The Clouds Part for Rufus

Foreboding clouds and cool winds yielded to a brilliant sky and mild temperatures last night for Rufus Wainwright’s fourth appearance at Ravinia in Highland Park, IL – this time with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – to perform five Shakespearean Sonnets, followed by a solo set of pop music.

Three of the sonnets originally appeared on 2010's All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, which Wainwright performed last year in Chicago with only piano accompaniment.  This time the sonnets were backed by a full orchestra while the singer, wearing a tan blazer and vest, a flashy scarf and white pants, stood at center stage, his hands clasped at his front for much of the show.  Rufus's vocal talents flourished in such a setting, and although some season-ticket holders might have not been sold on Wainwright as a classical artist (many of them left after intermission, or shortly thereafter), it’s undeniable that in pop music his vocal range and control have few equals.  As for the orchestral arrangements, at times they were too busy, with embellishments that cluttered up the melody, but at their best – like in Sonnet 43 – they anchored Rufus’s singing superbly.

For the second half of the show, Rufus appeared onstage – surprisingly without a costume change – for a solo show accompanied by piano, save for four songs backed by acoustic guitar.  His set list was less ambitious from his last Chicago appearance, sticking closely with fan favorites for the most part and ignoring his debut album, though he did unveil a new song devoted to publicist Barbara Charone, and he dusted off two lesser-played songs from his album Poses, “Grey Gardens” and “California.”

As always, Rufus was humorously self-deprecating on stage, admitting before playing “The Dream” that he might not be able to get through it.  Last year, he struggled throughout the most difficult parts of the piece (if you can find me a more complicated piano part for a pop-song, I’d like to hear it) but managed to plow his way through.  This time, Rufus had to stop, utter “Let’s try that again,” and then finally acquiesce after a few more attempts to find an on-ramp.  “I can’t play it anymore,” he laughed, before playing a chord that allowed him to finish the piece.  Perfection or not, the audience seemed genuinely appreciative at his efforts.

A few songs later, Rufus offered a new piece slated for his next pop album (to be produced by Mark Ronson), and said it wasn’t entirely set yet, but that he’d approach it as an “open rehearsal, which is what the show has sort of become.”

The show’s high points were from Rufus’s more intimate songs – “Dinner at Eight,” “Martha,” and “Zebulon” – all devoted to various trials and hardships with his family.  During these pieces, the audience – at least those seated in the pavilion – fell completely silent, a feat which might not have been possible in a setting other than Ravinia. 

The concert ended with the upbeat “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk,” along with two encores, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and “Going to a Town,” the last introduced with Rufus’s admission that “although it’s sometimes been hard, I still believe in Obama.”

If there were any Tea Party supporters in attendance, they opted to stay silent.  When it comes to art, sometimes you gotta swallow a few political quips.

From Album to Tape to CD to .mp3 File to...the Cloud

Jon Pareles published an excellent article in the New York Times about the ever-evolving makeup of the music we listen to, and it all seems to be headed to the same inevitable conclusion: the cloud, which you may have already had exposure to on Amazon, Apple and Google.  Cloud computing isn't new and it isn't limited to music - people have been creating Microsoft Office documents on-line for years - but with regard to music, the cloud simply refers to on-line storage that allows listeners to access music from multiple devices via an Internet connection, rather than having to copy mass quantities of storage from device to device. 

For my own website, I've been using a DivShare to store my own compositions, though with the Big Boys now in the cloud business, I suspect it's only a matter of time before DivShare gets purchased.

Of course, having each music listener in the world own their own cloud requires storage - massive storage - and insane redundancy, not to mention user time.  Remember how long it took you to convert your CDs to .mp3 files all those years ago?  If you and I both own The White Album, does it make sense for each of us to have to upload the same album (again) and store it on-line?  Why not just have the album stored in one place that both of us have access to?

Apple is all over this concept with iMatch, that - for a fee - will recognize music you own (legally or illegally) and provide access to their own copies.  For those of us with hundreds or even thousands of CDs, this concept is an attractive one. 

Cloud computing continues the trend of diminishing the value of music, and poses a tricky problem for artists who are already feeling the squeeze since physical ownership of a song became unnecessary.  When listeners have access to any song at any time from any place, the song becomes something less in the hearts and minds of the listener.  As Mr. Pareles wrote:

"Songs have become, for lack of a better word, trivial."  Now anyone with Internet access has "an infinitude of choices immediately at hand. But each of those choices is a diminished thing; attainable without effort, disposable without a second thought, just another icon in a folder on a pocket-size screen with pocket-sized sound."

So Long, Amy

On Saturday, July 23rd, I threw in a CD in the car, a Marc Cohn album, and listened along with my family.  On the same home-burned disc, it turns out, was another album, my apparent attempt at efficiency three years ago when I purchased downloads of two CDs on the same day and wanted to make a hard copy without wasting two blank discs.  The second album began to play when Marc Cohn finished.  It was Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black," music I probably hadn't listened to in two years.  It was good to hear.

The next morning, also by chance, I flipped channels on the TV for a few minutes and stopped when I saw Amy Winehouse's image.  I learned that she had died the day before, about seven hours before I played her CD.

Coincidence?  Most likely.  And yet...

So long, Amy.  Another one lost at age twenty-seven.  I think of her in-laws, who in the midst of Amy's substance abuse, begged fans to boycott her music to help her get back on track.

And I think of how I didn't listen.

