HORSE/S: CRAZY HORSE

Hell, yeah, in the week, near enough, ol' Shakey reveals the forthcoming of  his back to the day job with the Horse, what better time to celebrate this most epochal and emblematic of Neil Young's backing crews. You can have your Stray Gators, your Promise of the New, Pearl Jam and Booker T even, it is with the Horse that the ragged glory of his plaid shirt flaps the most. Never quite as celebrated as they should be, even oft denigrated for their supposedly simplistic backing, they are the perfect frame around which their boss can shine brightest. And it they are so dumb, how come that most attempts to emulate fall so short?

Present in one form or another since 1969, a number of musicians have been included under the banner, the band existing as much in it's own right, gigging, albums, rather than merely, as they are often perceived, waiting at home for Young to revive them from their slumbers. Because such waits can be lengthy. Very. And uncertain. The core, essentially, is the rhythm section partnership of Billy Talbot, bass, and Ralph Molina, drums.

Go back further, to 1963, and the vital spark of the band was in, astonishingly, doo-wop, a capella street corner crooning. A mix of West Side Story and what would now be called a boy band. Along with Danny Whitten and a couple of others, they even got as far as recording, first as Danny & the Memories, later as the cooler entitled Psyrcle, the zeitgeist now clearly barber avoidant. (Sadly I can find no clips of the latter, all the more disappointing, the Psyrcle having one Sly Stone, then a local record store owner, as their producer.)

Land of a 1000 Dances/Danny & the Memories

Appreciating the added value of playing some instruments, Whitten, Talbot and Molina picked some up from scratch, Whitten choosing guitar, and morphed into the Rockets, cautiously adding a couple of real musicians to paper over their deficiencies. And, yes, times were changing fast.....

Pill Song/The Rockets

This is where Neil Young came in, chancing on the band in a bar, OK, the bar, the infamous Whisky A Go Go. After jamming with them, suddenly the Rockets were no more, the core trio of the band absorbed immediately as Neil Youngs backing band for his 2nd solo record, 'Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.' And what has become his instantly recognisable signature style of melodic chunky scuzz was born. As well as backing Young both in the studio and live, by now christened Crazy Horse, they took off alone, absorbing piano player Jack Nietsche, another Young acolyte, along the way. Boy wonder Nils Lofgren, fresh from his appearance on 'After the Goldrush', also became involved, if not then officially a member. They could have been bigger than they were, Whitten becoming swiftly more accomplished both as a guitarist and a writer. Indeed, the song below was his, and is still, I am sure, a source of royalties, given many successful cover versions. But unfortunately only to his estate, as Whitten was a hardcore junkie. Eventually kicked out both from the band and from Young's circle, he succumbed, living on only in the lyric of 'Needle and the Damage Done'..... (The "another man" was Crazy Horse roadie, Bill Berry.)

I Don't Want To Talk About It/Crazy Horse

So where now for the Horse? After Whitten's demise, and lacklustre responses anyway to their records, the residual duo let the name lie dormant, despite still playing frequently alongside Young, with different musicians and different names for the collective. It was with the recruitment of Frank "Poncho" Sampedro in 1974 that suddenly gave the band a rebirth, his arguably rudimentary rhythm guitar slotting perfectly alongside Neil Young's idiosyncratic lead like a dream, wedged into the loose cement of Molina and Talbot. 'Zuma' is the exemplar and apotheosis of the Crazy Horse sound, and, of course, the song below is that of that record. Equal billing, no less.

Cortez the Killer/Neil Young, Crazy Horse

The last couple of decades of the 20th century saw Young chaotically change style and direction. Sometimes the Horse fitted the requirements, often they didn't, but it always seemed better when they did. When off the pay-roll, they would play occasional shows, with buddies from earlier incarnations, but kept a generally low profile. One exception came in 1994, when arch Young-fan and ex-Icicle Works mainman Ian McNabb hired them for a tour and an album. 'Head Like a Rock' was my album of that year and, yes, I was in the audience for the clip below, with there being little doubt who McNabb was channeling.

