Murphy's Law

Not much to add here (other than a h/t to my boy Jamie, who passed it along).

Okay.

Gibson (the fine folks who bring us some of our best guitars) has recently announced their selections of what they deem the Top 50 Guitar Albums ever.

Now, as someone who writes about music (and who has offered up a few lists of my own), I am acutely aware that one person’s list is another person’s purgatory. Put simply, when it comes to matters of taste and ranking (a particularly combustible combination), there is no pleasing everyone. In fact, there is no pleasing anyone, since the list makers themselves are invariably disappointed or frustrated. When you are talking about the best of the best, it is like boiling the Pacific Ocean to get a handful of salt.

So it is in the spirit of augmenting and not critiquing (though there are many items on their list I find objectionable) that I offer up an alternative Top 10 with some (very) honorable mentions. To avoid redundancy, my list will not duplicate any of the ones already selected by Gibson. Fortunately, there are more than enough to go ’round, and despite some genuine head-scratchers (there are many items on their list I find offensive, aesthetically speaking), it’s silly to quibble too much with a list that features most (but certainly not all) of the usual suspects.

Let’s review their Top 10:

10. AC/DC: Back in Black, 9. The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland, 8. Cream: Disraeli Gears, 7. The Allman Brothers Band: At Fillmore East, 6. Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin II, 5. Guns N’ Roses: Appetite for Destruction, 4. Derek and the Dominoes: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, 3. Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin IV, 2. The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced, 1. Van Halen, Van Halen.

Nothing really outrageous there, I reckon. I would say The Who should be in any list before AC/DC and having Eric “God” Clapton in there twice is a bit much (particularly at the expense of Tony Iommi). I’ll just wryly suggest that putting Van Halen (a worthy Top 10 entry for sure) before Hendrix is equal parts laughable and ludicrous. And if you do –and you should– have Hendrix in there, put all three of his albums in there, because a case could be made that they go 1-2-3.

There are many predictable (and inappropriate) selections rounding out the other 40 selections, such as Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Really? Those guys who could barely play their instruments made one of the 50 best (#15, in fact) guitar albums of all time? Give me a personal break and slip a safety pin through it. Another AC/DC (Highway To Hell) but nothing by Rush? Of course. Oasis but no Living Colour? Oh. Et cetera.

So I won’t spend more time bitching about the unconscionable omission of albums like (insert anything by Black Sabbath) or (insert anything by Rush circa 1970-something) or Aqualung, The Queen is Dead, Selling England by the Pound, Morrison Hotel, (insert virtually anything by Frank Zappa), Superfly, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Time’s Up, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Rubber Factory, Let It Bleed, Animals, The Royal Scam, The Woods, (insert anything by Sonic Youth), and one or two (dozen) others.

Here is my alternate Top 10, with respect to their mostly unassailable final selections.

10. Yes, The Yes Album

Let’s start out with Yes since, other than Rush, this band gets the least love from the so-called critical establishment. Nevermind the fact that (like Rush) their musicians, pound for pound and instrument for instrument, are as capable and talented as any that have ever played. Steve Howe is the 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, and his ability to create texture, nuance (check out the extended midle section of “Yours Is No Disgrace”) and bombast (check out the blistering work on “Perpetual Change”) is, on these proceedings, unparalleled.

9. Kiss: Alive

Before the sex, drugs, alcohol and the gravity of expectations vs. ability set in, Kiss was lean, hungry, unappreciated and angry. They also wore make-up. But circa 1975, the hardest touring band in show biz was firing on every conceivable cylinder. Their overproduced, somewhat half-baked studio work did not adequately represent what outstanding musicians they all were (no, seriously), but their genius decision to put out a live album (before they were big) and make it a double album was what put them over. And it still sounds incredible; easily one of the best live albums of the era. The star of these proceedings is Ace Frehley, who was always better than he sounded. He is a rock god on this outing, and he never really sounded better than this. Every single song features a solo that is logical, concise and utterly original (check out his restrained but authoritative work at the 1:50 minute mark here). All those candy-ass hair bands in the ’80s weren’t even trying to emulate this because they knew it was impossible.

8. Bad Brains, I Against I

No Bad Brains, no Living Colour.

Maybe not literally (and that is not said to deny that the amazing Vernon Reid would –or could– have ever been denied), but if you want to talk about stepping stones, Bad Brains are the Viking ship that launched a thousand mosh pits. Side one of this sucker, their masterpiece, is one of the most pure and potent distillations of unclassifiable genius in all rock. It’s all in there: rock, rap, reggae, hardcore, metal and yourself. And it’s all good.

