The Number Nine/September: Big Star, September Gurls

Purchase:
Big Star, September Gurls

In terms of musical discovery, I find myself often turning to the influences of those who influence me. Reading about an artist’s musical education often effects my own explorations into past genres and movements. In a beautiful, somewhat karmic turn, the influences of my influences become my own influences.

I find musical biographies the most interesting way to discover new, or otherwise unheard, music.  Digging deep into the history of music is as interesting and digging into actual, archeological history: what you find from the past informs the future. That’s why Magic Sam is almost daily listening for me. That’s how I discovered the Red Dirt Music movement, Jimmy LaFave, Stoney LaRue, and Jason Boland. 

In the same vein, I love a good name drop in songs. A few songs come to mind: Adam Duritz lamented Richard Manuel’s  (The Band) suicide along side the metaphorical impermanence of his own life in If I Could Give All My Love. John Mellancamp is pretty big name dropper (R.O.C.K in the U.S.A). The Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon has made a brilliant career out of not only name-dropping, but wholesale lyrical montage, or is it collage, by taking lines from famous rock songs and seamlessly weaving the lyrics into his own. And, as we shall explore further later on, Paul Westerberg famously paid reverential homage to Alex Chilton and declared we could all use a ‘little Big Star” in the class ‘Mats track, Alex Chilton. 

I’m spanning across some divergent ideas here, but the point is: I feel listening to an artist who really moved you necessitates digging into their musical heritage. The same holds true for contemporary artists who run in the same packs. But, this is September, and history class is in session, so let’s dwell there, back there, not in the back of the classroom, but in the stacks. Dust off your vinyl, pull out your vintage t-shirts that you bought when brand new and let’s talk about a band I have always loved, to a degree, but have a complicated relationship with: I'm talking about the aforementioned Alex Chilton's Big Star.

I came to Big Star, and Alex Chilton, because of Paul Westerberg and The Replacements. Big Star, I know a little about; The 'Mats? I worship at their altar, so it was almost a necessity that I dig into someone they wrote a song about.

But, as often happens, one man's treasure doesn't always turn out to be the same or the next. The reason I say my affinity for Big Star is complicated is simple: like a lot of short lived bands, their catalog runs the entire spectrum of absolute greatness to songs that, while I might not call them bad, do probably speak to why they never hit it bigger than they did. They wrote great songs, and they put of some junkers. I feel a band like The Who exists on the same level: some of the greatest rock songs ever written and some of the worst. Literary minded folks could say the same for say, Charles Dickens. Big Star has that appeal and occupies that strange place between greatness and…mehhhh. The great stuff is just that; a lot of the rest of it is filler, at best.

I think that inconsistency has kept me from making a total embrace. But this is also me being utterly, assholishly subjective...I've had this discussion about the Grievous Angel, Gram Parsons. I think his short lived career was marked with nothing but brilliant, but I know a lot of folks thinks Return of the Grievous Angle is the starting and stopping point when it comes to evaluating his output. 

Add to the fact that the hipsters have gotten ahold of Big Star  (at least their t-shirt) which makes any relationship to a band, movie, book or whatever a heck of lot more complicated. 

Big Star's Alex Chilton is an eponymously blistering tribute to one of Westerberg’s heroes. The lead singer of Big Star, Chilton never hit it huge, or as huge as he probably should have, but he was a critics darling, and many a rocker’s legendary founding father of power pop. You’ve heard Big Star, for sure, but a lot of you (not you, SMM readers), might not know it. Their most well known track owes its celebrity to serving as the theme song to That 70’s Show. In the Street. Google “Big Star Hanging Out”—you’ll know exactly what I’m talking out.

While Big Star had many great songs, my favorite remains, and believe me, this doesn’t put me in unique company—a lot of people love this song—September Gurls. It’s a brilliant, chiming, churning pop gem, as great a radio song as I’ve ever heard. It makes its way onto almost all of the mixes I make, and I can't think of a song I more want to hear when I’m sipping drinks on a summer day.  Or that goes better with any beautiful girl you fall in love with, even if it's from across the room or jsut walking down the street.  September Gurls is two minutes and 56 seconds of a pop jewel in the crown of love songs. And will always be the soundtrack for a heart that breaks way too often at meeting, and losing, one of many girls from one of many dreams.

