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The 25 Best Progressive Rock Songs of All Time: Part Two

May 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

20. King Crimson, “Red”

The progenitors of math rock on their last album of the ’70s. Red is the paradigm that every pointy-headed prog rock band worships at the altar of (even if they don’t realize it, because the bands they do worship once worshipped here). The title track is a yin yang of intellect and adrenaline, underscored with a very scientific, discernibly English sensibility. Robert Fripp, who has never been boring or unoriginal, outdoes himself while John Wetton and Bill Bruford do some of their finest work as well. It is the closest thing rock guitar ever got to its own version of “Giant Steps”.

19. Pink Floyd, “Echoes”

Most everyone would agree that Dark Side of the Moon made Pink Floyd the first (and last) band in space, but not as many people might appreciate that, if it were not for 1971’s Meddle, there would have been no Dark Side of the Moon. Gilmour’s guitar and vocal contributions delineate the ways in which he was asserting himself as the major musical force within the group (a very positive development), forging an increasingly melodic and ethereal sound. The point that cannot be overemphasized is that “Echoes” is not so much an inspired product of its time as much as it is the realization of a sound and style the band had been inching toward with each successive effort. “Echoes” unfolds deliberately, with carefully structured precision. The merging of Gilmour and Wright’s voices—a harbinger of good things to come, although on “Time” Wright sings the choruses while Gilmour handles the verses—is appropriately mesmerizing, and the two remain uncannily in synch on their respective instruments. “Echoes” also signals a minor step forward for Waters lyrically (the major step would be the aforementioned, and unavoidable, Dark Side of the Moon.

18. Rush, “Natural Science”

If 2112 is the album Rush had to make, Permanent Waves is the work that paved the way for a new decade and the next (most successful) phase of their career. The centerpiece of the album is the sixth and final song, “Natural Science”: it does not grab you by the ear the way 2112 does and it does not have the immediate, irresistible appeal of “Tom Sawyer”, but it is, quite possibly, the band’s most perfect achievement. Neil Peart’s lyrics, which tackle ecology, commercialism and artistic integrity (without being pretentious or self-righteous) are, in hindsight, not merely an end-of-decade statement of purpose but a presciently fin-de-siecle assessment that still, amazingly, functions as both indictment and appeal. “Natural Science” endures as the last document before Moving Pictures triangulated math rock, prog rock and the fertile new soil of synth-based popular music and did the inconceivable, making Rush a household name.

17. Yes, “Heart of the Sunrise”

As much as any other band, Yes epitomizes prog-rock, and as such, they are entitled to the praise as well as the disapproval that accrues from this (at times, dubious) honor. Certainly this band, with the possible exception of Rush, gets the least love from the so-called critical establishment. Nevermind that (like Rush) its musicians, pound for pound and instrument for instrument, are as capable and talented as any that have very played. Steve Howe is, like Robert Fripp, a thinking man’s guitar hero. His solos are like algebra equations, but full of emotion; his mastery of the instrument colors almost every second of every song from the fruitful era that produced their “holy trinity”, The Yes Album, Fragile and Close To The Edge. “Heart of the Sunrise”, aside from boasting some of Wakeman, Bruford and Squire’s most spirited support, features one of Jon Anderson’s signature vocal workouts. The band made longer, more intricate and segue-laden songs, but none of them pack as much emotion and intensity: there is so much going on here, all of it compelling and ingenious, that it manages to delight—and even surprise—four decades on.

16. Jethro Tull, “Heavy Horses”

Meanwhile back in the year…1978? It’s an embarrassing commentary on how close-minded so many folks are that they probably have never even heard this song. Of course, the professionals who write most often about rock music in the ’70s are not known for their fondness of multisyllabic words and material that obliges a modest understanding of world history. Back to basics? How about back to the 18th Century? That is the vibe Jethro Tull was emanating circa 1978. The band that dropped not one, but two single-song album suites had evolved into a proficient troupe of professionals that incorporated strings, lutes, fifes and harpsichords into their repertoire. To put it more plainly, the same years The Clash, The Ramones and The Sex Pistols were establishing a radically new and brazen rock aesthetic, Ian Anderson appeared on an album cover flanked by two Clydesdales. The title track is a typically literate—and unironic!—tribute to the working horses of England that, much like prog-rock, were soon to step aside, their demise having less to do with trends and tastemakers than technology.

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The Man Who Improved Music: An Appreciation of Norio Ohga

April 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Depending on how old you are, the iconic image above may mean different things. If you are young enough that digital files have been the primary way you’ve experienced music as long as you can remember, the picture of a compact disc is like an old car: a relic, a nostalgic reminder of a product that has long since been improved upon. If you are old enough to remember using CDs, you also remember having to pay for them, so their increasing disappearance from the cultural landscape is a welcome development. If you are mature enough, perhaps you already owned enough albums that you never wanted (or needed) to jump on the technological bandwagon. If you are old enough and/or an ultra-audiophile who disdained these discs from the get-go (which means you are an old fart, a pretentious Luddite or Neil Young), you probably saved a ton of money the last few decades, but then again, you probably wasted it on ludicrously expensive gadgets and hundred dollar speaker cables that are actually worth the pocket change it costs to produce them.

If, on the other hand, you are a guy like me, who got his first job right around the time compact discs starting appearing in record stores (note: there were once things called record stores and they sold things called records), you can recall the way the light bounced off that sucker like the star that once guided the wise men through the desert. I’m not ashamed to admit that I acquired my first compact disc even before I had a machine to play it in; I knew I was getting one so I began stocking up as quickly as possible. And after listening to records (good), cassettes (bad) and 8-Tracks (ugly), I looked at this pristine new invention the way the apes look at the monolith at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Here’s the thing: LPs are somewhat back in vogue now (equal parts prompted by desperate hipster cred and retro longings) and, to be certain, many people never stopped listening to them in the first place. But people who remember too fondly by half how the system used to work are either in denial or never lived through the era in the first place. Listen: you hear that snap, crackle and pop? That was an inexorable part of the experience. Yes, if you took good care of your albums, they lasted much longer, but everyone can recall how infuriating (and inevitable) it was to open up a brand new record, slip the needle into the groove and have it skip, usually on the one song that made the album worth buying in the first place. As a result, I am positive I’m not the only person who got in the habit of immediately copying each new LP onto a blank cassette in order to capture and preserve that (hopefully) flawless first-listen. But then, what was the point of doing this when you could not (would not) listen to the actual album after a while? In other words: the system was flawed and it used to be a dorky dream out of some sci-fi fantasy to imagine music being permanently unmarred for a million listens.

Enter the compact disc.

(Intermission: this reminiscence is prompted by news that Norio Ohga, the former Sony CEO and man credited with helping create and develop the compact disc has passed away at age 81. There is an interesting summary of his life from AP here.

A few fascinating highlights from the piece:

As a young man, aspiring opera singer Norio Ohga wrote to Sony to complain about the quality of its tape recorders. That move changed the course of his life, as the company promptly recruited the man whose love of music would shape the development of the compact disc and transform the Japanese electronics maker into a global software and entertainment empire.

Shattering the stereotype of the staid Japanese executive, the debonair Ohga was never shy, his hair neatly slicked back, his boisterous manner exuding the fiery yet naive air of an artist. His persona added a touch of glamour to Sony’s image at a time when Japan had global ambitions. An experienced pilot, Ohga at times flew the plane himself for business trips. A gourmet, he boasted about his roast beef. His hobby was cruising on his yacht.

Chairman of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra since 1999, he continued to conduct there a few times a year. In 1993, he conducted the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in a charity event funded by Sony.

Ohga often compared leading a company to conducting an orchestra.

“Just as a conductor must work to bring out the best in the members of his orchestra, a company president must draw on the talents of the people in his organization,” Ohga said in a 1996 Sony publication.

Ohga had tried to lead a double life of artist and Sony man.

One day, he dozed off from exhaustion in the stage wings while waiting to go on in the “The Marriage of Figaro,” rushed in from the wrong direction and watched his embarrassed co-stars stifling giggles.

He gave up his opera career but still promoted classical music in Japan by supporting young musicians and concerts.

Sounds like a life well-lived to me.)

