Are Spine-tingling Musical Discoveries Over?

Robert Plant recently said of the constant request to reunite Led Zeppelin, “magazines and internet platforms should be supporting new music” rather than clamoring for reunions. A fair argument for a man who fronted the band over thirty-seven years ago (with a few one-off reunions since). His retort inspired me to investigate his recent output, and I’m listening to his latest album, “Carry Fire,” as I write this. And it’s fine. It might even be good. Plant has proven to be among the most versatile vocalists in rock history, but there’s nothing about his new music that’s shaking me down to my soul, imploring me to listen. 

It’s not Plant’s fault. Creating something that screams “this is something you HAVE to hear” is getting harder and harder to achieve, and I’m beginning to think that music has largely played itself out. Everything that you’re able to accomplish using 12 tones has been achieved (check out The Guardian's article, Has Pop Finally Run Out of Tunes.). Classical music hit a wall in the 20th Century, giving way to Dixieland and jazz, giving way to blues and folk, giving way to simple rock followed by prog rock, breaking back down to punk, post-punk, new wave, giving way to rap and hip hop, electronic, etc. This isn’t to say that there isn’t good music being written and performed today – in fact, I’d argue that there may be more good music today than at anytime on the planet, simply because there’s SO MUCH to choose from – but I doubt that many current acts are breaking any new ground. I’m currently rehearsing songs for my tenth album, and while I truly like the compositions and think it’s going to end up sounding great, I’d be a moron to think that any of it is particularly inventive and not leaning heavily on influences of other artists.

“Ah-hah” moments – those spine-tingling revelations that grab you by the collar and assault you emotionally – happen few and far between for me these days, but they DO happen once in a while, most times in the car where most of my new music listening occurs. In 1980 Rush sang about radio’s “magic at your fingers,” and for me, this has certainly been the case, as I can recall several "Ah hah” moments in transit:

2016:  Heading north on York Road in Elmhurst, returning home from volunteering at a food bank, I tuned into WDCB playing “Porcupine Dreams” by the Danny Green Trio. It blew me away. I’ve written since about Green’s stellar album, Altered Narratives, but it bears repeating: listen to this recording!

2011:  In the parking lot at the mini-golf on Lake Street in Addison, I waited for my son to leave a birthday party when “Rolling in the Deep” by Adelle came on WXRT. Say what you want about Adelle, but the gal has chops. This song grabbed me by the gut and didn’t let go.

2009:  Driving to drop off the kids at Hebrew school on a Wednesday afternoon, WXRT played “Oscar Wilde” by a local band called Company of Thieves. Holy crap. Intelligent, sultry, angry, rocking, enticing - everything that I want in a song was there, and all in under five minutes.

1999: On my way to kill some time with my girls on a cold winter’s day, I took some extra time in the Lehigh Valley Mall parking lot as the disc jockey of Muhlenberg College’s WMUH played a song by a woman singing the lyric “I can’t breathe” over an infectious drum loop and haunting Rhodes keyboard. Unfortunately, this was pre-smart phone, so I jotted down what I could remember about the song and what time it was played. Upon returning home I called the radio station, by which time a classical guy was manning the radio booth. He was kind enough to go back to the previous jockey's song log and start rattling off song titles, eventually coming to the title “Here with Me” by an artist named Dido. That was it! One of the best songs of the 1990s. 

1995: After flying into Detroit, I borrowed my brother’s car to drive to Grand Rapids for a friend’s wedding, and on the way a very angry woman spouted off venomous words to a former lover. I needn’t have jotted down the song title or the woman’s name the way I did, as the song “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette consumed the airwaves for the next six months and beyond. It was a game changer, and it was evident upon first listen.

1995: Just six months after the revelation of Alanis, I heard the pounding piano, falsetto voices and witty, sardonic lyrics of Ben Folds Five. Driving with my handheld recorder that I used to quickly document song ideas, I pressed record in case the DJ of WXPN didn’t announce the artist and song right away. I still own the tape today of the fantastic final thirty seconds of “Underground.” Four years later I was recording my own songs that were directly linked to that revealing day driving around in my crappy Dodge Neon.