It was never a big hit, but September Gurls makes multiple lists of greatest pop songs ever. The Bangles covered it on their 1986 LP Different Light, and much in keeping with the theme of this post, it was their version that led me down a long path to Big Star (influences of influences, remember?). Though I should state that since I was listening to The Bangles, in 6th grade,my musical tastes hadn’t quite refined yet to the point where I would not listen to The Bangles. The Replacements followed within a few years, after I’d grown a little more discerning. Yet, now that I’m even older, I can kind of get down with The Bangles, and see they had some great songs—their cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s Hazy Shade of Winter has a fiery snarl that the original folk duo could never have achieved…not that they needed to, but again, I love seeing how the influence of a precedent setting artist informs the later one, and how different the sound becomes.

All that being said, influential or not, popular or not, Big Star deserved more. And not this enlightening bit of trivia from MTV.

Thanks, Katy Perry.

The Number 9/September: September Fifteenth

Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays: September Fifteenth
[purchase]

In 1981, after my junior year in college, I went to Europe with my two roommates, Jon, who was also a junior, and Neal, who had just graduated. We flew into Brussels and had open tickets home from London, and a Eurailpass. We had very little pre-planned, in the pre-Internet, pre-cell phone era, so every day was an adventure as we had to figure out what we were going to do, where we were going to stay, where we were going to eat and how and where we were going to travel. As best I can recall, our major information source was a book called “Let’s Go: Europe,” which was at the time, considered to be the best source for student (read: “cheap”) travel, and we used it, despite its Harvard roots. (In researching this article, I found out that the Let’s Go organization was founded by Oliver Koppell, who became a well-known New York politician and lawyer, and an early business manager was Andrew Tobias, who became a prominent writer.)

This lack of planning and lack of options like Google and Yelp resulted in lots of serendipity. We stumbled upon a rustic street fair in Lucerne, fireworks in Paris, a free Gil Evans Orchestra concert in, I believe, Florence, and had many other adventures. We mostly stayed in cheap hotels, filled with other students who wanted a bit more privacy and flexibility than youth hostels, although we did stay in one very nice hostel in Switzerland.

Another vestige of the era was that wherever we went, there were actual record stores, and I would occasionally break away from my friends, who were not nearly as obsessed with music as I was, to paw through their wares, looking for things I couldn’t find in the U.S. I did bring back one LP, Sky’s debut, which somehow survived the trip. But one thing that was somewhat strange to me was that many record stores allowed you to listen to new records to sample them before, the store presumably hoped, you would buy them. I remember walking into a store, I think in Switzerland, and seeing the new Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays album, with the unusual title, As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls. I had no idea what to expect—I was familiar with Metheny’s solo work, and his great albums with the Pat Metheny Group, which featured Mays on keyboards—but why was this album credited only to the two of them?

Luckily, I was able to ask to hear the album. The title track is a long, side-length piece that was at times atmospheric, and at others it was filled with driving percussion—sort of a mix between jazz, rock, Latin and ambient music. Of course, I didn’t get to hear the whole thing—they skipped ahead to move things along. I don’t specifically recall my reaction to our featured song, "September Fifteenth," but I know that I got the album after I returned home from our trip (which was shortened by the air traffic controller’s strike that led to President Reagan destroying the union, and which forced us to scramble to get ourselves home), and I listened to it often.  I got the chance to hear The Pat Metheny Group at Princeton later that year, and while I do not recall whether they played this song (they probably didn't, based on setlists from other shows from the same time), I do still remember being embarrassed by percussionist Nana Vasconcelos when I asked him a dumb question between sets.

