12 Months of Live Music

When things started opening back up in 2021 after fifteen months of living in a cocoon, I was chomping at the bit. I purchased concert tickets left and right, many from bands that probably wouldn’t have made the cut in 2019, but in my newfound freedom seemed like necessary luxuries. Twelve months later, I look back on a year’s worth of live music. It was a great run. All but two of the acts I had never even seen before. You can read below for details, but Joseph and Sammy Rae & Friends win my two best shows of the year. The War on Drugs earns my worst. Nearly everyone else gets high marks.

September 18, 2021.  Black Pumas, preceded on different stages by Poi Dog Pondering, Moon City Masters and Sheila E.  Sheila E. proved to me that she kicks ass even in her 60s, putting the rest of us aging schlubs to shame.  I was unhappy that I had to leave the end of her show to ensure my attendance at the beginning of the Black Pumas concert, though they were terrific too, easily one of my three favorite bands of the past half a decade.  Sadly, they’ve cancelled shows for the latter half of 2022, leading to questions about the long-term health of the band.  Hopefully they’ll release more music soon.

November 13, 2021.  The Fixx, preceded by Fastball (the acoustic duo version of the group).  The Fixx was fantastic, one of two bands I had seen prior to 2021.  They are in my mind one of the most underrated bands of the 80s and 90s, achieving a level of musicianship and lyrical content that surpasses most of their contemporary and more-popular brethren.  Fabulous.

November 21, 2021. Sammy Rae & The Friends.  I’ve written about this band before, but they are ridiculous.  Sammy Rae’s voice is out of this world, and she really sings, eschewing the vocal shouting that appeals to the masses on shows like American Idol and The Voice.  As gifted and as ebullient a performer as you’ll ever see grace the stage.  One of my top two concerts of the past year.

January, 2022.  Pinegrove.  Postponed due to COVID.  Stay tuned.

January, 2022.  St. Paul & the Broken Bones.  Postponed due to COVID.  I eventually got my money back, but fortunately got to see the band in August at the Sacred Rose Festival.  Stay tuned.

January 15, 2022.  Nate Bargatze.  Not a musician, but a fabulous comedian who manages to be hilarious without resorting to the low hanging fruit of vulgarity and profanity.  Not that I’m a prude, but comedians like Jo Koy assault the audience with F-bomb after F-bomb, and it becomes tiresome.  Bargatze takes another path.

February 27, 2022.  Ralph Covert.  Formerly of acts like The Bad Examples and Ralph’s World, this local Chicago musician played for 2 hours and 45 minutes!  I shit you not.  Playing as a trio for most of the night, Ralph told stories and played selections from throughout his career.  Terrific.

March 27, 2022.  Bright Eyes, preceded by Christian Lee Hutson.  I took a chance on this one.  I only know that band’s final two albums and really dig them, but my dabbling into their earlier efforts has left me mostly unimpressed.  Fortunately, the band brought it with a crazy number of musicians on stage, including at times a mini choir and orchestra.  Led by Colin Oberst, the band clearly has its fanatics, as illustrated by the woman behind me who sang every lyric to every song…loudly.  Admittedly, I was kind of annoyed, but also impressed!  And I didn’t feel that I – a minor fan at best – could possibly bitch to someone who was clearly more passionate than I was.  Great show.

April, 2022.  Spoon.  Cancelled by me due to double-booking.  Damn.  This one hurts a little, as I rank their latest album among the best of 2022, and it looks to have been a great show.

May 4, 2022.  Aimee Mann.  Postponed due to COVID.  To date, this hasn’t been rescheduled.  I haven’t seen Mann perform since Til Tuesday opened up for Tom Petty in 1985!

May 5, 2022.  Steve Hackett.  Performing a short set of solo stuff followed by the entire Seconds Out Genesis album, this was a kick to see live, especially with my son.  Such a high level of musicianship, and I finally got to see Supper’s Ready live!