7. Pretenders, Pretenders

Prediction: if James Honeyman-Scott (and his partner in crime, bassist Pete Farndon) had not overdosed, The Pretenders would have owned the ’80s. As it happens, “all” they did was make three perfect albums, one right after the other. While assessing their first two records (back in 2006 when they were reissued), this is what I had to say about the guitar playing: James Honeyman Scott—whose guitar playing throughout announces the advent of a major talent—uncorks a solo that somehow manages to soar while remaining subdued, transporting emotion without the flash, substance without the shtick. Virtually every note he plays defines his less-is-more style, which is not an exercise in minimalism so much as the confident restraint of an artist who could speak for minutes but conveys it his own way in seconds. Importantly, his contributions are the very opposite of the much-maligned self-indulgence of the mid-’70s prog rock the punks so scornfully (and gleefully) piled on, but also a million miles away from the sterile sheen and hair band histrionics that dominated the scene after he checked out. Need more evidence? Three words: “Tattooed Love Boys”. Of all the mini masterpieces that make up the album, this short blast of bliss might be its zenith: no other group at any other time could ever make a song that sounds like this (the music, the words, the vocals, the vibe. To listen again is cause to celebrate and mourn the senseless loss of Honeyman Scott: even if we are fortunate that he essentially distilled a career’s worth of talent into two classic albums, it’s simply a shame to ruminate on how much more he had to offer.

6. King Crimson, Red

The progenitors of math rock on their last album of the ’70s. Red is the Rosetta Stone 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. It is the closest thing rock guitar ever got to its own version of “Giant Steps”. Robert Fripp has never been boring or unoriginal and he outdoes himself here. Finally, few songs in rock history have the emotional import and uncanny feeling Fripp conjures in the album’s final song, “Starless”.

5. Santana: Caravanserai

Abraxas gets most of the recognition, even though Santana III is better. Yet not enough people name-check Caravanserai, which is a shame since it’s not only Santana’s best album, it’s one of the great documents of a great decade. If you’ve heard their big hits on the radio (and who hasn’t?) it’s familiar yet also elusive. There is an unforced exotic vibe the band taps into, and from the first cricket chirps to the last frantic arpeggios, the listener is definitely in another place altogether. The playing throughout is so obviously in the service of a singular and uncompromised vision, it still sounds primitive and from the future all at the same time (something the band itself acknowledges, literally, in the title of one of the more indescribable pieces). No serious fan of rock music should be without this album and that it didn’t make the cut for Gibson’s list is indefensible.

4. The Who: Quadrophenia

Sure, the Gibson crew got Live at Leeds and Who’s Next, but Quadrophenia is, in no particular order, The Who’s best album, one of the five best albums of the ’70s and an all-time guitar-playing tour de force. This is it. Townshend was never this energized or inspired again, and it all came together in a double LP that is not as immediately accessible or endearing as Tommy, but once you get it, it gets inside you –and it never leaves. From extended workouts like “The Rock” (which sounds a bit like an updated and plugged in version of Tommy’s “Underture), to slash and burn mini epics like “Bell Boy”  to pre-punk (and post-Mod) anthems like “5:15″ (check out PT’s lacerating but always-in-control frenzy toward the song’s coda).

I wrote at length about The Who last year and here is what I had to say regarding Quadrophenia:

The genius of Quadrophenia (an album that manages to get name-checked by all the big names and seems universally admired but still not quite revered as much as it richly deserves) is yet to be fully detailed, at least for my liking. Less flashy than the “rock opera” Tommy and less accessible than the FM-friendly Who’s Next, it is, nonetheless, significantly more impressive (and important) than both of those excellent albums. Everything The Who did, in the studio and onstage, up until 1969 set the stage for Tommy: it was the consummation of Townshend’s obsessions and experimentations; a decade-closing magnum opus that managed to simultaneously celebrate the death and rebirth of the Hippie Dream (see the movie and ponder this, this and especially this). Everything Townshend did, in his entire life, up until 1973 set the stage for Quadrophenia. It’s all in there: the pre-teen angst, the teenage agonies and the post-teen despondency. Politicians and parents are gleefully skewered, prigs and clock punchers are mercilessly unmasked, and those who consider themselves less fortunate than everyone else (this, at times, is all of us) are serenaded with equal measures of empathy and exasperation.

And the songs? It’s like being in a shooting gallery, where Townshend picks off hypocrisy after misdeed after miniature tragedy all with a winking self deprecation; this after all is a young misfit’s story, so the bathos and pathos is milked, and articulated, in ways that convey the earth-shattering urgency and comical banality that are part and parcel to the typical coming of age cri de coeur. And the band, certainly no slouch on its previous few efforts, is in top form throughout. Being a double album (quite possibly the best one, and that is opined knowing that Electric Ladyland, Physical Grafitti and London Calling are also on the dance card), it’s difficult to imagine a better song to open side three than the immortal 5:15. Unlike most double albums that tend to drag a bit toward the end, this one gets better as it goes along, and none of the songs feel forced. Some of the songs on Tommy seem shoehorned to fit the storyline but that’s never an issue with Quadrophenia; Townshend had a unified vision and the songs tell a cogent and affecting tale. As great as Who’s Next really is, you can have “Baba O’Riley”, “Bargain” and “Behind Blue Eyes”; give me “Cut My Hair”, “Sea and Sand” and “Bell Boy”. And then there is the song Pete Townshend was born to write (and no, it was not “My Generation”, although only he could have written that one, and all the other great ones), “The Punk and the Godfather”.