In between becoming ascendent and outmoded, compact discs had a complicated integration into the mainstream. Yes, from the get-go there were legitimate gripes about the fidelity, authenticity and the mere notion of digital numbers replacing analog wax made many purists pause. I had records, I loved records, and I sincerely wish I still had all my old records (most of which I gave away or sold to used record stores for pennies on the dollar in order to acquire compact discs), but I can’t –and wouldn’t– change the way things unfolded. It’s almost impossible to explain to the uninitiated how unbelievably good compact discs sounded in the mid-’80s. It wasn’t just that they sounded the same with each subsequent listen, they sounded better than the LPs. (The argument, which still rages on in coffee shops and online chat groups and at High-End Audio conferences, is one that can never be reconciled: anyone who claims they can unfailingly tell the difference between an album and a vintage AAD compact disc (e.g. a disc that digitalized an original analog recording, which was the case with virtually all music until the technology caught up with the creation of “new” music) is being recalcitrant or is the same type of person who insists their $300 gold-wired speaker cables make a discernible difference in the quality of the sound pumping through their “listening room”. In other words, it’s an argument that means so much to some people because it means so little to everyone else.)

Records did (and do) have that inimitable warmth, and a certain something that can’t be duplicated, but it’s folly to suggest or insist that contemporary music did not sound better digitally. For instance, I had albums by The Police and those first discs (even though they, like virtually all first pressings throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s, have been radically improved upon since) sounded better than the albums. A lot better. There was more clarity, you could hear all the instruments, and you could definitely discern subtle sounds that were buried into the mix or lost in the ether of fidelity and technology.

Perhaps more importantly, and this is something the younger generation, spoiled brats that they are, can never fathom and therefore never appreciate, is that content was not ubiquitous or readily available back in the bad old days. And I don’t just mean it wasn’t all free for all plugged-in pirates; I mean a great deal of it did not exist. Many albums from the glorious era of Prog-Rock had not been reissued or had fallen out of favor and, in some cases, had never been in favor in the first place. As such, particularly during a time when MTV, hair metal and synth pop reigned supreme (dark days, my wet-behind-the-ears-brethren), “classic rock” was not just considered music made by dinosaurs; it was a dinosaur–it was extinct.

There is no doubt in my mind that the proliferation of compact discs led to the resurgence of sales for old music, which prompted the classic rock radio formats that became a huge deal toward the end of the ’80s.

While writing/reminiscing about Jethro Tull on the occasion of J.D. Salinger’s death (here), I recalled the impact compact discs had on me, as a teenage music fanatic. I did/do defend my obsession with music as an addiction, and an expensive one, but also one that has had only positive influence on my life in literally too many ways to count:

As it happens, when I first experienced The Catcher in the Rye I was in the early (but intense) stages of what became a lifelong infatuation with Jethro Tull. Which naturally coincided with my burgeoning obsession with all-things progressive rock, which happened to coincide with the release of so many classic recordings on that new-fangled technical revelation called compact discs. It would be near impossible for anyone who didn’t live through those days to imagine a world when you waited for anything: i-Pods and online access have made everything that has ever happened available, immediately.

Back then, waiting for certain Rush, Yes, King Crimson and especially Jethro Tull albums to get their digital reincarnation was like patiently awaiting Moses to deliver a new sonic commandment every other week. The upside of this, of course, was that it was still a time when you had time (you had no choice) to savor and spend time with a new purchase, and by the time you’d (temporarily) exhausted your enthusiasm, you had ample funds to get the next installment. This was also, as many will remember, a time before information itself was a free 24/7 proposition. As such, each trip to the record store was loaded with possibility: you never knew what might have been released, including albums by bands like Genesis and Pink Floyd, that you never even knew existed. And, it should go without saying that the prospect of upgrading scratchy vinyl (or tape-recorded) copies of Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin and Hendrix albums was something slightly beyond orgasmic.

And so, it was not just a matter of how it all sounded, it was also a matter of discovering all this new (old) shit. In this regard, I reckon I was the right age at the right place at the right time, and my obsession with all types of music coincided with this giant technological leap. If compact discs made more classic rock available, it’s simply not possible to convey what a godsend this format was for jazz and reggae. If you think early Pink Floyd albums were obscure (and they were), getting out of print Blue Note jazz discs or any reggae by anyone other than Bob Marley was a pipe dream (literally). While I may have saved tens of thousands of dollars had all this music been available by some magical computer –which is what it would have seemed like then, and still, to a certain extent, seems like now– I can’t say I regret the inexpressible thrill of discovery and the delight of entire eras of music suddenly within my grasp: I reckon (without sarcasm or snark) that I experienced, on some slight but meaningful level, what scholars or religious devotees are in search of when they dedicate themselves to their monomaniacal quests for enlightenment. For me, the pleasure was never in doubt, the rewards indescribable, and at the end of the day, this was the best investment I’ve ever made. Every single disc I ever bought (except of course the ones that were borrowed or stolen) I still own, they all play, and they still sound impeccable.

My world, in sum, existed with albums and compact discs and then digital files. It still does, and while it’s strange to imagine, I’ll welcome the next technological advancement, if there is one. In the final analysis all of these toys and innovations are delivery devices for the most pure form of expression mankind has been capable of perfecting. For that, I salute the rich life and considerable accomplishment of Norio Ohga.

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Looking Into The Sun*

January 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

(March, 2000)

I look down at my mother as she lay dying.

It was worse than I expected. (You don’t expect anything; you worry and fear and anticipate and dread and delay and avoid and if you are the type of person who prays you hit your knees early and often, but mostly you prepare yourself as best you can for what you never can prepare yourself to see.) I had not expected this: I had seen my sister, only a few years before, just after childbirth and while, of course, that was an occasion to celebrate, it was also serious business, my sister obliged to undergo a C-section just as our mother had done.

I expected, I reckon, something similar, not thinking (not allowing myself to think?) about the difference between local anesthesia and going under; the real differences between a by-the-book medical procedure and a search-and-destroy kind of surgery. She is not yet able to speak (they had wheeled away a frightened woman and brought us back an infant, uncertain how to talk, breathe and think: that is what those first seconds are like when they let you into the room) and the force of my shock hits me like a sucker punch below the belt. The wind rushes out of me like an innocent bystander anxious to leave the scene of a crime and the water spills out of my eyes as if someone had flipped a switch. It’s not crying so much as a chemical reaction (Chemistry? Physics? Biology? All of the above, including the algebra of anxiety), and I am mortified that my brave, smiling face (Everything is going to be okay!) had betrayed me in less than five seconds.

Look at her: spread out under oppressive white sheets like an etherized lab experiment (Biology again). A tube inserted through her nose into her stomach to clean up the mess they make while saving your life. Tubes and wires connected to machines that blinked and breathed, electronic chaperones keeping guard over carefully administered fluids. It was all at once impressively state of the art and appallingly primitive. Look how far we’ve come; we’ve only come this far? And, inevitably: is this what she saw when she visited her mother, almost exactly twenty years ago? How much worse were the conditions (the prep, the prognosis, the recovery) then? And twenty years before that: her father’s father and the colostomy bag he wore for that last decade of his life. Old school: it was unfortunate, but it was miraculous; twenty or so years before that he wouldn’t have had a chance. This is progress, this is medicinal intervention being refined before our eyes, stitch by stitch, drip by drip, second by second, each patient another specimen, another insect laid out on the table to be scrutinized, tagged and, whenever possible, saved.

Where are you?

Did you actually almost faint just now? Are you kidding me with this cliché? (Get used to it, kid, you’ll finally find yourself saying, not without a little appreciation at the ways situations like these turn unbelievably personal and possibly profound moments into scenes that couldn’t even bribe their way into bad movies.) Do I really need to leave the room and splash cold water on my face? Yes, I do.

I rush out into the hallway, past the white coats scurrying here and there, somehow frowning and smiling at the same time, as only doctors can do, and find the bathroom and its impossibly clean and brightly-lit sink. Take some deep breaths, just as you’d learned to do at times like these. A few moments ago I had felt hot; now I am chilled (The physics of chemistry?). And tired. It wouldn’t be a terrible idea to get some fresh air, I think, heading toward the elevator.

On the way down to the lobby it stops and a tall, older man gets in (if I saw him today, ten years later, I’d probably say he was later-middle-aged and maybe, if he had grandkids, they would say I was middle-aged). He looks at me and we exchange a quick, cordial nod. It is a gesture that stops short of being formal, or friendly, but it is considerably different than the look strangers customarily give one another in a public place. The difference, to anyone else, would be all but imperceptible: this exchange of empathy, this implicit solidarity. It is a communication given and received exclusively in hospitals, where no one entering or exiting is free from the peculiar burden compelling their visit.

As I’m walking out I pause and hold the door for a young woman (if I saw her ten years ago I’d say she was middle-aged) wheeling an older man (her grandfather? Her father? Her husband?) hunched over in his chair. She is smiling and she is beautiful. She is beautiful because she is smiling; she has the unforced look of assumed control masking whatever concerns lie beneath. Or maybe she is on her way to figuring out (or has already figured out) the appropriate calculus between care and acceptance. Whatever it is, she is beautiful and I hold the door while she slowly slips out from the real world into the sanitized field of dreams and secrets where destinies come to be realized around the clock.