June 25, 2022.  Again with my son, this was the first time I saw Billy Joel since 1990, and he really surpassed my expectations.  Sure, he played it extremely safe with the setlist, but damn, I can’t argue with the quality of the tunes, and I was impressed with Joel’s vocal ability at such an advanced age.  He seems very at ease in the elder statesman role, probably happy to be alive and still performing for appreciative fans.

July 15, 2022.  Adrian Belew.  I kind of went to this one on a lark, unsure if it was worth the hassle.  It was.  The show cost all of $35, and it was sparsely attended, so my friend and I could stretch out in relative isolation during a high-COVID time.  Belew was fantastic, playing the guitar as no other with an unbelievable bassist and drummer to fill out the trio.  The music is weird and not always in my wheelhouse, but he was fun to see live, and I’m thankful he performed “Three of a Perfect Pair,” a favorite of mine.

July 26, 2022.  Pinegrove.  My daughter turned me onto this band, and while I enjoy their output, I can’t exactly name a song by them.  But this was one of those tickets I purchased way back in the fall of 2021, figuring, “What the hell. Take a chance.”  Playing twenty-two songs almost uninterrupted, the band was tight, offering a multitude of changes of tempo and feel, with odd-metered output and crunchy guitar making this a feast for the ears.  I was glad to have the plugs handy!     

August 26, 2022.  St. Paul & the Broken Bones, preceded on different stages by Sierra Hull, White Demim, City and Colour, Punch Brothers, and afterward a half an hour of The War on Drugs.  A stellar opening day of the Sacred Rose Festival in Chicago, I was greeted with a variety of acts, all really good except The War on Drugs, who I found to be ponderous and overly sincere with songs lacking hooks.  Oh well.  St. Paul & the Broken Bones, on the other hand, were stellar, with lead singer Paul Janeway leading the way.  He especially gained my respect after thanking security for getting his “fat ass” back on stage after a romp through the crowd.  Anyone who can laugh at himself is cool by me.  Oh, he can sing too!

August 28, 2022.  Khruangbin (but it was not to be), preceded by The Infamous Stringdusters with Molly Tuttle.  Bad weather made this entire day at the Sacred Rose Festival precarious.  I got to see an abbreviated setlist with the Stringdusters and Molly Tuttle, who were terrific.  Alas, nearby lightening shut things down thereafter.  My friend was particularly distraught after waiting for two hours in the front row to see Khruangbin, only to be turned away.

September 9, 2022.  The Shins preceded by Joseph.  Such a score on this one!  I was a little unmotivated to see The Shins on a weeknight, concluding that I may have been a bit too zealous with my concert ticket purchases earlier in the year.  But then a few days before the show I discovered that Joseph were opening, another band introduced to me by one of my daughters.  I liked their output and wondered how they might perform live.  Wow.  I mean, wow!  Three sisters singing tight harmonies to nothing more than an electric guitar and an occasional MIDI kick drum trigger.  And they killed it!  One of my top two concerts of the past year. I came home and immediately ordered their acoustic album on vinyl.  The Shins came out and killed it as well, offering a lot more urgency and energy than on their studio albums, and singer James Mercer was in great form, nailing the high vocal parts that Mercer could have been forgiven for reworking to accommodate his aging voice.  But no, even on the powerhouse “Simple Song,” he hit those suckers perfectly.  Great show.

And so ended twelve months of live music.  Not too shabby.  At present I don’t have tickets to see anyone, perhaps needing to take a reprieve after such a breakneck pace.  But it was a helluva good run.

The Cheap Trick book, This Band Has No Past

It’s been a long time since my last post, but I’m ready to get things rolling again.

