Listen: Stop, Look and Listen/Jeff Beck

purchase [ Blow By Blow]


It may have been Beck-Ola that turned me on to Jeff Beck but I can't really single out a particular piece from the album that has stuck with me. On the other hand, my copy of the 1975 Blow By Blow 33RPM album probably had worn out grooves from being played so much. It's no longer in my possession to check.

<Stop Look and Listen> from the "Flash" album almost a decade after Blow By Blow wouldn't be in my list of Jeff Beck favorites. The song just happens to fit our theme and Beck hasn't had much written about him here.

I actually saw him in concert ... must have been about '72, in Philly.

Listening to Beck again after a few years, I am struck by how eclectic he is: there are elements of all sorts of musical styles.

Beck has paid his dues: one of the Yardbirds, almost one of Led Zeppelin, known by all in the field, played with ... you name him/her.

ConsequenceOfSound has a raw review of his latest =- after a 6 year absence. You might enjoy checking it out. I did.

The album from whence Stop, Look and Listen comes (Flash, from 1985) is noted as a time when Rod Stewart re-united with the Jeff Beck group. (Come again? Rod Stewart and the Jeff Beck Group? Guess I didn't know that!) The <Flash> album itself has various other curiosities on it: covers of "Wild Thing" and "People Get Ready" Beck himself [apparently] didn't particularly care for the album, but it did pretty well on the charts.

But maybe my favorite Beck:

STORMS: STORMY MONDAY

I suppose this should really be a learned discourse on the origins of this oft-covered stalwart of the idiom, but, hell, no, let's cut to the chase and forget the earnest original and celebrate Duane, Gregg and the boys. Is this live track not the most uplifting downbeat song ever? Tacked on with Statesboro' Blues on 'Live at the Fillmore' (1971!), this was my introduction to the Allman Brothers and it remains their pinnacle, something I can listen to for time eternal.

Of course, in their decades long history, 1969 - 2014, give or take the odd recess, they have produced a zillion live albums and a trillion live versions of this old warhorse, but it is this outing I always see as the template, even comparing other artists to it, as if it were truly the original. So, then, what of the song? Penned by T-Bone Walker, it was a hit as far back as 1948, although maybe a decade or so elapsed before Bobby 'Blue' Bland cut the version many see as definitive. Indeed, as I much later learnt, much of the phrasing and a lot of the licks were lifted wholesale by the Allmans.

The lyric is the age old simple lament of the working man, the grind of the week, trajecting through to payday and the celebration of the weekend, grounded with some sunday religion, before it all starts again. Whilst Bland seems more celebratory of the contrast between the highs and lows, poor old Gregg Allman sounds completely dragged down by the repetition of the cycle, his vocal as downbeat a lament as any sharecropper half a century his (then) senior. So the then contrast as his hammond kicks into an unexpected jaunty and jazzevocative statement is all the more pronounced. Has he ever produced a more inspired burst of soloing? (In truth I find it hard to recall any other piece of soloing by him at all, making it all the more remarkable.)

Anyone else come close? Well, any blues legend worth his salt, such as Kings, Freddie, B.B. and Albert, most of the white boys, like Clapton and Beck, as well as wild cards like Eva Cassidy and ? and the Mysterians have all given it space. But I guess my other favourite is the one by Jimmy Smith, maybe no surprise if it is the organ that so appeals to me in the Allmans, Smith being the jazz-blues maestro of the same. Here it is in all its instrumental glory:

Now is Tuesday really just the same after any of these? Hell, I hope not.

Get your Stormy Mondays here, not forgetting where the best one came from.

Goodbye: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

Jeff Beck: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
[purchase]

Charlie/Charles Mingus' Goodbye Pork Pie Hat is a song that I have listened to again and again since way back when, including such versions as Joni Mitchell's, from her Mingus album (see below). Unintentionally, it seems to segue well with Ramone666's immediately previous post.

Among those things I consider myself lucky to have been there for is a Jeff Beck concert in Philly (must have been the Main Line in '72, but it was so long ago ...). Amazing guitar. Beck's "Wired" is probably my favorite of his works (from whence his original version  and the purchase link above comes). It dates to the same era as a similarly guitar-predominant work that I also hold dear and for some reason associate with this same era: Robin Trower's "Bridge of Sighs". Both include that same "sigh" - the lingering, well-timed pause of the guitar note before the guitarist moves on to the next. That wait is part of their personal/professional interpretation of a song: the timing that makes it their own.

Pork Pie Hat is so loosely structured that it really takes someone so confident and experienced as Jeff Beck or Joni Mitchell to bring it off. This live version of Pork Pie Hat appears to include Jaco Pastorius (not sure, really) ... I would have wished to give you the "Wired" version, but the belt on my turntable has - alas - finally given out and my only copy on hand is this live version from somewhere or other. The purchase link *is* to the Wired version, however.