There is a
Turkish saying about the month of March that goes like this: it'll make you
look (longingly) out the door and cause you to burn your (wooden) shovel and
pick handles.
March 1st
here was a balmy 50 degrees F; March 3rd it snowed.
Myself, I feel the weather
all day long since my workplace is required to leave all the doors and windows
open to mitigate the virus. But it will soon pass. The cold weather, that is.
The weather?
... we have no control over it. Or do we? You want to get into climate change,
do you? After COVID mitigation, you say you want to take on weather patterns?
Well,OK ...
I'm not a
climate data scientist but I do believe that we don't have (and likely never
will have) the long-term data to prove human-caused climate change - there are
just too many factors). But I still believe I carry some responsibility for my use of the resources I consume. Guilty until proven innocent.
But
without fruitless worrying, we *can* start by making a (limited) list of
weather issues:
too much
rain
too cold
too hot (kind of off the mark - except that it is Hot Tuna and Jorma is hot)
Do note that the Weather report intro solo at the top is played on a bass guitar
For those who remember 2012, I mentioned in a post that one of the first dates I went on with my now wife was to see the movie Bring On The Night, which was the Michael Apted-directed documentary about the creation of Sting’s first solo album The Dream of the Blue Turtles and the subsequent tour. We loved the movie, and I still have fond memories of seeing it, both because of the film and my date.
I enjoy learning about how music is created, probably because my love of music is not coupled with any real ability to make it. I’m jealous of those who can, so this movie was right up my alley. I was also a big Police fan and had heard, and liked, The Dream of the Blue Turtles. I know that Sting has gotten a reputation for arrogance and pretension over the years, but as someone who likes the often pretentious prog rock, it didn’t bother me that for his first solo album, Sting tried to move beyond the reggae flavors of the Police and try to push the boundaries a bit. As a brief aside, I had the chance to briefly interview Sting the summer before my senior year in college, backstage at an outdoor concert at Liberty Bell Race Track in Philadelphia. He was extremely genial and answered all my probably dumb questions, and readily recorded a station ID that we ran regularly — Stewart Copeland, on the other hand, had to be shamed into even doing a station ID for us. But he did two. You can hear them here.
In addition to wanting to expand his musical palette (which the Police had begun to do as time went on), Sting decided that his band wouldn’t be The Police Mark II (or III, for those few Henry Padovanifans out there), and instead chose young, hotshot jazz musicians. This isn’t as strange as it sounds — Sting’s earliest gigs were playing jazz and fusion music in Newcastle during his free time during college and while working as a teacher. Here's a jazzy tune from Sting's last pre-Police band, Last Exit—the melody of which was used in Blue Turtles' "We Work the Black Seam."
The people that he chose were all extraordinary musicians. Keyboard master Kenny Kirkland had played with Wynton Marsalis, bass player Daryl Jones had been in Miles Davis’ band, and Branford Marsalis, on sax, had been in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and played with his brother Wynton, Herbie Hancock and Dizzy Gillespie. Drummer Omar Hakim, who was in Weather Report (with Mino Cinélu), was the only member with significant rock credits, having backed Carly Simon, David Bowie and Dire Straits. In addition, Sting brought on veteran backup singers Janice Pendarvis (who was in another of my favoritedocumentaries, 20 Feet From Stardom) and Dolette McDonald (who worked with the Talking Heads, but was not in another of my favorite music films, Stop Making Sense, or on my favorite Talking Heads album).
The film shows how this mostly non-rock band fused with Sting to create a sound that was still identifiably rock, but had some elements of jazz. Maybe the easiest way to see what Sting was after is to compare the original Police version of “Shadows In The Rain,” a somewhat meandering, spooky dub track, with the studio version from Blue Turtles, which was reportedly based on the original demo that Sting wrote. Amusingly beginning with Marsalis asking frantically what key the song is in over a funky Hakim groove, a harsh voiced Sting enters, and the song turns into an exuberant, upbeat soulful and jazzy tune with solos from Kirkland and Marsalis.
