I don’t give a damn about any trumpet-playing band

Posted: March 26, 2014 in music, Record reviews
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Normally, when I take a particular band as my subject I listen to their music while I write. This installment of “Sins of the ’70s Week” is an exception. Our guest band this evening is Chicago, but after listening to a few tracks from Chicago Transit Authority (1969) and skipping desperately to Chicago II (1970) I felt that I was about to lose molecular containment.

Right now I’m listening to a disc from 1979: Jackrabbit Slim by the singer-songwriter Steve Forbert. Forbert sings a mash-up of folk, country, and Americana. (He’s Canadian, so I should call that North Americana.) I hear him as a happier version of Gram Parsons, who was glum, or of Elvis Costello, who started out angry and still strikes me as grumpy. I would also rate him approximately 1,000 times more literate than anyone in Chicago, the band that gave us the following thoughts, from “(I’ve Been) Searching So Long”:

I’ve been searching
So long
To find an answer
Now I know my life has meaning
Whoah whoah

When I was in high school I loved Chicago (the two albums I mentioned above). To try to understand why I did, I must first consider the case against them.

1) When Terry Kath, James Pankow, Robert Lamm, and the other Chicagoans formed their group, they called themselves The Big Thing. Great name! What compelled them to adopt Chicago Transit Authority? Did it sound more grown-up? Shortening it to Chicago when the real grown-ups at the CTA threatened to sue didn’t help. There is no personality involved in calling your group Chicago (or Boston, or Kansas). You’re just borrowing a label with its own emotional shadings, not venturing any of yours.

2) Almost all of Chicago’s hundreds of albums are double-record sets with the word “Chicago” on the cover with artsy things involving the letters and then a number. I guess this makes it easy for their fans to find their records. You might as well print covers with “Music Product” in black letters on a white background and then add the number.

3) OK, let’s get to the music. That’s what really counts. Chicago has an unsurpassed ability to write songs that are too sweet for Muppets. Exhibits A through D are “If You Leave Me Now,” “Saturday in the Park,” “Wishing You Were Here,” and “Colour My World.” Why were they using British spellings in the Midwest in 1970? Did the Brits win the War of 1812?

4) OK, let’s stay with the music. Much has been made of Chicago’s horn section, but what I often hear are a lot of held notes as in The Beatles’ “Got to Get You Into My Life.” I have much more respect for their first guitarist, the late Terry Kath, and their keyboard player, Robert Lamm. They could take a pop song and floor it.

That fourth point helps explain why at the ages of 14 and 15 I so enjoyed this band. “Beginnings,” for example, impacts like a meteor. The lyrics are easy to learn and sing and the emotions are imaginable, if not tangible, for any teenage male geek:

When I’m with you, it doesn’t matter where we are
Or what we’re doing. I’m with you, that’s all that matters

“Beginnings,” which is just short of 8 minutes, ends with 2 minutes of congas, cowbells, and guys shouting like they’re living la dolce vida. The ending didn’t mean much to me then because this self-indulgent stretch was usually cut off on the radio. Also, if you owned the LP you could turn the volume way up on your console stereo and hear an extra 30 seconds of congas and etc. that the engineers had faded out. It was like spinning Beatles records backwards to find out what happened to Paul.

Chicago sometimes broke songs into prologues, movements, and “ballets”; this seemed significant to me. The adults in my life considered my music juvenile; I could counterattack with Chicago, because they had brass instruments just like jazz players and their songs had movements so shut up. You can see how this perception would change as I got a little older.

But the final reason why I liked Chicago was because of, yes, “Colour My World.” (The formal title is “Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon: Colour My World”). When they played it at a school dance in 1970 it was the signal for girls and boys to pair off on the dance floor and crush themselves into each other while circling very slowly so as not to get dizzy and topple into the crushed couples nearby.

When I played “Colour My World” today, after not hearing it for almost 40 years, I was immediately up to my neck in that hormonal melting pot. I still didn’t make it to end of the song, though, and it takes up a mere 2 minutes and 39 seconds.