"September Fifteenth" is, simply, a beautiful song. It is dedicated to Bill Evans, the great piano player, who died on that date while the album was being recorded.  Evans, who cut his teeth playing with Miles Davis before beginning a distinguished career as a leader of his own groups, was an influence on both Metheny and Mays. For the most part, the song is a guitar and piano duet, with some synthesizer, mostly at the beginning. You can hear how Metheny and Mays pay tribute to Evans, if you compare "September Fifteenth" to Evans’ own work with guitarist Jim Hall, who was also a huge influence on (and ultimately a collaborator with) Metheny:



Pat Metheny is one of the biggest stars in jazz—he tours and records often, with various groups, exploring different styles of music, both inside and outside the jazz world. As I was writing this piece, I started to wonder, where the hell was Lyle Mays? And to be honest, it isn’t easy to find out much about his recent life. His last album with Metheny was released back in 2005 and his last solo album was released five years before that. The most recent thing that I was able to locate from Mays is this video from 2011, recorded at the TEDxCaltech conference.



It appears to be an attempt to meld three of Mays’ loves—music, technology and math. As Mays says in this article:

What do you get when the IT Department is the band? Jimmy Branly (drums) is a recording engineer. Andrew Pask (woodwinds) is a programmer who works for Cycling 74 (the company which makes the brilliant MAX software), Bob Rice (guitar and sounds) is a sound designer/engineer/synth programmer, Tom Warrington (bass) is a math wiz, Jon 9 (visualizations) designs, builds, and provides content for video installations, and Rich Breen could build (and nearly has built) recording studios MacGyver style. And what kind of music should one make when Stephen Hawking is in the audience at CalTech? Jazz alone doesn’t cut it.

Read the article if you want to know more, because I cannot even attempt to summarize what is going on. But the music still sounds good, and it is therefore a bit sad that Mays isn’t out there more, playing and recording music.

The Number 9: Prince - 1999

 

purchase [1999]

I have little faith in numerology and the likes: numbers appear at random , and trying to assign meaning to them (or to dreams etc) seems like ... well ... pipe dreams.

Well, no, that said ... there might be a "plan" behind it all when it seems to be more than coincindence... you know ... when the phone rings and you were thinking about the caller just a minute ago.

I'm going with 1999 for several reasons. (1) Prince is gone, (2) 1999 is gone, but 9's are not. (3) 9 times out of ten your first choice is the right one, (4) September is month 9.

But 1999 is history. Back in 1999 I had a one-of-a-kind VCR and TV that could handle NTSC 3.54 - The pair cost me an arm and a leg. In the process I learned about NTSC, PAL, SECAM and more. You live overseas, you learn these things.

Back in the early 1990s, when the Internet was a text-based afterthought, I purchased an NTSC "portable" VCR from a friend visiting from the US. This meant tht I also had to purchase an NTSC compatible TV: US formatted media shows up as squiggles on the screen without it - about the same as regional DVDs. For a number of years, we would aquire US recorded media that couldnt be viewed otherwise. During that time, MTV came on line. We had hours -long recordings of US TV that included the "latest" MTV clips, all recorded at SLP mode (6 hours to a single tape) among which was Prince : 1999, and the entirety of Purple Rain.

　

music festivals: Isle of Wight 1970

 

The Doors

The Who

The Moody Blues

Jimi

In 69-70, I was still under a certain amount of somewhat liberal parental guidance: liberal, in that I was free to trek to a local Blind Faith concert, but not so  free that I could stake out an event like Woodstock or the Isle of Wight - that would take another 2 or 3 years, by which time I was freely hitchiking up and down the East Coast at risk of life (more than once)

In retrospect I do  wish I had been a year or two older - so that I mgiht have gone to Woodstock. Most of my stars were in line - except my age. Similarly, I think I have always had a back-of-the-mind hankering to "do" the Isle of Wight Festival/Concert. This need probably stems from the 1970 festival rather than the more recently revived but similarly ostentatious iteration.


For about 2 years, the Isle of Wight festival (back in 68 or so) was a work in progress. The Isle isnt highly conducive to the likes of "flea-haired" hippies : the indigenous are  mostly folks with yachts and large yards, rather sedate and preferential to their 5 o'clock tea types. So much so that they ended up putting a kibitz to the whole thing after the over-board '70 program.

But it's the 1970  program that earned its reputation., Granted, since the chow came back on line in the early 2000s, there have been many many bug time acts: the Stones etc, etc. But again, it was and is the 1970 program that remains the name of legends.

