Archive for the ‘music’ Category

When the Messiah comes, this blog will start making money

Posted: December 25, 2010 in music, Record reviews
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Messiah
George Frideric Handel
1741

Since today is Christmas I’d like to have a few words with you about Christmas music. And of course when you’re rummaging around in the Christmas music cornucopia you’ll straightaway find that only one character can go the distance for you, and that would be Mr. George Frideric Handel.

Now you’re probably asking yourself, and rightly so in my view, what are my credentials for dissecting Christmas music? I am, after all, Jewish. And if you’re not asking this you’re probably asking yourself how you ended up here.

Let me reassure you and the rest of the reading public that I am extensively credentialed in this area. I was born before diversity was invented, which meant that I was forced to sing Christmas carols in the public schools. I could’ve refused, but if I had they would’ve beaten me up on the playground immediately after we were done with our Yuletide yodeling. And by “they” I am referring of course to the teachers.

As a young adult I was able to give the whole business of Christmas music a swerve, but then I married one of you pagans. Special D enjoys a healthy diet of holiday musical cheer, beginning December 1 and galloping on full-tilt over the fence until New Year’s. Being the classy little number that she is, one of her chief delights is that happy-go-lucky juggernaut known as the Messiah. So let’s have a crack at Handel’s masterwork and see what we might turn up.

S’wonderful! S’marvelous!
Handel, who was of German and British extraction, was a composer of the Starbucks Baroque Blend era. He’s probably dead today – he was a very old man when I knew him – but one thing I remember him going on about was how he invented the show-stopper. In Handel’s case, that would be the “Hallelujah” chorus. And quite smug he was about it too.

Rolling Stone ranks Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus third on their list of the “100 Super Explosive Classical Music Smash Hit Show-stopper Explosions,” behind Rossini’s “Lone Ranger Theme” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” but ahead of Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance” and Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance.”

The “Hallelujah” chorus is, of course, staggeringly popular at sing-alongs, probably because it can be learned by any moderately talented bumpkin with a spare afternoon up his sleeve. 17% of the total wordage in the “Hallelujah” chorus is “Hallelujah” and the rest is mostly kings and lords.

This mighty hymn was given a significant boost in the public consciousness in 1967, when the Red Sox won the American League pennant and their left fielder, Carl Yastrzemski, won the Triple Crown. The result you will no doubt remember was this Handel/Yastrzemski mashup:

Carl Yastrzemski! Carl Yastrzemski! Carl Yastrzemski!
 The man they call Yaz. We love him!
 Carl Yastrzemski! Carl Yastrzemski! Carl Yastrzemski!
 What power he has!

Yaz played baseball for 23 years, which is worth a brag or two but still short of biblical prophecy: “And he shall bat for ever and ever.”

His Yoke Is Easy (like Sunday morning)
You could never accuse Handel of being subtle and so the thundering hooves of the “Hallelujah” chorus fit right in with the story he tells in the Messiah, which involves martyrs, prophets, a miraculous birth, persecution, resurrection, and other burning issues of the day. The Messiah is a ripping yarn and though it has sometimes been mistaken for Tommy with the odd bassoon moonlighting in the string section it is probably the most often performed choral work in Western music. However, I’ve encountered a problem with the Messiah that has hindered my total assimilation by all things Handelian and that would be my lifelong tendency to mishear lyrics.

For example, and this is only one example, I can produce more if it pleases the court, I only recently discovered that the line our man Handel jotted down was “Every valley shall be exalted.” I thought it was “Everybody shall be exalted.” I should’ve known better, as “everybody” knows that only Normie said “Everybody!” when he walked into the bar on Cheers and I’m willing to bet that Handel never saw this program. He was probably watching the Three Tenors.

Other aural miscues on the part of your current correspondent have led to fractures in the sacred institution of marriage, as you can glean from the following illustration:

A Jew Copes With Christmas
By Run-DMSteve
Act I, Scene 1
(The setting: A suburban living room in December. Snow is falling outside. A corgi is shedding inside. Special D is playing guess what on the stereo. Run-DMSteve is puzzled.)