Chicago (the current highest-numbered album is Chicago XXXII, but there are also a few unnumbered albums) is one of those bands that are popular for reasons I don’t understand. But there’s plenty in this life I’m trying to understand. “Does anybody really know what time it is?” Chicago asked on their very first record, “time” meaning life in general. Their best metaphor.

Tomorrow, “Sins of the ’70s Week” continues with: Grand Funk Railroad! I’m your captain, yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Random Pick of the Day
Steve Forbert, Jackrabbit Slim (1979)
This gentleman is pretty good. I haven’t listened to him since forever. The individual songs don’t stand out for me yet but I’ll listen again and try some of his other releases.

Random Pan of the Day
Chicago, Chicago 25: The Christmas Album (1998)
Panning this one is totally unfair because I refuse to listen to it, but I get paid to be unfair. Well, no, I don’t get paid, I just like to be unfair. I have an uneasy relationship with Christmas music, as I demonstrated here and here. The thought of Chicago muscling in on Mannheim Steamroller territory makes me wish for a silent night. Produced by Springsteen pianist Roy Bittan.

 

Rhiannon promised me heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt

Posted: March 25, 2014 in music, Record reviews
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The Fleetwood Mac Military-Industrial Complex cannot be confined to a single blog post.

Around 1968, Peter Green wrote a song called “Black Magic Woman.” When I was a teenager we referred to this song as “Black Magic Marker.” You can find it on Fleetwood Mac’s English Rose album (1969). It’s good; it sounds like a tango in Jamaica.

It’s so good that two years later Carlos Santana decided to cover it. Rather than stop where Green stopped, Santana upped the ante by appending the instrumental “Gypsy Queen” by the Hungarian jazz guitarist Gàbor Szabó. I’ve heard Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” a million times, and it still knocks me down with its sinuous organ, furious guitar, and its roots in blues, jazz, and the folk music of two continents.

“Gypsy Queen” appears on Szabó’s 1966 album Spellbinder. Szabó was a pretty fair guitarist. Unfortunately, his interpretations of the pop standards of the day are uninteresting. When he tries to sing, as he does on Sonny Bono’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” things get worse.

But three of his original compositions on this disc more than make up for this problem: “Gypsy Queen,” “Cheetah,” and the title track. They’re sufficiently awesome to overwhelm “It Was a Very Good Year,” “My Foolish Heart,” and the bang bang song. I rate it a Buy.

OK, that’s it for Fleetwood Mac. I’m not going to deal with Stevie Nicks and her scarves. Tomorrow, Chicago for sure. Spoiler alert: “25 or 6 to 4” is the singer’s estimate of how many minutes remain before 4 o’clock, 25 or 26. The song appeared in 1970 and the digital wristwatch was patented in 1970. The composer, Robert Lamm, just got in under the wire on this one.

Who wears cheetah?
Many thanks to Loyal Reader Orin who sends word of the 2014 updating of Frank Zappa’s “Valley Girl.” Here then are The Chainsmokers with their haunting, heart-breaking “#SELFIE.” They definitely bought all their Instagram followers.

Random Pick of the Day
Fruit Bats, Mouthfuls (2003)
This band starts where the quieter tracks on The White Album end. The album is often too quiet for me, though never Cowboy Junkies quiet. The closer, “When U Love Somebody,” is a jewel.

Random Pan of the Day
Iggy Pop, Party (1981)
Party is so bad you have to get EPA approval before you can play it. Iggy, trying to cash in on the New Wave, crashes into a guard rail. His covers are inept (“Time Won’t Let Me” is gruesome) and his originals are unlistenable. Except for “Bang Bang” – now that’s good. Perhaps it escaped from another album. Sadly, this record was a footnote while it was being recorded.

 

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night. That’s super annoying.

Posted: March 24, 2014 in music, Record reviews
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Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac
Various artists
2014

Mick Fleetwood and John McVie were hard-working members of John Mayall’s Blues Breakers. When they decided to form their own band (everyone who worked for John Mayall in the 1960s formed his own band), they discovered that their true skills were not playing the drums and the bass, respectively. The one thing they did better than anything was finding talent.

They started off by recruiting guitarist Peter Green. Peter Green is one of our unsung Jewish guitar heroes, the guy who was hired to replace Eric Clapton when Clapton left the Blues Breakers to form Cream. (What a résumé entry: “Replaced Eric Clapton while maintaining band productivity.”)