Fire Inside My Soul/Ian McNabb, Crazy Horse

It wasn't until the early noughties that I actually caught them with Young, at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre (UK), usually a soulless arena, that night shaken to the pillars by a the intensity of the fragile yet triumphant  powerhouse of the collaboration.

Latterly the pairing has been increasingly intermittent, some fans despairing ever of that call ever coming round again, not least as Young was seemingly so entrenched with Promise of the New, the band of and with two of the sons of Willie Nelson. News had also come of Poncho retiring from performance. So it was with some glee that whispers came, late last year, of a 'Horse of a Different Colour', with a series of concerts following. And more this year. And you can stuff different colour, this was Crazy Horse, with the added attraction of the return of Nils Lofgren to replace Sampedro. OK, so the song comes from the wrong band, but, hell, Long May they Run. And for sure an album is coming.....

Milky Way/Neil Young, Crazy Horse

Here

Holiday Blues: Let Me Sleep

Pearl Jam, "Let Me Sleep"
Watch/Listen
Purchase sorry, you gotta join the 10 Club

Christmas is over--so are the 'holidays'--which is too bad. I dig this time of year, mostly because it gives me a no-questions-asked excuse to drink it up and eat like DeNiro getting ready for "Raging Bull". What I won't miss is the music...I swear, if I have to hear David Bowie and Bing Crosby doing the "rum-pump'a pum-pum" thing one more time, I'm gonna kick an innocent bystander right in his jingle bells...

I don't hate the season, really, I promise. I just get a little weary of they way we cart out the same albums year after year, and expect that somehow,  the one millionth playing of a Christmas tune is going to somehow sprinkle us all with magic happy dust and turn in holiday seasons into a perfect, Gap-commercial-style celebration.

Uggg...I take it back: I'm glad Christmas is over. I can once again eliminate the "Christmas Tunes" playlist from my iPod that my wife insists I revive every late November, and get around to a much better tradition: making my way through all those "Best Albums of the Year" lists and hear all the stuff I ignored during the year...

Without going too deeply into my personal history of obsession, I want to present an anti-Christmas song by the greatest band ever--Pearl Jam.

Why are they great? Well...

Wait, wait: I said I wouldn't go into it...New Year's Resolution number 46: "Stop Obsessing"...

But, out of the million or so reasons why Pearl Jam is my favorite band, one of the coolest things they do is their "Christmas Singles" tradition. Like the Beatles, who made an annual Christmas single available to their fan club members, Pearl Jam has been releasing their own fan-club-only 45s since 1991, exclusively for 10 Club members.

Strange sleeve art work accompanies an often eclectic selection of two songs, and though it's deemed a Christmas single, fan club members often have to wait until spring to hear the strange little treasure the band has offered up for the faithful.  Past highlights are many, but include 2005's "Little Sister", with Robert Plant, 2010's bluesd out "No Jeremy", and 1999's cult fave "Strangest Tribe", an apt descriptor of those of us who like to say we're part of the "Jam-ily" rather than just saying we're fans.

But, perhaps the best single they released was their first, "Let Me Sleep", from 1991. It was the height of the grunge era, when Vedder made a name for the band for amongst many other reasons, penning blistering screeds told from the point of view of the abused and the outcast (Why Go, Jeremy...etc) and probably explains why so many found his voice, along with another miserable flannel-clad Seattle boy name Kurt Cobain, as the one speaking for them. Tell a sad story with some angst and a take it no more attitude, and launch a revolution.

"Let Me Sleep" is in the same lyrical tradition of much of the album "Ten", featuring a speaker lamenting a miserable station in life. "Let Me Sleep" is told from the point of view of a tortured adult looking back to his childhood and begging just to be able to sleep, because it's Christmas time, and go back to what it was like " when I was a kid" and remember  "how magic it seemed".  It was a nice departure from the sonic boom of "Ten" and, if I recall, the first acoustic song the band released, showing a side they would expand on and ultimately make an even greater reputation for themselves on "MTV Unplugged" a year later.

What else to say about the song? It's spare and sad, darkly poetic and it ranks up there with The Pogues "Fairytale of New York" as not really a Christmas song, but somehow always manages to make it into the playlist every year, just to put a little damper on all that forced Christmas cheer...Which, for those of us who don't really hate Christmas but like to pretend we do, is just the right kind of song to put the spirit in perspective. Bah humbug! Can't wait for next Christmas!