Lately, I've been tuning into classical radio when I'm in the car. The songs I’m hearing on XRT are predictable and lifeless. The songs on classic rock radio are overplayed and cumbersome. Jazz on WDCB is hit and miss. But classical often provides the challenge my ears are searching for, something I wouldn’t have predicted just a few years ago. 

Where music goes from here is open to debate, but there will always be opportunities to discover “ah hah” moments - if not from new artists, then retroactively. Leaning on the familiar denies the spark of insight and emotional intensity that the soul seeks. Keep searching and once in a while you may find it.

The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock

David Weigel’s book The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock traces the arc of a semi-vague movement in rock history, devoting a good deal of space to the usual suspects of Yes, Genesis, Rush, Emerson Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, etc., while highlighting various bands who may have fallen under the radar for some listeners (me, for instance). If nothing else, the book provides a jumping off point to discover new music, but unless you’ve already submerged wholeheartedly into the waters of 20-minute long epics, this book will not wade you in gradually via the shallow end and let you get used to the temperature. You’re getting thrown into the deep end and will likely drown.

Weigel doesn’t hand-hold, so that when he delves into the history of chaps named Daevid Allen and Robert Wyatt – two people I had never heard of – he doesn’t give the reader the benefit of context. In the hands of a better writer, I would have expected a brief “…who would later form Soft Machine…” No such luck. Mercifully, a few pages later he applies this technique for Michael Giles, as “…the future drummer of King Crimson.”

But until the Weigel anchors the reader firmly in the 1970s and the bands that gained traction, the book is a bit of a mess, devoting a page to one band, then a page to another, so that it’s hard to find one’s bearings. The promising prologue is the only thing that kept me turning the page at first, but once we reached 1970, I was all in, finishing the book in just over a day (which, for me, is quite an accomplishment).

Once again, I had my handy streaming service next to me throughout the reading of this book, playing hours of music to see if any music struck a chord. Recognizing that I didn’t give compositions the same chance I would have had I shelled out $7.99 for an LP in 1980, here are some of my hasty conclusions:

1)     I hadn’t considered Procol Harum a prog rock band, and really, I hadn’t considered them at all. But after streaming through half an album, I’ve decided that I need to investigate them more fully (I'm listening to them as I write this blog). Aside from their breakout hit, “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” I have no clue, but I like what I’ve heard thus far.

2)     The funnest fact I learned was that the vocal/organ line of Yes’s 20-minute epic “Ritual” was sampled for a song by De La Soul called “The Grind Date.” Now THAT was something Jon Anderson couldn’t have foreseen back in 1973 as critics were panning the double album, Tales from Topographic Oceans (one of Yes’s best).

3)     The prog rock bands that hit the big time were likely the best, so give a hand to the masses for taste. I listened for a while to Soft Machine, Van der Graaf Generator, Gong, etc., and more modern bands like Porcupine Tree and Dream Theater, and none of them grabbed me.

4)     Given the inclusion of Gong, I was surprised that 10cc wasn’t given a brief shout-out, as the quirky nature of the music is similar. Styx too is mentioned only in passing on page 214, a little surprising given the content of their first several albums.

5)     Two additional bands that I’d like to investigate more are Hatfield and the North, and Gentle Giant. My ears perked up for both and I’ll need to add them to the list along with Procol Harum.

6)     A great deal of space is devoted to Robert Fripp, from his King Crimson output to his work with Brian Eno, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel and Daryl Hall, and I found both the man and his music to be insufferable. I’m not a fan of Bowie’s Heroes and Gabriel’s second album, and last night I listened to the Daryl Hall release Sacred Songs – terrible. And then I found a King Crimson concert recorded just last June from the Chicago Theater – a concert I actually considered going to until I learned that neither Bill Bruford nor Adrian Belew would be on stage – and I’m so glad I saved my cash. Aside from the song “Three of a Perfect Pair,” I guess I’m simply not a Fripp fan.

