I worked at my first country-western station – KDAK in Carrington, ND – in 1982.  I worked at a couple after that, including WDGY in Minneapolis in 2001-2002.  I learned a great, immutable lesson; when country  western is bad, it’s very very bad.  When it’s mediocre, it’s very, very bad.  When it’s good, it’s very, very good.

And while the country audience is reliably Republican and the heart and soul of this country, country’s big themes – adultery, drinking, adultery, drunk driving, adultery and being hung over – show that America’s heart and soul longs for it’s younger, dumber days.

JB Doubtless’ protestations aside, most country-western music is cynically-marketed, focus-grouped tripe that makes N*SYNC sound fairly deep and  fascinating in comparison. Y’know – like rock and roll, R ‘nB and “Smooth Jazz”, only marketed with an ersatz twang to a different market vertical.

There’s tons of great country, of course.  Emmylou Harris was a favorite of mine back when I was still mainlining Stiff Little Fingers.  Over time and stints at a couple of C/W stations, I found quite a few other singers and groups that grabbed me; the classic stuff, of course, George Jones and Johnny Cash and Ernest Tubb and Hank Senior (the twangier the better), Waylon and Willie and Dolly Parton and Buck Owens, as well as a few that dragged the genre back from the pop-crossover hell of the eighties (Garth Brooks was a good thing by that standard), Dwight Yoakam and Rodney Crowell (and Roseanne Cash, and for that matter Carlene Carter before she fell off the face of the earth dragging Howie Epstein with her), the Desert Rose Band, Vince Gill, Suzy Bogguss, Steve Earle (at his early-eighties best), Holly Dunn…

And, the incandescent Patty Loveless – here covering (since I’m going through a Red-like obsession phase) one of my all-time favorites, a Richard Thompson song whose original version would be hard to top.

Loveless has a ton of great stuff – she’s one of those rare country singers who writes some of her own stuff – but some of her covers (like this one, by yet another long-time fave, eighties cowpunks Lone Justice) just kill me.

Apropos not much.

I first saw Christine Collister backing Richard Thompson at the First Avenue in 1986. Now, seeing Thompson alone is amazing – he’s the world’s greatest living guitar player, which alone is a near-religious experience.  Every time I’ve seen him, I’ve felt the need to start completely over from square one on the guitar.

But for the last several years, Thompson’s been touring as mostly a solo or small-group act. Again, it’s great – Thompson’s an amazing performer, a guy who could sing the phone book to great effect. But that touring band was the best I ever saw backing Thompson. It featured Collister and Clive Gregson singing backup and playing guitar, Danny Kilpatrick on three-row button accordion, and Dave Pegg and Dave Mattacks in the rhythm section – this incarnation here).

The most striking thing about the evening was Collister’s backing vocals on a seven-minute version of Thompson’s classic “Calvary Cross” – a song I later learned I was very, very lucky to see; Thompson has performed it very sparingly since 1972. Collister – with a booming, contralto voice that’s totally unlike most female backup singers (and very different from Thompson’s ex-wife Linda, who’d done most of the singing during their marriage), more like Dusty Springfield than Christine McVie, was an amazing counterpoint to Thompson’s nasal brit yawp (as in this reading of a Rich and Linda classic). While I loved Thompson the other two times I saw him (in ’97 with Mattacks, Danny Thompson on double bass and Pete Zorn on guitars, sax and percusson, and in ’89 with a grab-bag drummerless band (Mattacks had broken his hand the night before) that included Loudon Wainright), this lineup was one of the most stunning nights I’ve ever spent in a concert.

Anyway – I got a jolt out of seeing that Collister has a solo career. Might be a stop on my next transatlantic CD-buying expedition.