Last spring I wrote about Brian Kramp’s run-in with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a short-sighted entity who temporarily shut down his music podcast, Rock and/or Roll. The silver lining in this fiasco was that it freed up Kramp’s time to complete This Band Has No Past: How Cheap Trick Became Cheap Trick, available now at Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, and other bookstores. I am not a die-hard Cheap Trick fan by any means, though I do think that Dream Police and In Color are nearly perfect power pop albums. Beyond that I’m a modest fan at best. Nonetheless, I found Kramp’s 300-plus-page read to be a delightful trip to the world of live music in the Upper Midwest during the 70s, and a meticulous record of how this band earned their success. If the book can capture the interest of a casual fan, I think that hard-core Cheap Trick followers will be ecstatic.

Kramp conducted more than eighty interviews for the book, including particularly insightful contributions from original drummer Bun E. Carlos and band manager Ken Adamany. The other original band members – Tom Petersson, Rick Nielsen and Robin Zander – didn’t participate, but their words are well-documented from past interviews, and I didn’t find their lack of direct input to be a drawback. If anything, it may have helped to keep the book focused and allow for more contributions from other players in the band’s history.

This Band Has No Past, a title taken from the mock-biography included in the band’s debut album, meticulously covers the origins of Cheap Trick from its modest roots in Rockford, Illinois, with forerunning bands such as The Grim Reapers, Bo Weevils and Fuse, to the recording of the wildly successful Cheap Trick at Budokan, the album that finally garnered the sales that eluded the band through their first three releases. You might be asking, “How the heck can a 300-page book only cover the band’s first few albums?” Kramp does this in a multitude of ways, all of which I found appealing.

First, he put the band’s evolution in context with contemporaneous events like the Vietnam War and the releases of Jaws and Star Wars, plus events that played tangential roles in band members’ lives, such as the details of the Richard Speck murders (which would inspire the song, "The Ballad of TV Violence") and the story of the plane crash that took the lives of Otis Redding and six others in 1967. As it happened, future band manager Ken Adamany owned the Madison, Wisconsin club where Redding was to appear that night, and Rick Nielsen’s band, The Grim Reapers, opened for what turned out to be somber occasion.

Second, Kramp’s devotion to details that other author’s may have deemed unimportant give the story its scope and vibrancy, such as the story of Chris Crowe, a graphic artist who created the band’s logo, the inclusion of setlists from various shows, and an in-depth analysis of which of the debut album’s sides was supposed to be played first (it’s not as obvious as one would think). Kramp scoured seemingly every publication that included even a passing mention to the band – the Racine Journal Times, the Rockford Register Republic, Estherville Daily News, etc. Seriously, I admire the efforts it must have taken for Kramp to amass so much information and portray it in an entertaining fashion. Hell, he included two pages worth of adjectives that various publications used to describe Cheap Trick, and another two pages of adjectives used to describe at Rick Nielsen. Kind of crazy, but really rewarding!

Which brings me to the third point: just as Kramp appears to have worked tirelessly to write This Band Has No Past, the book highlights just how hard-working the members of Cheap Trick and a multitude of other bands were at the time, playing show after show after show at tiny venues throughout the Upper Midwest, from bowling alleys to high school dances to clubs to festivals. The book serves as a time capsule of the gritty but vibrant live music scene during the 70s, a scene that modern day musicians can only long for. While most of the venues were foreign to me, I have to imagine that anyone from the area who came of age during the 70s is going to be thrilled with this trip down memory lane.

Most illuminating for me was the realization that Jack Douglas, the producer of Cheap Trick’s debut album, hand-picked the songs for that 1977 release, overlooking tracks that would later prove to be very important to the band’s success, most notably “I Want You To Want Me” and “Surrender.” And it’s mind-boggling to me that “Hello There” wasn’t chosen to open the first album; it would have rivaled other great debuts such as “Welcome to the Working Week,” “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Chuck E.’s in Love” and “Runnin’ with the Devil.” A fan of alternative history might ponder what would have transpired if these songs had been released earlier. Perhaps success would have come sooner, but perhaps Budokan wouldn’t have become phenomenon it became

Somehow it all worked out. And thanks to Kramp, much of it has been documented in an enjoyable read, and the book itself is an attractive, sturdy publication with color photos and appealing typesetting, making it well worth the price.