To be Fourteen and Inspired

In a New York Times opinion piece last week, David Hajdu wrote about how the music we’re exposed to as fourteen year-olds correlates with the creative output of tomorrow.  Fourteen is an age for developing personal tastes, and as artists like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson turn seventy, it’s interesting to see how rock and roll’s infancy influenced and inspired these great artists when they were fourteen, allowing them to envision a world that up until then didn’t exist.  One minute they were listening to Perry Como and Nat King Cole with their parents, and suddenly Elvis burst onto the scene, forever altering the musical construct.

A friend of mine with whom I graduated high school pointed out this article to me, and then made mention of who was big when we were fourteen years-old.  He wrote facetiously, “Other than Juice Newton and 38 Special, I just don’t see it.”

Perhaps, though when I think back to 1981 and 1982, “Queen of Hearts” and “Hold on Loosely” aren’t the first songs that come to mind.  I’m thinking more like “Subdivisions” by Rush, “Shock the Monkey” by Peter Gabriel, Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out,” Prince’s “1999” and Duran Duran’s “Rio.”  But you could just as easily think of “Back on the Chain Gang” by the Pretenders, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash or “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes.  There was plenty of stuff – both good and bad – to capture the imagination of a young pimple-faced soul at the time.

You could make the argument that after the initial rock revolution, there were so many genres and sub-genres of music that it was difficult for a particular band or artist to be life-altering the way, say, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis or Buddy Holly were back in the day.  If you ask a hundred 70 year-olds to name the influential artists of 1956, I bet you’ll get the same answers nine times out of ten.  On the other hand, try asking a hundred 43 year-olds to highlight the music of 1982, and I bet you’ll get ninety different answers.  There was just so much to choose from, and so much of it could have been considered trailblazing at the time, inspiring future artists to take up a guitar, a synthesizer or a saxophone, but none of it was MOMENTOUS (with the possible exception of Thriller, though I’d happily exclude this from my playlist).

Today, now that the digital revolution has firmly taken hold, music is even further diluted.  I recall hearing stories about how in 1967 St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band could be heard up and down college campuses, and any summarization of my freshman year of college wouldn’t be complete without mentioning The Joshua Tree leaking through every doorway of my dormitory.  But today, I’m not sure there’s an artist that could command that sort of widespread appeal, not due to a lack of artistry or genius, but due to a fundamental change in the music industry.  My daughters turn fourteen this year, and there isn’t an artist that appeals to their class on the whole – tastes are all over the place.

So what about 1981 and 1982?  Did those years inspire the great artists of the next two decades the way 1955 and 1956 did?

Well, they must have made an impression on someone, because here are the artists who turned 14 during ’81 and ’82:

Kurt Cobain

Dave Matthews

Thom Yorke (of Radiohead)

Billy Corgan

Liz Phair

David Grohl

Gwen Stefani

Perhaps not in the same league as McCartney, Dylan and Simon, but still, not too shabby.

A Giant Sucking Sound? What will become of Rock and Roll?

In 1992, presidential candidate Ross Perot warned Americans about the “giant sucking sound” of U.S. jobs fleeing to Mexico if NAFTA passed.  It did, and – for reasons probably having nothing to do with NAFTA – the U.S. went on to have eight years of rapid growth.   Maybe this example of exceeded expectations is reason enough to be slightly optimistic about what will happen to rock and roll once the current wave of aging rockers crashes into a shore of social security, nursing homes and…cemeteries. 

But one could be forgiven for having a slightly bleak outlook.

Just one look at the Chicago area concerts this summer gives reason for concern.  Consider the following acts:

Jimmy Buffet , Paul Simon, Rush, Styx, Bob Segar, Peter Gabriel, Steely Dan, Robert Plant and Journey.

The average age of those acts – not including Styx’s and Journey’s young replacements – is about 61.  Paul Simon will be turning 70 this year.  Jimmy Buffett?  65.  And then there are other aging bands coming to the area: Foghat, Asia, Yes, Nightranger, Motley Crue – the list goes on and on.

In ten years, when all of these acts are gone, what will fill the void?  Sure, there are plenty of popular young musicians on tour this year: Kate Perry, Taylor Swift, R Kelly, Rihanna, Josh Groban, Carrie Underwood…but you have to wonder whether in twenty years people will be willing to shell out wads of cash to see – say – an aging Lady Gaga.

And this really isn’t a knock on today’s artists; there are plenty of bands today that excite me.  But times have changed, and the age of long-lasting rockers with huge followings could be over, replaced instead by musicians who are compartmentalized by geography or niche genres. 

Gone are the days of the nurtured band who’s allowed to grow and audience over time, gaining allegiance and hard-core fans who can name the deep tracks.  Record companies can’t afford to do this anymore, and we as listeners have adjusted the way we listen to music, withholding the devotion, patience and money that music careers so often require. 

Purchasing a song on iTunes for 89 cents doesn’t really ensure a long career or even a follow-up album.  Have you heard anything recently from Daniel Powter?  Do you even know who he is?  Billboard Magazine named Powter the last decade’s top one-hit wonder.  “Bad Day” might have been a huge hit five years ago for Powter, but he couldn’t sell out an arena today, partly because few people actually purchased his album; they purchased his song, and a song does not an arena band make. 

Of course, there have always been one-hit wonders, and one can hope that the Foo Fighters, Kid Rock, The Counting Crows, Kings of Leon, Dave Matthews Band can hang in there for a while and hold down the fort while other acts build an audience.   I’ve no doubt that new performers will rise to the challenge. 

But it could be a couple of ugly years.