It is probably instructive to look at Jimi Hendrix's too short frestival sojourm: Monterey Pop, 69 Woodstock and then 70 Isle of Wight as indicagtive of the times and of his trajectory
Not the best of venues or circumstances (the operators lost big-time money/ the sound system and stage setup were apparently pathetic), I would have to assume that it was a combination of the alignemtn of the stars (hippie speak for just plain good karma) and a pretty damn good selection of artists.

Four days that included: (from Wiki): Cactus, Chicago, The Doors, Lighthouse, The Moody Blues, The Who, Miles Davis, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Jethro Tull, Sly and the Family Stone, Ten Years After, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Free

 

Music Festivals: Lollapalooza, 1991

My first great music festival was Lollapalooza, in 1991. I imagine most people my age would count one of the early iterations of Lollapalooza as their first real experience with the joyous carnival experience of multiple stages and a host of musical acts.  Lollapalooza wasn’t the first, but it was a pretty epic experience and helped touch off the alternative music revolution.

It was a pretty cool day, under the hot July sun in a giant empty field in Fairfax, Virginia. Jane’s Addiction, led by the festival’s founder Perry Farrel, caped the day with what remains one of the most epic sets I’ve ever seen, complete with semi-nude dancers in suspended cages. Coming Down the Mountain sounded a little like what I figured the Second Coming will: thunderous, earth-shattering and transformative.

The next summer’s festival and line up was even better—it was the first time I saw Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, sparking a life-long love affair with not only the Seattle Sound, but with Pearl Jam in particular. Eddie Vedder started off the set hidden in the crowd while the rest of the band got on the mic and play-acted at wondering where he was. “Hey, where’s Ed?” “Anybody our singer?” To which Vedder replied by sprinting through the crowd, leaping the barrier and vaulting onto stage. My sister was closer to the stage than I was and Eddie ran right by her, brushing her shoulder. I was jealous, so jealous. But, man, what a set.  They opened with Once, did Hunger Strike with Chris Cornell and added a tag of Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion to Alive.

Of course, like most of my festival experiences, I don’t recall all that much too clearly. All day in the sun, youthful exuberance and stupid bravery: who really does remember what happened at festivals? I went and looked their set list up and it was a nice walk back through not only that day, but al lot of my memories of the 90s and all the great festivals I got to see. Lollapalooza lots its edginess within a few years: its uber-commercialization is a well-known criticism of the gathering’s history.  But for the first few years, it was amazing: a truly diverse gathering of multiple genres and fans. Crossover defined, to be sure.

I haven’t been to Lollapalooza since 1995. I’m glad I got to see Sonic Youth. I regret seeing Courtney Love and Hole…It’s funny: in 1991, at 19 years old, I felt like I was in the only place I needed to be at a festival (I’ve written about the amazing experiences I had at the ‘HFS Festival—a uniquely DC rite of passage). Festivals were not just music, but a kind of tribal gathering, fueled by music and a million other beautiful distractions and vices. But, one of the saddest realizations I came to as I got older and left college was this: When I went to a festival, I started to feel old. I felt out of place and uncomfortable and I started skipping big shows that only a few years before I would have been totally at home. I think the last big festival I went to was the Tibetan Freedom Festival at RFK Stadium in 1998.

I suppose I belonged—the bands were still mine, so to speak. Beastie Boys, Tribe Called Quest, Pearl Jam—all the music I’d grown up to. But, I just didn’t belong. Not anymore. I wasn’t that young, I wasn’t in college, I didn’t have my gang of hoodlums I was used to making merry with for hours on end, desperately joyous with the flush and promise of youth, young blood flowing free like some kind of miracle wine, moved by music, solid and sure as a rock…No, sadly, I’d passed some unseen, unknowable, certainly unrecognizable line from youth into adulthood and rather than surrender to the kind of careless and wild abandon I’d known, I was busy thinking of the things that I felt adults had to think about: rent, or quitting smoking, or waking up with a hangover and going to work…cliché as it gets, and about as maudlin, but true nonetheless. Like I said, the Tibetan Freedom Festival was my last big show. But, I’d prefer not to look at it as an end to my youth but   a start to a more refined era. I still go see Pearl Jam, I still rock, I’d like to think. I just do it in better places, with a more select crowd…

So, no specific song to talk about here, so I will share this track, a live recording of Pearl Jam doing Even Flow at the Colorado stop on the Lolla tour, Summer 1992.