As a kid in the seventies (I graduated from high school in 1981) who was aggressively contrarian about music (into classical, punk, the Who and Springsteen, mainly), I pretty much eschewed most of the Top 40 pop of the day.  Of course, much of it deserved eschewing; it was the era of “Afternoon Delight” (still the worst song ever to make the Top 40, which after all these years continues to squeak a “win” out against Britney Spears’ loathsome “Lucky” and anything Dennis DeYoung ever sang), a time when people like the interchangeable Alan O’Day, Roger Voudouris, Henry Gross, Rupert Holmes, Robert John, Robbie DuPree,  and Sammy John (no, I mean it.  Look them all up.  They were all interchangeable musically and visually.  It says something about the impact of MTV that the musical careers of guys who looked like 35-year-old Woody-Allens-via-artin Scorsese dried up overnight) had interchangeable hits (“Undercover Angel”, “You Better Get Used To It”, “Shannon”, “The Pina Colada Song”, “Sad Eyes”, “Bread and Butter”, “Hot Rod Hearts” and “Chevy Van”).  As to mainstream rock, I have two words; KissandTedNugentwere Thetopgrossingtouringacts. Foreigner ruled the charts, making Boston seem like Ray Charles in comparison.

Dreadful stuff.

And yet in the past few years, I’ve actually started to appreciate some of the stuff I hated so badly for what it was; solid, well-crafted, hook-laden pop.   I’ve learned to listen to some of it the way it was meant to be listened to; unquestioningly, uncritically, like a good consumer.

And here’s what I’ve found:

• ABBA, “SOS” – Treacly manufactured Swedish pop?  Yes – but they also managed to manufacture a hook that would have woken Connie Francis from the grave.
• Fleetwood Mac, “Rumours” – The album was inescapable when I was in ninth and tenth (and probably eleventh) grade, except by pure denial.  So I denied.  And walked away.  And while I still can’t stand the sound of Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham’s solo career served as aversion therapy to the sound of his voice, I can listen to “Don’t Stop” and “Second Hand News” all day and ask for more.  Two of the most mathematically perfect pop songs ever.
• Kiss, “Destroyer” – I always hated Kiss.  I probably always will.  But “Destroyer”, featuring “Detroit Rock City” (the greatest death-rock song ever) makes you feel like you’re present at a moment; in this case, the moment when all of teenage America went gloriously stupid simultaneously.  And I sorta miss being gloriously stupid without serious consequences.
• “Saturday Night Fever” – Yep, I was one of those “Disco Sucks” guys.  I cheered when I saw Mike Veeck and the Insane Coho Lips on Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park.  And I thought of the record as a campy novelty for years – sort of a “Flock of Seagulls” of the seventies.  How wrong I was, of course, both in terms of its impact on pop culture (sheesh) and some of the music itself; “Night Fever” is, again, almost mathematically perfect, while Yvonne Elliman’s “If I Can’t Have You” has the most gorgeous hook of the decade. 
• Slade – I sort of looked down my nose at Slade; they seemed like a bunch of drunken yobs.  I realized years later – that was the point.  “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” still rocks my world.
• Sniff ‘n The Tears, “Driver’s Seat” – I heard that one on KQRS a few weeks ago, for the first time in probably 20 years.  What a cool song…

 Oh, heck – nominate some!

The UK Pop Charts are getting overhauled to match the new, downloadable digital reality of music sales:

The British pop chart will undergo one of the biggest shake-ups since its inception 54 years ago on Sunday when any song downloaded from the Internet will be able to compete for the number one single spot.

Up to now, only songs which were physically available for purchase in shops counted toward the weekly chart.

In theory, almost any song can now make the charts.

In unrelated news, King Banaian and I will soon be dusting off our various Nick Coleman dance mixes.

My daughter had her radio on last night.  Call me un-hip, but the music sounded like a hair dryer running.  No rhythm, no lyrics I could make out, just…a hair dryer.

What is with music today?

UPDATE:  I’m informed that my daughter was actually drying her hair…

James Brown dead at 73:

Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid- footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowies “Fame,” Princes “Kiss,” George Clintons “Atomic Dog” and Sly and the Family Stones “Sing a Simple Song” were clearly based on Browns rhythms and vocal style.

