Classic Rock Musings, Rants & Raves

Fresh from producing the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss record Raising Sand, T Bone Burnett has set his sights on another figure whose image is forever ingrained in struggle, gumption and wherewithal: John Mellencamp. The Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer may have gotten a shot in the arm creatively with 2007’s Freedom’s Road, but now he’s returned to the frontlines with Burnett paving the way on a powerful 14-track opus: Life, Death, Love and Freedom.

Whether he realizes it or not, Mellencamp often aspires to the emotional plateau of Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young. “Longest Days,” the stark and barren opener on Life, Death, Love and Freedom, succinctly bottles the sauce of the Boss, but Mellencamp remains defiantly individualistic in its smooth delivery. The country bounce of “My Sweet Love,” featuring back-up vocals from Karen Fairchild of Little Big Town, takes the listener down another road without the drama and pageantry. But it’s typically drama and pageantry that give Mellencamp’s music its distinct, striking flavor and resonance. You needn’t go much further than “Don’t Need This Body” where the singer questions his own mortality in lieu of growing old gracefully or kicking and screaming to the grave. One can only hasten a guess as to which path Mellencamp will follow, but the song’s reflective tone gives rise to further introspection. Country folk and blues have a beautiful way of doing that.

For his part, Burnett can turn a collection of acoustic instruments into a cosmic country symphony (can you imagine the possibilities of a Gram Parsons and T Bone Burnett collaboration?). This seems to work wonders on most projects he heads up. For Life, Death, Love and Freedom, however, the producer took one giant leap forward by integrating a new recording process called Code. Engineered for optimum sound quality across all formats — CDs, DVDs and digital — Code forgoes the compression that tends to cool the warmth and sharpen the contours. But all the technical embellishments can’t strip away the record’s sparse and elegant approach. “Mean,” “For The Children” and “A Brand New Song,” each wrapped in a sheath of effortless fortitude, are three more reasons why Mellencamp’s role as a singer and songwriter with a conscience can still reach ears and touch hearts. Even a few glossy rock and roll skeletons in the closet can’t erase that fact.

Ah, the saga of David Bowie. Nearly 40 years ago, the former David Jones, who’d been slogging it around London in search of an identity, finally connected with audiences when he transformed himself into an androgynous space alien called Ziggy Stardust. Touring the United States for the first time in 1972 behind The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, Bowie’s celebrated appearance at the Santa Monica Civic in Los Angeles was broadcast live on October 20, 1972 on the legendary radio station KMET. It eventually became a highly collectible bootleg. Over three decades later, the recording has been dusted off, given a nice rinsing and repackaged as Live Santa Monica ’72.

Bowie became an easy target for ridicule when he dolled himself up as Ziggy. But the music was too potent to write off; tunefully melodic with riffs and hooks galore, played whimsically by guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder, drummer Mick Woodmansey and pianist Mike Garson — collectively known as the Spiders From Mars. At Santa Monica, the songs from the new album came tumbling out like silver dollars from a slot machine. “Hang Onto Yourself,” “Ziggy Stardust,” ‘Five Years,” “Moonage Daydream” “Suffragette City” and ‘Rock And Roll Suicide,” all prodded and thumped like drunk Weebles on a school night. You can almost feel the energy of the small seaside venue’s rafters shaking in the madness of Ziggy and the Spiders’ vivacious chemistry.

Serving a wild mix of Clockwork Orange inspired theatrics with a provocative bend, Bowie rarely steps out of character — invoking a sassy spirit in “Changes,” floating through the stratosphere during “Space Oddity,” and occasionally stripping away the excess in the simplicity of “Andy Warhol” or the raw dirtiness of “The Width Of A Circle” and “Queen Bitch.” The devoted delivery of the Velvet Underground’s “Waiting For The Man” clearly illustrates where Ziggy was finding the inspiration to push boldly into areas previously unexplored. If Live Santa Monica ’72 accomplishes anything, it shows how even in the early days of Bowie’s burgeoning career, the genius was burning like a Roman candle, ready to explode and ignite a star brighter than most. How prophetic!

