NME has your typical internet trope -- a list! This time best live albums. Actually it's pretty decent, although I'm shocked it didn't include Cheap Trick Live at Budokan. I would also add Built to Spill Live and of course Guided by Voices Live at the Wheelchair Races. Otis Redding Live on the Sunset Strip would be another. Oh and I would have gone with The Name of this Band is Talking Heads over Stop Making Sense, but that's just me.
What other great live albums do you swear by?
I think it’s a indisputable fact that Van Halen is one of the greatest rock albums ever. Eddie’s guitar work, lyrics about getting with the ladies, David Lee Roth’s bravado. It’s all here wrapped up in leather, barbed wire, and a whiff of Axe body spray. Unfortunately since they first hit the scene back in 1977-78, there’s not a lot of video of their original shows. Below isn’t exactly a video but you can listen to a great early version of Feel Your Love Tonight. It’s definitely faster than the studio version -- almost punk like. Not as polished as the album but damn is it exciting, To this day I still get goosebumps listening to this song.
You know 2016 is a rough year for musicians when even Ralph Stanley can't make it through the first six months. We all know him his stirring rendition of O, Death from from Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Though.
NPR had a great obituary this morning and of course I'm sharing the video.
Has there ever been album written about more than Radiohead's Ok Computer? Perhaps Sgt, Pepper's but not many more than that. One of my favorite songs is the last one: The Tourist. It's a nice coda to the album: kinda lugubrious, druggy even. A great song to listen to at 2:00a in the morning after filling you head with 45 minutes of Radiohead and other substances. I really love the end: bluesy swirling guitars that give way to just a simple bass and drum beat and finally, the last note of the album, a single bell chime.
That chime just gets me (and it's foreshadowed early in the song). It's such a cool ending to the album. It is so simple yet that chime starkly announces the end; you can breath again and start thinking about what you just listened to. It's like the woo in What's Going On referenced by Russell in Almost Famous. It's a simple little thing but it makes the whole song (and album, I would argue). It's what you put in... That's Rock and Roll.
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Russell Hammond: But… it’s not what you put in, is it? It’s what you leave out. Listen to… listen to Marvin Gaye…
A song like What’s Going On.”That single “woo” at the end of the second verse – you know that woo – that single “woo.”
William Miller: I know that woo.
Russell Hammond: That’s what you remember. The silly things, the little things… there’s only one, and it makes the song.
It’s what you leave out. That’s rock and roll.
What I think is funny about this line of dialogue is that RH describes something that Marvin Gaye “puts in” not leaves out of What’s Going On. That single woo is just an added flourish, but it wasn’t something he left out.
I think I might use my five week FMD slot to go over other songs where the band/singer puts something simple in… and it just makes the song.
Let’s kick off the list with Blitzkrieg Bop by The Ramones. First of all the song is just a perfect little 2:13 of pop/punk joy. From the Hey Ho, Let’s Go chant, to the surf guitar sound, to the 3x repeated 2 versus about kids going crazy over a new dance craze. But what I love about the song is the Hey Ho Let’s Go chant. The first two times it’s chanted with just a drum beat. The next chant adds a bass, and the final chant has the guitar coming in. It’s a great build up to the verses (and song ending). I think the song would be missing something if they were just blasting all instruments during the chant, or conversely, having no guitars. It's what they put in. That's Rock and Roll.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYh1lRR1m6Y
Drop your lists.
Two years ago May 10th my wife of nearly 24 years passed away after a nasty illness. We had two children of college age living away from home, which meant that I was entering my 50’s flying solo, picking up the pieces of a life that was once a partnership. How does one do that? There’s no survivor’s manual: do A, next is B, then follow up with C and Presto! you now have a life with new routines and go from there. Unsurprisingly it’s not quite that easy. While thinking about that, this Rumi quote has been sticking in my mind lately:
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
Of course I had a GBV related post all ready for my first FMD and then David Bowie surprisingly died, meaning I had to switch things up to recognize his role in my love of music while writing the first post-Bowie FMD in WGOM history.
There’s probably only a few of us citizens old enough to grow up on albums. I’ve told my son many times that when I hung out with friends, we didn’t play video games, we played albums. We would bring our records over to a friend’s house and just listen to music. Not only did we listen to music, but we would spend hours looking at the album covers and reading liner notes. I was lucky in that I had a friend who’s parents weren’t home a whole lot and had older siblings, meaning access to lots of music and hours of unsupervised pot smoking and album cover gazing. David Bowie took up a lot of those hours.
My two favorite Bowie albums were David Live and Ziggy Stardust. Bowie looked so cool on that live album cover and the songs were great live. Ziggy Stardust was mindblowing of course and to this day remains one of my favorite albums. We spent hours trying to figure out that album cover and contemplating the songs. It was heady and it rocked. I’ve always been a Bowie song guy, not so much an album guy, but Ziggy Stardust is something else.
When we were doing college visits with my son, I played a bunch of Bowie in the car and then we had dinner with some of my college friends in Chicago. Charlie was both blown away by the songs and our in-depth discussion of the different Bowie personas. How freaky he was and how damn cool he was. Boys and girls both wanted to sleep with Bowie and who could blame them? Charlie became a fan that weekend.
Charlie is now in Norway for Study Abroad and this past Monday morning, I wake up and before I turn on the radio, I notice I had gotten a text in the middle of the night. It was Charlie texting from Bergen telling me Bowie was dead. Even though he knew I was sleeping, he had to reach out to experience our shared grief. Thanks Bowie you freaky handsome musical genius. The stars do look very different today.
Drop your lists.
Many thanks to Yickit for his DJ (most of the) week. Back to the daily grind with some Freealonzo bait.
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Loading... Many thanks to free for an awesome turn at the tables. Happy to have you, good sir.
The solstice was yesterday. It's officially summer. Every day will be shorter from here. Good luck with that!
2010
(3 votes, average: 9.00 out of 10)Loading... i hope freealonzo's having fun today.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDfDJUezCWQ
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