So, here’s a download link for the podcast.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ksb1jmfiqworrpg/Rez%20Talks%20About%20the%20Brit%20Tourney.mp3?dl=0
Sharon (@equilibriumgirl) takes a swing at Neutral Milk Hotel, the ne plus ultra of the Elephant Six collective.
Keep in mind, kids, that’s NMH at their MOST accessible. Girls being buried alive with roses in their eyes. I told you, this isn’t easy listening.
Sadly, a band that should have ruled the last decade and a half only recently resurfaced. The talent behind the operation, the aforementioned Jeff Magnum, spent years in seclusion after a nervous breakdown, occasionally surfacing to play a small acoustic show. I’m heartened to see him back, playing under the NMH banner (John Darnielle isn’t the only one who gave himself a band name) and playing sold out gigs. This is a band that deserves to blow the mind of an entirely new generation.
Sharon Gerber returns for one last swing. This one is for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
Describing something as esoteric as a live performance can be difficult, but I’ll try. It’s not just technical proficiency, because you have that in hundreds of hobby bar bands wherever you go that get ignored in favor of conversation. And it’s not just energy, because lots of shitty bands have that and nothing else. It’s more than just a combination of the two. There’s something that needs to happen on top of that – something that makes you shush your friends, put down your beer, and turn towards the stage. And more than that, it makes you walk up to the merch table to buy an album, or to at least find out where they’ll be next. It might be a hearty drumbeat or bass that makes you tap in unison. It might be a roaring sax solo that whips your head around. It could be the roar of a guitar solo, or even still, the roar of a lead singer that will not let your attention out of his control. If he gets it for even a second, he’s going to hold it forever.
People slag off the frontman as being a glory hog. For stealing the spotlight, and taking all of the credit. What they forget, is that when you’re out in the battleground of the live show, the frontman is on the front line. He’s at war with the audience, fighting their apathy. He’s going to war with them to win them to the side of this band he has at his back – this band he knows is incredible, is all-star, is full of super-heroes. He knows his drummer is a mighty madman. That the bass player is the only one that can rein him in. The keyboard AND the piano are going to come together from opposite sides in a cacophony to wake you up, and guitars that are going to make your pulse race, and most importantly, a saxophone that’s going to make you drop to your knees and worship. But he’s on the line to sing and yell and tell stories and sweat blood – anything that will get you to the part where you care enough for him to introduce the band. It doesn’t matter if they’re playing a tiny bar on the boardwalk or a 60,000 person stadium – he’s going to reach every person in that place, and make sure that every one leaves devoted. It doesn’t matter if they walked in die-hard or went along with friends because there was nothing else to do. He’s going to reach you. Especially if that man is named Bruce Springsteen, and the band he’s fronting just happens to be the E Street Band.
The word longevity is one that gets bandied around quite a bit. It seems like every band that manages to make it past two albums gets to discuss the topic, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so exasperating. Bands with true longevity, who have not only survived but thrived through the years. It seems almost impossible to fathom that after thirty something years in the business of rock n roll, a band would be coming off one of their most successful tours ever. And that’s where we have Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band.
Seth already introduced you to the key players in his write-up of this incredible supergroup. Each member could have (and in some cases have) led their own successful band. Much like the Avengers, however, the whole is so much more powerful when they work together (and they count a rather kick-ass redhead amongst their number). And though they’ve been through many, many amazing iterations, there’s really nothing quite like the core of the E Street Band as we’ve come to know them. Because they’re such an amazing collection of instrumentalists and creative forces that are barely contained, and that force comes alive when they play live. There isn’t a force they couldn’t battle and win.
It may be hard to believe that a band that’s been part of some genuinely amazing albums (Born to Run. Born in the USA. The River.) is actually better than on the record, but it’s true. There aren’t many bands that manage to create their own energy in addition to feeding off what is coming out of the crowd, but that’s what E street manages to be. It’s an old story, but one we seem to hear out of a few successful bands. The studio albums weren’t doing well at all before Born to Run, not at all. But it was the live shows that built the mystique, got the notice. The live act is what made Clarence Clemmons walk into a bar during a hurricane and ask to join the band. (True story).
There is something in their live show that they’ve tried to get on record, sometimes with success, is the sheer power of the joy that comes across when they play together. Even in the saddest of songs (and what’s sadder than when the Rat’s own dream guns him down?) has a moment of transcendence that comes from the band itself, not the vocal – like a saxophone solo that lifts your heart into the rafters, the piano that holds you when you hear the exclamation that I hated him, and I hated you, when you went away, or a crash of piano and guitar that confirms that yes, yes we were born to run. No lyric, no matter how good, would take off and wedge itself into our imagination without the sheer magic of a band that’s better than the sum of its parts.
