In a comment on another thread this week, Townsman al said he had some shots he took from an AC/DC Lane in Melbourne, Australia. These are too good to embed in the comments from a post that hasn’t caught fire. I’m posting them on the Main Stage, instead, and asking you to share your experiences walking any of the Streets of Rock ‘n Roll (or related 20th century and beyond music genres).
Remember Cabbage Patch Kids, those creepy (or so I thought, in my early 30s, or whenever those things were popular) stuffed dolls that were all the rage for a couple of years? I thought about them this weekend, while listening to The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn, a favorite syndicated radio show hosted by the longtime music-scene friend and all-around great guy whose moods make up the flow of each episode.
This week, Ben did a second edition of his highly appreciated “Comfort Zone” theme from a few weeks back. It was as enjoyable and comfortable an episode as Ben is known to deliver regularly, pushed along gently by his dry wit. The appearance of the Beach Boys‘ “Sail on Sailor” was no surprise. His love for later period Beach Boys far exceeds my own. I won’t get into a whole Please Explain discuss on that song right now, but feel free to explain, as a side topic, why that song is any more loved by hipsters than Pablo Cruise‘s “Love Will Find a Way.”
Ever have one of those moments when you reflect and say to yourself, “It’s time I try being a better person; it’s time I give [insert thing you’ve never liked] a chance”? I had one of those moment last week, when I decided to give ZZ Top a chance.
Social distancing has opened my mind and heart to all sorts of things I’d normally not watch on Netflix, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Lab series. How much more annoying could a ZZ Top documentary, That Little Ol’ Band From Texas, be than a 6-part series featuring Paltrow and her fellow vocal fry lackeys self-obsessing over touchy-feely subjects that first came into being to make us better people spiritually, not worse?
To my surprise and delight, to my edification as an evolved, better person, the ZZ Top documentary was not bad at all. I realized at least 5 things from watching this program:
Townspeople,
We hope you are healthy and abiding by your community’s social distancing practices. I’m keeping my hands as clean as Chris Martin’s.
COVID-19 has thrown us for a loop. I don’t know about you, but all this time shut in the house has made me long for an outlet that not even social media can satisfy. I need to mix it up with my most-intimate music-loving friends. I need to call bullshit with you on some things and, more importantly, have bullshit called on myself.
I’m not alone. A few of you have reached out to me and my close, personal friend sammymaudlin to ask if we could re-open the Halls of Rock, at least until we make it through this global pandemic. We’re brushing up things just enough to give us the rock-nerd shelter we may need to have the intimacy to kindly attack sacred cows, analyze the influence of facial hair on an artist’s musical development, and get a report on the Bill Wyman documentary on Netflix. This emergency trial re-opening of Rock Town Hall can even provide a safe haven for a discussion of Bob Dylan‘s new 17-minute song about the assassination of JFK, which I’ve been afraid to listen to without you.
Who knows where this goes? I hope it helps us through the coming months, if that’s what it’s going to take to get back out to clubs and backslap with friends.
Don’t hesitate to ask if you need a refresher on how to navigate things, how to post new content, simply how to log in. Of course, there is an auto-reset, if you’ve forgotten your password. Who could blame you?
Townspeople,
Can it be? Will our time spent in relative isolation give us the opportunity to get back to the Halls of Rock?
Stay tuned.
An honest-to-goodness All-Star Jam! See, we’re not dead yet; we were only sleeping.
Few personalities — particularly as one as protean and occasionally as brilliant as Reed’s — can be summed up in two syllables. But if you were to do a word cloud of memories of Reed in the various volumes that have been published on his life, the word asshole would turn up in surprisingly large type.
Maybe you’ve heard of this Lou Reed character? This article is worth a read, even if you think you’ve heard it all before. (And you probably have.)
One aspect of many of even Reed’s classic-era albums that doesn’t get talked about enough is the sonic inconsistency. It’s a subtle thing, but most decent rock albums have a sonic palette that forms the core of the work. It’s not that every song must be orchestrated identically, but a good album will generally sound like it was recorded a certain way in a certain universe. Reed’s own lack of sophistication and the B-level producers he used over most of his career combined to make many of his records sound internally random, and jarring. And even fans can point to few nuanced compositions to make the search worthwhile. Along the way he sold “Walk on the Wild Side” for a TV commercial for the Honda’s short-lived line of scooters; Reed appeared at the end of it, to say, “Hey — don’t settle for walkin’!”