“Thank you,” she says, the smile spreading.

 “Don’t go,” I want to say because I’ve fallen instantly in love.

Strangers can become unwitting angels to someone who is grieving. It’s not something you (or they) can control; it has to do with the formula that occurs when our Biology feels Chemistry and does Physics. We are scared and in need of assurance; we are vulnerable and desperate for consolation. We are people and need to grasp whatever hands might be reaching out in the dark; we are hoping to be saved by that human touch.  

And so I find myself, suddenly in love, just as I’d fallen in love with the oncologist in ’97 and would fall in love with the nurse from the night shift in 2001—the one I actually sent flowers to (or at least I meant to; I actually wrote down her name with a note reminding myself to send her something to let her know I appreciated her efforts, that some of us realize what a difference people like her make, and that even if all our efforts are ultimately in vain the type of care and concern she provided was never without meaning, and above all that I loved her). The exact opposite of the way I would despise the surgeon in 2002 for laughing (she wasn’t laughing at us; she didn’t know I could see her, so I had no choice but forgive her even though I can never forget that moment, in the hallway, seconds before she and her colleague—the one she was laughing with as they walked toward us—delivered that final verdict; the one we had waited for and been able to avert and avoid for a little under five years).

***

Outside, at last. I can feel the sun, that unblinking life force. At once imperious and impervious, a warm-blooded bystander to our exigencies, however fervent and fleeting.

I look up, cautiously: you learn not to stare into the sun; it’s dangerous and even worse, it’s a cliché. What is the sun going to tell you, even if cared to acknowledge us, even if it could? It’s enough that it’s there. I’m grateful, at least, for the clarity of its glow, the fact that it does its dirty work during the day, making it possible (impossibly) to light up the other stars who operate under cover of darkness. These stars don’t say anything and they don’t need to; at least we can see them: they are there, no matter where they came from. They were there before we got here and they will be there long after we’re gone. Humbling, maybe even horrifying, but there is nothing we –or they– can do about it. It might not be enough, but it somehow has to be.

Tiger, tiger burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

You learn not to talk to the stars, or you eventually realize it is senseless to imagine they can hear you. Yet enough people need to have their actions explained that we made a science of sorts out of animals in the sky, lit with meaning and the ability to govern our affairs the way the moon turns the tides.

Many of us are taught to talk to God, and some of us actually think He is listening. Those one-way conversations are enough for enough people that we sanctified that shot in the dark, that wish upon a star. We have enough people who need these mysteries and secrets explicable that we invest the sky with spirits and wish them into being: we have them make sense out of what we can’t explain for ourselves, and suddenly the senselessness yields salvation.

If all else fails enough people come to understand, and possibly take comfort in the fact that you can always talk to yourself. You know who you are and you will always hear your voice, even when you don’t want to. Even –and especially– when you are not sure what you can tell yourself, when you are not at all certain what you can or should or may say.

* From a non-fiction work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone.

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2010: Time To Die (Part One: January-June)

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

2010: In pace requiescat!

We almost made it through January without a major loss, but then, during the darkest and coldest evenings we got word that the reclusive and curmudgeonly icon J.D. Salinger had left for that great rye field in the sky. I had been working on a piece (mostly in my head) for a couple of years, and Salinger’s passing (along with round one of the 2010 Snowpocalypse, which kept me blissfully housebound for several days) prompted me to polish it off. It’s long, it’s involved and it’s something I ended up feeling rather good about (if for no other reason than it provided me with an excellent opportunity to write at length, once more, about Jethro Tull and what it meant, for me, to read J.D. Salinger while simultaneously falling under the spell of Ian Anderson way back in 1987).

By the time I got around to Holden Caulfield, I was already a senior in high school. Too young? Too old? Just right? For better or worse, I was either too old, or not alienated enough, to feel the full force of Salinger’s operetta of adolescent angst. Of course, I’m selling it short (or am I?), but I’ve heard very few adults whose opinions I admire mention being overwhelmed by this novel while revisiting it as an adult. Myself, I couldn’t tell if it was too obvious this book was the result of a grown man trying (diligently, and in that overly mannered, oft-imitated style) to sound like a disaffected but acutely sensitive sixteen year old, or if it’s because he succeeded so thoroughly that, even as a seventeen year old, I wasn’t especially simpatico with his anguished, if solipsistic observations. Which is not to say that his plight did not move me, or that his situation is not, at times, rendered with profound artistry by Salinger.

Perhaps it would be a bit unfair, if mostly accurate to conclude that The Catcher in the Rye is the archetypal novel of adolescent alienation for teenagers/young adults who don’t read a great deal of fiction. Just as there are certain types of movies and music that, through a perfect storm of critical consensus and a groundswell of contagious public approbation, get anointed as authentic touchstones of a particular moment in time (I would say “tapping into the zeitgeist” but I try to avoid using the dreaded z-word if at all possible).

Regarding the almost half-century of silence that followed his initial burst of creativty, Norman Mailer decreed Salinger “the greatest mind to ever stay in prep school.” That is harsh but it is also –based on the available evidence– pretty indisputable. On the other hand, when people hold up The Catcher in the Rye (or even Franny and Zooey) as the zenith of Salinger’s oeuvre, they are overlooking (or more likely, have never read) “For Esme –With Love and Squalor”, in my estimation one of the five best American short stories of the 20th Century. Indeed, what Salinger accomplishes in those twenty-odd pages greatly exceeds the sum total of Mailer’s voluminous, if mostly perishable output. Everything that Salinger didn’t do, or didn’t do convincingly, or didn’t do well enough to reward subsequent readings by a more mature audience, in his canonized novel, he does in spades with this short story. It is a compact, devastating illumination of the cruel machinery we, for lack of a better or more appropriate word, call adulthood. How fittingly ironic, then, that a writer celebrated (and minimized) for being the consummate chronicler of what Pete Townshend later called “teenage wasteland” actually wrote a shattering treatise from the trenches (literally and figuratively) that endures well into a new millennium.

As it happens, when I first experienced The Catcher in the Rye I was in the early (but intense) stages of what became a lifelong infatuation with Jethro Tull. Which naturally coincided with my burgeoning obsession with all-things progressive rock, which happened to coincide with the release of so many classic recordings on that new-fangled technical revelation called compact discs. It would be near impossible for anyone who didn’t live through those days to imagine a world when you waited for anything: i-Pods and online access have made everything that has ever happened available, immediately.

Back then, waiting for certain Rush, Yes, King Crimson and especially Jethro Tull albums to get their digital reincarnation was like patiently awaiting Moses to deliver a new sonic commandment every other week. The upside of this, of course, was that it was still a time when you had time (you had no choice) to savor and spend time with a new purchase, and by the time you’d (temporarily) exhausted your enthusiasm, you had ample funds to get the next installment. This was also, as many will remember, a time before information itself was a free 24/7 proposition. As such, each trip to the record store was loaded with possibility: you never knew what might have been released, including albums by bands like Genesis and Pink Floyd, that you never even knew existed. And, it should go without saying that the prospect of upgrading scratchy vinyl (or tape-recorded) copies of Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin and Hendrix albums was something slightly beyond orgasmic.

Anyway, it was during the winter and spring of 1988 that the back catalog of Jethro Tull was being released, a couple at a time, on compact disc. It was around this time, having already devoured Thick as a Brick and still patiently awaiting the arrival of A Passion Play, that I had my first sustained go-round with Tull’s third album, 1970?s Benefit. In April 1988 it was the right album at the right time. Remarkably, it still is.

(Read the rest here.)

 

In February, just beginning to dig out from round two of the Snowpocalypse, it was sad to hear the news of Doug Fieger’s passing.

Look at that guy. You know which one I’m talking about. You’ve got three surfer dude boys in the band and the frontman with the thousand yard smirk.

You know that guy. So do I. He’s the dude who always had a copy of the exam beforehand, always had a parent’s note (that he wrote) each time he was late for school. The guy that never kicked in for the keg then left the party with the best looking girl. The guy who would end up wearing his high school letter jacket after graduation, unless he happened to become a millionaire. And the big difference: that guy in your life doesn’t have the redeeming value of writing a transcendent pop song that gets inside of you like Herpes simplex and never leaves. Doug Fieger was that guy. And now he’s gone.

Rest in peace, you rascal.