The third annual VH1 Rock Honors, staged at the Pauley Pavilion on the campus of UCLA on July 12, was the first time the show celebrated the music of just one band: The Who. And what a celebration it was.

As is the custom of VH1 Rock Honors programs, younger artists came on to play the songs of the honoree. Pearl Jam held no punches when it came to delivering rockin’ versions of “Love Reign O’er Me” and “The Real Me,” both from Quadrophenia. The Foo Fighters opened the show with “Young Man Blues” and the always excellent “Bargain,” from Who’s Next.

The Flaming Lips played a Tommy medley and Incubus fired off a couple of early Who singles, “I Can See For Miles” and “I Can’t Explain.” To keep things loose and fun, Tenacious D, with Jack Black and Kyle Gass, plucked out a spunky reading of “Squeeze Box.”

The Who, of course, blew the roof open with a slew of hits including “Baba O’Riley,” “Who Are You,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “My Generation.” Throughout the night, Adam Sandler, David Duchovny, Mila Kunis and other celebrities made introductions, while taped tributes from luminaries like Sting, Coldplay and Billy Idol filled in the gaps.

Speaking with reporters on the red carpet before the show, Roger Daltrey expressed gratitude for the honor, adding that John Entwistle and Keith Moon (both deceased but never forgotten as the Who’s irreplaceable rhythm section) were “here tonight, here in spirit.”

Pressed about a follow-up to The Who’s 2006 album, Endless Wire, their first studio album in over two decades, the singer said it all depends on Pete Townshend. “You never know what he’s writing,” he said. “It might be a rock opera or it might be a Who album. The main thing is he’s writing.”

Townshend feigned surprise when asked about a new album. “What new album?” he smirked. And what about the influence The Who has had on America? “I stole your music, ” the guitarist asserted with a grin before walking off into the sunset.

Since the advent of the DVD, a lot of incredible music video has boiled to the surface. Classic rock artists who used to hide under the table, avoiding the cameras, are now trotting out their latest concerts on DVD. With a killer 5.1 surround system, my collection of live concert DVDs is out of control. Still, the one thing I’ve noticed is the shortage of vintage footage available.

In 2005, Robin Trower released a DVD in 5.1 with a 16:9 high definition picture. Sure, it’s a feast for the eyes and ears, but I’d rather see something from 1974. I know the video and audio won’t be nearly as nice, yet that’s a sacrifice you make when you’re after classic footage by artists in their prime.

Because of my desire to see film of my favorite groups at the peak, I find myself either torrenting homemade DVDs taken from old analog video sources or clicking over to YouTube, which is overflowing with the kind of footage my friends and I talk about.

Yeah, I have a couple of buddies who are as crazy for this kind of stuff as I am. We’re all avid music collectors, and while we’re viewing a clip of say, Heart doing “Crazy On You” from 1976, we’ll contrive a contest to see who can find the entire show. Many times, after a few months, a show will turn up. Even ragged clips from tours behind Pink Floyd’s Animals, Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, and Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play — stuff no one besides the audiences have seen — have been cut and pasted together by a gaggle of hearty souls with highly developed technical skills and loads of spare time. Hard to believe there’s still a few missing links we need to fill in.

So while it’s great ZZ Top has a new concert DVD with a beautiful picture, awesome sound, and lots of extras, some of us would prefer a show from the 70s or 80s when the group was at the top of their game. Check out the five performance clips below and tell me you wouldn’t want to have a DVD of the whole show. I know I would.

ZZ Top - La Grange (1980)

Robin Trower – Bridge of Sighs (1974)

Foghat - Slow Ride (1978)

Kansas – Icarus (1975)

Jethro Tull – Minstrel In The Gallery (1976)

Of late, there’s been a big and loud buzz surrounding the music video games Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Some bars and taverns offer “Guitar Hero” nights in place of karaoke nights. Slash, Aerosmith and the Who have all signed on, allowing their music and likenesses to be incorporated into these games. There have been reports that the Beatles have even been approached about putting out a Guitar Hero game of their own. Oh, the humanity!

