Hard: Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival

Photo by Katharine Swibold

Last week, I stretched our Hard theme as a way to discuss the founding of a new jazz club in my hometown. Today, I’m going to stretch it again to write about what I did last weekend—listening to great music outdoors at Clearwater’s Great Hudson Revival, or, as I think most people call it, the Clearwater Festival. Because not only is it hard to put on a two day, multi-stage outdoor music, environmental and progressive festival, it is actually pretty hard to attend—but well worth the effort.

I’ve written about Clearwater experiences before, but I’ve never really focused on the whole experience. The event started in the mid-sixties, as Pete Seeger held fundraising concerts to raise money to build a boat, to highlight the need to clean up the Hudson River. The sloop Clearwater was launched in 1969, and began its educational mission, as part of a larger charitable organization. In 1978, the first large-scale event was held at Croton Point Park, right on the river, and the “Great Hudson River Revival” name was coined.

Unfortunately, ten years later, pollution from the park’s landfill forced a move to a nearby, inland college campus. My wife and I went to the festival one year during this period, with our young children, and my two strongest memories are that the one musical act we wanted to see was Dar Williams, and that while we were at a playground with the kids, Pete Seeger appeared with his banjo and just started playing.

The festival returned to Croton Point in 1998, but soccer obligations and the fact that the festival is usually on Father’s Day, kept us from returning. In 2010 Steve Lurie began booking the festival, and started to bring in bigger names to perform. When the 2011 lineup was announced, including many favorites including the Drive-By Truckers, Martin Sexton, Indigo Girls, Josh Ritter, Suzanne Vega, Jorma Kaukonen, Billy Bragg, and Dar Williams, among many other great acts, we got the courage to tell my mother that we were not coming for the traditional Father’s Day family event, and instead went to the festival. We’ve gone every year since, except for last year, when they cancelled it to focus the organization's efforts on rebuilding the sloop.

I can only imagine how hard it is to get this event off the ground. Acts need to be booked to fill as many as eight stages, in genres ranging from the traditional folk that is at the root of the festival, to rock, dance and folk music from cultures around the world, story tellers, and other performers.  There are lots of jugglers. The site needs to be set up, vendors engaged, employees and volunteers trained, and the various activist booths and environmental education booths that are a hallmark of the festival have to be set up and staffed. The organizers need to make sure that the attendees can get to and from the site, there’s a campsite that has to be organized, the performers need to be taken care of, and the sound systems have to deal with the vagaries of outside shows, including heat, rain and dust. There’s a huge group of “access” volunteers to make sure that people with mobility issues are able to enjoy the weekend, and, I think, an even larger group of “Peacekeepers” to make sure that the thousands of people all get along. Then, there is breakdown and clean up.  And I’m sure I’m leaving something important out.

But, as I noted, it is also sort of hard to attend this, or I suspect, any outdoor festival (my experience in the torrential rain at the Newport Folk Festival is discussed here). First, you have to get there. Our first year, we drove the 10 miles from our house to the site, only to sit in horrible traffic. We started taking the train after that. You need to bring in chairs, a cooler with food and beer, blankets and other items. Then you have to load all of this onto a school bus not designed for large adults, unload it at the end, then schlep everything to the stages.

As I mentioned above, the festival now has eight stages, but we usually spend most of our time at two-the largest Rainbow Stage, and the second largest, Hudson Stage, which literally abuts the river. The Sloop Stage also often has good music. I’ve rarely, if ever, ventured to the Dance Stage, Story Grove or Family Stage, and skipped the new Workshop Stage this year (despite the fact that there was some good stuff there). Last year, I visited the Circle of Song to support my wife’s decision to join in the singing, but not this year. So, you are often forced to make hard choices as to which of the many simultaneously performing acts you will see. Sometimes we run between the stages catching partial sets.

Then, there is the weather. Usually, it is hot, and there isn’t much shade at the Rainbow Stage. That’s what we got on Sunday. Often it rains, sometimes torrentially, like two years ago, or steadily, like this year’s Saturday in the early afternoon. By Sunday evening, I’m usually beat, and my wife sometimes leaves earlier than me.

But it was well worth it. Here’s what I saw this year: On Saturday, we arrived early, got ourselves a nice spot at the Hudson Stage, then wandered around checking out the activist and vendor booths. At 11, we were back in our seats for a tribute to Pete and Toshi Seeger by mostly older folk and blues musicians, including David Amram, Tom Chapin, Guy Davis, Holly Near and Tom Paxton.

The great Nick Lowe was next, in the rain. (Note—all videos were taken from YouTube, and not by me)

Next up on the Hudson Stage was Joan Osborne, performing Bob Dylan songs, in advance of her soon to be released album of Dylan covers. During her version of “Tangled Up In Blue,” when she sang the line “Some are mathematician,” someone up the hill to my left, presumably a mathematician, gleefully cheered. No carpenter’s wives did the same. After Osborne was done, we walked over to the Sloop Stage to catch a little of Guy Davis’s excellent folk/blues set.

But then it was time to see Toshi Reagon and Big Lovely, one of the true highlights of the weekend. Reagon, who is Seeger’s goddaughter, and named after Toshi Seeger, has performed at most, maybe all, of the festivals. She is the daughter of civil rights activists and former Freedom Singers Bernice Johnson Reagon (also a founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock) and Cordell Hull Reagon, and comes by her musical chops and political activism naturally. I can’t find a video of her from this year, but here’s one from 2012, also on the Hudson Stage, that gives an idea of how powerful a performer she is.