It turned out to be a rather sombre St. Patrick’s Day when word got out that Alex Chilton had abruptly died. This was both unfortunate and ironic since Chilton, who had been one of rock’s great, if enigmatic, recluses, had recently seemed reinvigorated and was back on the road, touring and possibly ready to record. Instead of heading out to down some Guinnesses, I stayed in and listened to my personal favorite Chilton project, the undservedly obscure Cubist Blues.

While many people (understandably) associate Chilton’s best work with the ’70s, he was still making serious noise in the ’90s. Quite by chance, as we eased past Y2K, I stumbled upon the truly bizarre, and beautiful, album he made with Alan Vega and Ben Vaughn, 1996?s Cubist Blues.

If you are a fan, or if you are curious (check out the clip below and I dare you to not be hooked) it comes highly recommended. This is midnight of the soul mixed with ’50s Beat energy and what Elvis would sound like if he had ever tried to channel Jerry Lee Lewis, drunk. Only one million times deeper and darker and, for my money, more satisfying. This is at once deliberate, narcotic and wonderfully disorienting. It’s like you walked into the wrong bar and stumbled onto a one-off jam session featuring a bunch of bruised and wily underground legends, laying it all on the line for nobody but themselves. Which is exactly what this album is.

Back in September 2003 the east coast was about to get rocked by a hurricane named Isabel. We knew it was coming, and this was one even the TV weathermen couldn’t get wrong. We didn’t know how bad it was going to be and fortunately, for D.C. denizens, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It got darker and later, and once the wind really started blowing and the rain began pounding down, I knew exactly what album I needed to have playing. Cubist Blues came through for me before, and has come through since, but I’ll always consider this an ideal soundtrack for a hurricane.

We made it through April unscathed, but then in May a piece of America passed on to what is hopefully a long and easy ride. My tribute to Dennis Hopper can be read here; for now some key takeaways:

So cancer finally succeeded in cutting short the odd and inimitable life of Dennis Hopper. That is a shame, of course, although we would probably be wise to give thanks that he managed to stick around as long as he did. He danced with the devil so often they were on a first name basis. And if Thoreau was wise to encourage us all to suck the marrow out of life, Hopper sucked, slurped and occasionally mainlined it. I’d like to think you could cut him open and a good chunk of 20th Century DNA would come oozing out. He may have had a few more battles in him, but no one can deny he left it all out on the proverbial field.

(After dissecting some of his more notorious film scenes, a quick shout-out to what I consider his unequalled moment):

From True Romance, a movie that, pound for pound, features as many sublime scenes as quite possibly any other made in the last two decades. This scene, notorious for its, shall we say, frank discussion of racial relations, and hilarious for its rather unorthodox delineation of history, is one of the most-quoted from all contemporary films. For good reason, and all praise to Tarantino (who wrote it), Tony Scott (who directed it) and the bravura performances of Hopper and the genuinely incomparable Christopher Walken. It also includes the hulking presence of the then-unknown James Gandolfini.

The scene is certainly problematic (and no politically correct critic would want to touch it with a ten foot soap box), but more than the adults-imitating-schoolchildren one upmanship it sardonically presents, there is serious acting going on here. It is to the considerable credit of all involved that this scene never degenerates into (self) parody and is able to be hilarious and horrifying, often at the same time. There probably aren’t too many examples of scenes in semi-recent cinema that so successfully skirt the switchblade’s edge of tension and release. Hopper goes from scared to crafty, then understands he’s screwed and decides to go out with a bang (literally). The moment he realizes he is a dead man, you can almost feel him resignedly saying “fuck it” as he decides to have a cigarette, after all. And when he lets out the mirthful little laugh (a very Hopperesque touch), you get the chance to savor him saying “fuck you” to the men who are about to murder him.

The scene is uncomfortable and amusing in equal measure (well, in all honesty, it’s probably a hell of a lot funnier than anything else), but mostly a tour de force on every conceivable level. It just might feature Hopper’s finest work.

A bittersweet occasion (more sweet than bitter, bitter then sweet) for American legend Howlin’ Wolf: June 10, 2010 marked his centennial, and he remains an artist who cannot be imitated and whose unmistakable growl can probably never be adequately explained or understood.

Six foot, six inches. Approximately 300 pounds. Named after President Chester A. Arthur. In a class entirely by himself as a singer, performer and presence. If Muddy Waters, his friendly (and at times not-so-friendly) adversary was like an industrious bee that produces so much sweet honey, Howlin’ Wolf was a bear that crashes into the nest, snarling as he swats away the thousand wasps circling his head.

You read advice like this all the time (and no matter how enthusiastically I endorse a particular artist, I try to dispense it judiciously) but if you’ve ever taken someone’s word for it when they say “your life is lacking if you don’t have this” take my word for it and drop the ten bucks on this indispensable document. It’s not just that you are depriving yourself of one of the singular voices of the last century, you are actually missing an important chunk of America itself. Put another way, touchstones like “Smokestack Lightnin’” and “Sitting On Top Of The World” endure less as (merely) American songs and more as components of this country’s unique sensibility. Believe your ears because they are, in fact, even more than that.

Later in June we had the one year anniversary of The King of Pop’s premature passing. My assessment of Michael Jackon’s complicated legacy is here.

Listen: this story has been told so many times it is inextricable from the history of America. F. Scott Fitzgerald infamously (and incorrectly) declared that there are no second acts in American lives, but he was writing his own epitaph at the time. Little did he know that artists, and later, politicians, would perfect the Lazarus routine to the point that it was itself an art form of sorts.

Some great American artists could not handle the hype of their success, or remained paralyzed by the prospect of following up their uncanny grand slam (think Ralph Ellison after Invisible Man for the prototype). Some artists famously flamed out in part because of the pressure or else were consumed by their own demons (insert any number of movie stars and rock gods: James Dean and Charlie Parker remain the heavyweight champs of this routine). Some artists never had a choice in the matter: what can we say about the fact that Melville received less than a little acclaim after he wrote Moby Dick (even his good friend and contemporary critical darling Nathaniel Hawthorne–to whom Melville’s masterpiece was dedicated–thought little of the book, revealing him as either an exceedingly poor judge of genius or else an insecure literary prince who could not brook the very real competition Melville presented), and the man who may be our great American author (at least of the 19th Century) died broke, unknown, and embittered.

But none of these case studies can come close to approximating the one-of-a-kind wunderkind who became the King of Pop. His story is unique and will likely remain the triumphant and ultimately tragic cultural touchstone of our times. He had already lived at least three lives before he died, each one more improbable than the last.

That he was abused is undeniable and well-documented. It also scarcely scratches the surface of the pressures and pains that were inflicted upon him. Even a cursory acknowledgment of what he’d been through, before becoming a teenager, should leave the most cynical critic astonished that he was able to create the lasting work he did, as an adult.

I still get goosebumps every time I watch that. Now that he is gone, I’m sure each subsequent viewing (and there will be many, as I don’t expect I’ll ever tire of watching it) will be burdened with a melancholy even more profound than the one I would have felt anytime up until June 25, 2009. In other words, even before he passed on, watching a moment like this obliges one to relive one’s youth; it’s inescapable. So naturally one can’t help lamenting that loss of insouciance, of Innocence (with a capital I) and the many things time takes from us.

The previous generation had the moon landing; we had the moonwalk. That is not intended to be overly coy; I actually think I would invoke the moon landing regardless of the obvious word association. In my opinion, the few seconds that Jackson spent introducing that new dance move to the world are the defining cultural moments of my generation. In fact, I can’t readily think of anything else that enters the discussion. People have spoken about the other MJ (Michael Jordan) having played basketball better than anyone else did anything. I feel we could find other examples (Daniel Barenboim playing Beethoven piano sonatas; Flannery O’Connor writing fiction; Glenn Beck being an asshole), but I would propose that this performance is the apotheosis of what a pop star can achieve. No one, before or since, has been better at being a star, at seizing the moment, at overtaking the world by force of will and talent, quite like Michael Jackson did that evening. What is truly remarkable is not merely how incredible it was, then, but how inimitably cool and untouchable it remains, now. Everyone saw that and everyone reacted to it. It was (and is) impossible to be wholly unaffected or unmoved by what happens during those five minutes. There are probably people (perhaps lots of them) who still won’t see the art or genius (and the many layers of that genius: the song itself–a slice of irrepressible pop perfection, his dancing, and the fact that he is lip-synching it) of this moment, but it’s simply not possible to remain indifferent. You can fail to acknowledge this the way you can fail to acknowledge the Grand Canyon, as you are being pushed over the edge, eyes shut and screaming all the way down.

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My Kind of Christmas Music, Revisited

December 24, 2010 By 2 Comments

cb

Tchaikovsky

 

Corelli

 

Bach

 

John Fahey

The Who

Chuck Berry

a three-fer from Jethro Tull!