3. Led Zeppelin: Presence

This is not a guitar album; this is guitar. Aside from Hendrix and Iommi, you could fill the rest of the list with Led Zeppelin albums and call it a day. Ridiculous though it may seem to some (many?), beloved and lionized as the Mighty Zep is, they actually don’t get enough attention for what unbelievable songwriters and musicians they were. Not too many people would argue –at least with any credibility– that Plant is one of the great rock vocalists and Bonzo is on the short list of rock drummers and John Paul Jones is the unsung hero and jack of all trades for this outfit. But Jimmy Page, aside from unimpeachable Golden God status, seems most known for his “Stairway To Heaven” solo and the work he did between ’69 and ’72. The blues-drenched debut and the next three albums helped define post-Beatles rock music and they need little elaboration. But let’s have some love for the last four albums. Houses of the Holy gets sufficient respect, sort of, but Physical Graffiti (#48 on Gibson’s list) should be acknowledged as what it is: one of the ten best albums of the ’70s. Some people give it up for the last hurrah, the (very) underrated In Through the Out Door (mostly because of  the radio-friendly hits “Fool in the Rain” and “All My Love”, even though Page does some of his finest playing on “In The Evening” and “I’m Gonna Crawl”). But what about the dark horse, the heroin needle in the haystack, Presence?

If Led Zeppelin II is the Story of Creation and Led Zeppelin IV is The Resurrection (and Physical Graffiti is Ecclesiastes), Presence is The Book of Revelation.

One thing most everyone can agree on: Presence is the most obscure, misunderstood and maligned album, even if it represents the most perfect balance of studio proficiency and unpolished bluster (anyone not in the know of its origins, but interested, start here). This is the effort that sees Page’s multi-tracked majesty playing hide and seek with some of the more raw and visceral playing of his career.

It comes crashing out of the gate with what may well be Page’s crowning achievement: ten minutes of electric guitar pyrotechnics and peregrinations called “Achilles Last Stand”. The vision (to imagine all these sounds) and the dexterity (to actually pull it off) is staggering and it features the solo: the impatient may proceed directly to the 3.43 mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFRFtnTd620

It concludes with the laconic “Tea For One”, the slowest and saddest blues Page ever pulled off. In between, there is intensity (the anti-cocaine “For Your Life”), depravity (the “borrowed” blues lament “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”), playful Elvis parody (“Candy Store Rock”) and a spicy tribute to the Big Easy (“Royal Orleans”). What it adds up to is as intimate a glimpse as we mortals would ever get at Zeppelin at their most vulnerable and naked (emotionally and musically). Page’s playing is, as always, a see-saw of acumen and urgency, but he was never this insistent or soulful before or after.

 

2. Black Sabbath: Vol. 4

Simply put, this is an electric guitar rock symphony. This is the wall of sound (or for hardcore Sabbath fans, I should say “The Wall of Sleep of Sound”), plugged in and performed by one man: Tony Iommi. It got different (for them, for us) but it never got any better than this.

I’ve had more than a little to say about Sabbath, so I’ll let anyone interested in reading (or revisiting) go here and here. The best thing you can do is just listen to the magic, which is very black and very brilliant.

1. The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Axis: Bold As Love

 Not in Gibson’s Top 10? Okay.

Not in Gibson’s Top 50? Oh.

Look, any of Hendrix’s three “proper” studio releases could fairly be claimed as number one (Are You Experienced because it came first; Electric Ladyland because it was better –and it was a double album) but one might end up quite contentedly in the middle and claim that Axis: Bold As Love is the guitar album of all guitar albums. The best? Who knows. The most important? Who cares. The most satisfying? Who could argue?

Here is what I said earlier this year, while discussing Hendrix’s legacy:

Axis: Bold As Love did not have as many instantly accessible singles, but in spite (or because) of that, the second album is unquestionably a major step forward in several regards. This is the disc to slip into any discussion regarding Hendrix’s indisputable, but underappreciated compositional acumen. The guitar is consistently front and center (while Redding and especially Mitchell remain impeccable, as always, in the pocket), but the emphasis on Jimi’s vocals turns purposeful attention on some of the best lyrics he ever penned. While Are You Experienced remains the sonic boom that cleared away all competition, even the best moments on that effort could never in a thousand years have anticipated songs like “Little Wing”, “Castles Made of Sand”, “One Rainy Wish” and “Bold As Love”. (Even an ostensibly throwaway tune like “She’s So Fine” is instructive: Jimi’s lightning leads and delectable falsetto choruses shine, but then there’s Mitch Fucking Mitchell. Only one drummer in rock was this fast and furious circa 1967 and his name was Keith Moon.)