7)     As a vinyl purchaser, I’ve occasionally had a Jethro Tull album in hand before placing it back in the record bin (they tend to be pricey). After listening to Thick as a Brick in its entirety, I think I’m going to pass on this band. Aside from a few songs, they aren't my cup of tea. However, I have to give Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull a bit of a shout-out, as his 1980 description of why prog rock went out of favor is spot on:

Ten years ago, there was a great deal more flexibility and freedom both in radio programming and in terms of the record company policy, as to what they would take a chance on.

I agree, but the rise of the Internet and home recording studios of course changes all of that. As connoisseurs we can listen to anything we want whenever we want, and I imagine that aside from the terrible metrics that Pandora uses to crap out the same old shit time and time again, there has got to be access to interesting, innovative music at everyone’s fingertips. The trick is finding it. If I put in a Yes song in Pandora and press play, I’ll get the usual Genesis, Kansas, Styx and Rush – nothing that exposes me to interesting bands I’ve never heard of, including many of the bands explored in Weigel’s book. But I suspect if I were 20 years-old and cared more, I would find the music I was longing for.

For the time being, I’m going to go backward and explore some of the bands I missed the first time around. And then I’m going to put on Close to the Edge. Because really, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Joni Mitchell's Biography

Author David Yaffe is an unabashed Joni Mitchell fan, and his admiration oozes in nearly every paragraph of his 376-page biography, Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell. As a reader who knew little about Mitchell aside from her musical output from 1970 through the early 90s, I found this book to be an enlightening read that offered a glimpse into how Mitchell developed creatively, broke down barriers, explored new terrain, and how the difficulties she experienced in her personal life fed her art. Still, at times Yaffe’s love becomes overbearing, his writing devolving into a fawning fit of approbation.

Yaffe certainly knows his subject, and the book is buoyed by direct quotes from Mitchell herself, as well as many of her ex-lovers, fellow artists and friends, not to mention concert and album reviews from publications as Mitchell’s career unfolded. Fortunately, Yaffe doesn’t gloss over Mitchell’s less admirable qualities, allowing her cantankerous personality to barge through as she blasts the likes of Thomas Dolby, Joan Baez, ex-husband Larry Klein, and even her daughter, with whom she reunited thirty-three years after placing her up for adoption. The most revealing remark in the book may be from Klein, who concludes, “I think that the seed of the angry, narcissistic element of her personality was always there, but I think that it was a gradual process of that part of her growing, and the curious and joyful part gradually receding.”

Too many biographies are too thin on the creative process and too robust on private life (Daniel Lanois’s autobiography being Exhibit A), but Yaffe may be the first author I critique whose summary of an artist’s output becomes too much at times, especially as he describes Mitchell’s career of the late 70s that delved deeper and deeper into jazz influences and esoteric lyrics. When a subject’s lyrics are obscure, more grounded prose would be helpful, but some of Yaffe’s detailed analyses of Mitchell’s lyrics are as hazy as the source. Consider the following description of the final verse of “Paprika Plains” off of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter:

“Changing weather becomes changing rhythms. Now the disco ball is shining on the dancers, illuminated by an artificial globe. It’s a continuum. She’s still as ‘wide-eyed open to it all’ as she was when she was ‘three feet tall.’ Everywhere she looks, she sees patterns and makes poetic images out of them. Like a medicine ball, the mirrored ball is moving, yet it is also a center, like coming back to middle C. That mirrored ball shines on everyone.”

This kind of writing bogs the book down.

But there are other moments when Yaffe hits the nail on the head. When describing the effect that Mitchell’s reimagining of her classic song “Both Sides Now” in 2003 had on the orchestra and conductor Vince Mendoza, Yaffe writes:

“The arranger and the musicians were losing it, but Joni was smiling. She had them exactly where she wanted them. She knew she had achieved spectacular theater just by getting older and going back to a song people thought they knew.”

Simple and straight forward, but effective. 

The coolest tidbit I learned was that the line from Led Zeppelin’s ”Going to California” – “to find a queen without a king/they say she plays guitars and cries and sings” – is a reference to Joni and her first track off her first album, “I Had a King.” I wish I’d known this when I was a 12 year-old putz claiming Zeppelin to be the greatest band of all-time.