Sonny Boy

The Godfather

Donny

Satchmo

Ella! (An embarrassment of riches here, here, and here)

Johnny Mathis (The Master)

Vince (The King)

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The Problem With The Homeless Problem

December 16, 2010 By 7 Comments

Who was he?

I think the same question each time I see him (every day: the same man in the same spot, holding the same sign that tells everyone who he is, now—begging the question: who did he used to be, at some point in the past?) at the intersection he has stood at for several months now: the cardboard sign he holds both question and answer: Homeless veteran (the explanation), can you put some pocket change in this plastic cup (the question). The sign says he is a veteran. Okay. And even if he isn’t actually a veteran, he has been homeless long enough to be a veteran; or if he is not actually homeless, he has been acting the part long enough to earn the title. Either way, it is time for a promotion.

And so, I think, this is the problem with the homeless problem: it wasn’t (some of us learned—too late) the ones who hustled or even approached you who were down and out; they were the ardent ones, half the time they weren’t even homeless; it is the ones you never even saw, even when they sprawled on the concrete right beside you, the ones who were down, the ones who were out, the ones who had nothing to ask for, nothing to say, nothing to do except wait, sit it out until time or the whiter man’s burden delivered them that eventual, inevitable verdict. It was the ones you could afford not to be afraid of, the ones who could not even hurt themselves, because they’d already dug as deep inside as their ashen fingers could reach, the ones too dead to tear out their hearts, but not dead enough to unloose their souls, the ones who learned (too late) that death was only impatient for the fools who feared it, it had all the time in the world for those who the world owed nothing except the decency of an overdue death.

Could that be me?

The ultimate fear, the oldest worry. Who knew how it happened, who could make sense of it? And yet. These people do not wake up one random morning, on the streets and out of their minds. Or do they? If you believed the signs the man on the corner held, the government did this to him—and could do it to anyone else: that was his message, his mission.

The problem with the homeless problem is that these people who don’t see you and can’t see themselves are all chasing something they can no longer name: memories. Or, even worse, it is the memories that are chasing them, speaking in tongues they long ago ceased to understand.

A memory:

Newark Airport. That shithole. A place has to be exceptionally beautiful, appalling, or incomprehensibly pointless in order to be easily remembered years after a brief visit.

When I was a kid, (I couldn’t have been much older than ten) my father and I had a layover in Newark airport. Even then, I was perceptive enough to understand that this was no place I ever needed to return voluntarily.

An unassuming older man (at any rate, he was noticeably older than my old man, which made him old) sat in one of those impossibly plain plastic chairs, with his pants leg rolled up. It wasn’t until we got closer that I realized two things: he was alone, and he was scratching at a series of scabs on his shin. For some reason he looked our way at the moment we passed him, and after sizing us up, he stood and amiably approached my father.

“Sir, did you need someone to help you and your son carry your bags?”

“No thanks, we’re okay,” my pops replied, looking ahead and picking up the pace.

The man was persistent. In the space of fifteen seconds—my father denied him three times—my emotions slid from the appreciation of possibly having someone carry my suitcase for me, to the vague, uneasy sense that my father was being somehow rude, a jerk, to the unsettling awareness of recognition. I sensed something I’d seen plenty of, but never before in any person older than myself: fear. I saw it in his eyes, and felt it in my insides.

As we walked away my old man waited until we were at a charitable distance, then looked at me meaningfully and offered the somber assertion: That’s as low as you can go. I asked him to elaborate, as was my style, and he was either unwilling or unable to add anything to his observation, as was his style. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what my father was saying, I understood him perfectly. It was because I understood him that I needed him to say more, to talk to me a little longer about it, about anything, anything to interrupt that silence and the sudden thoughts that accompanied it.

It’s easy to believe that people like this exist for our sakes: they are dying lessons on how not to live, warnings of what could happen if you weren’t careful and found yourself scratching at scabs in the world’s ugliest airport. We forget, or we don’t allow ourselves to entertain the idea, that these people have histories; that these shadows and signposts don’t happen to serve a purpose for anyone else; they were once actual people themselves.

I realize, now, my father was wrong about one thing. That’s not as low as you can go. You can go lower, a whole lot lower. But perhaps it’s more disturbing to see the ones that are on the way down, it’s somehow easier to accept the ones at the bottom of the ocean; it’s the ones who are sinking, who are still within reach, who are drowning noisily in front of you, who sometimes have the temerity to ask you to hold out a hand. These are the ones we can scarcely tolerate, because every so often we look at them and see ourselves.

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Jethro Tull: Stand Up (Expanded Collector’s Edition)

December 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The first bit of good news regarding this “collector’s edition” of Stand Up is that you don’t need it. The second bit of good news is that for the most part it already exists, albeit scattered throughout a handful of previously released material. If you already own all of those sets, chances are you are a serious Jethro Tull fan, in which case you’ve probably already acquired this latest installment. To cut through the haze, anyone who has been meaning to pick up this excellent album should know it was remastered earlier this decade (and includes the obligatory bonus tracks), so you can pick that baby up for about a third the cost.

Now to be fair, there is a lot of good “extra” material included in this edition, and only hardcore Tull fans will have all of it in their collections. Various box sets and compilations have featured these BBC sessions as well as the Carnegie Hall concert from 1970. If you already own Stand Up and are interested in hearing some vintage Tull from that era, as well as an extended interview with Ian Anderson, you could do worse. That interview, conducted earlier this year, is the real draw here for fans that already have everything.

All that being said, a question those unfamiliar or unimpressed with Jethro Tull might ask is: what does it matter? It matters because, all other considerations aside (deluxe packaging with original pop-up inside cover, liner notes from Ian Anderson, the first full and unedited version of “With You There To Help Me/By Kind Permission Of” from the Carnegie Hall show (wherein new pianist John Evan does his best Ludwig Van), 5.1 surround sound—but no footage—of the concert), Stand Up is a crucial album in many regards. In addition to serving as the first testament of the band Tull became, and would become, it endures as a meaningful document from what turned out to be a very transitional moment in rock history.So, if this somewhat superfluous new release affords the opportunity for a sustained reappraisal, all the better.

Stand Up may be Jethro Tull’s second album, but it is more like a first than a follow-up, in almost every way. This Was, their proper debut, illustrated the direction which that band might have gone in (keywords: that band). Mick Abrahams, original lead guitarist and co-leader, was no slouch and to his credit knew exactly where he wanted to go. A dedicated acolyte of the blues, Abrahams was all about the old school and dirt-under-the-nails authenticity. His approach is mostly successful on This Was, with songs such as “Move On Alone”, “It’s Breaking Me Up” and the garage rock aggression of “Beggar’s Farm”. On other songs the sound is overly derivative and while never boring, the results are not exactly memorable, unless the design was to sound like third-rate Cream (it was a dubious decision to include “Cat’s Squirrel”, a song featured on Cream’s debut, which suffers by comparison and betrays an opportunism that would have been more honest—and less misguided—if they’d called it “Copycat’s Squirrel”).

In any event, by 1968 that formula (British bands earnestly mimicking American blues legends) was pretty well played out, no matter how convincingly rendered. Even Cream’s debut sounds dated, particularly in comparison with their stunning follow-up Disraeli Gears. In other words, Abrahams had hitched his axe to a locomotive that was going backwards (where he contentedly rode it into semi-obscurity with Bloodwyn Pig), and it is understandable that Ian Anderson envisioned bigger and better—or at least more original—fields for Tull to plow.

Enter Martin Barre, a young but game guitarist whose primary credentials were his lack of experience, which ensured Anderson would never again compete with anyone for control of the band. It is, then, to Anderson’s considerable credit that the resulting album—recorded less than one year later—represents a development that was, and remains, staggering. The dividends Barre delivers are immediate, and well-represented throughout the recording. While one can detect the flute-driven energy of “Beggar’s Farm” in “Back To The Family”, the latter is less a jam and more a proper “song”. Interestingly, both Abrahams and Barre, like every other guitarist in the mid-to-late ‘60s, were listening to a lot of Clapton, and the first two Tull albums are tributes of a sort to the first two Cream albums. To be certain, Barre is less interested in aping Clapton’s riffs and although the blistering outro on “Back To The Family” is a bit of a nod to “God”, it possesses its own unrefined power. While Barre’s playing is not as technically proficient, it’s debatable whether even Clapton can match the emotional heft uncorked on “We Used To Know”, which is cold-finger, raw hangnail material.

There is also ample evidence of the first-rate lyricist Anderson would quickly become. There have not been many 22-year-olds in rock music history who could half-convincingly write songs like “Look Into The Sun”, “We Used To Know” and especially “Reasons For Waiting” (the best song you’ve never heard). These songs are a universe apart from anything on This Was and provide early evidence of the incredibly warm and full sound Anderson gets from his acoustic guitar.