Run-DMSteve:  What does cheese have to do with the birth of Christ?
Special D:  What?
Run-DMSteve:  Cheese. What did the Wise Men bring baby Jesus, a cheese wheel?
Special D:  What are you talking about?
Run-DMSteve:  They’re singing, “And we like cheese.”
Special D:  Are not.
Run-DMSteve:  Are too.
Special D:  They’re not singing “And we like cheese,” they’re singing “And we like sheep.”
Run-DMSteve:  (Pause.) They like sheep?
Special D:  They don’t LIKE sheep, they ARE LIKE sheep!
Run-DMSteve:  They don’t like sheep even a little?
Special D:  I’ve got a gun.

Ready or not, the Messiah has become an inextricable part of Christmas hereabouts. I would miss it if Special D stopped playing it. I would especially miss it if she replaced the Messiah with The Grateful Dead Go Caroling. So when I catch myself wondering if I can listen to the Messiah shake the shack yet again this season or should I find something to do on the other side of the Moon, I remember what my good friend Rudi once wrote me: “Keep singing the Messiah. Builds fiber.”

Wide world of Christmas
Next year at this time we’ll give some thought to A Charlie Brown Christmas, which was composed by the one melody-maker who can give Handel some headaches in the 100-yard dash: Vince Guaraldi. Until then, enjoy your holiday, whichever one you subscribe to, there are plenty to go around, and here’s hoping that Santa, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Molly Ivins, Patron Saint of Secular Humanism, brought you everything you desired. Hallelujah.

New feature: Bands I saw 30 years apart!

Posted: December 19, 2010 in Concert reviews, music
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The B-52s
Boston, Mass. 1979
Portland, Ore. 2007
In the summer of 1979, when The B-52s sang “Everybody had matching towels,” I was one of the people in that little club waving matching towels. Mine were white with a red checked pattern and I bought them that morning at Goodwill.

Of course none of us who had arrived at the club equipped with extracurricular textiles had considered what we were going to do with them after that line, since the rock lobster immediately appears and there’s no time for towels after that. They mostly ended up kicked into a corner. I’d like to think the club donated them all to Goodwill the next day.

I wish I knew the exact date of that show, and the time of the evening when they launched into “Rock Lobster,” because at that moment I was cooler than I’d ever been or ever would be again. (I saw The B-52s again in 1980 and 1981, by which time I was hauling a strobe light around with me.) Before the 2007 show I considered going back to Goodwill for more towels, but you can never recapture your old glory. Not even if you drove a Plymouth Satellite/faster than the speed of light.

Bring the noise

Posted: December 12, 2010 in music, Record reviews
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Get Bach!
The Baronics
1996

Nothing says “respectable,” “significant,” and “serious” like classical music. And nothing says “pretentious,” “turgid,” and “snorefest” like rock musicians taking classical out for a spin. Need convincing? Let’s examine the evidence:

J’accuse!
Exhibit A: The radioactive remains of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” after Emerson, Lake & Palmer
blew it up real good.
Exhibit B: Just about everything else by Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
Exhibit C: Paul McCartney’s 1991 Liverpool Oratorio. Only Yoko liked it.
Exhibit D: Any doofus with an electric guitar who thought it would be cool to eviscerate Ravel’s Bolero.

I don’t know which band in rock’s distant past was the first to fall down this mine shaft, but I’ll bet it wasn’t Black Sabbath.

Can rock and classical ever make nice?
You betcha. The Canadians solved this problem in 1996/Les Canadiens dénouér ce problème dans 1996. In that year the Canadian surf quartet The Baronics released a selection of pop tunes from the Classical and Romantic eras, arranged for the reverberating surf guitar we older teenagers recall so fondly from “Walk Don’t Run” and “Wipe Out!”