I got a nice picture of Joan Osborne watching the performance from backstage

Then came Los Lobos, who I have seen great, and I have seen not so great, and when they took the stage without singer/guitarist Cesar Rosas, I was worried. But they did a fun, rocking set.

The cool night ended with the hot sounds of Lake Street Dive, who are just an incredibly talented band. Great songwriting, strong musicianship and powerful, charismatic singing. It was an exhilarating way to end the long, wet day.

Then, back on the school bus, to the train, to Tarrytown and a well-deserved hot shower.

We were up again early on Sunday, packed our cooler, and decided to drive up, hoping that we wouldn’t get caught in traffic on the way up. We didn’t, and again schlepped our stuff onto the school bus which took us to the site. It looked to be a nice, hot day, but the forecast was calling for a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. We set up at the Rainbow Stage, walked around some more, until the music started at 11. Although I enjoy going to Clearwater to see musicians that I am familiar with, some of the fun is discovering someone new. Sunday, we started at the Hudson Stage to hear Jerrod “Blind Boy” Paxton, who is part African American, part Native American, of Cajun descent, and who is a practicing Jew (he has one Jewish grandmother, who he discussed during his set). Performing on piano, fiddle, banjo, guitar and harmonica (and the spoons), Paxton focuses on blues and jazz from the 1920s and 30s. I don’t have a video from his set, but here’s a video of part of a Black Banjo Music workshop he gave later in the day.

I stuck around for a 50th Anniversary tribute performance of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by Brother Joscephus and The Love Revolution, a New Orleans style band. It was great fun, all the songs were well-played, but they didn’t try to sound like The Beatles. My wife ran over to the Circle of Song to sing a little, but came back to see most of the set.

By this time, it was very hot, and the occasional clouds only briefly gave some respite, so we killed time in the shade until it was time for Tommy Emmanuel, who I only knew was supposed to be a great guitarist. Wow! His fingerpicking was unbelievably fast and it often sounded like two or three guitarists were playing. Here he is doing “Classical Gas:”

Then it was back to the Hudson Stage for one of my favorites, Alejandro Escovedo, who started out rocking hard, before doing a bunch of acoustic numbers, including “Five Hearts Breaking,” his tribute to late Austin musician Billy Smith:

As he was trying to decide what to end with, someone in the audience yelled out “Castanets,” which he decided to play, and then joked that they were becoming a request band, “and you can catch us at the Holiday Inn.” During his set, the crew began to cover the speakers and other equipment, as the skies darkened. But, mercifully, it didn’t rain.

We moved back to the Rainbow Stage, for the end of Valerie June’s performance—she was wearing a skin-tight gold dress that must have been very uncomfortable. It was time to get out of the sun for a bit, so I got a banana-strawberry ice pop to cool down, and sat in the shade watching little kids play on the swings. But then it was time to go back and see another favorite, Richard Thompson, who, as always, was amazing:



We beat a retreat to the shade to listen to a few minutes of The Kennedys at the intimate Sloop Stage—They are so good, and I would have liked to see their set at the Hudson Stage on Saturday, but they were up against Los Lobos. Here’s something from that performance:

Finally, we returned to the Hudson Stage for the much-anticipated reunion of Cry, Cry, Cry, the trio of Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell, who had not performed together in 18 years. Which kind of blew me away—it didn’t seem like that long ago. They were clearly having fun on stage together, and while they definitely could have used a bit more rehearsal, and they weren’t in the best voice, it was special:

They’ve announced a mini-tour (and I have tickets for the Tarrytown Music Hall show in October!), and indicated that there might be a new album in the offing. During the show, the clouds rolled in and it looked like we were going to get, as Dar Williams noted, “the apocalypse.” But, again, we dodged the bullet.

After the long weekend, and knowing that Monday was a work day, we reluctantly skipped out on Arlo Guthrie’s closing set (as well as Brother Joscephus’ performance at the Dance Stage) to load back on the bus, to our car. About halfway home, we noticed that the road was soaking wet, so it looks like the apocalypse passed just south of Clearwater. So, was it hard? It was. Was it worth it? Undoubtedly. Do I expect to be there next year? Yup.

Hard: Hard to Handle

Otis Redding: Hard to Handle

[purchase]

Oh.

I remember that when I first heard the Blues Brothers do this song, I wondered why they were covering the Grateful Dead. Hard to Handle was a staple of their live shows in the early days of the Grateful Dead. Pigpen was the Dead’s designated blues singer in those days, and this song appeared to give him more trouble vocally than most. There are many concert versions that don’t say the best things about his voice if you listen too closely. Now at last I know why. Blues singing of the kind Pigpen did best is very different from soulful R&B shouting, as practiced by a master like Otis Redding. This is what Pigpen was trying for, and the Blues Brothers came closer. But there is simply no substitute for Otis Redding. In Redding’s hands, all of the power of this soulful boast is revealed, and you can hear why anybody would want to cover the song in the first place. But Redding delivers a performance that sounds so natural that the challenges of covering the song do not become apparent until you try it.

HARD: AS HARD AS IT GETS/ F.Y.C.

This took me back in an instant. Forget what David Hepworth says about 1971, for a brief window 1989 was the year and well nigh wonderful, cranked up by songs like this. So history says the 80s were naff, does it? Since when was history driving along a road on a summer day, windows open, cassette player blaring this out, for the good and the education of all in earshot? I bloody love(d) the Fine Young Cannibals, from their intricate minimalism to the legs everywhere dancing of the guitarists on Top of the Pops. Life affirming and some.