Archie Bunker and the Pentatonic Scale

Cooking in the kitchen the other day, I began humming the theme song to the classic 70s sitcom All in the Family, “Those Were the Days.” (TV theme songs constantly pop up in my head – they were good tunes!). In short order I recognized that nearly the entire song is comprised of the major pentatonic scale. Not until the B section, as Carroll O’Connor pines for the days when “girls were girls and men were men,” is the 7th of the scale introduced. Good stuff! It reminded me of my first introduction to the pentatonic scale as a child, when my sister taught me how to play a version of “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater” using only the black keys of our piano. I didn’t know at the time that the five keys made up a pentatonic scale, but in retrospect I probably became innately familiar with the scale’s sound.  

Years later, when I played baritone horn in my school’s band, one of my favorite pieces was “Variations of a Korean Folk Song” by John Barnes Chance, a ubiquitous piece among band circles at the time. Nearly the entire composition’s melody uses a pentatonic scale, and the impact of the song’s climax is probably heightened because the melody is played over a low brass line that finally introduces the 7th and 4th degrees of the scale, surprising the listener who by that point has grown accustomed to hearing only the five notes of the pentatonic scale. Really lovely.  

Traditional Chinese music utilizes the pentatonic scale, something American composer Alan Menken tapped into when composing songs for the Disney film, Mulan. The A section of the opening track, “Honor to us All,” is comprised solely of the pentatonic scale.

When I was a junior in high school, after I’d saved up my dishwashing money and skipped my high school’s homecoming dance to purchase by buddy’s older brother’s Peavey T40 bass guitar, I learned the familiar beginning notes to “My Girl,” the Temptations classic. Not only does the opening guitar riff use the pentatonic scale, the melody of the entire tune is comprised of only five notes.

Somewhere along the line my piano teacher Fred Tesch taught me the blues scale, and probably even intimated its association with the pentatonic scale, but it wasn’t until I was older that I truly understood the relationship. When I first learned the intro to Supertramp’s “Bloody Well Right,” it finally sunk in that the blues scale is essentially a major pentatonic scale starting on the 6th degree (which is simply called a minor pentatonic scale), plus one additional “blue” note. When Supertramp pianist Rick Davies plays his fabulous intro on the Wurlitzer, he’s primarily jamming on a G blues scale, though the song is in B-flat. The same technique is employed in Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke.” When I doubled the riff in my horn band years ago, I was well aware that I was doing the same thing Rick Davies had done in Supertramp: playing a major key’s relative minor blues scale (in this case a G-sharp blues scale, though the song is in the key of B).

Over the years, I dutifully took note, and even now when I’m soloing, I’m hopelessly tied to the pentatonic scale (I’m a pretty good keyboard player, but creative soloing is not exactly my forte).

Irving Berlin is famous for (among composing many great songs) preferring to play the black keys of a piano, and he had a transposing piano built so that he could always play in the key of F sharp.  Here he is demonstrating the invention.

It would be wrong to conclude that Berlin only played the black keys – far from it – but it’s nice to know that as the younger me was pounding out “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater,” I was playing the notes that Berlin favored. Not a bad way to begin a musical journey.

Touring for Today's Musician

Last month I discussed the current state of new music (conclusion: it isn’t good, not because of the music, but because of nearly everything else), and I questioned how a smaller artist can financially justify touring. More specifically, I estimated how much the artist Sammy Rae and her amazing band might have earned at a show in Milwaukee that I attended last November. I concluded very little, if anything.

