Musical Lifelines

 Posted by
Jun 072010
 

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While seeing if you can ever like the music of a particular artist whose music has not appealed to you to date, do ever find yourself hanging onto the musicianship of a particular band member? Growing up I couldn’t stand Janis Joplin except for the song “Piece of My Heart.” That song, in fact, initially appealed to me only because of the sloppy, fuzztoned lead guitar and the throaty, off-key backing vocals of the dudes in Big Brother and the Holding Company. Over the years, whenever being confronted with the music of Janis Joplin, I’d see out the guitar player(s?) in Big Brother and the Holding Company and see if the sloppy guitar playing and funzztone could get me through the next 3 to 4 minutes of Joplin’s blooz wail. The stuff she did after Big Brother never worked for me because that guitarist, whose name I’ve never bothered to learn until seeing it in this video (James Gurley), wasn’t in the mix.

About 10 years ago I began to come around on Joplin with the help of other aids, which I’ll get into another day this week, if not for the lifeline that guitar player through me I’d have had no shot!

Another example for me is Phil Lesh, whenever I’m revisiting the Grateful Dead, again, a band I no longer hate but still feel the need to thank Lesh for thinking of me with his long, loopy bass runs.

How about you: has a particular musician in a band or backing an artists you did not otherwise like thrown you a lifeline?

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When You’re a Little Strange

 Posted by
Apr 112010
 

This past Friday night I got to see most of the new Tom DiCillo documentary on The Doors, When You’re Strange. I say “most” because the DVD being used to project this film in Philadelphia’s cool, hip outdoor Piazza at Schmidt‘s condo gathering space crapped out twice for long stretches. It was a pretty cold and windy night, and after the second run of technical difficulties, with just the fat, bearded period of Jim Morrison and The Doors’ life left to tell, my son and I felt like we’d had enough of a great night out, talking music and life and all that good stuff. We listened to – and talked about – Pink Floyd and Yes on the ride home. It was a beautiful time, man, and although I regret not seeing my favorite period of The Doors covered, we’d gotten more than our money’s worth.
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Artists You Wish People Could See for What They Are, Not for What Most of Their Fans Wish They Could Be

 Posted by
Apr 062010
 


I’m excited to see the new documentary on The Doors, When You’re Strange, which is playing for free in Philadelphia this Friday night, April 9. My excitement is for a range of reasons, from the fact that it’s directed by Tom DiCillo, who’s first three movies (Living in Oblivion, Box of Moonlight, Johnny Suede) were indie joys for me in the ’90s, to the fact that I like my share of Doors music as well as get a great deal of laughs out of the band’s pretensions and their even more incredibly pretentious diehard fans. I’m sure this film’s narrator, Johnny Depp, for instance, is going to match Ray Manzarek for jive-ass references to “shamen” and other mystical “native” nonsense that no white man who’s not a professor of anthropology should be caught dead talking about.

I’m suspect this film will only perpetrate the mythology around The Doors and Jim Morrison, but I wish more people could see The Door for what they really were, not for what most of their fans wish they could be. For instance:

  • The Doors were a solid psych-pop group with tight production, not groundbreaking avant-garde visionaries!
  • The Doors were a tough, little blues-rock combo, not the house band for the Weimar Republic.
  • Jim Morrison’s lyrics were usually pretty funny and only worked in the context of his committed approach to desiring transcendence within the confines of his solid, little psych-pop/blues-rock combo. He was no American Poet!
  • Jim Morrison’s not alive; he’s dead.

I’m not trying to degrade the work of The Doors. There’s so much to like over the course of their brief career that reasonable rock ‘n roll fans can’t be bothered to hear for what it is for the risk of letting any of the wacko cult-worshipping leak into their lives. I’m trying to uncover the true and meaningful legacy of The Doors. For those Doors fans who use the band as a means for compensating for their empty spiritual lives, get a practicing shaman to guide you!

Is there an artist you wish people could see for what they are, not for what most of their fans wish they could be?

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Reconsider The United States of America?

 Posted by
Feb 262010
 

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Years ago a friend tried to turn me onto the underground psych-pop band, The United States of America. I could not get into them, but today I stumbled on this track, “I Won’t Leave My Wooden Wife for You, Sugar,” as well as some other cuts on YouTube, and I’m thinking I may have to reconsider this band. I can now appreciate the whimsy and subtle use of electronics like never before. Are there other prime cuts from their debut or other releases that I should revisit? Did the band members go on to do anything else of note? Thanks.

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Rebuilding Team Hippie for the Modern Age

 Posted by
Nov 212009
 


Sometimes I come up with the germ of an idea for discussion here in the Halls of Rock without knowing exactly where I expect things to go. This is one of those times. I think a lot about the notion of hippies and wish there was some kind of true neo-hippie vibe that I could be swept up in. I’m going to share a few thoughts on the matter and see if any of you have your own thoughts on the subject.

A few of you may have heard me say this story before, but when I was about 6 or 7 years old my parents, who were not hippies in any way but were pretty liberal in terms of the pop culture they’d expose me to, took me to a drive-in double-feature of Easy Rider and Hell’s Angels on Wheels. We went with another family and their young boy. I still remember the other boy and I sitting atop the roof of our old station wagon, and I still remember the thrill I got from all the hippie stuff on screen that night: Dennis Hopper’s mustache, the football helmet, the choppers, Steppenwolf, the bad biker in Hell’s Angels on Wheels getting shot right between the nose bridge of his rectangular Roger McGuinn glasses… From that night forward I wanted to be a hippie.

Maybe a year or two later, I recall an older girl in my grandparents’ neighborhood taking a bunch of us little kids to see to see the movie Willard. (Good god! As a parent of two preteen boys myself, what was going on in the late-60s/early-70s, with my not-normal-but-not-progressive, middle class family, taking me to a double-feature of hippie biker flicks and trusting a 12-year-old girl to take a group of 8 year olds to see another flick about a young man who loves rats?) The girl asked us what we wanted to be, and the other kids wanted to be butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers – the usual stuff. The girl got a real kick out of my wanting to be a hippie, but I recall walking her through my thought process – you know, getting to have long sideburns, a ‘stache, a chopper, a cool helmet, shooting bad bikers right between the eyes… Honestly, to this day I still want to be a hippie, in the rebellious, searching, cowboy sense Easy Rider, and that’s why I’m asking for your help in rebuilding Team Hippie for the Modern Age.
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