Green took Fleetwood Mac in a blues-rock direction, naturally, but Fleetwood and McVie were looking for something more lucrative. They got rid of Green and hired two singer-songwriters, Robert Welch and Christine Perfect, who began the band’s transition from blues to pop. (Perfect later married McVie.)

Fleetwood and McVie eventually ditched Welch and brought in two more singer-songwriters, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. That, as Ruk the android declared on a memorable episode of classic Star Trek, was the equation. In the mid-’70s there was no band bigger than Fleetwood Mac. Everywhere I went, everyone seemed to have Fleetwood Mac (1975) and Rumours (1977) in the plastic crates that held their records. I owned Fleetwood Mac and Rumours. Yes, it’s true. I spent money on Fleetwood Mac records, I didn’t change stations when Fleetwood Mac songs came on the radio, and I put coins in jukeboxes so I could hear really dumb stuff like “Monday Morning” and “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.” You can understand why I’m a snob today. I have much to atone for.

(In 1992, the Clintons used “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” as their campaign theme song. Fleetwood Mac immediately reformed and went on tour. I will never forgive the Clintons for this.)

By the early 1980s I’d shaken off Fleetwood Mac the way a dog shakes off water after a swim. I came to believe that the final word on Fleetwood Mac was sung by The Rotters in their insightful single, “Sit on My Face, Stevie Nicks.” But then I encountered this tribute CD. Once again, I’ve been proven wrong. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

Just Tell Me That You Want Me (this terrific title is a line from one of their worst songs, “Tusk”) is a collection of talent so deep that Beck isn’t even mentioned on the cover. He’s buried in the credits. Most of the interpretations are sincere, some are quite imaginative, and only a few are duds. Just Tell Me That You Want Me scores far higher than I expected.

What’s good
You can tell who the muscle was out there because 10 of these 17 songs were written by Stevie Nicks. For my money, the finest performance is turned in by Marianne Faithfull on Nicks’ “Angel.” Ms. Faithfull can turn any fluffy pop song into the King James Bible and as usual she doesn’t disappoint. Bill Frisell, another huge talent not noted in the advertising, plays guitar. He spends the last minute and a half of the song ascending into heaven. I rate this disc a Buy for “Angel” alone.

Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top provides the vocals on Peter Green’s “Oh Well.” You can hear the ghost of John Lee Hooker in his growls. The New Pornographers turn Christine McVie’s “Think About Me” into a fun Beatles romp. The Crystal Ark, a band I’ve never heard of, convert Lindsey Buckingham’s unlistenable “Tusk” into something I almost like. Two names I’m learning about, Matt Sweeney and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, create a beautiful cover of Nicks’ “Storms.” St. Vincent, a name you can’t avoid hearing these days, turns “Sisters of the Moon” (Nicks again) into a hard, almost dirty rocker. I never thought I’d connect adjectives such as “hard” and “dirty” with Fleetwood Mac.

Another band I don’t know, Best Coast, was assigned Nicks’ “Rhiannon,” Fleetwood Mac’s signature song. Though Best Coast stays close to the original, I’m highlighting this track because their singer, Bethany Cosentino, sings like a female Johnny Cash.

Of course, you can’t discuss Fleetwood Mac without complaining about something. For one thing, the cheap paper CD holder was designed to spill the CD out of its sleeve and onto the floor of your car just as you’re changing lanes. But I have something bigger in mind.

Robert Welch: Fleetwood footnote
Robert Welch was not an unappreciated genius and I’m not launching a crusade on his behalf. In 1994 he re-recorded his Greatest Hits and managed to de-improve all of them. But he wrote the only two original Fleetwood Mac songs I still like: “Future Games” and “Bermuda Triangle,” so I feel I should say something in his defense.

“Bermuda Triangle” is the closest this band ever came to a dance number. It would’ve been a perfect song for The B-52s, who would’ve injected 10ccs of humor. (Welch believed he was warning the public about a hazard to navigation.) This song is not covered on Just Tell Me That You Want Me.