I called on James several times in this round. I’m really sorry that you all didn’t get to see these when they were written. This one is a spirited defense of… Van Halen.
CAN YOU DIG IT?
“As life is without external, life is the only meaning. Every moment, taste, sound, sensation is the meaning. And for that reason, the music of Van Halen does more than any other to drive my exploration of the meaning in the meaningless waste of life.”
– Jean Paul Sartre.
“Thanks, JPaul! We got margaritas and babes at the cabana for yah! YEEAAAHHHHH!’
– David Lee Roth.
Some rock is of the mind, the soul. Some rock is the deepest existential questions. And some rock is of the moment, the heart. And some rock is for everyone to get blast AND PARTY!!
Welcome to Van Halen.
First off, forget about the Van Halen/Van Hagar schism. Yes, the original configuration of Van Halen, Van Halen, Anthony and Roth was the strongest, the one
That earned them this place. But Van Hagar, as you will see, continued the key dynamics and kept the band evolving as opposed to stagnating.
Let’s do some history.
Van Halen started in California in the early 70’s, by Eddie and his brother, Alex, bringing in David Lee Roth. They broke with their self-titled Warner Brothers debut in 1978, and continued to romp and rule until Dave was fired in 1986, shifting over to his solo work and then, well…
Let’s talk about classic Van Halen.
What is this band? How about one of the saviors of mainstream rock?
You have Dave as one of the most charismatic front men… EVER. Up there with names like James Brown, Elvis, Prince, Bruce… Bruno Mars is one of the newer stars who shines as bright as the man at the front of the stage. David Lee Roth was a show too himself. Able to sing everything from hard rock to a forgotten song from Irving Ceasar, David could sing, dance, tumble, if need be swing across the stage the hell out of a song.
And then there’s the band. Alex Van Halen, besides doing management and ministerial duties (he’s ordained) he drummed like Dave, making a show and spectacle while bringing serious skills. He also wrote with Eddie. Michael Anthony, another show horse in a band of show horse, brought his passion for making the bass guitar just do things it wasn’t supposed to.
And then there’s Eddie.
Yes, we now know him to be a raging asshole, and the man who broke Valerie Bertinellei’s heart, and control freaked the heart and soul out of the band. But from the start, he always saw the musical potential of pop rock, and worked with it. He was a Mozart of the electric guitar, his finger boarding rightly putting him up with Hendrix as a guitar hero and innovator.
So, you got the music, you got the front man, and so, you got the saviors of mainstream rock.
How?
Well, rock was a crazy diffused place in the late 70’s. Everything from disco, punk, new wave, southern rock, r&b were scrambling to put the pieces back together. And while Kiss was having its impact, there wasn’t much of a focus for the party music of mainstream rock. Glam had died under Gene Simmons dragon faced boots. Heavy Metal… we’re talking early metal of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, not the rage machine of Metalica and their ilk
And out of that came a need for something loud, glammy, bright… something that just simply rocked out and lived. In the moment.
Van Halen, folks. They took the look and showmanship of glam, toned down a touch. They took the noise of 70’s metal, the drive, but not the rage. They also took the appreciation of classic rock standards and garage, found in punk, and brought music forward. The Kinks and Roy Orbison certainly owe some royalties and new audiences to the boys.
And they took the disruption, the incipient darkness in performers like Iggy and Ted Nugent, and froth it up. Shirtless, and wild, without the constant threat implied rape or infectious disease… YEAH! THEY COMBINED IT ALL! Glam/Hair Metal of the 80’s essentially tried to be Van Halen, with none of the charm and triple the douchiness.
Their covers of “You Really Got Me” and “Pretty Woman” stand up with the originals. “Running With The Devil” and “ ‘Ain’t Talking ‘Bout Love” are as nihilist as any metal song could be. Yet “Dance The Night Away” has a sweet, if earthy, romanticism. The boys rocked hard, loud, but with a heart few bands could match.
Now… let’s talk about ‘Van Hagar’
As Roth grew in fame, and played solo, Eddie grew irritated. Firing Roth, Eddie struck out for a different singer. And ended up with Sammy Hagar. Hagar, veteran of 70’s rock band Montrose and a solo star in his own right, was an inspired choice. A front man and band man, Hagar actually had a better voice than Roth. He had gravel AND range.