A candle that burnt only briefly, the Cannibals burst into my consciousness in about '84, with 'Johnny Come Home', instantly branding their template of rudimentary drums, spluttery guitar riffs, and whiffs of trumpet and keyboards, all topped by Roland Gift's, if you will, constipated style of vocals. The band had evolved from the break-up of the (English) Beat, with the guitar and bass players, Andy Cox and David Steele, eventually choosing Gift from a shortlist of 500. But no evidence of the ska so representative of that earlier band, pulling in influences from all over, as exemplified by the Elvis cover, Suspicious Minds, that gave their first international hit.

A successful first album was later eclipsed by their second, and last, the Raw and the Cooked, discounting a remixed version and more greatest hits albums than they had actual albums. This was simultaneously more stripped back and more adventurous. Huge worldwide success ensued, with 2 U.S. number one singles in She Drives Me Crazy and Good Thing. I remember being slightly shocked by it when it appeared, the shock of the primitive sophistication taking time to imprint. Then? Virtually nothing. The odd charity song, the  spin-off duo of Two Men, a Drum Machine and a Trumpet, featuring just Cox and Steele, whilst Gift set off to an expected glittering film career. That too faltered after a promising start. Since then occasional promises of a new start, never fully materialising. Gift has said he has merely been happy being a father to his children, possibly the truth. Two years ago he was recording new material. Did it ever appear? And of the other two, Cox seems to have more or less disappeared, Steele occasionally popping up as a producer or sidesman, notably on the debut of british R'n'B maverick, Gabrielle.

A brief word as to the origin of the band name, this being inspired, perhaps only by the title of 1960 movie All the Fine Young Cannibals, arguably a loose bio of jazz trumpet icon Chet Baker, starring Robert Wagner (as jazz trumpeter "Chad Bixby") and Natalie Wood. So maybe that explains all the trumpets!?

I miss this band and I miss that time, with a slew of UK bands pumping out original music that has, largely, stood the test of time.

Buy! (And yes, I had noticed that, whilst the song is called "gets', it sure as hell sound like "is" he is singing.)

Hard: The Who - It's Hard

purchase [It's Hard]

One of the first cassette tapes I ever bought for my brand-new SONY Walkman back in 1982 was the Who's <Face Dances>. And now that I think back on it - the first 33 1/3 album that came with my new SONY "stereo" in high school was <Who's Next>. Guess I've always been a Who affecionado. And yes, I certainly chuffed at the Who's Super Bowl performance - more pleased that they were still able to do their thing at that age (more or less) than at their current abilities- after all, it's the show that matters for that kind of thing.

As I previously noted, my departure from the US music scene at the end of the 70s probably played a role in why I missed the <It's Hard> album. Yes, I picked up on the songs Athena and Eminence Front, but I didn't buy the album in any form (vinyl or tape) - again, my bad.

The 1982 <It's Hard> album comes just before their <Who's Last>, intended to signal the end of the road for the group (more or less true). The muscial style showcases the transitional stage between the late 60s and 70s (My Generation >>>Who's Next >>> Face Dances) and sounds an awful like <Face Dances> in many places.

The "hit" Athena from <It's Hard>

The equally well-known Eminence Front from <It's Hard>

All said and done, I think my favorite Townshend is <Rough Mix>, with Ronnie Lane. Nothing I could find there about "Hard", How about "... easy .." @ 2:46?

Hard: Heroes Are Hard To Find

purchase [Heroes Are Hard to Find]

How our music tastes can change over time.

Fleetwood Mac's <Heroes Are Hard To Find> was one of my favorite albums way back then. (Yes, I bought it - see my previous!) The album came out at about the height of the band's fame: that would be just before the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks and just after the release of < Mystery To Me> , which - at the time - I couldn't get enough of. On cassette tape, of course.

Admittedly, (still after all these years), there are several great pieces on the <Heroes>  album - many of them better than my choice of "Heroes Are Hard to Find" , but they don't meet the current theme criteria.  There's the mesmerizing "Bermuda Triangle", the take on Elmore James' "Coming Home" .. lots of Bob Welch before he left the band ... and some other good music here. The fact is that Fleetwood Mac was pretty big stuff in the mid 70s. Mick Fleetwood had put together a  group that moved the Fleetwood name from a mildly successful 60s band to the top of the charts - repeatedly- throughout the 70s.

The funny thing to me is how - 40 years later -  the title track (Heroes) no longer does much for me. You know how they talk about songs that maintain their allure/stature over the years? My take is that this isn't one. Admittedly,  I made good use of it a few years back in one of the courses I taught. The unit's topic was heroes, and the song seemed to fit in alongside Tina's <We Don't Need Another ...) and Little Feat's <Time Loves A...> ... but now, it just comes up a little short.

That said, I wouldn't be  bringing up a song that didn't have some kind of value. The value for me is mostly in memories. The value for you ... ? Possibly a song you hadn't heard before? Possibly a new perspective on the song. Maybe just a reminder of a bygone era. Then again, as I cued the song for one more play before posting, I was struck by the similarity with my previous post (Little Feat's Don't Try So Hard) - as Fleetwood began to roll, I might have been listening to Feat - close to the same beat. Guess it says something about my musical taste.


Fortuitously, the clip above includes both Christine McVee and  Stevie Nicks.