“He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator. Rap music, all that stuff came from James Brown,” entertainer Little Richard, a longtime friend of Browns, told MSNBC. “A great treasure is gone.”

Sad icing on the sundae of a most dismal Christmas.

I’ve been humming “Circle of Steel” by Gordon Lightfoot incessantly for the past two days .

Not that that’s a bad thing, but I have no idea why.

Ahmet Ertegun dead at 83.

For all the justifiable reputation Motown garnered for bringing R&B to a mass audience, it was Ertegun’s Atlantic Records that brought R&B to the wider world:

[Ertegun’s Atlantic Records] popularized the gritty R&B of Ray Charles, the classic soul of Aretha Franklin and the British rock of the Rolling Stones…
remained connected to the music scene until his last days – it was at an Oct. 29 concert by the Rolling Stones at the Beacon Theatre in New York where Ertegun fell, suffered a head injury and was hospitalized. He later slipped into a coma.

“He was in a coma and expired today with his family at his bedside,” said Dr. Howard A. Riina, Ertegun’s neurosurgeon at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center…Ertegun will be buried in a private ceremony in his native Turkey, said Bob Kaus, a spokesman for Ertegun and Atlantic Records. A memorial service will be conducted in New York after the New Year’s.

Don’t hold James Blunt against him.

…but even though I haven’t heard this song in fifteen years, it still always kills me.

After weeks of progress…

…I’m back to “Life Begins At The Hop” by XTC.

What have I done to deserve this?

The song that I can simply not  stop humming today…

…is “Fine Fine Day” by Tony Carey. 

Why this 1983 one-hit wonder (from a solo outing from the leader of another one-hit wonder, Planet P) would burble to the top of my head, I have no idea.  But there it is. 

It’s a fine, fine day for a reunion…

It’s almost a shame Scott Johnson is such a good lawyer…

…because he’d have been a heck of a music critic.

It was seventh-hour “Living Sports” class, the end of a long winter day in the middle of my senior year of high school. We were doing ice skating. Lesa MacEwan was showing me how to skate…well, I already knew how, more or less, but if you had a chance to have Lesa MacEwan tow you around the ice by the hand, ethics came in a distant second.

But I digress.

The radio was playing on the house speakers, tuned to KFYR in Bismark (at the time a Top40 AM station – a virtually forgotten specimen these days). “Hungry Heart” by Springsteen played.

And ended.

And the jock came on after the song and said that John Lennon had been shot and killed.

I’d never been much of a Lennon fan. And I never became one; genius doesn’t necessarily imply likeability. And I always found Double Fantasy a completely awful album; Lennon’s death didn’t make it any better.

But I could see why, for so many people not much older than I, December 8 1980 was the day the music died.

Red saw an apparition from the past:

— And then …. JOHN CAFFERTY!

— You know, people make fun and all that, but here’s the deal, and here’s what I saw: I saw someone who has not gone bitter and pissed because his moment of fame did not pan out to a lifetime of fame. According to the folks in Rhode Island, he IS a star. And he IS. And not only that: but there he is, playing the songs that everyone knew once upon a time – way back in the 80s when they suddenly were national, rather than local … and he has probably played them thousands, and thousands, of times. And to me it felt like the first time. He had that same enthusiasm. He’s not pissed that people remember. (A lot of one-hit wonders ARE pissed if you remember their one-hit … because all it means to them is that they didn’t have TWO hits. Now I get that … I get that it’s freakin’ tough to not have your dreams pan out … I get that on almost a cellular level, because I’ve lived it … ) But to see someone who LOVES that people remember … and who plays those songs with as much gusto and as much enthusiasm as when he played them in the 80s … You know, I just really loved him for that. I loved him for being okay with being loved. The crowd goes NUTS for the Triple B … and I was telling Beth and Michele about it the next night and they both were saying, “Oh my God, we all HAVE to go the next time you’re in town.” This is our high school years. There he is. The same band. All together. John Cafferty would come out into the crowd with his guitar – and people would jostle him, crowd around him … give him a stool so he could then step up onto one of the tables in the middle of the crowd. Jean and I, watching, were just laughing and clapping and loving him. He’s an entertainer. He’s a local staple. He made it big for about 2 seconds. And people remember and still come out in droves to see him. And he loves that. I had a couple of moments when I teared up. Because I am a geek of the highest order. But I’ve also been an emotional basket-case for about 3 weeks now. Just let’s go way up, shall we? And then let’s go way back down again, shall we? Seeing John Cafferty stand up on that table, in the middle of a sea of pulsing throbbing arms in the air, people shouting up at him, people who know all his lyrics, who remember him when … gave me a little lump in the ol’ gizzard, I’ll tell ya.

