Let’s just get right into it.
Some of Young’s finest blistering guitar fury. Led Zep may have had the hammer of the gods, but there were four of them; Neil is like the lone Viking, hacking and snarling his way to Valhalla.
If you’ve never seen this live footage before, don’t thank me. Thank whatever forces there are for letting us share Stevie for even a short while. Hearing, as always, is believing, but SEEING is beyond belief.
Calming it down considerably, and shifting from one of the most physical, overpowering guitarists (SRV) to perhaps our most cerebral axe masters, Robert Fripp. The subtlety and refined nuances displayed throughout this song continue to astonish me, three decades after I first heard it. (The double vocals and the sax/flute interplay also are deeply, indelibly affecting.)
Speaking of Fripp…add the master, and true genius ensues. When Gabriel is at his best (and he manages this often), nobody else can come close to him.
(That link above will take you to some love for each of those men, and the bands that they made famous –and vice versa– in the early days of the prog rock apotheosis.)
Coltrane again? Of course. As ever, anyone wondering: What is all the hype about? THIS is what all the hype is about. It’s okay if you can’t handle this truth.
Eddie Hazel made history with Funkadelic (Maggot Brain, anyone?), but he also kept it more than slightly real before, during and after. He remains the best guitarist entirely too many people have never heard of. RECOGNIZE!
If it’s gonna’ rain, well, by God, make it RAIN.
(A bit more on the album this comes from, which you should get into your world as soon as possible:
Remember 2004? Seriously. No matter what side of the political fence you were on, that was a year when America (inevitably, belatedly) realized it could not impose its will with impunity, that oil was not going to cost less (indeed it was going to cost a hell of a lot more in a hurry–go figure), and that lots of lives were being lost because of our idiotic overseas adventure. Flashback to the year before: we had surrender monkeys, Liberal Traitors, With-Us-Or-Against-Us and Mission Accomplished. Things changed in a hurry, as they tend to do. The fact that it was predictable (and predicted) only exacerbated the pain.
What does any of this claptrap have to do with Tom Waits, the fine wine of modern music, who becomes deeper and more indispensable as he (and we) gets older? Well, for my money, no album inhabited the tenor of that time as indelibly as Real Gone (the title was both a barometer and a judgment). Of course, the critic associates the sounds of a particular time with the time he heard those sounds, because he was hearing those sounds during that particular time. That is natural, but in the instance of Real Gone, it’s much more than that. Yes, I am transported to how I felt and what I was thinking when this album came out, but one listen brings it all back. Of course, I would do this great artist a serious disservice to imply that this album is merely an anti-war screed or a sociopolitical statement (although it is, at times, both of those and quite convincingly so): it is, like most Tom Waits albums (and all great pieces of music) bigger and deeper than the here-and-now, or even what the artist intended. The transmission of feeling into sound elevates the artifice and the audience: then something significant happens. The true magic is that, with every listen, it continues to happen.)
Neko. Perfection.
(More on this song, this album and the notion of perfection in art, HERE. Scroll down to number one, because that is where I ranked this one, above everything else made last decade.
A taste:
Leave it to Neko Case to find inspiration in Russian folk tales to craft a series of songs that are thoroughly American and of the moment. But, like so much great art (including, of course, books and movies as well as albums), intentional or not, if the artist is sufficiently astute and historically cognizant, the resulting work cannot help but recall themes and images of the past, and transcend the time and place in which the words are set or conceived. In this regard, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood is as much a Russian novel as it is a Y2K progressive country-rock folk album. Get the picture? Check it out: if any song on any album discussed thus far contains Whitmanesque multitudes, it’s the title track.
It ain’t a hurricane until the big, bad WOLF says it is. R.I.P. to the Human Hurricane.
(Click on that link for more. Here is a taste: 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.)
Full cirlcle, back to Neil. Here is what I had to say about this song (and the man who provided those drums, R.I.P. Levon!):
There are certain albums you come upon at the ideal age, and I reckon, as a freshman in college, it was the ideal time to fall under the spell of Neil Young’s On the Beach. Much more on that album another time (short summary: it’s impeccable), but one of the songs that has never ceased to leave me at once unsettled and exhilarated is “See the Sky About to Rain”. It was interesting enough in its earlier incarnation as an acoustic number that Young performed on his ’71 tour. In fact, hearing that version helps you appreciate how much Young and his band did to elevate it (here I go again) to that other place.
Beyond boasting one of Young’s most desolate (and beautiful, yes beautiful) vocal performances, it has the whiskey-soaked Wurlitzer, the harmonica, the steel guitar (!) and that dark-night-of-the-soul vibe that more than a few folks—coincidentally or not—tapped into during the early-to-mid ‘70s. But mostly it has those drums: Helm’s work here is a clinic. Like all his playing and like the man himself, it is muscular, sensitive, soulful and masculine. It prods and occasionally cajoles, but it mostly keeps the time and supplies the requisite pace to the proceedings. (In a wonderfully full-circle sort of touch, Young—who had recently felt some rebel blowback for his acerbic, if accurate, cultural critiques in “Southern Man” and “Alabama”—alludes to his own recent and the region’s older history by name-checking “Dixie Land”. It’s one of those improbable moments that you shake your head at and remain in thrall of for the rest of your life.)