The songs on Axis: Bold As Love, for the most part, are concise and unencumbered (the clarity of sound on these remasters more than justifies their acquisition), and this is in no small part due to producer (and then manager) Chas Chandler, who brought a strictly-business professionalism to the proceedings all through ’67. He explains his old school M.O. on the companion DVD: “If a band can’t get it in two or three takes they shouldn’t be in the studio.” How can you not love this guy? And watching Eddie Kramer at the console, isolating guitar tracks and vocals while recalling how the songs came together is a treat true Hendrix fans will lap up like voodoo soup.

There is also an air of adventure and daring that augments the sometimes disorienting edge of the debut. Hendrix is clearly pushing himself, each day coming up with new ideas and electrified with the air of possibility. That vision is convincingly and definitively realized, and we can only lament the comparatively primitive technology that prevented alternate takes from surviving the sessions. Imagine, for instance, where “Little Wing” continued to go after the tapes fade out. If there is one particular moment on any of these tracks that best illuminates Hendrix’s insatiable creativity and unerring instincts, it comes toward the end of the incendiary “If 6 Was 9”. After declaring, in one of the all-time great rock and roll F-offs (“I’m gonna’ wave my freak flag high!”), a sort of whinnying, high-pitched noise slips into the maelstrom. Kramer explains that there happened to be a recorder lying around the studio, and Hendrix simply picked it up and started wailing. Kramer then applied the appropriate effects and echo, and the rest is history. In the final analysis, there is no way to improve upon practically any part of Axis: Bold As Love: this is as good as music is capable of being.

You’ve Seen Me Before (1989)

I am the nimble sparrow who is surprised
By eager claws that approach without a sound.
Security lies in lofty branches, overhead
But I feel safe with my feet on the ground.

I am the clever trout that is landed
By the barbed hook of the child on shore:
Each time instinct warns me of the trap
Compulsion makes caution easy to ignore.

I am the hurried fox that goes to ground,
Tracked by hounds that are flanked by men.
I escape only to renew the game:
I stop and the cycle begins, again.

I am the solemn man who cannot smile
When the sun sharpens a cloudless sky.
Since I know that in another place
The rain has caused someone else to cry.

October 20, 199_ (1991-2009)

Jim Morrison, I saw you today at a Chinese Buffet
($6.95 all you can eat).

And I could not help but notice:
The dull complacency, even exhaustion
That I saw in your eyes;
Obese stumbling gait imitating
Your svelte Lizard King Prowl;
A resigned beard,
An indifferent slouch,
A (scarcely audible) southern drawl
Has replaced your butterfly scream.

What’s your story?
The tyranny of boredom,
Or a dream deferred:
For the safety of TV dinners
And insipid comfort of re-runs
Before bedtime?

How was it?

To grow old and die at 27
Then: To start over again.
A play-thing of the gods.
The frenzied productivity
Of acid-fueled creativity;
A papier-mache soul,
A black and blue ego.
Everyday was Saturday,
A lifetime of summers
In only six years.

(What was it like?
To die nightly
And live only to die.
Survival wasn’t part of the script,

You know.)

How is it?

Now: Mysterious no more.
Burned inside-out
From your aimless wandering.
Now it’s Church on Sunday:
A banana peel reality.
Once you told us to wake up but have you
Yourself awoken?
Trapped in this new-fangled slumber.
Remember the message?
Even now it echoes, falling fast

Asleep in the ears of idle downloaders.

Recess (1992)

His eyes shifting, never still
Following the frenzy
Of random feet.
Dust flies around the heels
Of the schoolboys.

Thoughts roll by aimlessly
Like unhurried clouds,
Frozen in time:
This eager moment
Of envy and desire.

(in his mind he is free:
floating over the playground
and running, feeling
every blade of grass underneath)

Peaceful vision in his quiet solitude.

And then there is nothing
But the same fearful tears,
As the spiteful sun glares
Off the silver spokes and steel:
This spiral prison that is a part of him.

Old School (2002)

This is old school, I say
To my niece who, at five years old, is now
The same age her uncle was when his parents
Transported him to this place—new then, old now.
Old school, she repeats, repeating things
I say because I am older, because I am
Still interesting, because I am…old school.
Even I can see that.

You Can’t Go Home Again, someone once wrote
And he was wrong.
Of course you can—all you have to do is never leave—
Leaving it behind does not mean it leaves you.
(And certainly I can’t be the only grown child
who returns often—in dreams, in memories and yes,
in my mind, I must confess: earnestly, ardently, often—
to the old streets that I came to outgrow
the way we outgrow games and bikes and friends
and exchange them for jobs and cars and co-workers).

You can always go home, and you need to go home,
It is only when you want to go home that you should
Start asking yourself some serious questions.

