Dec 032008
 


To this day, although I’ve come a long way in digging reggae music, I prefer hearing The Clash do their version of reggae than almost any real reggae artist. Give me “Police and Thieves” with those crunchy guitars and awkward bass over the Junior Murvin original version any day, even though the original version is pretty great. If you put a gun to my head I may even admit that I prefer the bastardized reggae of The Police and Joe Jackson to most of the real thing. Not cool, but true.

I feel the same way about most Brian Jones-era Stones covers of slightly earlier R&B/early rock songs, like The Stones’ version of “Around and Around” over Chuck Berry’s original or their cover of The Valentinos’ “It’s All Over Now.” Mad props to the source material, but I’ll take the Stones!

Give me Paul Simon and Talking Heads doing whatever they’ve done with South African and South American music over most of what I hear by the people who inspired them. Not cool at all, I know, but I’ve never found King Sunny Ade‘s music, for instance, half as interesting as the best of Simon and Byrne. For starters, it’s nice to know what’s being sung. How do I know King Sunny’s not singing his culture’s equivalent of “Working for the Weekend?” I do, however, prefer the real Brazilian stuff that Byrne’s label has released to Byrne’s solo works in that same vein.

A lot of my favorite “country” songs are Elvis Costello’s pastiches of real country songs, songs like “Motel Matches.” One of the best things about Costello’s “country” originals is that the rhythm section gets to do cool fills. Real country rhythm sections usually sound to me like they’ve got the freedom of a lamb.

I can’t say the same for newer takes on Da Blooz, not even Da Blooz of Jeff Healy and Stevie Ray Vaughn. This is proof that more than Rockism is at play, right?

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May 232008
 

Fine Wine

Smelly Cheese

Recent plans and offlist discussions with fellow Townspeople have once again brought the issue of “aging well” to my mind. Being the Schau-obsessed person that I am, when I decided to dabble my 43-year-old toes in the world of live performance again, I officially hung up my rockin’ shoes and joined a ska band instead, being quite certain that the sight of me rockin’ out on stage would likely be a Very Embarassing Thing indeed.

Fine Wine

Smelly Cheese

Other Townsmen have told me that while they have no self-consciousness about doing the rock and roll thing at age (cough), they get irked when their musical efforts are automatically lumped into the category of the weekend rock and roll party warrior/Georgia Satellites and George Thorogood cover band member — as in, “oh, you play in a band? So does my husband — him and his friends played at our beach house a couple of summers ago; it was *great*!”

Fine Wine

Smelly Cheese

But some folks manage to pull the aging thing off with great aplomb, avoiding the need to slather on the Rock Of Olay, or chickening out to join a ska band, fer chrissakes. My question to our current musician townspeople is, how do you stay looking so young? What’s your secret? To those who have no stake in that game: what do *you* think makes certain rockers age like a bottle of fine wine, while others merely putrefy?

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

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