The Baronics fearlessly tackled five of the baddest boys in the classical-music game, resulting in a totally whacked, straight-up sick party record. (Just kidding. Don’t play this thing at parties, after the first laugh subsides people won’t know what to do with themselves.) Here’s the set list, with some helpful notes on the composers for those Run-DMSteve readers who are still listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer. And I know who you are.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
Nearest contemporaries: Talking Heads
What Vivaldi would be doing today: Martha Stewart stunt double

Vivaldi is best known for The Four Seasons. When this experimental double LP of violin concertos was released in 1725, critics called it La Album Bianco. Concerto No. 1 in E Major, “Spring,” is the perfect introduction to the Baronical approach. “Spring” is not too fast, not too slow, and not too crowded; you can hear all the moving parts. You’ll enjoy the delicious solo in the middle and the steady Ringo-like drumming.

Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, “Summer,” showcases the band’s furious two-guitar attack. Actually, The Baronics’ two-guitar attack can best be described as “affable,” but compared to their usual work this track is furious.

Concerto No. 3 in F Major, “Autumn,” would fit right in at a luau on Kauai. It features two saxophone breaks, almost 20 seconds of pure Clarence Clemons/Born in the USA­-style playing. (Twenty seconds may not sound like a lot, but this piece isn’t even three minutes long. Antonio would’ve been amazed.)

As for Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, “Winter,” this is where you’ll learn to air-baton.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Nearest contemporaries: The Beatles
What Mozart would be doing today: Running Apple

Dave Brubeck has already given Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca a good jazzercizing, and of course The Beach Boys turned it into “Help Me, Rhonda.” This new version will keep your foot tapping, though the guitarists barely meet Mozart’s hectic pace and the drummer gets left several laps behind. Big finish, though. What we really needed here was a guest appearance by one of the master thrash-metal outfits. Megadeath would’ve done nicely, though I’m afraid if they had shown up for this session they would’ve killed and eaten The Baronics afterwards.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Nearest contemporaries: U2
What Bach would be doing today: Dividing the Lutheran Church

Bach, who couldn’t resist a practical joke, wrote his Inventions to torture his students. Kudos to The Baronics for choosing the trickiest Inventions, 1 and 13, bypassing the sissy-pants 2 through 12. The boys heroically rise to the challenge; even the drummer almost does well. In your face, Bach! W00t!

Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)
Nearest contemporary: Bobby McFerrin
What Pachelbel would be doing today: Only Oakland Raider who never breaks curfew

You know Pachelbel’s Kanon. You hear it at every wedding you go to, even the ones where the bride and groom are dressed as Klingons. Hearing The Baronics play the Kanon makes you realize how beautiful this tune is. This isn’t just a track off another obscure CD, this is a public service.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Nearest contemporary: Beck
What Beethoven would be doing today: Amy Winehouse

This is the only spot where Get Bach! falters, but the problem isn’t the band, it’s their choice of music. Beethoven wrote his Moonlight Sonata for a woman he was in love with. Sounds promising, but I have to wonder if Ludwig really knew his target market. How many women would be willing to engage in sex on top of a piano after hearing this doleful crawl through the dark? It’s tough enough listening to the Moonlight Sonata while someone tries to belt it out on the piano. Giving it the surf treatment only thickens the claustrophobia.

Mozart reprise
Forget Beethoven and his ideas on how to approach chicks. Surf and Mozart go together like Lego bricks! Mozart’s Serenade No. 13 as translated by The Baronics is more fun than catching a wave and shootin’ the pipe in front of a beach full of babelinis.

Bach reprise
The Bourrée was a dance the French did in their 17th-century mosh pits. Seems tame to us, but back then Bach’s Bourrée terrorized the Church and plunged Europe into the Dark Ages. The Baronics end this good-natured album with their good-natured version of the Bourrée, and even throw in some genuine English/French yelling. Bravissimo, Baronics!