Part of the tension in Bring On The Night, beyond the question of whether the whole concept would work, is that the band was scheduled to play some live shows on little rehearsal. As you can see from the video above, they had no problem with the performance, and the exuberance of the album track is even more apparent.
Another part of the tension in the movie is that it shows, in pretty graphic detail, the birth of Sting and wife Trudy Styler’s son Jake, who is now this guy.
Listen to the words to Waters of March, and you may not hear why I am posting it for this week’s theme. There are a few mentions of rain, but it doesn’t appear to be the subject of the song. Actually, there doesn’t appear to be a subject, just a list of things and impressions. The music offers no particular assistance, offering the cascading gentleness that is a hallmark of Brazilian music. The key is that many of the objects named in the song are things that might be carried away in a sudden flood. Waters of March is by Antonio Carlos Jobim, and he hails from Rio de Janero. In Rio, the month of March marks the end of summer, and the month is known for sudden heavy rains. So Jobim sees this as a cleansing process which inspires a hope for spring. Jobim wrote versions of the lyrics for the song in both Portugese and English. The English version reaches for universal appeal, so it removes cultural references from the Portugese version that are specific to Brazil. Cassandra Wilson’s interpretation of the song is up to her usual high standards.
Being from South Florida, singer-songwriter Alex Bach probably knows a thing or two about hurricanes. So when she writes a song likening a man in her life to a hurricane we know she is talking about the destructive path he is laying.
Her song "Hurricane" appears on her 2002 album "Miles to Go" . The whole album is lovely, but my favorite thing about Alex as a songwriter is that she can put her lovely lyrics with the acoustic ballads such as this song, but can also just as easily rock your face off in the next song. I think it's quite a talent to be that versatile.
So where do I sail?
A ship losing control,
My cries swallowed up, lost in the raging sea.
So where has love gone?
Will I ever reach it?
The Cape of Storms echoes the pain I feel inside.
You can't really call this J-rock; it's really a power ballad (and quite angsty, to boot) and it's sung in English. Still, it's a solo effort by Hyde, the vocalist of L'Arc~en~ciel, definitely a J-rock band. It's from his 2002 album Roentgen, released in both Japanese and English. Both versions, however, have this song available only in its original English.
To me, what really makes this song is its arrangement: Sometimes, nothing beats a full chorus of strings swelling under a heartfelt lyric to get across strong emotion. And whoever arranged this tune had a real knack for cutting back and then rebuilding the tension. For contrast, I've tucked in the piano-backed remix. It's nice, showcasing the raw vocals the way it does, but it's not nearly as powerful as the full arrangement. Hey, I guess that's why it's called a power ballad.
Weather in songs is often a metaphor for emotional turbulence. Stormy Weather is the classic example of that. Comparing raindrops to tears may be a cliché now, but it wasn’t so much when this was first written. Doc and Merle Watson do a great job here of finding the emotional truth of the song with their performance. Merle Watson takes a solo on slide guitar, Doc on regular guitar, and Sam Bush on fiddle. These solos are all brief but sweet. This Stormy Weather is fine example of artist taking an old familiar song and making it their own.
Not everything Paul Revere and the Raiders recorded turned to gold. Their 1967 holiday album, A Christmas Present...And Past, never broke the Billboard Top 100 album chart or even launched a single. In fact one Columbia exec hated the album so much he frisbee'd his preview copy across the room.
Rain, Sleet or Snow" would have been the single. A heavily distorted tongue-in-cheek rant from the point of view of an overworked holiday mailman, it sounds kind of like Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" at half speed.
On his website, singer Mark Lindsay admits the Christmas album is a mess but it reflected the counterculture attitudes of those times:
"Most of our singles weren’t political, but the Christmas album totally was. It was a disaster, but it reflected what we were feeling at the time. It was a good time for flower power and protest.”
