RTH, You Got a Lot of Splainin’ to Do

 Posted by
Apr 142021
 

In life, there are innumerable things we just know to be true: being loved is better than being lonely; cruelty is bad; freedom is better than slavery; racism is wrong, and so forth. There’s really no point to explaining exactly why we believe these things are true — they’re just not up for debate, and debating them essentially proves that you’re a fool, an asshole, or insane.

In the world of rock nerdery, there are similar articles of faith: Jimi Hendrix was a great guitar player; the 1960s was an unparalleled decade of growth and creativity in popular music; the Beatles were great.

Now, just because everybody agrees with something doesn’t make it easy to defend. But sometimes, like some of us did in debate club, we have to try, just to keep our wits sharp, and to make sure we don’t believe in important truths for false reasons.

It’s in that spirit that I hope we can come together to examine all the real, true reasons why “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard is glorious, while Pat Boone’s version is awful. Is it okay to say you like Little Richard’s version because it has more of what EPG calls “animality”? Is animality just a code word for “Black”? Do we cringe at Pat Boone’s version because it’s so “white”? Does Little Richard’s version have more “soul”? How does one measure such a thing? At the end of the day, are we really talking about race when we talk about the vast qualitative chasm that separates these two versions? Or is that just me?

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

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Bassmanship

 Posted by
Apr 012021
 

In preparation for a long-overdue post on the mystery that is Carlos Santana (coming soon to a Rock Town Hall near you), I was plowing through some vintage Santana performances, and came across the above, from 1977.  It’s not the greatest version of “Carnaval/Let the Children Play” I’ve ever seen or heard, but I was really taken by the performance of Pablo Tellez, the band’s bassist at the time.  As I watched him dig in to his instrument (watch in particular at 2:56, and again at 3:54), horsing every note out for maximum impact, I thought (paraphrasing one of my favorite scenes from “Master and Commander”):  that’s bassmanship, people; my God, that’s bassmanship.

Bassmanship, in my view, is the ability to stroke the thunderbroom in such a way that you bring extra life, extra swagger, extra joy, and extra extra to an entire band’s performance.  It doesn’t mean adding more bass-as-cock-extension hip thrusting, or more Lee Sklar tastiness, or more in-the-pocket/locking-with-the-drummer-whatever-that-actually-means-ness.  It means doing what Tellez is doing:  making you enjoy the music more by watching the bass player love what he or she is doing.

Who’s got bassmanship?  Well, this guy is the all-time heavyweight champion, in my view.  Just watch.  Don’t tell me he doesn’t know full well just how much he lifts the entire band with his subtle in-place sashay.

Or Dan Hartman, leading Edgar Winter’s White Trash into a whole ‘nuther groovy dimension in this live rendition of “Frankenstein”:

Bruce Foxton?  Oh, yeah; bassmanship.

You know who doesn’t have any bassmanship?  Bill Fucking Wyman.  I actually really dig his playing, but on stage?  Give me a break.  It’s like watching mold grow.

Just thought I’d share.  

HVB

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Mod, Please Explain Your Hatred/Disdain/Fear of These Country Music Trackssss

 Posted by
Mar 262021
 

I’m going to keep this simple. Below, you’ll find a brief selection from the couple-hundred country music 45s I chose to rip after my west Texas storage shed discovery a few years ago. In order to foster healing, understanding, and general RTH good vibes, I’m asking Mod to listen to each of these trackssss, and explain to all of us why he thinks they suck. Here we go:

Sure, a lot of classic country music is pretty sad stuff. But when you can put over a lyric like this one without a whiff of pretense… man, I dunno. Freakin’ George Jones can make me goddamn cry.

I used to have a problem with the “same-ness” of much classic country. Over time, I grew to appreciate the genius of the songwriters who were able to work within that same-ness to produce music that still moved me. BUT: here’s a track produced and co-written by the great Billy Sherrill that expands the traditional country music form to include pop-ish elements like bridges, turnarounds, and so forth. If nothing else, you should appreciate the fact that your precious Elvis Costello is a huge Billy Sherrill fan.

Okay, so country music doesn’t feature too many sick bass and drum breaks. But holy shit, the stuff they give the guitar player! And the pedal steel guy, and the piano man. Anyhow, this Bob Wills track pretty much blew my guitar-pickin’ mind.

… and of course, the fact that our precious rock and roll descended so directly from country music’s demon seed ought to count for something — right?

Anyhow, those are four tracks pulled out of my west Texas haul that — just maybe — might convince you that country music is worth listening to. But if you’re still in the naysayers column, at least do us the courtesy of dissecting these trackssss so we all can better understand the source of your anti-country-music bias.

I look forward to your response.

HVB

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Self-Described “Country Music Idiot and Skeptic” Declares Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s Don’t Look for a Heartache the Greatest Album the Genre Has Ever Produced

 Posted by
Mar 262021
 

Self-described “Country Music Skeptic and Idiot” Mr Moderator is sold! This morning, he declared, to no one in particular, that Jimmie Dale Gilmore‘s Don’t Look for a Heartache the “greatest album the genre has ever produced.”

“Hands-down,” Mr Moderator said, when asked to expand on this statement, “it’s one of the only country albums that I’ve ever played twice in one day.”

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RTH Labs Needs You

 Posted by
Mar 222021
 

Hey, gang! I just got off the phone with Milo T. Frobisher, the big cheese over at RTH Labs, and he asked me to pass this along: apparently, RTH Labs is trying to develop a set of quantitative rules/frames of reference for the analysis of how well live music is performed, depending on the age of both the performer and the audience — and the relative statistical intersection of those data cohorts.

What does this mean for you? Well, what RTH Labs needs is the year of your birth, followed by a short list of the live rock shows you’ve seen, the years you saw them, and a numerical assessment of the quality of the shows you witnessed (1-10).

Now, Frobisher acknowledges that a full accounting of all shows from all artists would be prohibitively time-consuming — and would likely result in an excess amount of non-repeating data that would be impossible to cross-tabulate across the RTH community. So what RTH Labs is looking for are data for shows performed by the following British rock dinosaur bands/artists only:

  • The Rolling Stones
  • Solo Beatles
  • The Kinks
  • Led Zeppelin
  • The Who
  • Pink Floyd

So, for example, my response would be:

  • HVB: 1964
  • Solo Beatles – Paul McCartney: 2006, 7 rock quality points (RQP); 2008, 5 RQP
  • Kinks: 1992-ish, 3 RQP
  • The Who: 1984, 5 RQP; 2007, 7 RQP

It’s that simple — unless you prefer to provide any footnotes that might shed light on your RQP assessment. (For example, I might choose to mention that Townsman Mockcarr and I were flummoxed by the Kinks’ choice to incorporate a lone dancer into their show, dressed in ballet taffeta, doing all the artsy swoops and swishes one might expect to see in a high school dance recital, as the band plunked away in the foreground. She would appear at random intervals above and behind the stage, leaping from one side to the other, a high kick here, a deft twirl there, for no discernible reason.)

Will you lend a hand? Milo assures me the data will reveal some interesting patterns worthy of further discussion.

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