“Did you play kick the can?” my niece does not ask.
Nor does she ask if I ever played
Red Rover Come Over or Smear the Queer.
Those games got outgrown, or else we learned
To play them in ways not measured in bravado & bruises.
And I wonder if we are better off:
Growth granting us the eventual awareness that everyone is
Queer and no enjoys being…

I put away childish things each time I think
About them, storing them safely inside my heart
Where grown-up games can’t make them say Uncle.

“Uncle, did you play?” she does not say.
(She does not know everything but she knows
enough to understand that her uncle was never young
the way she is and the way she’ll always be and
far be it from me to tell her any differently).
Question: Can you play?
Remember when that’s all we used to say—
Summers summarized in a phrase we learned
Eventually to outgrow.

This uneven field (Field of Dreams, I’ll never say)
Was our Fenway and with tennis ball and wooden bat
We righted the wrongs of an evil world, where
Yaz never struck out, Bucky Dent was a blip
And the Curse of the Bambino played off-Broadway
Those days, that ceaseless, sweltering summer in 1978.
(Summer, seventies, Schlitz—not malt liquor, my friend,
this was strictly old school—no bull. I remember
block parties, warm beer, burnt marshmallows, mosquitoes
and putrid bug repellent that didn’t kill anything
but made us stronger (Don’t let the bed bugs bite, I’ll never say).
I had no idea how much I did not know but
I knew this much: if there was a beer besides Schlitz or
Bud I was unaware of it—that’s all
The adults drank back in the bad old days.

Play ball! no one needed to say because we played ball
Anyway—ball was our business and business was good,
Get it: the ball would invariably make a break for it
Ending up in the gutter (we called it sewer but, of course,
We were old school). Without a second thought
We pried off the manhole cover and dashed down into semi-darkness.
We never thought twice about it—we were young.
The game must go on! no one needed to say, we knew.
(I look now, and think: I would not go
into that hole for all the allowance money I never earned—
I know there are rats and who knows what else
Down there: the things our parents never realized
They should warn us about).
We never worried about the things that were not
Waiting for us, down there in the darkness.

“What are they doing?” I do not ask aloud,
Noticing—just in time, before I can call attention to it—
Two cats in coitus, doing what they do when they are young & free.
That’s something I’ve never seen and as I worry about
My niece asking me about it I understand: I’m old now.
Old school, I cannot say (to myself I say this).
That’s how it happens.
This would never have happened, then—
(I did not know much, but I knew this:
cats did not fornicate and kids fought only with fists).
But this is what happens when you go away.
Back then, in our close and cloistered community
Even the cats had discretion (they were old school)
Or maybe they were mortified, because
Bent over with booze or barbiturates they were
Silently screeching behind closed doors—
All of us, unknowingly, out in the light
Winning the World Series, while wicked women
Garrisoned themselves in dark alleys, behind
The anodyne of automatic garage doors.
It is quiet, now. Our mothers were so quiet, then.
Please allow them to have been happy,
In our memories if not in their actual lives.

I don’t remember but I have a feeling
That if I think hard enough I will recall
The things that were never said and therefore never forgotten.

I drink in the past and am reminded of youth,
Which tastes unlike anything other than what it is: freedom.

Cold, sour Schlitz (of course I took a taste)
With those incredibly awkward silver ring-tabs
We pulled off for the privilege of first sip.
That is old school, I do not tell my niece.
It’s only when you’re older that beer tastes
Like freedom, but it’s a borrowed brilliance,
A manufactured feeling, just like in school
How it’s cheating if the answer is already in your lap.
It’s the things they can’t package or make you pay for:
Those things that they never tell you about until you are old enough
To know better: that is what freedom is.

Curiosity killed the cat, someone once said and
Maybe they were right.
But something is going to get all of us
Eventually, whether we ask for it or understand it.

The cats are gone, maybe they have gone home
(they can always go home), back to their families—
The heavy silences and signified banality of routine
(do they still have strict rules about no TV
and everyone present around the table when
dinner is served at six-thirty sharp?
I certainly hope so, for their sakes).
Or maybe they are getting down to business—
Dirty deeds and dirty work go hand in hand—
Down in the darkness, doing their thankless task,
Keeping the sewers safe from rats and reality.
Curious or content, we know enough to take
Whatever it is that life decrees.

We went into the sewers the way we went into the world:
Unafraid, unwavering, unencumbered and
Above all: unconcerned about all those things
Older people were kind enough to never…

“Old school!” my niece repeats, curious
because she does not comprehend at all.
Old school, I do not say, reticent
Because I do remember it (all).
If curiosity doesn’t kill us, contentment gets there quicker.

How did we go down there, then?
How do we go out there, now?

Ah, if only one could come home to packages like this every evening.

Wait, check that. That would be too much of a good thing. Who could handle sensory overload like that on a regular basis? Anyone who claims they could clearly has no idea what they are dealing with.