Rock on, be you young or old…

Music Festivals: Newport Folk Festival 2012-Dawes

Dawes: A Little Bit of Everything (Live from Newport 2012)
[purchase the album that this song is on]

I have written about the trip that my wife and I took to the Newport Folk Festival back in 2012 a few times. It was our first time there, and it was a great experience, despite the fact that we got rained on both days. At a festival often identified with Bob Dylan, it was fitting that a hard rain did fall, and we unsuccessfully sought shelter from the storm, as we waited for our ship to come in and take us back to our hotel.

But I haven’t written about the moment at the festival that I remember most strongly. It was not a pleasant moment, and I’m willing to bet that my wife will be surprised when she reads this.

I’ve been a lawyer for a long time, and for a while before our Newport trip, I had not been happy at my job. Despite that, I stuck through it, because the pay wasn’t bad, and I had settled into somewhat of a rut—sort of like the one that Nick Lowe wrote about in “Rocky Road” (“The rut I was in had once been a groove”). By the time we went to Newport, the end was in sight, and I was looking for a new gig. I actually spent a good portion of my post-festival Newport vacation reviewing deposition transcripts using the Panera Bread’s free wi-fi (which was better than the hotel’s) for a summary judgment motion to try to stay in the senior partner’s good graces, to keep the paychecks coming in. I did a good job, I think, and I ended up creating a 45 page statement of undisputed facts from my Newport work. We lost the motion, and the trial (which I helped prepare for, but which took place as I was basically out the door.) So, as we were enjoying our time in Newport, I was very uneasy, because I didn’t know how long I would be staying at the firm, and had no alternatives, other than the risk of starting my own law practice.

One of the bands that I was excited to see at the festival was Dawes, a band that seems to have recently evolved into essentially the Newport Festival house band—supporting other musicians who don’t always travel with backup musicians, and often having other performers sit in with them. In fact, that is one big way that Newport differs from the other festival that we have gone to (and which I have written about), the hopefully-returning-in-2017 Clearwater Great Hudson River Revival. Although it does happen at Clearwater (seeing Jason Isbell and Patterson Hood sit in during each other’s solo set was a highlight, and there are other examples), it seems like more of a regular thing at Newport for people to play with each other. This adds a feeling of camaraderie and friendship to the music, and you get to hear interesting, often unique, combinations (like this great version of The Band’s “It Makes No Difference” by My Morning Jacket, with Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, from the 2012 festival, that I missed waiting for a ferry to get us out of the rain).

Dawes’ sound is often compared to the Laurel Canyon sound of the 1970s—CSNY, Joni Mitchell, The Byrds, etc., with a bit of Band thrown it. And I also have to believe that they also were influenced by the Uncle Tupelo/Wilco/Son Volt/Jayhawks alt-country sound and artists like Ryan Adams. In keeping with their debt to the great confessional singer-songwriters, their lyrics often plumb emotional topics, which is certainly true about one of my favorite Dawes songs, “A Little Bit of Everything.” The song has three vignettes: the first, focusing on a man planning to jump from a bridge, not for any one reason, but for an accumulation of things, the second about an older man in a buffet line, musing over his life’s disappointments while deciding what to eat, and the third features a woman writing invitations to her wedding, and explaining to her fiancé why she was working so apparently humorlessly on the wedding planning. As the song’s writer, Taylor Goldsmith, explained in an interview, “each verse would provide the phrase with new meaning. In the first verse, it’s used to describe why life’s unlivable, in the second, what it takes to forget, and finally, what matters most about love.”

So, I’m sitting there, watching Dawes, getting toward the end of a great first Newport day, very much enjoying their set, when they launch into “A Little Bit of Everything,” in the version you can hear above. And the next thing I know, tears are streaming down my face. Was I identifying with the suicidal guy who was feeling overwhelmed? With the old guy at the buffet thinking about “when his bright future had left him”? Or the woman who reassured her fiancé about the power of finding the person you truly love? Clearly, it was a little bit of everything, but it affected me so profoundly.