I didn’t expect to be posting a transition song this week for two reasons. First, I didn’t realize that I had a weather song by a band that had never been on Star Maker Machine before. And second, sitting here in the path of Hurricane Irene, I wasn’t sure I would have electricity. At the moment, it is strangely quiet outside, which may mean that the storm will wallop us again soon. But hopefully, I can get this done and posted before then.
Scott Kannberg records these days under the name Spiral Stairs, but when he first left the band Pavement, he formed the group Preston School of Industry. The band lasted long enough to record one EP and two full length albums, and then went on hiatus in 2004. The album Monsoon included guest musicians from Wilco and The Minus Five. All of this added up to songs like Caught in the Rain. There is nothing very profound about the song. But breezy pop songs like this are harder to get right than most people realize. The first verse reminds me of the mud I experienced at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival last year. That is about the happiest memory of mud I am ever likely to have.
Usually, a bass line is part of the rhythm of a song. This is normally true in jazz, rock, bluegrass, you name it. And I will have some examples of that later this week. But here, the bass plays a melodic line. One could even argue that the bass has the main melody, with a counter melody in the saxophone. And I have always wished that someone would take the bass line here and write words for it. and record it. The first words would be, “A remark you made...”.
To make this work, Weather Report had to have Jaco Pastorius on bass. Pastorius, as you can hear, had an amazing tone; his bass sang. In addition to Weather Report, Pastorius leant his talents, in his too brief lifetime, to the Pat Metheny Group, and to Joni Mitchell during her jazz period. All these years later, he is still sorely missed.
Back in Cars week, in my Cadillac post, I mentioned that Joni Mitchell had taken a dive deep into the heart of jazz. Now, It's time to tell that story.
In the early part of her career, Joni Mitchell's music went from spare arrangements for voice and acoustic guitar or piano, to fuller arrangements. Throughout, she used harmonies that no one who liked folk music or pop had ever heard before. Many an amateur guitar player came close, when trying to play her songs, to giving up the instrument in despair, before they realized that Joni got those sounds by actually changing the tuning of her guitar. So it shouldn't have surprised anyone when David Crosby suggested that Joni try working with jazz musicians. After summing up the first part of her career with a live album, (Miles of Aisles), Joni gave it a shot.
Now I would guess that neither Crosby nor Mitchell knew any straight-ahead jazz players at that point, so her first experiments were done with Tom Scott and the LA Express. This was a group of LA studio musicians with jazz training who were paying the bills by playing on pop records; as a band, they were playing the kind of fusion jazz that I have described elsewhere as musical wallpaper. In combination with Joni Mitchell, however, the created two of her finest albums, Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns.
Joni Mitchell has always had a great musical curiosity, and as she continued her exploration of jazz, she began to meet more musicians who could help point the way. From the sound of the album, I imagine that during the recording of Hejira, someone said to her, "Joni, if you want the bass to sound like Jaco Pastorius, why not get Jaco Pastorius?" And she did. By all accounts, they became great friends, and Pastorius was still around for the recording of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter.
So that was where things stood when a phone call came from out of the blue. Jazz legend Charles Mingus was dying, and he wanted Joni Mitchell to help him record his last album. After picking herself up from the floor, she agreed, and the resulting album was Mingus. Mitchell and Mingus worked against the clock to finish the album, but Charles Mingus died before it could be released. He did, however, get to hear demos of all the songs. After that experience, Mitchell apparently felt that she had gone as far as she could go with jazz. She summed up that part of her career with a live album, (Shadows and Light), and moved on. Sadly Jaco Pastorius also died around that same time.
"The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines" begins with a blast from the horn section, who then disappear. But fear not, they do reappear later, and the song does not work without them. There is also a solo soprano sax part, played by Wayne Shorter. Wayne Shorter and Jaco Pastorius had worked together before, in a band you may have heard of called Weather Report. I have included their best known song here as a bonus track.
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