And therein lies the dilemma: the opportunity to write not only about a new Jimi Hendrix album (LET ME REPEAT THAT: IN CASE YOU DID NOT KNOW A BRAND NEW COLLECTION OF ALMOST ENTIRELY UNRELEASED MATERIAL IS ABOUT TO DROP)? No brainer. But more, owing to the serendipitous occasion of the newly remastered back catalog of his studio albums, an assessment of his career? ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky.

I mean, the obvious answer is you say yes a million times out of a million. The chance to wax ecstatic (but hopefully not too hyperbolic) is irresistible. And more than a little terrifying.

The question is: Are you (sufficiently) experienced?

An answer via another question: is thirty years of intense study and worship an adequate preparation to grapple with the incomparable phenomenon of Jimi Hendrix?

How, exactly, does one proceed when tasked to write about God?

To be continued…

Beethoven, Symphony No. 3, 1st Movement

Grant Green, “Exodus”

Rahsaan Roland Kirk, “Balm in Gilead”

John Coltrane, “Psalm”

Philip Glass, “String Quartet No. 5”

Jimi Hendrix, “Beginnings”

Bob Marley, “Revolution”

Bad Brains, “Leaving Babylon”

Living Colour, “Wall”

Antibalas, “NESTA (Never Ever Submit To Authority)”

 

 

Everyone knows YouTube is the best shortcut to favorite, as well as forgotten video clips. And while it is well worth recognizing, and celebrating, the millions of anonymous DJs out there manning the Internets have been doing work bringing the noise. Literally. YouTube is becoming (or has become) a reliable source for tunes. Everyone knows this, but there is no accounting for what gems you might stumble upon while surfing for that favorite (or forgotten) song. Of course, that is what Last.fm, Rhapsody and LimeWire are for. YouTube is less for programmed setlists and more for dedicated investigatory treasure hunts. Like the universe itself, the site is buzzing with signs of life and ready-to-be revealed secrets. If you boldly go where some men (and women) have gone before, you can collide with some very happy accidents.

Category One: Live Gems

 

Marvin Gaye!

 

Emerson Lake and Palmer (prog-rock nirvana!):

Oh, you want more prog rock? How about some Genesis? You may recognize that reverse-mohawked lead singer…

The Moody Blues keeping it REAL:

Pink Floyd (not live, but there is plenty of that to be had; here is a rare promotional video, i.e., Prog rock apotheosis!):

John Fahey!!

 

Category Two: Jazz!

 

Big Friendly Jazz Orchestra: “Fables of Faubus”
(First of all, that these songs are available is awesome; that this is a high school band (!) of Japanese girls (!!) playing –among other things– Mingus tunes (!!!) is bordering on miraculous. God bless them and God bless the Internets.)

Version One:

Version Two:

Charles Lloyd and Billy Higgins:

Art Motherfucking Blakey:

 

William Parker!

(Special appreciation for the things you were looking for all of your life — but didn’t know it until you found them):

Sun Ra:

The Keith Tippett Group. Who? Exactly. (King Crimson fans will recognize this woefully underappreciated pianist):

Grachan Moncur III:

Pharoah Sanders:

 

Category Three: Personal Favorites

And then there are the old friends you sometimes need to dial up just to get through another case of the Mondays:

(I mean, a little Funkadelic never hurt anyone; in fact, it did a lot of people a whole lot of good. And hopefully a few of you have never heard of Standing on the Verge of Getting It On, and are now addicted. I know what you’re thinking: Wow, what an incredible album title! Here’s the best part, that’s not even the second best Funkadelic album title from the first half of the ’70s. How about Cosmic Slop? Or the truly hysterical (or hysterically true) America Eats Its Young? Of course there is also Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow. And, for anyone still not convinced, we can cut through the cleverness and get to the heart of the matter with Maggot Brain. Yeah, you may be thinking, but how serious can a band be with album titles like that? The answer, incidentally, is: serious as a fucking heart attack.

Two words: Eddie Hazel:

Category Four: The Wisdom of Crowds

And finally, there are the geniuses amongst us who take the time not only to upload great music, but create arresting –and original– images to accompany it:

Exhibit A, Portishead:

Exhibit B, OutKast meets The Peanuts:

Exhibit C, Jimi Hendrix meets Earl King!!!

Exhibit D, Klaus Kinski, remixed:

And finally, Karlheinz Stockhausen — the only possible way to conclude this particular list:

Blogs are, or can be, like diaries.

Except that diaries, by nature, are private. Which begs the question: do people who blog censor or soften the observations, complaints or critiques that in other times would exist inside a document designed to remain unread by others? (Or more to the point, should they?) To be certain, only a few years ago, thoughts like the ones I’m about to express would have been safely ensconced inside a journal, not read by anyone else, even including myself (I don’t often return to old journals, hopefully because I’m too busy living in the here and now). And for whatever it’s worth, I am humble enough to know that small numbers of people visit this blog, and I have enough sense (or self-respect) to instinctively acknowledge that nobody is well served by overly earnest airing of personal trivia.