Then there are the familiar songs, some of which continue to get airplay on classic rock radio: “Bouree”, the jazz-rock riff on Bach; “Nothing Is Easy”, the flute-cake manifesto; and the band’s first huge hit, “Living In The Past” (not released on the original album, but included as a bonus track). “A New Day Yesterday” is an ideal opening statement, teasing with nods to the black-and-blues soundscape from ’68, then exploding into Technicolor as Barre’s guitar solo bleeds into Anderson’s frenetic and reverb-laden flute breakdown. Finally, the jocular “Fat Man”, featuring both mandolin and balalaika, a first signal of the folk and eastern influences that would permeate the band’s mature work. There is still a blues sensibility driving most of this material, but Anderson—who clearly had ability and creativity to burn—is already showing signs of developing the multi-faceted approach he would bring to each successive effort.

A few words must be said about Clive Bunker and Glenn Cornick, the drummer and bassist who would not be long for this band (Cornick lasted one more album; Bunker two). While it’s hard to quibble with Bunker’s excellent replacement, Barrie Barlow, Bunker was the perfect drummer for Jethro Tull’s early work. He does restrained as well as explosive, but his accompaniment is always ideal for whatever a particular song calls for. Songs like “Back to the Family” and “For a Thousand Mothers” would be unthinkable without his contributions. Cornick was a top-notch bass player and each new remaster reinforces how busy and brilliant he was in the pocket. He gets room to shine on “Bouree” and “Nothing Is Easy”, but as is often the case with the best bassists, you almost don’t realize he’s there until you stop and consider what a particular song would sound like without him. The charisma and stage antics of Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond became indispensable components of Tull’s charm and overall history, but the loss of Cornick (see: artistic differences, rock music’s version of the pink slip) affected the later music more than Anderson might ever care to admit.

1969 was not merely the conclusion of a decade, it was the end of a succession of eras. These include the British Invasion and the aforementioned blues-by-numbers of those bands (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, Cream, even early Led Zeppelin), psychedelia, art-rock and the eventual, inevitable marriage of precision and pretension that brought us the dreaded “concept album”. By 1970 many of the bands that would become most closely associated with progressive rock (or Prog with a capital P), like King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes and ELP, were already off the proverbial reservation, crafting side-long suites and noodling away in the manner that captivated listeners and confounded critics.

Stand Up, then, remains rather unique. It is a document created in a rapidly closing artistic window, pre-prog but post-British blues and psychedelic rock. Within two years Jethro Tull would unleash Aqualung and fully, if warily, enter the prog-rock arena (literally and figuratively). Their second album continues to age quite nicely as a hybrid of many sounds, and a reflection of Ian Anderson’s restless vision. Stand Up boasts an ambition and vitality we usually associate with most successful debut albums, but the band is more seasoned and confident, with accordingly impressive results. It still manages to sound unspoiled, an ideal balance of daring and the deliberate.

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For J.D. Salinger, Jethro Tull and Me

February 8, 2010 By 1 Comment

She nodded. “Make it extraordinarily squalid and moving,” she suggested. “Are you at all acquainted with squalor?”

I said not exactly but that I was getting better acquainted with it, in one form or another, all the time…

–J.D. Salinger, “For Esme — with Love and Squalor” (1950)

Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth, as the song says.

April, 1988.

More time has passed since those days than had passed since I’d been born.  There has to be a more eloquent way to put that, but I’m having a difficult time coming up with it. More to the point, I am increasingly unable to avoid calculations like this. Why? Because the balance has shifted and, going forward, more years (and things) will have transpired in my life, but few of them will be as indelible. So there’s that.

Everyone talks about how reading The Catcher in the Rye is one of those seminal rites of passage. Now that J.D. Salinger has gone to that big field of rye in the sky, everyone is talking about it all at once. I would be a phony, I figure, not to include myself (and all). For starters, what do you call a rite of passage involving a lot of middle-aged (or older) folks talking about the passing of an author who wrote one of the ultimate rite of passage novels? Indulgent? Inevitable? Ironic? All of the above?

By the time I got around to Holden Caulfield, I was already a senior in high school. Too young? Too old? Just right? For better or worse, I was either too old, or not alienated enough, to feel the full force of Salinger’s operetta of adolescent angst. Of course, I’m selling it short (or am I?), but I’ve heard very few adults whose opinions I admire mention falling under this novel’s spell while revisiting it as an adult. Myself, I couldn’t tell if it was too obvious this book was the result of a grown man trying (diligently, and in that overly mannered, oft-imitated style) to sound like a disaffected but acutely sensitive sixteen year old, or if it’s because he succeeded so thoroughly that, even as a seventeen year old, I wasn’t especially simpatico with his anguished, if solipsistic observations. Which is not to say that his plight did not move me, or that his situation is not, at times, rendered with profound artistry by Salinger.

(This is the squalid, or moving part of my observation: after getting several paragraphs of analysis and personal reflection put down, my power went out for a second, and I lost everything I had just written. Everyone knows, whether they are writing an essay or an e-mail, how indescribably frutrating this can be. Nevertheless, I had to chuckle thinking Salinger’s spirit was taking the piss out of my piece, or else the collective force of so many Holden Caulfield acolytes simply snuffed me out in midstream as a sort of karmic correction. Duly noted, and a discouraging setback but not enough to tempt me to pull a Seymour Glass.)

Perhaps it would be a bit unfair, if mostly accurate to conclude that The Catcher in the Rye is the archetypal novel of adolescent alienation for teenagers/young adults who don’t read a great deal of fiction. Just as there are certain types of movies and music that, through a perfect storm of critical consensus and a groundswell of contagious public approbation, get anointed as authentic touchstones of a particular moment in time (I would say “tapping into the zeitgeist” but I try to avoid using the dreaded z-word if at all possible).

Regarding the almost half-century of silence that followed his initial burst of creativty, Norman Mailer decreed Salinger “the greatest mind to ever stay in prep school.” That is harsh but it is also –based on the available evidence– pretty indisputable. On the other hand, when people hold up The Catcher in the Rye (or even Franny and Zooey) as the zenith of Salinger’s oeuvre, they are overlooking (or more likely, have never read) “For Esme –With Love and Squalor”, in my estimation one of the five best American short stories of the 20th Century. Indeed, what Salinger accomplishes in those twenty-odd pages greatly exceeds the sum total of Mailer’s voluminous, if mostly perishable output. Everything that Salinger didn’t do, or didn’t do convincingly, or didn’t do well enough to reward subsequent readings by a more mature audience, in his canonized novel, he does in spades with this short story. It is a compact, devastating illumination of the cruel machinery we, for lack of a better or more appropriate word, call adulthood. How fittingly ironic, then, that a writer celebrated (and minimized) for being the consummate chronicler of what Pete Townshend later called “teenage wasteland” actually wrote a shattering treatise from the trenches (literally and figuratively) that endures well into a new millennium. Of which, more later.

 

As it happens, when I first experienced The Catcher in the Rye I was in the early (but intense) stages of what became a lifelong infatuation with Jethro Tull. Which naturally coincided with my burgeoning obsession with all-things progressive rock, which happened to coincide with the release of so many classic recordings on that new-fangled technical revelation called compact discs. It would be near impossible for anyone who didn’t live through those days to imagine a world when you waited for anything: i-Pods and online access have made everything that has ever happened available, immediately.

Back then, waiting for certain Rush, Yes, King Crimson and especially Jethro Tull albums to get their digital reincarnation was like patiently awaiting Moses to deliver a new sonic commandment every other week. The upside of this, of course, was that it was still a time when you had time (you had no choice) to savor and spend time with a new purchase, and by the time you’d (temporarily) exhausted your enthusiasm, you had ample funds to get the next installment. This was also, as many will remember, a time before information itself was a free 24/7 proposition. As such, each trip to the record store was loaded with possibility: you never knew what might have been released, including albums by bands like Genesis and Pink Floyd, that you never even knew existed. And, it should go without saying that the prospect of upgrading scratchy vinyl (or tape-recorded) copies of Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin and Hendrix albums was something slightly beyond orgasmic.

Anyway, it was during the winter and spring of 1988 that the back catalog of Jethro Tull was being released, a couple at a time, on compact disc. It was around this time, having already devoured Thick as a Brick and still patiently awaiting the arrival of A Passion Play, that I had my first sustained go-round with Tull’s third album, 1970′s Benefit. In April 1988 it was the right album at the right time. Remarkably, it still is.