It’s funny that certain words stand out when reading a book, and in Reckless Daughter Yaffe’s love for the word ebullient is almost as apparent as his love for Mitchell. If I had a digital copy of the book, I’d do a quick count. And he refers to Mitchell on several occasions as a “goddess,” which – to me – reads over the top, as if he’s projecting his own fantasies with the younger Mitchell. That’s quibbling on my part, but there are meatier grievances, particularly those pages where Yaffe reveals his own prejudices. His blanket statement about 80s music being “the aural equivalent of fluorescent lighting” is, of course, ridiculous. Let’s not forget that in the 80s many of Mitchell’s peers released some of their best work: James Taylor, Paul Simon and Jackson Browne among them. Mitchell didn’t. It was her choice to follow trends, but there was nothing inherently bleak about the 80s music scene. Great music was there for the taking. Mitchell didn’t create much, if any. 

And Yaffe inexplicably critiques artists of that decade: “If Nietzsche was disgusted by Wagner, what would he have made of Hall and Oates, or Phil Collins? The slickness of the decade even plagued music that might have otherwise been good. The standards, in other words, were low, and the people were sheep.”

Ouch. Okay, Yaffe, you got your licks in, but I confess without shame: I would rather listen to 1980s Phil Collins – and hell, even 1980s Hall and Oates – over 1980s Joni Mitchell any day of any week of any year. Don’t blame these guys on Joni’s poor output that decade

Still, Reckless Daughter is a good read and it educated me on several blind spots I had regarding Mitchell’s discography. One habit I employ that I would recommend to anyone reading a book about music: have your streaming app handy. It took me a while to finish Mitchell’s biography because every other page led me to listen to another song on Napster, and there are some gems I hadn’t heard before, or at least hadn’t paid much attention to: most notably, “I Had a King” and my new favorite, “Roses Blue.”

Yep, those are old songs. What can I say? I’m a melody guy, and when it comes to heartfelt lyrics and melody, you can’t do much better than Joni Mitchell’s first decade of recordings.

Guitars, Gibson and Sonar

Last summer the rock music industry was all abuzz after the Washington Post reported on the decline of the guitar, an instrument whose sales are down by a full third in the last decade and whose retailers are drowning in debt (don’t be surprised if Guitar Center and Sam Ash go the way of Blockbuster and Circuit City). Virtually every musician I know read the article, and many agreed with its conclusion: that music today isn’t generating the guitar heroes necessary to sustain sales. Gone are the days of Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Vaughn and Van Halen, and as a result young talent is gravitating toward beats and loops rather than six stringed instruments.

There’s another issue that wasn’t touched on in the Washington Post: why buy a new guitar when the market has been flooded with superior used instruments? Poke around on-line forums and you’ll find a universal conclusion that a new Gibson Les Paul is widely inferior to one built three decades ago, and as the aging baby boomers shed the guitars they used to shred, there are deals to be had.

I’m not really a guitar player, so the above would seem not to have a direct impact on me, except that I am a DAW user (that’s Digital Audio Workstation for you novices out there), and last week I learned that the software I’ve been using for over twenty years is being discontinued by – of all things – a guitar manufacturer: the aforementioned Gibson, who bought out Cakewalk – the company that produces its flagship DAW software, Sonar – in 2013. Guitar sales had been declining, cost-cutting measures had already been adopted, and the thought was that Gibson needed to diversify into consumer electronics and software. Since then, it seems that in addition to screwing up their guitars, the company is now screwing up other sides of their business.

At least that appears to be the consensus on-line. Check out this blog and you may agree that Gibson – in addition to bungling a valued piece of software – handled the discontinuation of Sonar poorly, giving little notice to its users and collecting money for recent upgrades and “lifetime” subscriptions for products that were about to be shelved.  

Depending how you look at it, my having to learn an entirely new DAW at a point in my life when all I want to do is record music without having to think about it can be directly attributed to the dearth of guitar heroes today that resulted in the diversification and mismanagement of the premier guitar manufacturer.

Damn you, guitarists, or lack thereof!