Put another way, I don’t begrudge anyone else documenting every last detail of their existences (no matter how mundane or mawkish); I simply remain uninterested in reading about it. In that regard, blogs are self-regulating: if you don’t write things that others will find interesting, you won’t have an audience. And who cares anyway? In that regard, blogs are like diaries: people post on them because they want to, or need to, and the concept of friends or strangers reading their innermost thoughts won’t necessarily hamper their willingness to compose. Still, only the sensation-seekers looking for notoriety (usually the already famous, and even those folks have a shelf-life of about six months) go out of their way to wax solipsistic in a public forum.

When it comes to the death of my mother, I of course have meditated on the loss privately and publically, and anyone who knows me (or reads this blog) understands that her life and death are an unequivocal component of my ongoing existence. Nothing remarkable about that, really: it is what it is. I am not alone; in fact, one need not suffer the untimely death of a parent to understand that their presence is inextricable from one’s own. That said, it’s not because my feelings or experiences are unique, but because they are the opposite that I have little compunction sharing some thoughts on this plaintive anniversary. Indeed, for me these occasions are much more a celebration of her life (and her unambiguously positive influence in my life) than any sort of disconsolate meditation on death. It is what it is.

 

As I have mentioned in other pieces (most recently on my birthday), one of my earliest and most positive memories of art and discovery is associated with my mother: listening to Nutcracker Suite and drawing pictures. Tchaikovsky has a real Proust-like effect on me (and, I suspect, a great many grown-ups who have indelible memories of the Nutcracker or Fantasia, or both), but on a purely aesthetic level it is like Bizet’s Carmen: I can (and do) enjoy it on purely musical terms. Moreover, I prefer it that way (and having seen my share of holiday performances and the opportunity to enjoy a full performance of Carmen, I’m happy to have those experiences and need not go there again). Anyway, there are more than a handful of favorite moments (coincidentally or not, conductor Fritz Reiner’s version from 1960 is the first compact disc I ever purchased, in 1986), but the one that gets me every time is the sombre yet majestic ”Coffee: Arabian Dance”.

There’s no shame in my game. I cannot deny my past and the fact of the matter is, back in the ’70s I thought Jesus Christ Superstar was pretty awesome. Moms, sis and I knew this one by heart (at least Side A of the 8-Track, which received heavy airplay in the Ford Grenada). This was in the pre-Kiss and post Fantasia time period, and of course before I discovered the original “rock opera” Tommy (not the last time ALW would be influenced by a rock band). In any event, this was my first and last dalliance with Andrew Lloyd Webber and while I can hardly stomach it now, oh how I loved it then. And you know what? A handful of moments are still worth reliving.

I’ve also alluded to the fact that we worshipped at the altar of the White Album, and we’d listen to the cassette (taped from the original double record) constantly in the car. Our favorite singalong was (obviously) “Rocky Raccoon”, but one of my favorites that I can never hear, now, without thinking of my mother and those million car rides is another great song by McCartney, “Mother Nature’s Son”:

It was pretty cool to watch movies with my mom, who was much more lenient than Pops when it came to the Rated R ones. One we watched many times (which I haven’t seen in ages and suspect I’d like much less now) was The Big Chill. Of course, the soundtrack was ubiquitous at that time and did for Motown what soundtracks like O Brother, Where Art Thou? did for bluegrass and Goodfellas did for oldies (or at least Tony Bennett). It’s silly to contemplate now, but it was almost a novelty to hear Smokey Robinson and The Temptations in the very arid early years of the ’80s. Indelible baby steps for an impressionable young honky:

Beethoven. I’ve spoken often in regards to my worship of Ludwig Van. Everyone encounters the symphonies first, but once I latched onto the piano sonatas, that was it. It still is. I’m not sure if I ever succeeded in getting my mother to really appreciate the immortal  Mondschein, but she at least tolerated how often it was played during the late ’80s and early ’90s in her house. Since I’ve already thrown Barenboim a bone, I’d like to give props to Freddy Kempf’s superlative rendition of one of the truly sublime compositions ever written:

The other great discovery and love of my life around this time was Bob Marley: kind of like Beethoven and the symphonies, it’s impossible to have ears and not be exposed to Legend at some point in high school or college. When the amazing Songs of Freedom (by far the best box set of all time) came into my life during grad school I latched onto it like a remora. This career-spanning set opened a large door wide on Marley’s music (particularly the mostly unknown, and remarkable, work from the late ’60s and very early ’70s), and eventually, reggae. Moms needed no convincing, she formed her own deep love and appreciation for Marley and would sing his songs on my answering machine. Suffice it to say, our shared love of the great man is one of the very special bonds in my musical and spiritual life.