But before you can fully appreciate what Tull achieves on Benefit, one has to consider (and understand) the brilliant album that preceded it, 1969′s Stand Up. In addition to the handful of gems that still get radio play (“Nothing Is Easy, “Bouree”, “A New Day Yesterday” and “Fat Man”), there were a couple of standard coming-of-age type middle finger salutes to the establishment: “Back to the Family”, which features a blistering guitar coda from Martin Barre and album-closer “For A Thousand Mothers”, where Ian Anderson not only spits on, but laughs at the naysayers. This song is notable for perfecting  a sort of “garage flute rock”: once you hear that joyously spiteful noise, this might not sound like such an oxymoron. (And incidentally, if you don’t realize how incendiary and downright dangerous this band was capable of sounding circa ’69, get a load of this.) The two most surprising, and surprisingly abiding, songs are “Look Into The Sun” which Led Zep could have put on their third album (and indeed they may have been listening to this one before taking their somewhat left-field, and awesome, acoustic turn in 1970) and the best song you’ve never heard, the sublime and ethereal “Reasons For Waiting”. But the one that stands out (or stands up, as the case may be) from the rest is the ceaselessly astonishing “We Used To Know.” Check it out:

How many 21 year olds write songs like that? The world weariness of those vocals (not to mention the lyrics) and the masterful subtlety of Martin Barre’s embellishment through the first half make the song ache with longing and arid resignation. But then after the flute solo bleeds into the guitar solo, the song explodes into the clear-eyed appraisal of a man who has fully taken stock of the world, and the reigns of his destiny. As we know now, he never looked back. (A few quick words about that guitar solo: more than a few folks, including Ian Anderson, have noticed that The Eagles’ much more famous “Hotel California” seems to have borrowed more than a little from “We Used To Know”. Personally, I think it’s a tough case to make as the two songs are so different, but this does present an opportunity to lament the fact that Joe Walsh, lovable rascal that he is, would be easily identified by approximately 100% of people who know anything about rock music, while Martin Barre might be recognized by one in ten, and that is being generous. Such is life, and don’t weep for Mr. Barre who can wipe his own eyes with the piles of money he has earned. Joe Walsh, who left his talent and most of his brain cells in that holiday weekend of excess called the ’70s, endures as an avatar, and casualty, of that era: he is the coke-stained hundred dollar bill that says so many things about a time and a place where certain people did certain things because they quite simply could afford to. Mr. Barre, on the other hand, is a vintage Jaguar –pronounced Jag.U.R.– that may have neither the flash or immediacy of newer, more colorful models, but discerning eyes can assess its value, and class, with little difficulty. In hindsight, listening to him in song after song after song, it becomes increasingly clear that even some of the most accomplished –and celebrated– guitarists of the ’70s were using crayons while Barre had already figured out how to use water colors.)

So where were we? Ah, 1970. The growth evidenced between Tull’s blues-drenched debut and the follow-up, only a year later, is unequaled by any other rock band’s first and second albums. This is in no small part due to Barre’s arrival (replacing Mick Abrahams, who lost his battle to co-lead the band and continue down the British blues revue road) and the almost incomprehensible maturation of Ian Anderson’s songwriting proficiency. To the band’s credit, their ambition knew no bounds, and part of their strategy for the third album was to recruit John Evan to agument the sound with his considerable piano (and organ) skills. It was a move that paid substantial dividends, immediately evident on the first song, “With You There To Help Me”. Evan’s welcome presence is in full effect on the deceptively simple, almost waltz-like “Alive and Well and Living In“, which details the dynamics of a failing, probably abusive relationship. The flute and acoustic guitar bely the heartbreakingly familiar subject matter (a woman stuck in the rut of on-again/off-again romance with a man who is distant and then demanding, while she is quick to forgive but not quite able to forget), but Barre’s abrasive guitar tone articulates the anger steadily being buried beneath the surface. It’s a cautionary tale for the teenage listener who has yet to embark on a meaningful romance (written by a young man who could not have had a great deal of experience himself) that an older listener can still admire, decades later.

But the centerpiece (thematically, aesthetically) of the album –and a song that absolutely ranks in the upper echelon of the Tull catalog– has to be “Nothing To Say”. If “We Used To Know” grapples with a wary nostaligia that accompanies the resolve to make one’s own way (as an artist but also as a young adult going out into the world),  ”Nothing To Say” confronts the pressures (of an artist or a young adult out in the world) of conformity or, in Anderson’s case, the expectation that he will embrace the role of countercultural guru, ready to dispense words of wisdom for his young acolytes (a role many artists are quite satisfied to assume, and much more so today than in 1970). Anderson’s ambivalence about this scenario signals, as much as any rock song of that era, that the ’60s are over. Anderson who, to his credit, did not pay much more than lip service (intellectually, lyrically) to the free-love surface level ethos of the festival-flocking hippies, takes aim at both sides of the system and espouses a creed of personal responsibility. What at first might be read as a surly refusal to take a stand is actually an admonishment that everyone needs to figure it out on their own; certainly Anderson was not willing to be a de-facto spokesman for anything political or otherwise. The world was, in many ways, a mess, but every concerned citizen is personally accountable for finding their way and bringing about whatever change is warranted:

It’s not my power
to criticize or to ask you to be blind
To your own pressing problem
and the hate you must unwind.
So ask of me no answer
there is none that I could give
you wouldn’t find.

At this point, Anderson has dealt with the past (Stand Up) and the present (Benefit); his burgeoning confidence would prompt him to combine those elements in an attempt to grind some axes that probed quite a bit deeper than the typical sociopolitical commentary on offer (then, now). As it turns out he had plenty to say, which brings us to Aqualung and the semi-dreaded concept album, wherein Anderson turns his attention, and lacerating wit, to the institution of organized religion. First off, it’s one of the more unfortunate, if trivial, missteps in rock. Naming their fourth album Aqualung was akin to Black Sabbath changing their name from Earth. In both instances, a less appropriate moniker makes the work easier to dismiss. Considering the thematic scope of the album, and the central thesis of how religion affects us all, especially when we are at a young and formative age. It is tantalizing to imagine how much more street cred this album could –and would– have accrued if it were named after almost any of the other ten songs, specifically “Cheap Day Return”, “Up To Me” or “Wind Up” (particularly as a pun for what this expression signifies in British slang–as a comment on the song and the album, and the material, which was sure to “wind up” some listeners). But most of all, this album absolutely should have been named “My God” which, again, would be appropriate on the micro and macro levels.

In any event, anyone who has made it this far most likely has at least a passing acquaintance with this particular album (perhaps beyond the excellent title track and the radio staples “Locomotive Breath” and “Cross-Eyed Mary”). While the first side of the LP concerns itself with, for lack of a better cliche, man’s inhumanity to man, the second side takes on religion with a righteous indignation that has not been improved upon by many (if any) other mainstream artists since ’71.

I wrote a bit about this one (while attempting a succint overview of the band’s career here) and here’s an excerpt on a couple of songs from Side One: the one-two acoustic punch of “Cheap Day Return” and “Mother Goose” are archetypes of a sort; the kind of whimsical British folk that Tull perfected: the songs seem straightforward and pleasant enough (and they are) but are cut by their topical, and occasionally unsettling, lyrical import. This is Anderson’s calling card, and nowhere is it in better effect than the one minute and twenty-four seconds of perfection entitled “Cheap Day Return”. In astonishingly succinct and effective fashion Anderson deals with his own alienation, offers a sardonic appraisal of his own budding super-stardom (What a laugh!), and his father’s imminent death, all in a song that sounds innocuous as a nursery rhyme.

Side Two is a remarkably ambitious –and successful– attempt to look at the racket religion has degenerated into (or was it always thus?) and after getting some licks in on the clergy, Anderson turns both barrels on the men who have sought to create a  convenient God in their own image. Pretty sophomoric stuff, eh? Well, that’s partly the point (more on that in a moment), but what’s remarkable is that these songs have lost none of their power or perspicacity. It still sounds pretty audacious today, but was downright defiant to pen tunes like this in 1971 (check out “My God” and “Hymn 43“, which includes the incendiary couplet “If Jesus saves, he better save himself/From the gory glory seekers who’ll use his name in death). In just one minute Anderson nails, for all time, the opportunistic hypocrisy of the materially rich but spiritually depraved amongst us who compensate (figuratively) for their nagging consciences in the confessional or in the collection basket (“And you press on God’s waiter your last dime/As he hands you the bill”). But on the literal levels, these are the people we all know: our peers, parents and especially our politicians, and Anderson sardonically nails these weekend warriors to their crosses of gold.