Hard: Hard Times Come Again No More

Hard Times Come Again No More is a song that dates from well before the Great Depression, but it’s easy to see why you might not think so. The song is a secular hymn, a plea directed to the comfortable for compassion for those less fortunate. It speaks to times when those in power would have the poor and the middle class compete against each other, rather than risk us joining together to find common solutions to our problems. We are in such a time now, and the Great Depression was a period that brought about such a joining together for an all-too-short moment. The song, however, shows that the need for compassion is much older. Stephen Foster wrote Hard Times Come Again No More in 1854, and it became a favorite on both sides of the Civil War. In seeking out versions of the song for this post, I found that some of the best versions express the idea that none of us are alone in the way the song is arranged.

Jennifer Warnes: Hard Times Come Again No More

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Jennifer Warnes finds a stark beauty in the song with the sparest arrangement here. She gets a small group of friends together for an a capella version that expresses solidarity with the sounds of human voices alone.

Mavis Staples: Hard Times Come Again No More

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Mavis Staples is best known for her work with the Staples Singers, although her solo work has become better known lately. Either way, she is a gospel singer at heart. Even a secular song like this one becomes a prayer when she sings it. This jibes perfectly with Stephen Foster’s intent, and results in a powerful performance.

Nanci Griffith: Hard Times Come Again No More

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Nanci Griffith makes a specific connection to the hard times that have been experienced by the Irish people. Her version includes notable Irish musicians such as Dolores Keane and Sharon Shannon. Griffith starts with a small ensemble, and gradually builds to the full arrangement, which is a great musical device for expressing the theme of the lyric.

Paolo Nutini and the Chieftains: Hard Times Come Again No More

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Finally, I could not resist closing with the Chieftains’ version with Paolo Nutini. The universality of the theme of the song is still very much intact, but the Irish connection is now explicit. The Chieftains find a perfect fit for the song as an Irish ballad, and deliver a version that lingers after the last note. Stick around for the coda played on pipes and drums; it really takes this one home.

HARD: Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Nooooooooooo, not that one!

This is no syrupy Sedaka or claggy King, this is Studio One, Kingston, Jamaica, Hortense and Alton Ellis, a wonderful slab of early lover's rock from, um, much the same time. Probably. Don't get me wrong, the "other one" is a fine piece of music. For it's day. If not a little unbearably twee, not to say the image of  Neil Sedaka and Carole King in the clinch they once were seems a little not-in-front-of-the-children in it's euww-ness.

Brother and sister, Alton and Hortense were better known apart than together, with Alton, the 'Godfather of Rocksteady', being by far the better known of the two. Indeed, the duet in this song is probably not even that, with Hortense added as an overdub to an earlier hit for her elder sibling, and the LP in the frame for the clip being otherwise songs by one or the other, rather than both, even if Alton had originally produced some solo success with most of them. This is how show biz worked in 1960s Trenchtown. Or maybe even 70s, as the recordings didn't reach any much wider public until 1990. It is no less wonderful for that, and is a staple on many of the excellent retrospectives of the original era produced by Soul Jazz records amongst others.

Alton had a long and varied career ahead of dying from lymphoma in 2008, in a career stretching from the derivative jamaican ersatz american r&b of the 60s, in time for the birth of ska and, eventually, reggae. As these music forms blossomed, Ellis was often a lone voice in decrying the violent 'Rudeboy' culture that caused so much social chaos. After sojourns in Canada and the U.S. he eventually made his home in the U.K., arriving well in time to be greeted as an elder statesman for the emerging 2-Tone ska revival of the late 1970s, as the Specials and their kin made a stand for multiculturalism. His legacy includes many wonders including this version of this David Clayton/BS&T groaner, giving it a little less sweaty smell, and, less successfully, this curious version of 'Whiter Shade of Pale.' Fabulous bass, though.

Hortense, meanwhile, spent time both under and out the wing of her brother, recording constantly, alongside a couple of marriages and producing, at least, 8 children, before herself succumbing to throat cancer. Here is a staple from her live career in the States, a version of the Patti Labelle song, although her biggest hit was 'Unexpected Places.'

You can't have too much vintage reggae and I can't have too much love for it.

Buy!

Hard: Hardgroove

[purchase]

I’ve written many times about how lucky I am to live in Tarrytown, New York, in part because the Tarrytown Music Hall is within an easy walk from my house. I’ve seen so many incredible rock and folk music shows there, that I’ve lost count.

This week, the musical landscape of Tarrytown got even better, as a new jazz club, Jazz Forum, opened last weekend, also within walking distance. My wife and I attended the early show on Saturday, featuring the Roy Hargrove Quintet, and were completely blown away. The club itself is beautiful—a minimalist L shaped space with room for 85 patrons without crowding and the walls are covered with art from local artists that will rotate over time. There is a gorgeous, specially made bar and a back room with comfy chairs and a pool table. The current menu is limited to dips and tapenades, charcuterie and cheeses, all of which looked delicious (we didn’t eat on this visit). The service was professional, friendly and not obtrusive, which was remarkable considering that we were at only the third show after it opened.

So, how does this fit our theme? Simply because opening a new jazz club is hard. Opening any business is hard, opening a music club is harder, and I suspect that opening a jazz club is even harder still. Google the statistics for new business failures, and you can see that it ain’t easy. But I think that Jazz Forum has a good chance to succeed. The main reason is that its owners, Mark Morganelli and his wife Ellen Prior know what they are doing. Morganelli, an excellent trumpeter and flugelhorn player in his own right, has been promoting jazz shows for almost four decades. He has promoted jazz shows and festivals in Westchester County and other suburbs for years, including for many years at the Tarrytown Music Hall and his connections in the business are myriad. Not only do these connections and friendships give him a leg up in luring top talent to play a small suburban club, Tarrytown’s location, an easy drive or train ride from New York, make it an attractive place to play and for audience members to come and listen. Also, I heard at least one patron tell Prior how happy he was to be able to hear such great music without having to head into the city. So, while the endeavor itself is hard, and it may be hard to keep Jazz Forum alive, I think that it will beat the odds.