I purchased my first Cakewalk software in 1995 (back when the company was called Twelve Tone Systems), and four short years later I was producing entire albums using Cakewalk on my Compaq computer running Windows 97. It was a time of slow processors and tiny hard drives, when each song I recorded had to be stored on rewritable CDs costing over $20 a piece (remember the CD manufacturer, Smart and Friendly?). We’ve come a long way since then, and early next year I’ll complete my tenth and last album using Cakewalk software. Then it’s off to new horizons as I devote valuable time to learning another DAW – likely Cubase. 

It’s been a good run, but it’s a run that shouldn’t have ended this soon.

Lovett and Hiatt in Waukegan

The mutual admiration and banter between Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt at their duo acoustic show in Waukegan’s Genesee Theatre on Friday night was almost as much fun hearing as the music itself. Both sporting stylish sportscoats and ties, Lovett and Hiatt sat down in their respective chairs and stayed there for the entire evening, trading songs back and forth and occasionally adding an accompanying guitar or backup vocal to each other’s performances, but always adding witty repartee between songs. Of the 160 minute performance, I’d guess that a full third of that time was Lovett and Hiatt chatting with each other in their slow, dry delivery, much like a James Taylor or Randy Newman.

I am more familiar with Lovett’s songs than Hiatt’s, but had always admired the latter’s soulful, swampy voice and his uncanny ability to stay under the radar yet command respect from musicians whom I admire. But if a newbie to Hiatt’s music were to base his opinion solely on Friday’s performance, he would likely be at a loss as to why or how Hiatt managed to attract attention. Opening with “Master of Disaster,” Hiatt immediately pushed his range to its limits, screeching out vocals that barely resembled notes, and while some of the rough edges smoothed out over the course of the evening, it was clear that he was either having a bad night or was no longer able to hit the notes in their original keys. There is no shame in this, but there is an expectation for musicians to adjust the keys or the melodies to adapt to their aging voices. Hiatt played most of his tunes with a capo, so lowering the songs by a half step or two would have been an incredibly easy thing to do. Unfortunately, he grinded it out for the evening, and his performance suffered as a result.

The contrast between Hiatt’s opening performance and Lovett’s “Creeps Like Me” couldn’t have been wider, as Lovett’s smooth tenor sounded strong and unstrained and remained so for the rest of the show, and the contrast wasn’t limited to each other’s vocal abilities. Hiatt talked about having to solo regularly with Ry Cooder’s band back in the early 80s when Lovett first saw his friend perform, and how terrifying that had been. Lovett responded that he always found soloing terrifying. As such, Hiatt took all the leads of the evening, but I found his guitar playing clunky and sloppy. I’ve played with some excellent guitarists in my life, and Hiatt wouldn’t rank among any of them. As is often the case with live acoustic guitar, the sound when strumming was overpowering and mid-rangy, often masking the lyrics of the songs, and Lovett’s picking went over better, allowing his vocals to shine through.

As for the songs, both performers are excellent craftsmen, particularly when it comes to funny, witty tunes, though I would have loved to have heard some of Lovett’s more heartbreaking compositions such as “Road to Ensenada” or a more up-tempo song like “It Ought To Be Easier.” Instead, he stuck largely to blues-based or funny songs, the most effective being “Her First Mistake,” a gem from 1996. Glancing at the set lists from this tour, the songs between performances vary significantly, so it looks like each show is one of a kind, much like these artists.

This was the first time I saw either of these musicians perform, but it was the second time I purchased tickets to see Lovett. Back in July of 2001, my wife and I were to see him perform at Ravinia on a sweltering weeknight. We had lawn seats, and I was kind of dreading the insane traffic, having to find a place to sit and sweating my ass off only to fight the traffic again on the way home. To add a little wrinkle to the evening, my wife was three months pregnant and not feeling all that great. As we were about to walk out the door, she mentioned something about not having to find a good seat because at Ravinia lawn seats aren’t in view of the stage.  I did a double take. “What?” “If you’re in the lawn seats you just hear the music. You can’t actually see the stage.” I contended then, and I contend now, that that is the stupidest setup for a concert venue in the history of mankind.

I pulled the plug. We stayed home. Sixteen years later we sat in the twelfth row of a small theater, and in addition to hearing an honest, uncluttered performance, we actually got to see the human marionette’s smile stretching out wide and strong in response to his buddy’s goofy remarks. It was worth the wait.