I recovered, though, both at the festival, where we went on to see Amy Helm, Patty Griffin and the beginning of My Morning Jacket before we evacuated, but also professionally. I played out the string at my old job, and in March of 2013, I opened up my own practice. It hasn’t been easy, and there have been struggles, but I’ve learned an enormous amount and have never enjoyed being a lawyer as much.

That all being said, I still get emotional when I hear this song, which, I guess, shows that Mr. Goldsmith knows what he is doing.

MUSIC FESTIVALS: LISDOONVARNA/Christy Moore

Everybody needs a break,
Climb a mountain or jump in a lake.
Sean Doherty goes to the Rose of Tralee,
Oliver J. Flanagan goes swimming in the Holy Sea.
But I like the music and the open air,
So every Summer I go to Clare.
Coz Woodstock, Knock nor the Feast of Cana,
Can hold a match to Lisdoonvarna.

Well this couldn't be timed any the better, being that time of year when I bundle my kit into the car and head off into the sunshine, hopefully the sunshine, in search of the outdoor muse. I commented here, just a couple of years ago about my intent to revisit my youth and to start attending music festivals once more, after a decade or so of good behaviour. It was Cambridge Folk Festival that broke my fast, a venerable warhorse of such events, now in its 52nd  consecutive year. Folk is a multi-faceted definition these days: this year featured such finger in the ear trad. arr. stalwarts as Wilko Johnson and Charles Bradley! But amongst the Satchmo all-inclusiveness was the fellow I praise today, Mr Christy Moore. The featured song is one he wrote about an Irish festival, sadly no longer in existence, but, judging by the lyric, would have been right up my street.

Lisdoonvarna is a small town in the west of Ireland. The video above gives a good grasp of the place. Small as in very small, less than 1000 inhabitants. But between 1978 and 1983 it was home to the festival that bore its name, described here as:"Lisdoon, of course, was the Irish Woodstock. First held in 1978, it was conceptualised as the Irish equivalent of the Glastonbury Festival in England: part-scout jamboree, part-Bacchanal frenzy, part-hippy-dippy roots-embracing finger-in-the-ear jig-'n'-reel extravaganza...If all those who now claim to have been at Lisdoon 1978 were actually there, Co Clare would have tipped up and slipped off the Cliffs of Moher."--Irish Independent

 Does that not sound wonderful? Sadly the combination of several "revellers" drowning off the coast, and the unhelpful presence of the ubiquitous Hell's Angels finished it off, the local council vetoing any further such endeavour. (Why do the media always refer to festival attendees as revellers, a seemingly compulsory journalistic term I abhor, even writing to the august British Medical Journal in 1994 to lambast them for this lazy verbiage. Sorry, no link, they didn't publish!) However, should you need still to get to Lisdoonvarna and happen to be single, there is still this, the worlds largest dating festival.......

So what about Christy Moore? A bastion of probably more folk festivals than nearly anyone, he has been a fixture on the circuit for an astonishing 4 decades, retiring more than once. A founder member of both Planxty and Moving Hearts, each of whom propelled traditional irish music out of pub back rooms and  into global recognition, first of all acoustically and then with the full electric band dynamic. Each, in my humble, never bettered. Thereafter he retreated to his roots and his battered guitar, often alone, or with longterm trusty sidekick, Declan Sinnot, mesmerising audiences with his combination of political commentary, eirocentric whimsy and unexpected covers. His voice a gentle fire, with an unusual power and a soft beauty, often as much a sound as a medium for the lyrical content, though you would be foolish to miss that aspect. And, having been forced off the road in the 80s through alcoholism and heart disease, both now seemingly in abeyance, his schedule as busy as ever. Here he is, playing at Cambridge barely a month ago. And here is an example of his latest and recommended release:

I must rush; next weekend sees me in Shrewsbury for another 4 days of, um, revelling....... (Indeed, the curious interested in seeing this scribe in action at last years event might stop the promo video at 1.13, catching the handsome fella with a goatee, enraptured by whomsoever was playing at that time. I appreciate it would be even more curious if you did.)

Buy the song, but do yourself a favour, check out the back catalogue, including his Planxty and Moving Hearts releases.