“Future Games” is. I know that not all who wander are lost, but the boys in the band were lost in the dreamy, meandering “Future Games.” Still, this 8-minute song pre-dates Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon by a year and Pink Floyd acknowledges it as an influence. With better editing (or fewer recreational drugs?), “Future Games” could’ve been one of the decade’s classics. It’s good, OK?

In their cover, MGMT sings the lyrics through a vocoder to produce a computer-like voice. An old computer. Like Matthew Broderick/Ally Sheedy WarGames old computer. Neil Young tried this in 1982 with Trans and got nowhere, and he’s a god. Even Gary Numan, who is a computer, never tried to sing like one. MGMT made a huge mistake and I’m glad this record’s producers stuck this thing at the end so it’s easy to skip.

Don’t stop thinking about Fleetwood Mac
A tribute CD should show you an old band in a new light. Just Tell Me That You Want Me, like Various Artists for the Masses, the Depeche Mode tribute, accomplishes this mission. Despite “Future Games” and a couple of other miscues (“Silver Springs” sounds as if it was recorded in the bathroom of a bus station), let me just tell you: You want this CD.

Tomorrow night, Sins of the ’70s Week continues with: Chicago. Colour my world, dudes!

 

Antique Parent Land

Posted: March 23, 2014 in Miscellaneous, Record reviews
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In February, Special D and her best friend spent a week on Kauai. I spent five days with my parents in southeastern Massachusetts, where the temperature never left the frozen zone and I crunched across snow like stale pie crust. You can see who got the better end of this deal.

Happy cat roommates
Irving, Gloria, Elliot

Mom and Dad are doing well for two people on the high side of 80. The main question every hour is, “Where’s Elliot?” (The answer is, “Right there.”) They watch the Red Sox in the warm months and Downton Abbey in the cold months and Animal Planet and the World War II channel the rest of the time. They have their favorite breakfast place and their favorite lunch place and at night they’re cozy in the run-down house I grew up in.

Until recently they sold hardware and housewares from two tables at an indoor flea market. Dad has at last sold the business and I no longer have to worry about him hurting himself hefting heavy boxes or of getting an emergency call from the flea market owners that my mother or my father or both have collapsed and would I please fly across the country NOW. Plus the new buyer is carrying off all of the junk that filled two units in a warehouse and most of the basement of the house.

(Consumer report: If in the past I promised you a random box of mystery crap when I inherit my share of my parents’ estate, fear not. The house is still packed full of stuff – the cat never runs out of places to hide – and I will find you a 1960s clip-on tie or something brown or orange and made from velour.)

Always 1982 in Somerset
In the house of my parents it is always 1985.

Among the things my Dad has done that I have not is live in the same place all his life. In 1939, when Dad was 12, his father took him into a new lumber yard, started by a man who had failed as a tailor. Over the decades the lumber yard became a hardware store and branched out into appliances and moved a couple of times. The founder died and his four sons took over. The baby of the bunch, Lester, is the last man standing. He’s 90. The place is run by Lester’s son, who Dad told me recently is a “very nice boy.” I realized later that this very nice boy is at least my age.

Dad has visited this temple of tooldom almost every Saturday since he came back from the war. Generations of store employees have known my father. They’ve heard him talk Yiddish with the owner and they’ve brought him coffee. Sometimes he even helps a customer. Last week, Dad went to his “third place” – his equivalent of the barber shop, the pool hall, the coffee place, the gym – and told everyone he had retired. The staff was relieved, as they all had the same worries that I did, but they had tears in their eyes too and they made Dad promise to come back. He surely will. He loves the coffee.

They don’t make life like they used to
In 1946, flush with his last Army paycheck, Dad marched in and bought his first power tool:

drill

It takes a physical effort to use one of these metal-hulled tools. The metal is cool to the touch in the hottest weather. Drills from this era have no safety features. Modern drills have a trigger lock. That wouldn’t have been considered good sportsmanship in 1946. If the motor in a modern drill overheats, it shuts itself down. If the motor in a drill from the 1940s or ’50s overheats, it shuts itself down by burning itself up. Plus you have to buy a separate attachment to make it go in reverse. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Coming attractions
Visiting my ancestral home has stirred up old memories and unresolved issues. So for the next few days I’m going to take a look back. Starting tomorrow: Sins of the ’70s Week. Our first contestants: Fleetwood Mac!