Acoustic Versions: Post Grunge hits

Dishwalla: Angels or Devils (acoustic)

[purchase]

Live: Lightning Crashes (MTV unplugged)

[purchase]

Pearl Jam: Black (live, acoustic)

[purchase]

Good things come in threes, right? So with this terrific theme of the week, I thought I'd do a little post-grunge triplet featuring three of rock's most melodic male vocalists: J. R. Richards of Dishwalla, Ed Kowalczyk of Live, and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. I went through an intense year of oscillating between these three groups and hoovering up all of their music. There's something about all these guy's rich, powerful voices that sends chills up my spine, and I think that these acoustic versions of their 90's hits allows them to really belt 'em out of the park. My favorite, I think, is the Dishwalla number because I'm a real sap for piano.

Show Tunes: Millworker

Pearl Jam: Millworker

[live, 2004]

Emmylou Harris: Millworker

[purchase]

Lavinia Ross: Millworker

[purchase]

I posted the author's "original" of this song way back in 2008 for our Work theme; aptly enough, the song was written for the score of the James Taylor-penned musical "Working", based on the Studs Terkel novel of the same name. Though neither the musical nor the 1979 album this song ultimately appeared on were terribly well received, I've always liked this simple song, and ol' JT clearly does, too, or he wouldn't keep recording it, trying to find just the right balance between the resignation and the desperation of the narrator, a widowed blue-collar millworker and mother from my home state of Massachusetts.

But today is for coverage, and thankfully, a number of musicians have taken this one on, from Pearl Jam to Emmylou Harris. Here's both: the former live and ragged; the latter, recorded relatively early in Emmylou's career, a solid countrypop tune exactly as plaintive and haunting and dreamlike as you'd expect it to be - plus a warm, gentle cover I just received in the mail last week from organic farmer and occasional singer-songwriter Lavinia Ross.

One Word: The Pearl Jam Edition

Pearl Jam: Porch

[purchase]


Pearl Jam: Breath

[purchase]


Pearl Jam: Corduroy

[purchase]


Pearl Jam: Smile

[purchase]


Pearl Jam: Wishlist

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Pearl Jam: Sad

[purchase]


When I first started posting here (thanks, Ramone666!) I was adviced to keep the posts as short as possible. I always try to and I usually fail. I'm a born rambler.

But this time I will keep it short. I will only say that Pearl Jam is the greatest active American rock band, and any other band can only hope to achieve such an impressive body of work.

There's Something About Mary: Crazy Mary

Pearl Jam: Crazy Mary

[purchase]

I first became aware of this song on Sweet Relief: A Benefit for Victoria Williams, released in July 1993 - truthfully, I had never heard of Victoria... nor heard the original, but I was intrigued by the story of her illness, as well as impressed by the line-up of artists who donated their time and energy for this worthy cause...

I still haven't been privy to Victoria's version of Crazy Mary... but I actually don't think I want to... as Eddie Vedder's growling vocals provide just the right balance of haunted and tragic - "that what you fear the most could meet you halfway" (whew)...

I don't know how Victoria is faring health-wise these days... but I continue to think of her and wish for the best - benefits like this give one hope that we are never alone...

P.S. Tomorrow (January 18) is my little sister Mari's 42nd birthday - since our theme was John songs way back in mid-September 2008, I asked if we could have a week of Mary songs, in honor of my younger female sibling...

You can read the full account, written almost two years ago, on my own blog here - long story short: Mary Catherine (which she shortened and then changed the spelling) was born when I was 13 years old, and I thought she was mine... I have loved watching her grow up to the beautiful and wise young woman she is today... she turned me on to The B-52's more than a few decades ago... we like to give presents that make each other cry... :-)

Boo f*cking hoo, baby sis - I love you!

P.P.S. The above photo is of my daughter Sarah (bottom left), sister Mari (bottom right) and Mari's daughter Julia (on top), taken on a memorable (for so many reasons) family vacation in August 2008 - if you look closely, you'll notice that all the sand castle turrets are topped with Corona bottles (crazy, eh?... :-)