Jazz is also hard, but Roy Hargrove and his band made it look almost easy. Hargrove was a trumpet prodigy, discovered in high school by Wynton Marsalis (a future Jazz Forum headliner? Maybe….), who has created a Grammy Award winning career, and regularly is considered to be one of the top trumpeters of his era. His soloing was incredible, but he also was willing to cede the spotlight to his fine band, fiery alto sax player Justin Robinson, subtle pianist Tadataka Unno, the rock solid Danton Boller on bass and creative drummer Willie Jones, III. Here’s a brief snippet from the show we saw, stolen from Mark’s Facebook page. You can sort of see us in the video, at the end, looking blurry.

The featured song was chosen for its title (a pun on Hargrove’s name), and not because they played it last night. It is from a project called RH Factor, featuring Hargrove and other jazz musicians along with non-jazz musicians including Erykah Badu, Common, D'Angelo, Meshell Ndegeocello, Q-Tip and Karl Denson. Hargrove has long experimented with “crossing over” to popular music, which is either a way to broaden the audience for jazz, or selling out, depending on the critic. The track is more of a soul/funk groove than a traditional jazz piece, and it really is great.

I know that my wife and I are looking forward to future shows at Jazz Forum, and thank Mark and Ellen for doing something hard to make hearing great jazz easy for us.

Hard: Dont Try So Hard

[purchase Shake Me Up]

Little Feat was/is/has been one of my favorite sounds of all. From my reading, critics seem to fall into two categories: thems that think the band could never be the same after Lowell George's passing (and they are right ... but wait: "be the same" means just that) , and thems that give them a chance without their original (burned out) star.

Like many others, I kind of stopped tracking them about the time of the 1979 album Down on the Farm. Probably had something to do with the fact that that's when I left the US. But I cant offer any excuses for not continuing to follow them. Well, no ... I did follow. Over the years, I have returned again and again to the Internet Archive's incredible collection of free Little feat concert recordings, but almost all of it is from before '79.

I'm not really truly stuck in the pre-79 age, but in many ways I am. You hear folks say that the music that comes out these days just doesn't rate compared to the old days. But it's not so. It's more that a lot of music from the "old days" has become classic. As has Little Feat.

The Little Feat on the '91 Shake Me Up album is disparaged by some: it's Paul Barrere, Craig Fuller, Bill Payne, Richie Hayward ... - the same guys as the old days. There are some songs on the album that I agree are not so good, but then there's others like <Don't Try So Hard>, that IMHO match the quality of anything earlier: solid emotion, quality vocals and slide guitar that may not be Lowell George, but doesn't leave much to be desired.

Hard: Hard to Concentrate

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Hard to Concentrate

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There is the classic way to propose marriage. The man gets down on his knees in front of his love. He has already planned this moment, and he has the ring ready in his pocket. He gazes lovingly at the object of his adoration, and says the words, “will you marry me”. I suppose many couples did it that way, and I also suppose that many of those couples stayed together and are still very happy. But that was far from my experience. My wife and I had been dating for almost three years. We had been making baby steps toward the aisle, although I suppose we were somewhat in denial about our destination. We had long ago stopped splitting checks on our dates, and stopped worrying about whose turn it was to pay. We had each cleared the awkward hurdle of meeting each other’s parents. And then, one day, my wife to be got to feeling insecure about life to the point of tears, and I wound up proposing by way of comforting her. My words were something romantic like, “let’s make it official”. There followed a lengthy scene in which I had to convince her that I meant it. Hardly a textbook proposal, but we will be celebrating our 26th anniversary next month.

I mention all of this because Hard to Concentrate is a marriage proposal. It is not the classic scenario either, and the song also does not contain the words, “will you marry me”. But the lyric is classier than what I did, and there is no mistaking the singer’s intent. Like us, this couple may not have actually shopped for the ring until after the proposal was accepted. Nevertheless, this lyric makes me feel optimistic for the couple’s prospects. It invokes the realization that an I and a you have become a we. Going with the genders in the video, I hope she said yes, and I hope that they can look back fondly at this moment 26 years from now.

Musically, the song is very spare, in a good way. The drummer does little more than keep time, and the bass line is very simple and almost invisible. The rhythm guitar does most of the work here, with the lead guitar intensifying the feel of the song. It works beautifully, and nothing more is needed. The song has a quiet intensity that suits the lyric perfectly. A more recent example of this kind of song building is Ed Sheeran’s hit Shape of You. In both cases, the songwriter stopped when they had enough, with great results.

Large Numbers: Millions- Humor Edition

Tom Paxton: One Million Lawyers

[purchase]

Dire Straits: Millionaire Blues

[purchase]

Bare Naked Ladies: If I Had a Million Dollars

[purchase]

As our theme indicates, one million is a very large number. Thinking about it is enough to make your head hurt. There is simply no way for most people to imagine how much one million actually is. So we humans sometimes cope with the concept by resorting to humor. Here are three fine examples.