David Lee Roth- amazing rock performer. Front man. One man circus. But just on technical terms- Hagar was the better singer. If you can’t accept that, sorry, man.
And he was a good fit for the new direction Van Halen was going in as a band. Even before their last album with Roth, ‘1984,’ Eddie was adding in more keyboards, more anthems with the party rock. Songs like ‘Right Now’ and “Can This Be Love,’ while certainly loud, were less drunken dude falling off his bar stool into a cartwheel, more about the feelings and thoughts. Maybe they fit with Regan’s ‘Morning In America’ malarkey- Hagar is certainly an out Rock n’ Republican, but they left the 70’s hangover, and moved on to music with, pun intended, a little more drive.
At least until Eddie got mad when Sammy was promoting his own business ventures, and the band fell into its cycle of reunions and split ups that we are just ignoring.
But Van Halen and Van Hagar- in both forms you had tremendous musicians, catching the core of American pop rock really speaking and reflecting the spirit of the times. Pushing rock music forward technically, if not necessarily lyrically. And just melting faces with great music.
To close, I want to refer to the classic film, “Fast Times At Ridgemont High.” Like Van Halen, the film caught the tipping point between the 70’s and ‘80’s. One character, Jeff Spicolli, wins the lottery and spends it all to have Van Halen play his birthday.
And I would say to you… be it classic Van Halen, or with Sammy Hagar, and you spent your lottery winnings on having them play for you…
You would be hearing one of the best American Rock Bands.
EVER.
As for some videos.. check these out. ‘Runnin’ With The Devil is a good glimpse at their early nihlist fever pitch. ‘Panama’ offers a look at the band at peak Dave. And.. from the Van Hagar years, ‘Best of Both Worlds.’ Again, there were a lot of solid songs from both periods,.. the Van Hagar power ballads are prime samples of the species- but it’s worth seeing both configurations cut loose.
‘Runnin’ With The Devil’
Panama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-NshzYK9y0
“Best of Both Worlds”
James aka @sailorboyj is the spirit of the internet. He’s a joking, thoughtful, humorous, jocular…so many adjectives describe the man. So I asked him to talk about what I believe to be the most overrated band of the 60s. If anyone can pull it off, he can. James opens The Doors of Perception.
The Doors.
“Insert Standard Aldous Huxley Quote Here”
First off, The Doors come with baggage. To be fair, many bands, I will handcuff them to their baggage. Tie them to their suitcases, and push them off a bridge. But the Doors… nah. The Doors are so much more than baggage and an Oliver Stone “not quite historical film.”
Let’s address the baggage. Mostly…Jim Morrison’s. Yes… he committed the unpardonable act of trying to put on Native American drag. I’m sure Bob Dylan never got over that. Yes, he followed the path of artists like Rimbaud, Dylan Thomas and Christopher Marlowe trying to debauch their way to higher wisdom and deeper art. Now, I’m not saying he succeeded like Rimbaud, Thomas and Marlowe… but the man and the bands ambitions were more than drink a little wine and have a good time.
Although certainly, having a good time was part of the plan.
The Doors sang about breaking on through… and that’s what they did. For me, rock has always been about taking the blues and country, and then mixing shit it up. While other bands in the Sixties went for Eastern influences, or Southern flavor, the Doors went jazz. Manzarek’s keys and Densmore’s drums have the playfulness and structure that rock had lost as it pulled apart from jazz.
The Doors went beat. While having lived through slam we may be a bit blasé about it, but taking the spoken word of beats made lyrics matter in a fresh new way. The break from spoken to sung word added a tension to the songs, an explosion that many have tried but few succeeded in matching.
The Doors went cinematic. Much has been made of the Doors as failed film students, but experimental film infused their music with a broader range and deeper sound. Bands often attempt music as invocation, and few succeeded as the Doors did. Even with their early videos.
The Doors went theatric. While Broadway and operatic standards were part of pop, all too often their edge or grandeur were lost in the translation. Bobby darin’s ‘Mack The Knife’ comes to mind. But when the Doors dipped into Berthold Brecht’s song book, “Whiskey Bar’ took on that mix of the delightful and damned that maybe the Animals and Stones had reached, but rock had the right cocktail to find now.