I think she saw pretty quickly that I was going to be a special case, and there is little doubt that regardless of anyone’s opinion, I was off and running early on, and little could come between me and music. Nevertheless, her encouragement (from Kiss to The Beatles to The Doors all the way through classical and then jazz) was generous, ceaseless and always appreciated. It’s kind of neat to consider that a CD she originally bought for me my senior year of college (when I explained to her that it was very important for both my studies and my sanity to procure this album) is one I wrote about almost twenty years later. I can’t think of a more beautiful song from a more perfect album to commemorate my gratitude.

Not too much needs to be said by way of introduction to Jimi Hendrix, but my mother definitely dug some of his (less experimental? more accessible?) work. This one was, and is, a no brainer: a song he wrote about his mother (who passed away when he was ten years old): “Angel”:

August 27, 2002 was the first day of the rest of our lives. Anyone who has lost a loved one will recall (or half-reall) the blur of events that come after, all of which are a blessing in the disguise of distraction. I did a lot of driving: driving from father’s house to my place, from funeral home to father’s place, to the airport to pick up relatives. The emotions and sensations would become overwhelming at times, and there are those awful moments when you wonder how you can possibly find peace or make sense of anything ever again. During one of these episodes I was coming or going somewhere and I had not been paying attention to my car stereo, and then this song (by the great Israel Vibration) broke through that haze like the sun and saved my life:

Finally, and this one is the most important, for me.
The ’70s: this one reminds me of coming home from school and spending time in the house in between games of soccer or kickball or whatever else I was up to in those days. I have a memory: it was either autumn or winter, but it was a day I couldn’t play outside, so I was stuck inside the house and my mother had first dibs on the sounds. She was a huge fan of Janis Ian (as I would become, and remain) and I don’t think it’s a stretch to consider Between The Lines one of the better albums of that time, or anytime. “At Seventeen”, “Tea and Sympathy”, “Light a Light”: this is as good as it gets. But it’s the swan song, “Lover’s Lullaby” that affects me most; it haunts and restores me in equal measure. This one makes me think of my mother, so young; myself, so young, and even the beautiful Janis Ian, so incredibly young and so unbelievably beautiful. Sentimental? Not so much. True, this is wistful on multiple levels, and while my nature is to embrace or confront things that I consider cliche, it still took me quite a while before I could bring myself to listen to this song after my mother’s death.

I can, now, and when I do I naturally think of her. And inevitably I think about myself:

Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,

Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

 –Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”

Okay.

I wrote words about (and worse, posted pictures of) Camille Paglia and Bret Michaels on this blog within the past month.

Since my aim was to bury both and praise neither, I feel I should be forgiven. But some sort of palliative gesture would seem appropriate, if not imperative at this point.

And so, I turn to one of the few artists of whom I can find nothing negative to say: Jimi Hendrix.

Indeed, the only critique one can make of Hendrix is that he did not live past the offensively young age of 27. Regrettably, when it comes to musicians checking out before their time, there are simply too many tragedies to count. But Jimi Hendrix remains the Alpha and Omega of artists whose abrupt departures leave us inconsolable. Considering that we are still trying to come to terms with what Hendrix did between 1967 and 1971, it is excruciating to contemplate what he would have achieved had he reached even early middle-age.

Art Tatum and the piano. Jimi Hendrix and the guitar.

Take any and all other instruments and let the debates begin, but those two are covered; there is nobody who can make a convincing argument otherwise. When it comes to Hendrix, there is no conjecture: he already did it, but the growth he displayed in only a couple of years is unlike what we’ve witnessed from just about any other musician or composer, ever. We’re talking light years, the universe expanding; real quantum type shit. Put it this way: Miles Davis, who didn’t have many good things to say about the best Jazz musicians, made no bones about his desire to get Hendrix in the studio to jam. That’s like Michael Jordan saying he’d like to play some pick-up basketball with you, or Muhammad Ali asking you to spar with him.

Pure, unfiltered artistry. Unparalleled achievement. Jimi Hendrix did it first, and he did it best. He was, quite possibly, not entirely human. To quote Bill Hicks, Case. Fucking. Closed.

Exhibit A: Pali Gap. If the liner notes are accurate (and why wouldn’t they be?) this was just an impromptu jam miraculously caught live in the studio because the tapes were rolling. Imagine if they hadn’t been? Imagine what other spontaneous jams weren’t captured? Imagine all the jams he never had a chance to create? No, don’t. It’s too painful. All we can do is appreciate what we got while he was here: it’s more than enough to tide us mere mortals over until we punch the great clock in the sky. Is it too much to hope he’s already out there somewhere, waiting for us? Probably. Either way, this world isn’t a particularly terrible place so long as we can still listen.

Really no commentary necessary.

Jimi Hendrix. Vernon Reid. Enough said.

I’m smart enough to just get out of the way and enjoy.