It may be tempting to think of folk music as serious business. There are all those murder ballads, for starters. And many protest songs are solemn affairs. But Tom Paxton has always made his points using humor. One Million Lawyers doesn’t protest anything. It simply a gentle poke at all of us. I offer it here, knowing that at least one of our writers at Star Maker is a lawyer himself. All in fun, I assure you.

Millionaire Blues is a slyer form of humor. Here, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits is poking fun at himself. Remember, this is the same man who wrote Money For Nothing, so he knows what it is like to have far less money. He reminds himself that, no matter how hard things may get for him, he has it better than many others. The blues is the perfect musical genre to make this point. “Low as the heals of my alligator shoes” indeed!

Finally, If I Had a Million Dollars is a song I was sure would have been posted by now. Barenaked Ladies make the point here that it most of us can not even imagine what we would spend it on if we did have a million dollars. In fact, buying all of the items listed probably would spend it down in record time, but that is not the point. This is a promise of love based on a fantasy of money the singer never really expects to have.

Large Numbers: Millions - Millionaire Waltz

purchase [A Day At The Races]

I don't recall every having bought a Queen album. I've made it this far with the basic awareness of the big hits: Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are the Champions, We Will Rock You,, Radio Gaga ... My loss. In consolation, as Confucius is said to have said: Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. (Hmmm... someone else comes to mind today.)

And so, as I dug for <songs about million>, I was pleasantly surprised to come across Queen's Millionaire Waltz. If I had bought <A Day At The Races> , I might have been wiser. Then again, the album didnt have any of the hits I would have been exposed to via MSM.

I was initially struck by the similarity of <Waltz> to other Queen I was familiar with. No big surprise - a band has its style and you can expect them to sound ... well ... the same from one song to another. There's the familiar piano and the well-known vocal lead. The progression (as in time line from start to finish) also comes across as ... expected. Expected but good enough.

In reminiscing, I thought I recalled Queen at Live Aid. In fact, because I lived in a part of the world mostly bereft of this kind of media/culture, I had back then a collection of VHS cassettes that I had recorded the summer of 85 when I happened to be in the US of A and caught Live Aid on TV. Sure enough, there's Freddy Mercury and band doin' it from the London Stage (there were stages in the UK and the US/cities for that Geldoff event, and Phil Collins performed on both, flying across the ocean on the Concorde).

A long time gone. Here it is:

Large Numbers: Million: Bill Million

The Feelies: Raised Eyebrows
[purchase]

I suggested this theme (or something like it), thinking that there were large numbers of songs that fit, but strangely the first thing that came to mind when I sat down to write was the name Bill Million, best known as a member of The Feelies (and, it turns out, it isn't even his real name). Coming out of Haledon, New Jersey, The Feelies formed in 1976 around guitarist/songwriters Million and Glenn Mercer, reportedly after Million, tripping on acid, passed Mercer’s house and heard his band playing the Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” They soon gained a reputation as a live band. Ultimately, the group also included Keith Clayton on bass and Anton Fier (that guy!) on drums.

The Feelies remarkable first album, Crazy Rhythms, came out in 1980, during my WPRB days, and I remember thinking that it was unlike anything I had ever heard before. If you took the early Talking Heads’ quirkiness and twitchiness, Television’s intertwined guitars with strumming that would be made more famous in a few years by R.E.M. (who were influenced by The Feelies), add a touch of Dick Dale surf guitar, a bit of Phillip Glass/Steve Reich minimalism, some Eno drones, a heaping spoonful of Velvet Underground and back it with what is almost always referred to as “nervous drumming,” you might come close to understanding what they sounded like. And yet, it was something totally original. The Village Voice ranked it as the 17th best album of 1980, just behind X’s Los Angeles and ahead of Bowie’s Scary Monsters, The Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue, Joy Division’s Closer, and Argybargy by Squeeze, to name a few. Rolling Stone has ranked it as the 49th best album of the Eighties.

The album is many tracks deep, and we played the crap out of it. That year, the band performed at a party in a campus gym, and while their energy was evident, the bad sound and acoustics made it frustrating, because it was impossible to really appreciate the precision with which they played. Those of us who were familiar with the album enjoyed it, if with some disappointment at the sound, but I suspect that the performance failed to make many converts.

For various reasons, The Feelies splintered after Crazy Rhythms, with members leaving and starting side projects.  They pretty much dropped out of sight until 1986, when Mercer and Million, with bass player Brenda Sauter, percussionist Dave Weckerman (who had returned to the band after leaving before Crazy Rhythms was recorded), and drummer Stanley Demeski released the folkier, less nervous, The Good Earth, produced by Peter Buck of R.E.M. They also appeared in Jonathan Demme’s movie, Something Wild. 1988’s Only Life was The Feelies' major label debut, and it was followed in 1991 by the somewhat harder rocking Time For A Witness. And that was it, it seemed, for The Feelies.

But Million’s Princeton student son had been jamming with Mercer, who lived nearby, and that led to a reunion and a new album in 2011, Here Before, which simply sounds like it hadn’t been a decade since they had been together. Early this year, they released another fine collection, In Between.

Most of the band’s lead vocals are handled by Mercer, but our featured song, “Raised Eyebrows,” from Crazy Rhythms, is essentially an instrumental that features Million injecting the phrase "You get old." It is much better than my description.

Large Numbers : Millions : One in a Million

Giles Giles and Fripp : One in a Million

[Purchase]

1968's The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp is one of the psychedelic eras's most eccentric little treasures, full of whimsical numbers that will make you smile. Among them, the bouncy single "One in a Million", written in 1965 by drummer Michael Giles with an apparent nod to Ray Davies. Like the album itself, "One in a Million" failed to sell any copies. 