Right on cue, bassist and YouTuber Adam Neely posted a video this week on how his band, Sungazer, barely broke even on their recent tour of the West Coast. Neely is far more eloquent than I am, and I highly encourage anyone who wonders about how their favorite artists survive to check out this video. In it, Neely specifies the costs associated with his tour, some of which may surprise you. Neely discusses how important the size of the band is in determining the cost-effectiveness of touring. For Sungazer’s tour, they typically played with four musicians, and the fourth was sometimes a luxury they weren’t so sure they could afford. Compare that to Sammy Rae’s six-piece backing band; I have no idea how she was able to pull this off and whether any of her band made enough to justify being away from home and, presumably, away from their other gigging or teaching jobs that pay the bills.

A few years ago, touring was challenging enough for independent artists, but Neely highlights just how precarious such an endeavor is in the age of COVID, as his band had to postpone tour dates when two of its members contracted the virus. This took away from the bottom line, as it extended lodging requirements and added costs to its van rental and gas. There’s also the issue of insurance, and Neely points to a CBC article from last September that examines this issue.

What was most illuminating about the video for me were the negative comments Neely shared about people’s perceptions of how touring musicians “should” live: to-wit, destitute, sleeping in vans, unshowered, presumably living off of nothing but the thrill of playing music. Worse, many of these vitriolic viewpoints were from fellow musicians who, as Neely states, “had sacrificed personal comfort indignities to stretch thin budgets on the behalf of those who might exploit their labor” and were now eager to chastise those who have chosen to live the way most sane human beings live.

Neely concludes (I’ve edited his remarks for smoother reading): “Musicians are expected to struggle. It is part of the narrative. The idea of a bed to sleep in seem(s) especially controversial. But this DIY ethos metastasizes quickly into anti-labor rhetoric. and (in) relentlessly questioning the necessity of fair working conditions and compensation, the argument being made, effectively, is that living expenses are shameful and the idea of paying for labor is downright offensive.

“I would argue that live music has value. It is work. And those who do it deserves to do it with dignity, like anybody who works.”

Nicely said, Adam. Please consider subscribing to his channel.

Neely also refers to several other worthy reads, including the following:

• the band Pomplamoose’s balance sheet from its 2014 tour.

• Stereogum’s article, “Why Are Musicians Expected to be Miserable on Tour Just to Break Even?”

• If you have access, you can also check out Rolling Stone’s article that references some of the above, including the band Wednesday’s tweet about it’s appearance at South by Southwest Festival, which earned the band a net of $98.39.

I’ve been writing about music for the past couple of months. Next week I’m going to start addressing some other issues that have been on my mind, starting with the importance of physical labor for one’s well-being.

The Stupidity of the Recording Industry

Before I get started, allow me to note that the podcaster Brian J. Kramp who I discuss below is also the author of the upcoming book, This Band Has No Past: How Cheap Trick Became Cheap Trick, available on September 6, 2022 in paperback from bookstores everywhere, including Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, and other on-line bookstores. You can pre-order your copy now. I will be covering this book in more detail once it’s released.

Okay, let’s begin.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the recording industry. It states on its website that it “advocates for recorded music and the people and companies that create it.” Allow me to put a spotlight on a situation where the RIAA practices something very different from its stated intent.

Enter Brian J. Kramp of Wisconsin, a self-described music obsessive who’s been hosting the terrific music blog Rock and/or Roll since 2015, with over 300 episodes. Brian is the kind of fan the record industry wants, or should want: someone who’s into music exponentially more that the average person. He buys tons of music, owns tons of albums, and he’s been spreading the message of music for years, covering metal, AOR, power pop, classic rock, alt country – you name it, this guy has it, often illuminating listeners about hidden gems by unknown bands whose music might be challenging to find. (Kramp’s recent podcast on AOR included bands like Under Fire, Razor Sharp, Fake ID and Babe Blu. All new to me!).