In a future post we’ll discuss classical’s attempts to assimilate rock and roll, including string-quartet tributes to everything from The Cure to Pink Floyd and the endless Hooked on Classics series of disco drum-machine freakouts (which, wouldn’t you know, can all be traced back to Electric Light Orchestra).

Until then, appassionato non troppo!

Roll over, Kurt Cobain

Posted: November 28, 2010 in music, Record reviews
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Grunge Lite
Sara DeBell
1993
I was living in Seattle when our fair city unleashed a pair of unstoppable cultural forces: coffee and grunge. Everyone knows what coffee is: overpriced. What is grunge?

Figure 1. Let’s go grunge-spotting!
Here are some general characteristics to help you seek and spot grunge anywhere in the world:

  • Men who can’t sing.
  • Big fuzzy guitars – a moderately pleasing sound that conveniently camouflages a lack of technical skill.
  • Overflowing testosterone. Particularly ironic in that the best album from the grunge era is easily Hole’s Live Through This. Only Courtney Love’s husband came close when his band released Nevermind.
  • Bad male fashion – plaid shirts worn unbuttoned or tied at the waist, or two nondescript shirts worn one on top of the other. A man at my gym left one of his nondescript shirts on a hook in the locker room for two months before he realized it was his shirt and not an irregular pattern on the wall.

Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament, and Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam played Matt Dillon’s band, Citizen Dick, in the movie Singles (1992). This movie might not have been the high point for grunge, but it was certainly the high point for Pearl Jam.

Targets don’t get much fatter than this
Sara DeBell’s Grunge Lite, which appeared while grunge was still happening, was billed as a “whole buttload of easy-listening favorites,” recorded entirely in her dining room. She took 11 grunge masterworks and muzaked them, including Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow,” Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick,” and Soundgarden’s “Hunger Strike.” (DeBell was particularly taken, or appalled, by Soundgarden, who appear three times in her carnival of carnage.) I only wish she had taken down my faves, Screaming Trees (“Nearly Lost You”). They could’ve used the publicity.

Grunge had it coming, but this is the kind of album you’ll play only when your house is full of people and they are full of your beer. Sure, the muzak versions of  these songs are clever…if you like muzak. Few people will be able to sit through the entire thing without losing intestinal containment. OK, I’ve done it. In the mid-’90s, though, when I played DeBell’s version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at parties at our house, everyone over 40 would gather adoringly around the stereo. I probably couldn’t get that reaction today, now that the real “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is a standard in the Classic Rock repertoire and everyone I know is at least 100.

After releasing Grunge Lite, DeBell became the copy editor at The Stranger, one of Seattle’s weekly alternative papers. At that time I was finishing my sojourn as the copy editor at Seattle Weekly. If this was her idea of how to gain respectability, I could’ve told her it wasn’t going to work.

I don’t know where Sara DeBell is today, musically, but the one time I spoke with her, in 1996, she was really into The Everly Brothers!

Stop messin’ ’round with your tricks!

Posted: November 21, 2010 in music, Record reviews
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Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time
Santana
2010

Carlos Santana has been a cultural icon for 40 years. But how much do we really know about him? Let’s check the record.

Yay! Carlos Santana Fun Facts!

  • Has released more albums than The Rolling Stones, and they had a head start.
  • Wears a stupid hat.
  • Recorded the most popular versions of three Classic Rock mainstays: “Oye Como Va,” “Evil Ways,” and “Black Magic Marker.”
  • Made a comeback in 1999 with Supernatural, which was kinda cuddly coming from a Classic Rock guy.
  • Rolling Stone ranks him 15th on their list of 100 greatest guitarists, behind Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and Willie Mays.
  • I may be looking at the wrong list.

Guitar Heaven is a reinterpretation of 14 “greatest guitar classics of all time,” with guest vocalists (and Yo-Yo Ma?) adding their superpowers to Carlos Santana’s. Now we can learn more about Santana, and the first thing we learn is that he has brain damage. When did T-Rex’s “Bang A Gong” become a guitar classic? It has more sax than guitar. It has more lame than cool. It’s Golden Oldies, not Classic Rock. I couldn’t understand why this number was included until I remembered that T-Rex’s Marc Bolan, like Santana, wore a stupid hat. Oh, OK then.

Then there’s “Photograph.” Don’t get your hopes up. This isn’t “Photograph” by A Flock of Haircuts. I would’ve loved to hear what a Category 6 hurricane like Santana could have done with that New Wave dirge. Nor is it “Photograph” by The Verve Pipe. The guitar on that one is as lazy as an afternoon at Starbucks. Santana would’ve turned it into Alien vs. Predator. Alas, this is “Photograph” by No Depth Leppard. If you have to pick something by Leppard, why not “Rock of Ages”? It’s a much tougher song, probably because the lads were imitating someone a lot tougher than them, Joan Jett. Santana sounds bored on this track. Santana smash puny Leppards!

And couldn’t he fight the urge to include “Smoke on the Water”? Rolling Stone ranks this immortal doorstop 426th on the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” By my math that means there are 425 other songs that are better. “Smoke on the Water” has already been covered by Pat Boone. I believe we can call his version definitive. Stop it!

Shut up and play the music already
Right. OMG! Leading off is the most hilarious song ever recorded: “Whole Lotta Love”! Led Zeppelin’s version enthusiastically rattled along like a Model T on a log road. Santana easily duplicates that effect, brightening Jimmy Page’s sound without blunting the song’s inherent stupidity. (You’re going to give me every inch of your love? You nut!) Santana jettisons the psychedelic on-ramp that Led Zep installed in the middle, but the replacement, a sort of highway rest area, is not an improvement. You’re still waiting for the pistons to start jerking again. Chris Cornell adds his strong yet curiously inexpressive voice, making the whole thing sound like Audioslave if anyone in that band could play guitar.

Next up: The Rolling Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.” Santana sizzles in the blues half of this song but loses his way in the jazz half. This from the man who played one of the two guitars on the jazz landmark Love Devotion Surrender…I blame Supernatural. Extra credit to Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots for standing in for Mick Jagger without sounding ridiculous.

Of all the vocalists, Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty turns in the best performance. He’s completely convincing on Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” and the music gives him the space he needs – Santana doesn’t fill every microsecond with fireworks. These well-chosen moments of quiet demonstrate what an awesome guitarist Santana is – one of the best in the history of pop. Only his stupid hat keeps him out of the front rank.

My favorite track is Santana and Nas’ collaboration on AC/DC’s “Back in Black.” (Sure, they’ve removed the air of danger, but admit it, after 30 years AC/DC are about as dangerous as The B-52s.) Santana rips the bones from its back. Nas alternates between rapping the lyrics and rapping about Santana.

Anything else any good? No.
Santana purees Creedence Clearwater Revival’s anti-war “Fortunate Son” into a fruit smoothie that suggests The Spencer Davis Group’s pro-sex “Gimme Some Lovin’.” Scott Stapp of Creed handles the vocal on this track, but for once something isn’t Creed’s fault.

Which brings us to Yo-Yo Ma, who adds something to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” though I can’t tell you what. He would’ve made more of a difference on the drums. The song is so sluggish you gradually lose the will to live.

And what’s the deal with “Little Wing”? Joe Cocker’s voice is mixed so far into the background, he sounds like Bruce Springsteen. Or was he singing his part from out in the parking lot? This version of “Little Wing” can’t touch Jimi Hendrix’s or Stevie Ray Vaughan’s, though it easily outpaces Sting’s La-Z-Boy go at it.

Scoreboard totals
25% of the 14 songs on Guitar Classics rawked (I gave “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” half a point). That’s a solid score in the elite world of Run-DMSteve. A tip of the hat to Santana! Don’t change your evil ways. Baby.

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