The might have been the end of the story. But of course the Fripp in Giles, Giles and Fripp is Robert Fripp, one of prog rock's greatest guitarists. When the trio met multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, it was only a matter of time before they formed a new band. Out would go bassist Peter Giles for the stronger vocalist Greg Lake and McDonald's friend Peter Sinfield would also join to handle lyrics, lighting and PA. It was Sinfield who coined the name of the new band, King Crimson. 

From there things would get decidedly less... cheerful.

No hard feelings between the brothers. Peter Giles would join his brother and Ian McDonald in 1971 on the magnificent McDonald and Giles album.

Large Numbers: MIllions - Gold and Platinum

Rather than approaching this theme with the standard  "songs with million" in the lyrics/title, I decided to educate myself just a little.

Question 1: what is the certification level given to records that sell 1 million or more? The answer is a little more complicated than I was aware of. If you know the answer to this question, more power to you. Fact is, there are different requirements for singles and albums. As a music aficionado, you likely know that <Certified Gold> requires 500K in sales, and this is true for both singles and albums (but $1 million in sales at the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price). Howsomever, <Certified Platinum> places a 1 million threshold for singles and a 2 million bottom line for albums (again, with a minimum total income based on the MSRP).

Diamond  status takes the stakes up to 10 million, and then gets even more complicated when we get into Digital Downloads.

Question 2: the first <Gold> record? The first "gold" label was awarded to Glen Miller's <Chattanooga Choo Choo> back in 1942 (probably rightly so) - but it was an "in-house" award that was only later adopted across the board by other labels. My understanding is that the  RIAA only came into being after this point in time. You could check out the RIAA website, but I'm not so sure I would rely on their info based on their past public performance.

But - being the powerhouse that they are, we need to pay some attention to the  RIAA, and after they got on board, they awarded Perry Como and Elvis Presley some of their first "golds".

I'll go back on my word just a little by relying on the  RIAA website: they say that the very first Platinum record was Johnnie Taylor's <Disco Lady>. I confess the name meant nothing to me, but adding in my experience of where music was at at that time - highly plausibly "gold".

And from there ... the rest is probably what you are already aware of .. The Eagles, Michael Jackson, Pink Floyd .... [I couldn't possibly list them all]

LARGE NUMBERS: MILLION(S): A Million Tears/Kasey Chambers

Folk seem to be suggesting there aren't that many songs about millions, so it was with some relief I tapped into my i-pod search and and found, well, over a handful, mainly to do with miles, dollars or, as this one, tears. And delighted too I was to find this song, an artist I had somehow forgotten about of late, and, indeed, seems also to have been overlooked in the wider world of fame and fortune. Time to discover!

Kasey burst on to my consciousness back in the late 90's, in her 20's, her debut coming at me with a blast of raw, gutsy heartfelt C&W pathos. Country and western australia that is, as she hailed from,(actually south) australia, rather than the West Texas Lucinda tinted tones she reminded me of, albeit a younger and more innocent Lucinda. Her first album, 'The Captain',  was an absolute scorcher, if one discounts her years of active service in her 'family" band, honing her chops under the capable supervision of her father, himself a name in australiana. It probably did no harm that world famous in my world, hopefully yours,  husband and wife duo, Buddy and Julie Miller, were involved. Indeed, she soon eclipsed his custodianship, a run of records alerting her to international ears, with, notably, a duet with the aforesaid Lucinda appearing on her 2nd solo outing. Hell, her first 2 tours of the USA were supporting, first, Lucinda and, secondly, Emmylou Harris. The 2nd album, 'Barricades and Brickwalls', took her further, if not a better record, getting close to the sales of another australian, sales wise. The titular song from this piece comes from said album.

I was sort of surprised, whilst researching this piece, that she has a subsequent 9 releases, many performing just as well. Somehow these didn't seem to hit the radars I rely on back in the UK. I was aware she had married, and that she had become a duo with her husband, one Shane Nicholson, but none of their material had intrigued. They have since separated. The good news is that she has this year produced a new album, 'Dragonfly', which, on a first spotify, sounds and seems well much a return to form.

I feel bad suggesting there has been a fall away from grace, as, for all I know, maybe there hasn't been, but, irrespective, she's back on my register and I commend her to yours.

Buy

Large Numbers: Millions: A Million Miles Away

Jim Boyd: A Million Miles Away

[purchase]

[purchase Reservation Blues]

For our new theme, I went to YouTube and did searches for what seemed to be likely titles for songs. I am somewhat embarrassed that I had never heard of Jim Boyd until I did that. Boyd is identified in most references to him on line as a Native American singer-songwriter. He was certainly that. His roots were on the Colville Reservation in Washington state, where he was an important member of the tribal council. But, on the strength of this song, Boyd deserved to be more widely known. True, A Million Miles Away expresses the yearning many on the reservations feel for a better life somewhere else. But the theme of the song is more universal than that.

I am reminded of a book I would like to recommend, Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie. Alexie is a novelist. He has achieved a level of fame where he no longer has to be called a Native American novelist, although he gives voice to Native American concerns in the book. In fact, Alexie and Boyd became friends, and even wrote songs together. Reservation Blues is about a group of young Native Americans who form a band and try to use their music as a way off the reservation to a better life. In the end, they are unsuccessful, and they have to go back to the life they knew. There was eventually a movie version, and Jim Boyd was on the soundtrack. Boyd’s music was good enough to stand with anything ever posted here, but I’m guessing most of our readers didn’t know about him either.