He saves the best for last, when in “Wind Up” he recalls being shipped off to church, eventually concluding that God is “not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays”. I can trace the trajectory of when I first heard this album, early in high school, and loving the “hit” songs, to eventually gaining a fuller appreciation of “My God” –in terms of the lyrical import and the inspired way Anderson multi-tracks his vocals to imitate, and satirize, a sanctified choral hymn– and the other songs on the second side. But it wasn’t until college that the full effects of “Wind Up” revealed themselves to the not-so-innocent, recovering Catholic who had served mass as an altar boy only a couple of years earlier:

In your pomp and all your glory you’re a poorer man than me/As you lick the boots of death born out of fear.

I’ll decline to further recall how profound those lyrics seemed to a nineteen year old, but I’ll argue they retain their poetic import even now. Of course one comes to an age where they can see through the self-serving charade and the fake humility and the sickening appropriation of the holy for personal, earthly gains. Et cetera. But this sort of material goes several steps beyond fighting the power or endorsing the punk rock anarchy; this stuff is gospel for a young sensitive soul, alienated by everything and earnestly (sensitive souls are nothing if not earnest) looking for Truth with a capital T.

Which, at long last, brings us back to Salinger. If the holy trinity (sorry) of Tull albums comprised the ideal, if occasionally uncomfortable, source material for making that awkward (but earnest!) leap from adolescence to young adulthood, “For Esme — with Love and Squalor” is among the handful of indispensable short stories (along with Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well Lighted Place”,  Tolstoy’s “The Three Hermits”, Kafka’s “First Sorrow”, James Joyce’s “Eveline” and especially Joao Guimaraes Rosa’s “The Third Bank of the River”) that resonate on profound and permanent levels with a certain type of person at a certain age.

Perhaps, as already acknowledged, I simply came to The Catcher in the Rye too late (although, as already suggested, I am uncertain it was capable of working its celebrated charms on me, not because I didn’t relate to Holden Caulfield on some levels, but more because as I read I kept thinking “Yeah? Is this all you got?”). There can be no doubt that I came to “Esme” at exactly the right age: after digesting Catcher and spending many a session (and, the writer would be remiss to overlook, at least one enchanted, and mycologic evening) uncovering the ultimately not so mysterious mysteries of Aqualung. I was, inevitably, an ardent if confused soul quite concerned with “again becoming a man with all his fac– with all his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact”.

Like the very best literature, “For Esme — with Love and Squalor” is every bit enjoyable and edifying to adult eyes as it is to, say, the wider eyes of a college sophomore. In fact, Salinger’s achievement is that much more poignant (and devastating) to an older audience who has actually known people who have been wounded or killed in war. But the narrator of this story is reeling from actual experience in the real world, so it resonates to a young reader about to enter it, and certainly a more mature reader who has seen and felt some of those proverbial slings and arrows. If there is a more  quietly coruscating image in literature than the narrator lifting Esme’s (KIA) father’s wristwatch, which has shattered in transit, out of the care package, I’m not aware of it. The question, as the story ends, is: does that broken glass represent the narrator’s spirit, or will he rally to once more become part of the world?

This is the question so many (but apparently not enough, considering we are still fighting wars and still taking less than acceptable care of our veterans) young adults grapple with at a crucial time in their lives.

This is the question J.D. Salinger may or may not have answered, in his own inscrutable fashion, once he turned his back on fame –and his fans– and spent the last decades of his life in a golden cage of his making. Whether or not he was quietly desperate, or just quiet, will presumably be answered once those elusive and much-discussed manuscripts see the light of day.

Once it seemed there would always be
a time for everything.
Ages passed I knew at last
my life had never been.
I’d been missing what time could bring.
Fifty years and I’m filled with tears and joys
I never cried.
Burn the wagon and chain the mule.
The past is all denied.
There’s no time for everything.
No time for everything.

–Ian Anderson, “A Time For Everything” (1970)

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A Kinder, Gentler Jethro Tull

January 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

jethrotull-splsh

Meanwhile back in the year…1978?

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. The progressive rock monolith (immortalized, or infamous, from the cover of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s Tarkus… or the cover of any Yes album) was lurching toward its bloated end-game. This was unfortunate, or overdue, depending upon your perspective. If punk rock did not quite reign supreme, there was no question that its DIY ethos was gaining steam. If one image (besides a disco ball) could express the disfavor the stadium-rock old guard was falling into, consider the (calculated) mileage Johnny Rotten received for scrawling “I Hate” above his Pink Floyd t-shirt. Pretense, all of a sudden, was anathema—and if the cash registers were still clanking, they would be replaced by synthesizer sounds and round-the-clock music videos in short order.

Back to basics? How about back to the 18th Century? That is the vibe Jethro Tull was emanating circa 1978. The band that dropped not one, but two single-song album suites (ingenious or insufferable, depending upon your perspective), had evolved into a proficient troop of professionals that incorporated strings, lutes, fifes and harpsichords into their repertoire. Beginning in 1975, with less irony than some might assume, Tull released consecutive albums entitled Minstrel in the Gallery and Too Old To Rock and Roll; Too Young To Die!. Then, as if doubling down on their never hip (but, to their credit, never affected) sensibility, they released Songs From The Wood (’77) and Heavy Horses.

Heavy_Horses_front

To put more plainly, the same years The Clash, The Ramones and The Sex Pistols were establishing a radically new and brazen rock aesthetic, Ian Anderson appeared on an album cover flanked by two Clydesdales. Out of time and possibly out of touch (but still remarkably successful, for all the right reasons), Jethro Tull were, first and foremost, a band for people who craved intelligent and occasionally challenging music, played convincingly by exceptional musicians. How quaint.

In any event, it was while touring for the recently released Heavy Horses (the title track being a prescient—and unironic!—tribute to the working horses of England who, much like prog rock, were soon to step aside; their demise having less to do with trends and tastemakers than technology) that the band had the privilege of transmitting a show live, via satellite, from New York City to Britain. That Jethro Tull was the band selected for this historic occasion should adequately signify how huge they were at that time. Not for nothing (even though 1980 and alas, a new line-up ushering in a lesser era lurked unknowingly, just ‘round the corner), this was arguably Tull’s ultimate cast of characters.

The band, including mostly unheralded drummer Barriemore Barlow and the brilliant keyboardist John Evan, along with David Palmer (arranger/keyboardist) and Tony Williams (gamely filling in for bassist John Glascock, who would pass away a short time later at the absurdly young age of 28) as well as Anderson’s right hand man, lead guitarist Martin Barre, were a force to be reckoned with. These lads brought the noise—so to speak—in the studio and were quite capable of recreating their material on stage.

And the above point gets to the heart of the matter in regards to the merits of this new release. For a band that has toured almost ceaselessly for four decades (!), there is painfully little footage available of Tull in their prime. The year 1978, then, finds them suitably confident and eager for the occasion, and they acquit themselves with flying colors. The DVD, like the gig, was necessarily unorthodox: the satellite feed was transmitted to UK households watching The Old Grey Whistle Test. As such, the band was obliged to play a three song “warm up” (seen only by the live audience at Madison Square Garden), then re-start the concert, play until the allotted time ran out, “end” the show and then come back out for several more songs (again only seen by the live crowd).

This detail is intriguing not only as back-story but to marvel at how incredibly far we’ve come, technologically speaking, in only a few decades. The evening’s performance is included on this DVD, which generously includes a bonus CD with the same tracks (a fact that should elevate this offering from interesting to imperative for Tull fans).

The show itself is quite satisfactory: Ian Anderson, ever the showman, may have slowed down a step from his “Mad Dog Fagin” days, but he—and the rest of the band—is still fit, trim and full of fire. The highlight of the concert (and the “opening song” for the UK audience) must be “Thick As A Brick” which represents (at least for now) the definitive live version of this extraordinary tune.

The recent albums are nicely represented with spirited takes on “Songs From The Wood” (wherein the audience is literally challenged to “join the chorus if (they) can”), “Heavy Horses” and “No Lullaby”. As always, the band is obliged to perform crowd favorites “Aqualung” (which never translates particularly well live) and “Locomotive Breath” (which does), and there are some pleasant surprises such as “My God” and “One Brown Mouse”.

Live At Madison Square Garden 1978 is indeed a very worthwhile—and somewhat overdue—addition to the Tull catalog, and hopefully this signals an imminent willingness to explore the vaults for more (preferably even earlier) material.

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My Kind of Christmas Music

December 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

cb

Tchaikovsky

 

Corelli

 

Bach

John Fahey

The Who

Chuck Berry

a two-fer from Jethro Tull!


The Godfather

The Boss

Satchmo

Ella! (An embarrassment of riches here, here, and here)

 

Vince (The King)

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