— But we also sang along at the tops of our lungs. Pat was openly laughing at us. And Sean was openly scornful. I think he didn’t want to go to Burning Man with me after seeing me go nuts over John Cafferty. Hahaha

— It was a BLAST. TRIPLE B!!!

Livin in the C-I-T-Y! Livin’ in the city!

Or …

On the dark side, oh yeah
On the dark side, oh yeah
On the dark side, oh yeah

John Cafferty must have the life of riley; he’s had one megahit, which will keep the royalties coming in forever (in fact, I’ve been hearing “On the Dark Side” more in the past year or so than I have since the song was on the Top 40), so he doesn’t have to suck up to any recording industry weasels; he’s a local hero (think Martin Zellar or GB Leighton with royalty checks) who can pack bars around the mid-atlantic, which pays mighty nice.  He can do music for a living and actually (I’m thinking) make a decent living at it. 

How cool would that be?

…the less I notice the difference.

This one never seems to get any less dead-on.

Joe Grushecky – of the late, great Iron City Houserockers – has a new album out.

On the one hand, who better to cover the Neil Young classic “Cinnamon Girl” than Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs?

Cool.

On the other hand, time is not being especially kind to Sweet [compare and contrast].

Perhaps a name change to “Matthew Nutrasweet” is in order?

(more…)

Bruce Springsteen released Born To Run thirty years ago today.

Thirty years. The album is twice as old as I was when I first heard it.

Amazing.

I hear the album today, and it’s still just as fresh as it ever was. If Rock and Roll is a matter of crystalline moments that still cut and shine through the tarnish of the years and the background noise of everyday life, Born To Run is the mother of all diamonds.

I remember being a seventies-addled junior high kid, watching the guy at Mother’s Records in Jamestown – the one across from the high school – drop the needle on the first copy of Born To Run I ever saw, on the one hand thinking “no way it’s better than Boston“, on the other hand looking at the sleeve – a 26 year old Bruce leaning on a 33 year old Clarence (with a Fender Freaking Telecaster Squire, in the middle of the heyday of the Gibson Les Paul, no less!), presaging the joy and tension and just plain ENERGY in the album, and thinking “Wow. That’s rock and roll”.

And then – Thunder Road:

The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways
Like a vision she dances across the porch. As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that’s me and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again, I just can’t face myself alone again

A girl! Dancing on the porch! Sign me up!

All prelude of course, to the burst of energy to come that washed over me, that shot a chill up my spine:

With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair
Well the night’s busting open
This two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back, Heaven’s waiting on down the tracks…

Bruce has done better albums (Darkness on the Edge of Town, Tunnel of Love), he’s had records that sold more albums (Born In The USA) – but no album, before or since, has ever had moments like Born To Run.

Moments – it’s a prosaic word, but in the world of Mitch, as applied to Rock and Roll, it has a very specific meaning that, for purposes of explanation, I should make clear; a “moment” is something, some tiny snippet of a song, that sends a chill up your spine, that rattles you to the core of your being. They can be huge and dramatic (Roger Daltrey’s scream in “Won’t Get Fooled Again”), or light and subtle (Susannah Hoffs’ cooing “to a perfect world” at the end of “Dover Beach”, from the first Bangles album); they can be part of a great song (the final “to bring the victory Jesus won…” in U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, the murderous guitar hooks in Big Country’s “Where The Rose Is Sown”, the bridge in Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin'”), a mediocre one (the final coda in the Alarm’s “Blaze of Glory”, the bridges in the Babies’ “Isn’t It Time”), even a crappy one (Neil Schon’s entrance in Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”), it can beat you over the head (the beginning of Barry Goudreau’s blazing final solo in Boston’s “Long Time”), it can seduce you (the mournful, whispered chorus of Richard Thompson’s “Jenny”, Aimee Mann’s transclucent last line of the last verse of Til Tuesday’s “Coming Up Close”). You get the picture.

Moments are ephemeral, unpredictable. Most artists never have one (Laura Brannigan and Dee Snider searched their whole careers in vain); most albums never send a single chill up a lonely spine. A single such moment can redeem an otherwise mediocre career; the world could forget the Monkees, Roxette, 10,000 Maniacs, the Cars and Abba tomorrow, but I’d love them for a grand total of maybe fifteen seconds worth of moments among them (brief snippets of “I’m A Believer”, “It’s All Over Now”, “These Are Days”, “Bye Bye Love” and “SOS”, two-second flares of pop brilliance that are all I need). A talent for such moments – the ability to create more than one or two on a couple of albums – is a rare thing indeed, almost mythical. Pete Townsend, Ray Davies, Chuck D, Lennon/McCartney, Paul Westerberg, Chrissy Hynde (until about 1985), Bono/The Edge, Stuart Adamson, Smokey Robinson, Levi Stubbs, Aimee Mann – it’s a small, select list.

And in no album are there more such moments jammed so tightly together, moments enough to define the careers of a dozen other artists, moments that, thirty years later, still thrill and chill and drag you out into onto the Jersey Turnpike of the mind in Dad’s jalopy. None. Ever:

• Thunder Road – “…roll down the window”, “it’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling outta here to win…”
• Tenth Avenue Freezeout – “While Scooter and the big man bust this city in half!”
• Night – Almost too many to count – the frenetic opening, the raw harmonies of the first verse, the bridge (“Hell, all night, they’re busting you up on the outside…”)
• Backstreets – The crescendo when the entire band joins, the exit from the bridge (“…but I hated him, and I hated you when you want away – whoooooah”, raw with aching and longing and unrequited pain)
• The title cut – Again, too many to catalog; “Boom” Carter’s half-bar drum intro, “Beyond the palace, hemi-powered drones…”, the moment when Bruce counts off the beat to the last verse…
• She’s The One – The band stomping into the Bo Diddley beat from the intro, heavy enough to crush rocks but deft enough to dance to – in fact, impossible not to dance to.
• Meeting Across The River – All the sly little moments that tell us the song is about a couple of desperate losers looking for the big break; “Here, stuff this in your pocket, it’ll look like you’re carrying a friend…”
• Jungleland – Too many to list; the first “Down…in…Jun…gle…Laaaaand”, the glorious guitar solo, “…in the parking lots the visionaries dress in the latest rage…, and of course, the song’s cornerstone “…and the poets down here write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be…”

Born To Run is the encyclopedia of rock and roll – one moment at a time.

And thirty years later, it still crackles like static from the speakers, feeling barely controlled, throbbing with potential energy (“Backstreets'” ominous buildup) and thundering with explosive release (“Night”), careening from smokey barroom to dragstrip to rumble to backseat like one of those lost weekend evenings from your teens – or the teenage years you imagined other people having – packed into a sleeve.

Born to Run is one of those rare records that feels as good today as the day it was released; it hasn’t aged or dated itself one iota; one of those bits of art that will long outlive its creator.

One moment at a time.

(Feel free to comment – but please keep all politically-oriented criticism out of this thread. Springsteen’s support of John Kerry last year is no more an indictment of Born to Run than the Pedophile Priest scandal is a black mark on the New Testament. Politically based criticism will be gleefully mutilated).