Musically, someone could probably have a hit with A Million Miles Away by turning it into a power ballad. I can hear in my head just where the band would come in with drums, bass, and screaming electric guitars. Boyd doesn’t do that, and the song simmers intensely all the way through as an acoustic ballad. To me, the song is better for it, but subtlety is not how you get onto the charts.

Gold: The Golden Vanity

Rory Block: The Golden Vanity

[purchase]

Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir, Ed Trickett: The Golden Vanity

[purchase]

Sam Kelly: The Golden Vanity

[purchase]

Unlike in my last post, there is no need for make to make the case for The Golden Vanity as a folk song. Instead, the song and the versions offered here give a great example of the folk process. What are now traditional songs once served a role in society that is filled now with far less artistry by tabloid newspapers. In a culture that was mostly illiterate, songs like The golden Vanity were how the masses got their news. As stories like this got told and retold, different singers would add their own agendas to the lyrics. The Golden Vanity may have begun as a tale about a specific sea captain. The singer might have left him unnamed, secure in the knowledge that his audience would know who he was. But the song is also a tale of the unfairness of the class structure of British society. There are versions that present the tragic conclusion as inevitable, citing how impudent the cabin boy was to expect to be rewarded for his efforts. The universality of the main theme of the song assured it a long life that extended well beyond the life of the people it was written about. So the enemy is often a “Turkish Revelry”, but sometimes it is a Spanish ship. Likewise, it is important to some singers that the enemy deserves their fate, so there is a verse that describes them as sinners, playing cards and shooting dice as they sink into the sea. Rory Block gives us a lyric where the crew give the cabin boy an honorable death, as if the teller is a former shipmate struck by pangs of guilt. It is unlikely, in the actual event, that the captain would have allowed this, but it puts the blame on him alone for what happened. Gordon Bok and crew give us an exchange between the captain and the cabin boy that exposes the villainy of the captain for all to see; here, the reason the cabin boy does not take revenge is an act of class solidarity.

Another aspect of the folk process is on display here as well. All three versions here are recognizably the same song. But Rory Block and Bok, Muir and Trickett take very different approaches musically, although both are ballads. Sam Kelly turns the song into an uptempo burner, and it really cooks. As these songs pass from news items to parts of the traditional culture, each new artist uses their unique talents to put the song over the best way they can. There are times, like this one, where there never becomes an “official” way to do the song, so each artist must make it their own. I could have presented many more versions, including classic takes by Pete Seeger, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and Peter Paul and Mary, but the versions I have chosen suffice to illustrate the point.

Gold : Gold Town

Tommy Keene : Gold Town

[Purchase]

    In 1986, a year that jangly guitars were still all the rage on college radio stations like mine, Washington D.C.'s Tommy Keene released one of the year's finest power pop albums. Songs From the Film was Keene's major label debut. Produced by Beatles audio engineer Geoff Emerick, it's a collection of straight ahead tunes that grow on you ten, twenty, even thirty years later. 

   I caught Keene's act from the back of the 9:30 Club in his hometown a year or two earlier and I wasn't impressed. From the back of the room, he looked like Alan Thicke. In my hometown of New Orleans, the Jesuit owned TV station had replaced David Letterman with Thicke's show Thicke of the Night. We hated Alan Thicke. So that counted as strike one. Keene's reedy voice reminded me of Let's Active's Mitch Easter who seemed to be constantly replacing female bandmates taller than him. Strike two. And the songs may have sounded too straight forward to a guy like me, who considered himself a music snob. Strike three.

 Then, in 1984, Tommy Keene released a pair of EPs on the Dolphin label that sounded great with the kind of songs I liked to play on my college radio show ( Back in the USA MC5, Marshall Crenshaw, the dBs, R.E.M., The Byrds, The Beau Brummels,  the garage rock bands from the Nuggets Compilation, you get the idea). One of them, Run Now, produced by T Bone Burnett and Don Dixon, topped the Village Voice Pazz and Jop EP poll and is now included on the Songs From the Film CD.

  Keene never made it big. But take a listen to  "Gold Town" and you'll be left wondering why.

Gold: James Bond

purchase [Lulu]


[Un] fortuitously, this comes more or less upon Roger Moore's demise. I had already started in on this topic when I read the news this week about his passing.

More than once, the James Bond series has shown its affinity for gold: the word appears in more than one film title: Goldfinger, GoldenEye, The Man with a Golden Gun. And the metal itself appears even more often - you know, the root of all evil.  Ask yourself: Why does one rock dug out of the ground have such value? Go figure. Gold ... Silver...  Diamonds and more.

The James Bond film series is a serious production process - not least the selection of its music - both throughout each film, but more emphatically, in the film's  intro section. Over the years, the honor of singing the films' intro music has fallen to  the top of the pop: Paul McCartney, Louis Armstrong, Nancy Sinatra, Carly Simon, Rita Coolridge, Tina Turner  ... the list goes on and on. Kind of like  how the list of Bond films that include <gold> goes on and on.
 
The Bond <gold> selection I highlight  spans a number of musical genres, but there seems to be an over-arching theme to them all: lots of [studio] production. I don't mean to necessarily place this in a bad sense. In fact, the Bond music over-production is appropriate, but it's obvious. That's probably a given for anything Bond - the whole operation is tightly managed - and that's part of what makes the series classic.

Herewith, 3 golden Bond theme songs:

Tina:

 

Lulu:

 

Shirley Bassey: