Posts Tagged ‘The Who’

Write-a-thon, Day 30: Do ya think I’m texty?

Posted: July 22, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
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Snoopy thanks for not sending 1

The biggest challenge for me when returning to my regular life following a vacation that includes my family is food. I just spent a week ingesting 22,000 calories per day, including anything that swims and whatever comes out of an ice cream scoop. Basically, someone stepped on my foot, I opened my mouth, they shoveled food in. But today I ate streamlined meals that included a number of vegetables. What’s up with that?

I rallied despite these hardships. I impressed everyone at a job interview, including me; helped put our household back together; and spent another hour in the Write-a-thon, working my way through everything I scribbled last week. I remember this now. This is the easy part: Typing up my notes, editing as I go along, making changes in previous chapters that occurred to me on the plane. It’s as if someone else did all that work and all I have to do now is supervise. But I’ll finish with the last page of hand-written work in a day or two. Then it’s back to the blank page on the screen and just my imagination, which, hopefully, will run away with me.

Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice. (Octavia Butler)

Random Pick of the Day
The Who, The Who Sings My Generation (1965)
They certainly sang “My Generation” as well as “A Legal Matter,” but those might not be the best songs on their raucous debut – “The Good’s Gone” and “The Ox” are still rock at its finest (and messiest).

Random Pan of the Day
The Who, Live At Leeds (1970)
I love this album! If Led Zeppelin had tried this they would’ve gotten a concussion. But what I love is the original six-song release. Here’s what I’m panning: The 14-song version of 1995 (“The Big One”), the 33-song version of 2001 (“The Deluxe”), and the four-CD, 55-song version of 2010 (“The 40th Anniversary Collectors’ Edition That Makes The Big One Look Like a Weenie”), which includes 32 songs from a concert in Hull. No offense to anyone living in Hull, but as I understand it, that’s not Leeds.

The expanded editions give you about three days’ worth of new music, but also what feels like years of stage banter that’s almost indecipherable and adds nothing to the experience even when you can decipher it. Pete is out of breath from all that windmilling? Roger thinks something is funny? Was that Keith who just hacked up a hairball? Would you please just fucking play?

The producers picked out the best songs 40 years ago: “Young Man Blues,” “Substitute,” “Summertime Blues,” “Shakin’ All Over” (my favorite), “My Generation,” and “Magic Bus.” I don’t know about you, but they are all that I need.

Parnassus 072013

This is the Cape Cod bookstore where I discovered Lord of the Rings in 1970. I was 15 and all I was trying to do was go for a walk to escape the chaos in our vacation cabin. You never know when or where books are going to strike.

 

The People vs. Coldplay

Posted: November 6, 2011 in music, Record reviews
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A Rush of Blood to the Head
Coldplay
2002

My three regular readers know that I use the term “Coldplay” as a handy benchmark meaning “inoffensive crap.” Is the case against Coldplay really that simple? Probably, but let’s consider it anyway.

Coldplay offers expertly crafted, atmospheric soft rock that implies other, harder, kinds of music. They’re not manipulating anyone; they’re sincere. That makes them The Monkees, minus the laughs and the bouncing-puppy energy. I’m guessing that they answer a need for people to be part of something cool created by guys who look like them. That makes them The Who, without all the philosophy. If you like to rock but you secretly enjoy music that makes you float on a cloud, Coldplay rocks just enough to give you some cover. That makes them Pearl Jam with the corners sanded off.

Coldplay is often compared to U2. I admit that both bands are insanely popular, that there are four men in each group, and that all eight of them come from islands off the coast of continental Europe. The similarities stop right there. Coldplay will never be as pretentious as U2, which is a mark in their favor, but neither will they take the chances U2 took on The Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby. And Coldplay seems to have skipped their hellcat period. It’s too late now for them to clobber us with their versions of War or Under a Blood Red Sky.

“Am I/a part of the cure/Or am I part of the disease?” (Coldplay, “Clocks”)
I’ve written before about guilty pleasures. Here’s another one: Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head.

The album showcases Coldplay’s strengths: Their flair for simple-yet-dramatic musical moments and their skill at constructing relatively short, punchy pop songs. Some of them are short and punchy, anyway. Unfortunately, A Rush of Blood also showcases their weaknesses, like their habit of repeating all of their simple-yet-dramatic musical moments. You can do a lot with half a dozen keys on the piano, but must it always be the same half dozen? Then there’s Coldplay’s Yes-like tendency toward bloat, and finally we have their singer, Chris Martin. Mr. Martin’s voice is breathy, high, and at times whiny. When Bono gets worked up about another issue bedeviling the world, which is every day, his voice goes striding across the land. Martin’s goes flat. It doesn’t help that he married Gwyneth Paltrow.

But man, does this album whip up a mood! At least it does in me. Playing A Rush of Blood on my headphones has made many a task zip right along. How did Coldplay win me over? My theory is that I first heard A Rush of Blood on a temporary job where I spent much of the day feeling sorry for myself. Coldplay is the band for you if you’re feeling sorry for yourself! They are melancholy without being terminal, cathartic without making you curl into a ball. They provide a valuable public service.

My conclusion on the Coldplay question is that these boys are all in their 30s. They work hard, they love their fans, and they take care of themselves. We’d better learn to live with them because they are not going away. And that makes them The Rolling Stones without all the egos.

 

Golden Oldies vs. golden retrievers

Posted: March 21, 2011 in Miscellaneous, music
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Let’s give a big Run-DMSteve welcome to today’s contestants:

Golden Oldies: Radio programming.
Golden retrievers: Dogs.

Are you ready to rumble?

Golden Oldies
In 1966 my parents gave me my own radio, with a primitive earbud. They were sick of listening to my music on the family radio, which sat on the kitchen counter beside the bread box. Looking back, I can understand what Mom and Dad were up against. My musical sensibilities at the age of 11 were the equivalent of Lady Gaga and the Jonas Brothers. Who wants to listen to Herman’s Hermits and the tragic story of Mrs. Brown and her lovely daughter?

When I was 11, I certainly did, and when I got to see Herman’s Hermits in concert for a friend’s birthday I was thrilled. But before my 5th-grade colleagues and I could sing along to “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am,” we had to survive the opening act: The Who. (They weren’t famous yet, at least not on this side of the Atlantic.) What followed was, by the standards of that era, full-blown insane flying carnage. Fun!

Wherever you are today, Mrs. M., I’d like to thank you for not taking us home early, though I plainly remember your shock, particularly when the audience was hit by drum sticks and guitar shrapnel.

As the 1960s continued, The Beatles and The Who became more experimental and The Rolling Stones more savage. Other bands followed. Radio stations sprang up to play this music (the first “alternative” outlets). In the early 1970s I noticed that there were other stations, usually on the AM side, that were still playing Herman’s Hermits and similar bands. They didn’t seem aware of Sgt. Pepper’s or Tommy or Beggar’s Banquet. Their playlists stopped in the mid-’60s, and they included songs from a decade I knew nothing about: the 1950s, which in my mind meant crooners (Frank Sinatra) and cool jazz cats (John Coltrane).

As we moved into the 1980s and I learned more about the history of pop music I realized that Golden Oldies radio wasn’t just something I listened to when I didn’t like what was playing on the other stations. Golden Oldies was cultural propaganda, like Fonzi and Happy Days. All of the ’50s music these stations played was white-washed white pop. The only black artists I remember hearing* were Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Bo Diddley – and by the time we moved into the ’90s, Bo Diddley had disappeared and the other three were restricted to a song or two each.

What about all the other black R&B artists? What about rockabilly? What kind of country is this where we have to learn about our heritage from Led Zeppelin?

Today, in 2011, even that remnant of the 1950s is gone. The Golden Oldies songbook begins in the early ’60s with The Beach Boys and The Beatles. Jan & Dean and The Everly Brothers have vanished. Golden Oldies extends into the early 1980s now, and though blacks and women have been allowed into the club (no soul, no Golden Oldies), this format continues to perpetuate atrocities. Where else are you going to hear Chicago, The Dooby Brothers, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Bread? Excuse me while I rinse my brain out.

* Not counting doo-wop. I’m not sure that doo-wop is music.

Golden retrievers
Golden retrievers love chasing tennis balls. They love standing around chewing tennis balls. They love you. They love whatever you’re doing. They would never ever rewrite musical history or suppress music created and performed by women, minorities, or gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered individuals. They wouldn’t make me listen to Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park.” And if I secretly played “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daugher,” they wouldn’t tell.

Winner: Golden retrievers. W00T! (And w00f!)