A few years ago the dearly missed Happiness Stan wrote up a piece on an English cult artist I’d never heard about before, Frank Sidebottom. Despite Stan’s typically charming and personal presentation, this artist was hard to swallow. However, I had to give Sidebottom props, at first site, for being annoyingly funny. After that post faded from The Main Stage and after Happiness Stan faded from these Hallowed Halls I never gave Frank Sidebottom another thought…until this past summer, when my wife and I were desperate to see a new movie and came across the description of something called Frank.
I know that this site has raised the ire of Andy Partridge, which is unfortunate since he is somebody whose music has been absolutely integral in my life. [“Mine too,” says the authors of the old piece that got his goat.- Mr Mod] I’m not trying to piss him off. And I know the Nonsuch album is not so widely loved in these halls, but it does have some tunes I love – yes, I *like* “That Wave.” I’ve played that album many, many times, I know where the little squeaks and clicks are, I know the timing between the songs. I was psyched to hear it in surround, I thought it would be cool.
Feeding this also is that I joined the FB XTC group, mostly to hear news, but honestly I’m a bit turned off by the rampant fandom there, where the praise is generous and lavish and criticism is not especially welcome or considered. Those fan groups can have a weird dynamic and maybe I’m reacting against that. But I’m not trying to piss off those fans either, just to state my opinion.
Don’t give up on us, baby. The All-Star Jam is the place to do your thing. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got much to report, once I get the time. Meanwhile, I may post some random thoughts here. Feel free to do likewise.
I love how Steve Cropper’s paid no attention to his hair, probably not even washing it for 3 days, but his beard is magnificent! Then there’s the delicious matter of that Tam O’Shanter, or whatever that hat is called!
While flipping the radio dial between sport-talk radio ads on my ride home from work last week I landed on the opening measures of one of the most perfect (and perfect-sounding) songs in my world: “Beast of Burden,” by The Rolling Stones. The coming updates on the Eagles’ (my hometown football team, not the band) bye week, following the commercial break, could wait. I had to listen to this soulful gem all the way through!
At the song’s conclusion, the DJ came on and said, “That was some early Stones: ‘Beast of Burden,’ off 1978’s Some Girls album!”
First, I felt like the DJ was an idiot. Then, I felt like I was 100 years old. Finally, considering the Stones have survived 36 years since that album, it could technically be considered a song from their “early” period.
Following my initial Facebook posting of my thoughts on Neil Young last night, which became the basis of today’s brief concert review, cdm picked up on my reference to Neil’s cover of the excellent Gordon Lightfoot song “If You Can Read My Mind” and said (offlist) something to the effect of,
I’m particularly glad to hear that Neil is a fan of the ‘foot.
If I were a normal person, I would have let that comment stay on the record without comment. That’s what nice, normal people do. I’m not at least one of those two things. Instead, I said something to the effect of,
It was helpful for me to be reminded that Gordon Lightfoot actually wrote a great song. I have not understood the Genius of Lightfoot cult that’s developed over the last 15 years. “Sundown” is kind of cool, but I also grew up chuckling at it and still do. That other hit of his, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” is Blood, Sweat & Tears/Billy Joel’s sea shanty bad. What am I missing?
This led to the type of back and forth we used to come to expect in the Halls of Rock, with cdm and other FB friends posting examples of other “great” Lightfoot songs and me shooting them down with statements like,
I don’t know, that Hokey Macho way he sings does nothing for me. It’s like the Brawny paper towels guy came to life as a singer-songwriter.
Our old friend saturnismine backed me up with a one-liner that topped anything I’d been able to articulate:
Last night my wife and I went to see Neil Young at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music. We got an invitation earlier this week from old friends. It was a great show: all acoustic, great sampling of all that’s great and even occasionally larger-than-life lousy about Neil (eg, a didactic, 2-song “Environmental Hymns” set that Neil of October 2014 clearly felt compelled to perform). His between-song banter was really funny. He played one of my favorite Buffalo Springfield songs (“On the Way Home”), surprisingly made a cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind” (see clip, above, from his Boston show a few nights earlier) his own, and then some. The guy was all THERE: his songs, his performance of them, etc. We had some great laughs and bad pizza with our friends after the show. I went home feeling really good about the world.