Yes, they made the world safe for prog. Oh, prog. My favorite rock and roll whipping dog. But where prog may have noodled off into irrelevance, the Doors started on a controlled plan, with a target to hit, a mood to evoke, and an audience to destroy or enlighten.
Jim and Co. opened up the world for scores of great bands to come. Like Nick Cave’s dark murder songs? Patty Smith pouring out her soul through word and song? Iggy lighting a crowd on fire? Joy Division diving into the darkest abysses and still finding some light, drowning while still gasping for air?
Thank the Doors.
It’s easy to forget that the Doors was a four man band, not just Jim. Ray Manzarek and Robby Kriger were co-writers for many of the key songs. John Densmore drums can’t be discounted. And while the band was for all intents and purposes done by 1970… the story went on.
Morrison, we know about.
Chasing and being chased by his assorted demons, he finally died in Paris, becoming legend. Or a fat joke Or aconspiracy theory. He was the Lizard King, so being everything was in line with that. The band attempted to continue in assorted configurations, not as mythic but there. Ray Manzarek continued his work as a keyboardist, branching out to film and multiple different groups. Drummer John Densmore moved into acting and writing, while continuing his playing. Guitarist Robby Krieger worked with both, ending up in Manzarek-Krieger after the 3 split up, citing different philosophies over the Doors work, and protecting Morrison’s legacy.
And how or how not to capitalize on it.
One last thing to consider about The Doors. Many bands tried to capture the promise and hope of the 60’s. The Beatles and the Byrds, while not avoiding darkness, certainly stayed on the lighter side. However, with 1967’s ‘Strange Days’, just as the Summer of Love was happening, the Doors music spoke to the darker things coming. Mick Jagger sang about marching in the streets in 1968’s ‘Street Fighting Man’ off of Beggars Banquet. On ‘Strange Days,’ the end of the dream was already in sight.
So, the Doors stepped through Huxley’s doors of perception. They mixed talents and influences into a heady mix, and got consumed in the process. But rock was better for it. And even to this day, they remain one of America’s Best.
Here are some songs to get a sense of the Doors at work. ‘People Are Strange’ shows their cinematic sensibility. ‘Touch Me’ shows them at work on mainstream tv. For all their rage and danger, they could sell it on Sunday Night TV. And ‘Light My Fire’ shows them cutting a little loose on stage.
People Are Strange
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRAr354usf8
Touch Me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bKSqKpdEFI
Light My Fire
The inimitable Sharon Gerber returns today, teachin’ the blues about the Black Keys
It’s a rare gift (or perhaps not so rare) to be the kind of band that wins a listener over more with their live shows than with their album. The album (and its singles) can be good, even great. So, you get your hands on some tickets and go to the show, hoping to be entertained. What you get is your mind blown out, and are sent away with a brand new appreciation of the band. This has happened to me a few times – it happened with the White Stripes, with the Mountain Goats, and most recently, with The Black Keys.
The Black Keys have a fabulously raucous sound. In an age where buckets of polish are poured on anything and everything released on every platform from band camp to iTunes, they are a glorious source of dirty, noisy old-school rock and roll. Their favorite paint brush is distortion, but it’s not one that they over-use to the point where a song is painful to listen to. They gather up the last seventy or more years of blues, filtered through rock on both sides of the Atlantic and pound it through their amplifiers for an audience of kids who probably think Howlin’ Wolf is a sports mascot. They even manage to take their beautiful mélange of sounds and filter it through a funkier mix (as they do on their latest masterpiece, Turn Blue), without losing any of the power or edge that drew fans to them in the first place. (No, seriously. If you haven’t listened to Turn Blue yet, go and get it. Right now. I’ll wait.)
Having a fabulous sound isn’t enough, either. I’ve seen plenty of bands live that sound amazing on the record that really don’t translate to a live show, at all. (Please see entry under National, The or Best Coast.) Or, more tragically, there are bands that can rock a tiny venue that are dwarfed by a large arena. When I went to see the Keys in Madison Square Garden in 2012, I was deeply concerned that they wouldn’t be able to translate that sweaty, raunchy sound into such a huge venue. I was happily wrong.
I’m not going to tell you that they’re great showmen. There was hardly any stage patter at all. They thanked the crowd for their applause, but there was minimal chatter from the band. There was a keyboardist and a bassist that were brought along for the ride that were thanked and introduced, but the center and focus were on the two men who founded a band in a garage in Akron, Ohio. And for good reason. There was Dan Auerbach, placidly standing there and allowing his guitar to screech like the love child of a harpy and a banshee and a hurricane. At his side was Patrick Carney, drumming like a man possessed – like his very life on this planet depended on how hard he hit his sticks. I was captivated by the sound Dan made, but I could not take my eyes off of Patrick, how the sweat poured off of him, and how he bashed stick to drumhead with the fury of a madman. It didn’t matter if the tempo he kept was fast or slow – watching him was easily the best part of a sonically incredible show.
While they’ve only been around a short time, The Black Keys have definitely made their mark on rock. They picked up the baton dropped by Jack White and are running with it harder and faster than he did. In their wild and raucous sound I am relieved to hear everything that makes rock n roll exciting has not been driven out at all, but remaining in everlasting light.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYO1OAHADgh9ZGg86VVRVkbhg3p7FnXL1
Rez rediscovered his love of the Black Crowes.
I love soul music. Always have, always will. I got introduced to it through Motown when I was a little Rez. Mom and Dad made sure I always had Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, and the Four Tops to listen to, and I was grateful. Music as a young person is always something that shapes your life and worldview from then on.
The Black Crowes seem like their parents did much the same. I mean, it’s obvious isn’t it. That, and I think being born in the South after a certain date, it’s in the water as well. It backed up the Mississippi and it’s in all the tidal estuaries. Soul music, man. Otis Redding. Sam and Dave. Rufus Thomas. It gets into your blood and into your organs and you can’t get away from it. I can’t imagine, for example, a new wave band like the Knack coming out of the South. The Knack feel brittle and dry, which aren’t criticisms, but just descriptive. The Black Crowes, though…they’re humid and moist, flexible and bendable.
I remember hearing their cover of “Hard to Handle” for the first time. And it felt obvious, right off. These guys were going to be great. When you put together traditional guitar based rock music with soulful vocals, it’s hard not to hit it, and hit it hard, in my opinion. Peanut butter and chocolate right there. They also did something I find important, which is choose to use an analog keyboard (fender Rhodes, perhaps?) rather than a synth. Warm sound, much more appealing to my ear than the bleeps and bloops of a synthesizer.
For a chunk of their career, the Crowes did go the three minute rock and roll song route. But interestingly enough, as they’ve gone on, they’ve gone a bit in the jam band route. To do that sort of thing, you really need to be in the groove with your fellow musos, and the Crowes certainly are that. I do favor the three minutes and out route when it comes to rock and roll music, myself, but I do raise a glass to those who can improvise in the long form, and make it work.
There’ve been two hiatuses in the Crowes career. I’m always curious about what happens in the room when this sort of thing is discussed. Are ya tired? Do you hate the other guys? There’s been a ton of lineup changes with these guys too, but a lot of them keep coming back, too.
For my money? I hope Chris and Rich Robinson keep making music I like. I hope they get along better as they get older and playing soul music for the world. Kudos, gentlemen.
Patrice Bartell writes for us, and it’s a blessing. She’s a passionate fan of so many bands. We asked her to expound on her favorite band, possibly of all time!
On R.E.M.
I was around seven or eight years old when, while watching a music video show on network TV, the video for “The One I Love” came on. My siblings, who rarely agreed on anything musical (Aerosmith, I think, was the only band at that point they could agree they both liked), both piped up, “Hey, it’s that new band from Georgia we’ve been hearing about! They’re pretty good.”1 So, I watched the video and walked away with one question on my mind: “Where’s the singer?”
See, R.E.M. is nothing else if not a band that set up unusual rules for itself to follow, many of which it would break later on in the future. They for a time didn’t do love songs, refused to put the lyrics in the liner notes of their albums, and swore up and down that the band would break up if any one member wanted to quit. “No lip-synching in videos” was another one.2
Nearly all their videos, especially up to and around that point, were weird, arty, and unequivocally Southern. My brother once referred to Michael Stipe as “the Boo Radley of rock”; in the band’s early days, he would hide behind his hair and mumble lyrics that were more like dreamlike splatterpaint than a cohesive story or statement. Whereas so many rock bands at that point were of the big-hair, devil-may-care, cock-n-balls-in-your-face variety, R.E.M. were thoughtful, sensitive, eccentric, and not afraid to get a little political. All these things would cultivate a unique mystique that would surround the band and draw in equally sensitive people (like myself) for years.
Of course, things do change, as they inevitably will. The video for “Losing My Religion”—considered by many to be right up there with “Thriller” and “Sledgehammer” as one of the greatest ever made—was still arty and more than a little controversial, but the shocker was that Michael broke the “no lip-sync” rule. The lyrics became more direct and personal, as Michael began to realize that he had a mostly young audience that hung on his every word (compare “I Believe” with “Everybody Hurts”, for example), and Michael shaved his head, taking away his hiding space. They wandered more and more into love song territory (“Be Mine”, “At My Most Beautiful”), finally started putting song lyrics in their album sleeves with Up, and—despite all promises to the contrary—stayed together as a trio after drummer Bill Berry quit.
Did a lot of people get turned off by all these changes? You betcha. If I had a nickel for every time, after telling other people R.E.M. was my favorite band, they responded with “I like their older stuff, but…”, I could probably retire at 40. However, the point of having all those rules in the first place was to challenge themselves to make something better than the mediocre pabulum that was out there at the time. So many times they could’ve taken the easy route—they could have sold one of their songs to an advertiser (Microsoft has been begging them and offering them mountains of money for the rights to use “It’s The End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” in their ads for years), they could have tried going the more approachable route early on in their career, or they could even have made the jump to a major label sooner than Green if they really wanted to.
R.E.M. is great because they said, “Nope, we’re better than that, and so are our fans.” They held us all to a higher standard, and music as a whole has gotten better because of it. That’s why I’m an R.E.M. fan.
1 Having grown up in upstate New York, we didn’t hear about R.E.M. until Document came out. As such, there was a period when I and a lot of other people thought Document was their first album, even though it clearly says “R.E.M. no. 5” right on the cover.
2 There was one exception, the rarely seen video for “Wolves, Lower”. Michael apparently had a miserable enough experience lip-syncing through that video that “no lip-syncing” became a rule for many years.
Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN0hPYoSuuaiDwJV79pl07vQWqdKbvS41
Lisa Chamoff, AKA @lchamoff or IndieUntangled in her professional life, is a music aficionado like Seth and myself, but in a different vein. Lisa asked us if she could write about the Velvet Underground, and here it is.
It was 1996 and I was a Beatles- and Britpop-obsessed teenager when some random guy started Instant Messaging me to talk about music and literature. In this ancient, pre-MySpace and Facebook era, you crammed the Interests section of your AOL profile with all the bands you listened to in an effort to look cool and find like-minded souls to chat with.
While I’m assuming Jeff the University of Maryland graduate and English major was looking for more than a friendly conversation with someone who he eventually learned was a 16-year-old girl, he had more of an impact on me than he’ll probably ever know. At one point, Jeff asked if I’d ever listened to The Velvet Underground, who he flatly deemed “much cooler” than Fab Four. I admitted that I hadn’t, and on one of my subsequent trips to Sam Goody I picked up “The Best of the Velvet Underground: Words and Music of Lou Reed.” The 15-track disc opens with Reed half talking, half singing about scoring $26 worth of smack in a Harlem brownstone. It was like Trainspotting set in 1960s New York turned into music, and it was perfect.
In 1987, Reed told Rolling Stone that his goal as a songwriter was to create the Great American Novel in album form. He may not have gone that far, but the protégé of poet Delmore Schwartz definitely wrote the Great New York Novel. The band mixed John Cale’s classical background with Reed’s rock one. VU’s Andy Warhol-produced debut with the iconic banana pop art was a snapshot of a certain New York cool in the 1960s. It opens with the sweet, simple “Sunday Morning,” continues with the aforementioned “I’m Waiting for the Man,” and then the deep-voiced Nico sings an homage to Warhol Factory Girl Edie Sedgwick with “Femme Fatale.” Side two has Lou’s drug love song, and if Nico sounds a little different in the hauntingly beautiful “I’ll Be Your Mirror” it’s because Cale and Reed made her cry before the tapes rolled to cut off her lower register.
Later songs were pure rock, from the classic ‘60s harmonies of “Who Loves the Sun” to the signature “Sweet Jane” with its jangly guitar intro on 1970’s “Loaded,” the band’s last album with Reed. (There’s also a slower version, which Cowboy Junkies hewed closely to in their cover, but in my opinion the versions from “Loaded” and “Fully Loaded” reign supreme.)
VU was active for about a decade, though really only five years before Reed left to embark on his solo career, and it was never a huge commercial success at that time. However, as the oft-quoted Brian Eno line goes, while the first VU album may have sold only 30,000 copies after its release, “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.” Based on influence alone, they are untouchable.
Eric Koslofsky does an amazing music podcast called the Old Time Modern Mixtape Hour, where he plays new favorites and old ones, and chats in between tracks. We asked him to write about several bands. Today he expounds about the Replacements and the Ramones.
The Ramones
The first I ever heard of the Ramones, it was my pops, who said “NOISE”. And not in a good way. For full context, he also said Billy Joel was “NOISE” and that Billy Joel was “hard rock”. In hindsight, I realized he had only heard of the Ramones, not actually heard them (witness when I played “Needles and Pins” and he loved it as much as I did).
But that was enough for me to avoid them in my youth. And ignore punk in general. Noise. Meanness. Disrespect towards nice people. Spitting. But as I wound my teenage way backwards from the latest Phil Collins and Elton John to Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, I leap-frogged over punk because of fear that it was just too noisy and scary. But having gone back to the base, I was actually prepping my brain to finally take punk and the Ramones in.
It happened in college. There I was, a cry baby pity party of one, angry at presumably some social slight by a female or a friend or someone and I finally listened to Ramones Mania, having been given tastes of it by a friend of mine (possibly the very one I felt slighted by for all of five minutes). It clicked. And how! This wasn’t some alienating monster. Their songs might be about feeling like an alienated monster but the music itself was an embrace. They were singing about the same kind of boredom and simplistic feelings of youth that I had (and all the other clichés you don’t need me to tell you about). And the blasts of lightning fast rock n roll switching off with 60’s girl group pop sweetness were such a one-two thump to the brain. Hell, even their song about being slipped a mickey (“Somebody Put Something In My Drink”) had me going – and I had never even been slipped a mickey (yet).
There were serious consequences to this realization that the Ramones were good: Suddenly that wretched Never Mind the Bollocks didn’t sound so bad. The Clash turned out to be more than “Rock the Casbah”. All subsequent sounds I got into had to be looked through the prism of the Ramones. Garage bands? Sign me up. Suburban brat rock? Take a hike, even with your “hey! Ho!”’s. Hardcore? Alright, you’re not so bad after all. Gimmicky phony posturing shtick? What kind of gimmicky phony posturing shtick? Ramones-level or Kiss-level? Ramones-level? Alright you’re OK.
In the years since I gave the Ramones a chance, I’ve had crazes over bands, genres and scenes, contemporary and in the past, but I always come back to the Ramones. I have gone back to the Ramones well more than any other. When I’m happy, angry or sad. Whatever the situation, it usually results in the Ramones being played. I watched Rock n Roll High School on the morning of my wedding day both to celebrate and to stop me from throwing up. I just realized that I don’t have a picture of my wife on my work desk, but I do have a picture of the Ramones on my office wall. Not sure what to make of that.
The Replacements
The Replacements-way to look at this piece about them is to tell this piece and this whole site in general to take a long walk off a short pier. What kind of nonsense is this? What are we, 16? We’re hanging out at the Internet version of a townie record store and having a High Fidelity moment with our college rock scene ‘zines? Do the Replacements really strike you as a band that you need to judge in the context of other bands? Battle of the Bands, dude. In sports style. On a blog. High five.
But also in keeping with the Replacements-way of looking at a piece about them on a site like this, as the Replacements would be perfectly glad to play along for a few minutes if only to demonstrate why they got this whole thing down and you don’t, this writer will also play the part. No sabotage, just coffee talk.
The Replacements stink. That was always the working theory. The band subscribed to it, the people who saw them subscribed to it. It was almost a registered trademark. When they got good, and started writing songs that appealed to other parts of the brain that wasn’t the “smash everything” dingle bit in the lobe or cortex or whatnot, they had to make sure to go back to stinking just to remember who they were. Except when they went back to stinking they were now accidentally still good. Which they then put to use. Which was then shunned by the corporate record industry (witness the transformations of songs like “Kiss Me on the Bus”, “Little Mascara”, “Can’t Hardly Wait”, or “Talent Show” from their ripping demos to the tamed down finished product). And then they finally had to take a two decade hiatus.
But the hiatus is over. As in Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson have reunited. Good enough for most people of the few people who know and care, save for a couple of anonymous Internet commenters who were born in the 90’s but say they stopped going to ‘Mats shows after Bob Stinson got kicked out of the band. So we have a new chapter by which to take in the story of the Replacements. The good angle of the chapter is that a generation of people who never got to see them the first time around will get to see them now, including getting to see the potential for bad shows and sabotage and all those other old ‘Mats hallmarks that they are probably too old to care about doing now (unless you count Billie Joe Armstrong as a part-time Replacement a sabotage, because that’s been happening). The bad angle is that they are no longer preserved in rock n roll amber. Now they’re the Pixies. But that’s OK. If you’ve ever heard the 15 seconds of the demo cover of ”Monkey Gone to Heaven” (tacked on to the demo cover of “Gudbuy T’ Jane” which can be found on the expanded edition of Don’t Tell a Soul), then you know that if the Devil is 6, then the Pixies are 7, but the ‘Mats are 8. So it’s no insult. Everyone gets a harder-than-it-had-to-be pat on the back from Westerberg. Including one for himself. Some of that Minnesota Nice mixed in with punk insolence. The Replacements in their priniciple.
Yeah, it’s true.
The truth is, we had some major issues figuring out the later rounds of the tournament, as in, how could we keep the content new and interesting.
We’re still figuring it out, but we’re getting closer to the sequel to our first tourney.
This week is going to be about posting the really awesome content we got from our contributing writers, which didn’t get posted, for which we’re sorry.
First off, we have friend of the blog, Mitch Kaplan aka @selftoken, writing about CCR, Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Tournament blog readers, I’m sorry this piece has taken so long. It isn’t that I don’t want to listen to, read about, or think upon Creedence Clearwater Revival. I chose them because I really enjoy their music and I won’t let you dismiss them! My obstacle is getting myself to start writing. The professional journalist & my spouse, Lisa, was done with the VU entry weeks ago, but I still hope to express myself well to you, if not at all quickly.
I’ve identified why I think CCR is able to compete in this tournament and deserves for you to recognize they’re Great. To start, they draw from blues, country, gospel, and rock and roll roots, clearly celebrating our American musical traditions. They were roots rock before the term existed. Even better, they evoke the sound and subjects of the swamps of the American South, adding to the mythology of the Mississippi River, New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast.
I must assume their music, such as the songs “Have Your Ever Seen the Rain”, “Born on the Bayou”, and “Bad Moon Rising” sound as great to our tournament MCs as they do to me. If not those, we can go on and on listing terrific songs, all of which were released only in a 4 year stretch, 1968-72. You want another impressive 3 song grouping? Sure: “Proud Mary, “Who’ll Stop the Rain”, and “Fortunate Son”. Their music reigned high on the charts, became a staple of Classic Rock radio, has been covered widely (as punk, hard rock, country, alt country, blues, alt rock, neo soul, metal, and perhaps more), and has been covered to legendary effect (Ike & Tina Turner – Proud Mary). They also excelled with the music of others. Since early in this tournament I’ve thought the greatest bands would be those who are able to write their own songs and reinterpret those of other artists equally well.
What could stand in CCR’s way, besides other competing bands? John Fogerty wrote, sang, played lead guitar for, and produced their music as well as managing their affairs. The rest of the band – John’s brother Tom, Stu Cook, and Doug Clifford – pushed for years to be allowed to sing and write songs. Tom quit CCR after the sixth album, no longer willing to remain under the rule of a prince, if you know what I mean. (If not, start reading this tournament blog from the beginning.) John agreed the other guys could write and sing their own songs on the next album, basically proving to them in front of the world that they weren’t his musical equal. “Mardi Gras” was their final album. Still, people know Tom Fogerty was in the band, and one album was named for Doug “Cosmo” Clifford, so beyond the fact that we’re not going to disqualify them at this point, they may legitimately escape the Prince Rule.
In my previous tourney blog comments, I’ve had fun analogizing the bands as places I might go with friends in a fictional “Musictown”. CCR’s sound makes them a highly-regarded but unpretentious Cajun restaurant. You might say we’re able to pick up a packaged meal just like the restaurant used to make, although the actual place closed before we were born. The food is also only authentic in a honorary way, as the band was actually from CA, which makes them an Eagles that The Dude wouldn’t hate. Wow, when I originally wrote that, I’d forgotten they actually had songs in The Big Lebowski. The Dude loves CCR! What else do you need to know?
I’ll give you 2 last things anyway. In only their 2nd year, CCR was a headliner at Woodstock, playing between The Grateful Dead and The Who. John kept them out of the movie/off the soundtrack because he didn’t think they played well. Lastly, their record label’s owner Saul Zaentz was able to start producing films because of his CCR profits. They’re essentially responsible for the existence of films including “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
American Bands-Who are the best? 