Random Pick of the Day
Chet Atkins, Chet Atkins Picks on the Beatles (1966)
Amiable, with some interesting guitar work, but not too much interesting guitar work. The harmonica, drums, and piano all get their licks in, too. Top tracks for me are “I Feel Fine” and “A Hard Day’s Night.” “Things We Said Today” shows some easy-going bossa nova influence, and “I’ll Follow the Sun” sounds almost Hawaiian. With liner notes by George Harrison.

Random Pan of the Day
Various artists, Harpsichord Greatest Hits (1995)
Harpsichords are charming…for about 5 minutes. After that I feel as if Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy have gone outside, leaving me indoors with the more boring characters.

Her name is Cleo and she dances on the sand

Posted: March 22, 2014 in Dog reviews, music
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In January we adopted an undersize corgi in need of rescue. Cleo is the abridged version of this type of dog – instead of weighing in around 30 pounds, she only weighs 20. She’s so small that we thought she was not far beyond puppyhood, but our vet says she’s a senior citizen – 10 or 11.

Cleo’s miniaturized frame works well for her because one of her back legs doesn’t work well at all. She probably has the same degenerative nerve condition that struck our last dog, Teddy. Her light weight makes it easier for her other legs to do most of the work. And they do!

Cleo running Jan 2014

This dog streaks like a missile across lawns and beaches and through any open door. She can outrun me in a sprint but not in a marathon. It was when I saw her racing around the perimeter of the large grassy pen where she was being held that I knew I wanted to give this dog a chance. She has a rage to live.

Cleo running looks from behind like a hook-and-ladder fire truck, except there’s no one steering on the back end.

When she’s not charging into the forest to chase another squirrel or racing around the base of our quince bush scolding the chickadees and goldfinches that perch there, she’s happy to curl up and sleep. On the bed, on the couch, on a pile of towels. She loves everyone and expects them all to love her. When we walk her at Reed College, she elicits a cascade of ooohs from coeds that we call The Sopranos Effect. She doesn’t like being left out. She can’t handle stairs, so if I’m downstairs she comes to the landing at the top and makes clicking sounds like the primitive drumbeats in Battlestar Galactica.

Manz Mar 14 Steve vs Cleo
Run-DMSteve takes Cleo for an al fresco editorial conference.

Yesterday we let her off the leash on a baseball field to play with another corgi. This other corgi owned a ball. It turns out that every ball Cleo sees belongs to her and she immediately transformed into Bilbo face-to-face with the Ring. The two dogs ran in circles, barking and snarling, with all of the humans shouting, which to dogs sounds like now we’re all barking. I cut off one of their circles (I haven’t owned herding dogs all these years without learning something) and tackled Cleo with a last-ditch slide. This is too much raging.

I’ve put off writing about Cleo because frankly, given her age and what’s going on with her back leg, we don’t know how long she’s going to last. But she’s already become a valued team member here at the Bureau. She’s probably going to win Employee of the Month for March. It’s time I introduced her.

Tomorrow: What I did on my mid-winter vacation!

Random Pick of the Day
The Smithereens, Blown to Smithereens (1995)
If The Beatles had stayed together, and if in the 1980s they got tired of listening to Simple Minds and Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark and decided to record something hard and dark but closer to their rock ’n’ roll roots, they might’ve come up with something similar to this.

The Smithereens are a solid band, though some of their songs do trudge along. If you like sad, they can deliver. “Beauty & Sadness” and “Only a Memory” touch the heart. “A Girl Like You” and “House We Use to Live in” rock so very hard. “Miles From Nowhere” borrows riffs from but none of the fun of The B-52s’ “Roam” and Duran Duran’s “Rio.” “Time Won’t Let Me” is a really bad cover.

And now that I’ve twice put “Rio” in your head, let’s all enjoy one of the funniest videos of all time. Oh, to dress in a tailored suit and engage in lip synchronization on a sailboat! If only they could’ve worked this into All Is Lost.

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