In short, Brian offers the record industry what it should be coveting: free advertising and unbridled enthusiasm for recorded music. Instead, in the summer of 2020, Brian received an email from Podbean that began:

"Dear Podcaster, we have been notified that your podcast content contains infringing content. Please check all your episodes and delete all copyrighted material. Please notice that repeat violation of copyrights will cause your account to be suspended. We've blocked your podcast site from public view. Please remove all infringing content and update us when this is done." 

Podbean was of course doing what they had to do. The real bully behind the letter was none other than the RIAA.

In August of 2020, Brian, obviously frustrated and bewildered and uncertain of what to do next, stated in his podcast: "What the RIAA is too dense to realize is that they're dealing with their best customers here. I have been buying music obsessively for more than 30 years. I have purchased exponentially more music than the average person, obviously, and the same goes for the kind of person who listens to these podcasts. So we are their best customers and they're treating us like the enemy.”

Brian then referenced a question that he had posted on his Facebook page: "Who's bought music because of the podcast?" After posting, it garnered a flood of positive responses, and Brian concluded that his podcast had exposed people to music that they “didn't even know about. Wouldn't that be exactly what the RIAA would want? It’s a free commercial for them.” Regarding his podcast, he added, “I’ve never made a penny off of it. The entire podcast is about loving music.”

So what’s behind all of this? Why does the industry actively inhibit this type of music endeavor when the result is music fans obsessing over music and seeking out music that they hadn’t heard before? If the RIAA’s objective is in fact to represent “people and companies” that create recorded music, aren’t they doing these people and companies a disservice?

If I were a recording artist who’s music was previously featured on “Rock and/or Roll,” I would welcome the advertising and I would wonder why the RIAA is making it harder for people to hear my music. But as I stated a few weeks ago in my last blog, the music industry isn’t necessarily in the business of promoting new music or lesser-known older music when it’s more lucrative to promote established catalogs of music at a fraction of the cost. After all, record companies have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars for these catalogs; now they need to recoup their investments.

Consider this: yesterday I saw a preview for the upcoming Disney/Pixar movie, Lightyear, and it featured the David Bowie song, “Starman.” It’s a fine tune, but whereas Pixar hired Randy Newman to compose new music for the original Toy Story back in 1995, spawning the gem, “You’ve Got a Friend In Me,” the new movie is promoting a 50-year old song, in this case “Starman,” owned by Warner Chappell Music, the publishing arm of Warner Music Group, which is owned by Access Industries.

Warner Music is one of the big three recording companies, along with Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. In short, these three music behemoth’s carry a lot of weight, and I suspect they’re willing to twist a few arms to get their high-priced music acquisitions featured on major motion pictures. I think the days of a modern songwriter being asked to compose three original tracks for a large, animated film are over. If there are exceptions – and I hope there are – I bet it’s for films with smaller budgets.

So where does that leave Brian Kramp and “Rock and/or Roll”?  Well, there is a happy ending to all of this, albeit one that grew out of frustration. As I already mentioned, Brian took the hiatus after 2020 to complete his book on Cheap Trick, a labor of love that he’d started in 2017. Also importantly, Brian began to post podcasts again two months ago after signing on with the Pantheon network and agreeing to “fade out” music per Pantheon’s policy. In the age of music streaming, why the hell it matters if a podcaster plays an entire song or fades it out is a question for the ages. Somehow the distinction is critical for the RIAA’s mission of “advocating” for recorded music. Go figure.

How else will Brian’s podcast change? It remains to be seen, but Brian wrote to me that he would likely avoid big-named artists and “stick to the original spirit of the podcast: rare and obscure music.” Brian is also reediting a number of his older podcasts and rereleasing them without complete songs.

In the meantime, new artist without large followings and more obscure older artists must face the facts: the RIAA doesn’t care about them or their music, and they care even less about their fans. What they do care about is placing songs of big-named artists with highly-priced catalogs in as many commercials, movies, TV shows and video games as possible.

Get used to it, folks. You’ll be hearing David Bowie ad nauseam for the next century.