I confess total ignorance to the inner workings of these games. But the idea of marrying legitimate classic rock with a video game sounds fishy to me. For one, I fail to see the competitive angle. I mean, how do you win? Or lose? Secondly, wouldn’t it be far more fulfilling if the “players” were playing real musical instruments as opposed to these color-coded props they include with the games? I guess it’s easy to label Guitar Hero and Rock Band as time-wasters for the musically incompetent, but without knowing all the facts, I’m forced to hold my tongue. Somewhat.

In a Rolling Stone article entitled “Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero,” from October 18, 2007, Harmonix (the company behind both Guitar Hero and Rock Band) cofounder Eran Egozy contends that players get “to experience what it’s like to play every single part” of a famous song. While I would argue with Egozy that players who aren’t actually playing an instrument are, in fact, not experiencing what it’s like to play every part of a song, there are, nevertheless, some measurable benefits attached to Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

One view is that these games are responsible for turning a lot of people onto classic rock music. Not sure that one flies. Who in his right mind would purchase either game if they weren’t into classic rock music in the first place? Scratch that one…

Another popular opinion is that these games are inspiring some people to learn actual instruments. OK, I might buy that one although the props used as instruments supposedly require a completely different type of hand-to-eye coordination. Still, if one kid picks up an instrument because he kicks ass on Guitar Hero (how ever that’s done), then I suppose that’s a good thing. Back in the old days, kids like me were just as inspired to play guitar after spending a night strumming a tennis racket and singing into an indoor TV antenna (Oh, the concerts I staged!).

But let’s face the real hardcore facts: these games are providing an additional stream of revenue for artists whose legacy catalogs are no longer the cash cows they thought they were. Who would have thought 20 years ago — before the advent of the Internet — that video games and ringtones would replace albums as income for some of the world’s most renowned classic rock artists? Certainly not me.

Maybe if they add hotel destruction, groupie gathering, or ego crushing, the games might ring a little more true. But in this politically correct world, you can’t have everything. Now, if I could figure out how to restring my tennis racket, it might be time for an encore performance.

I recently received a couple of sweet 180 gram vinyl records from my friends at Legacy. One is Billy Joel’s The Stranger, which I never owned. The other is an Iron Maiden two-record compilation. Both sound surprisingly warm and generous on my sturdy and reliable turntable.

It had been a few years since I last spun a new long-player. I have a couple hundred records from the 60s, 70s and 80s, but I rarely pull them out. It’s just too much work. Any dope can slap in a cassette, plop on a CD, or flick the switch on an iPod, but records require special handling and care, placement and synchronization skills. You have to especially pay attention because when the record ends — almost always sooner than you think — you have to be prepared to rescue your stylus and your sanity from the end-of-the record crunch. Whew! That was a close one.

But think about it if you will — while paying attention, one might grow to actually appreciate what lies between the grooves that much more. We are such a hurried society, that we often think we can portabalize anything — physical, mental, whimsical — and take it on the road. MP3s, CDs and cassettes are popular because they lend themselves to these very concepts. You can’t take your records to the beach or on an airplane, but then again it’s questionable as to whether or not these places are ideal environments for music. With records, you simply have to set aside an evening. Not a bad thing at all.

Besides the flipping, cleaning and variances of turntable speed that has to be monitored, there’s the album cover. Some of it is plain and uncomplicated, others make the most of it with extensive art work, allegories, photographs, messages, gateways to other dimensions. There are coffee table books that are full of album cover art. I’ve yet to see any books on CD or cassette art. Cassettes are minuscule no matter how you look at it. They’re just too compact to make the commitment. On the other hand, some record companies and specialty houses have tried to re-invent album cover art within the CD format. DCC goes to such lengths as utilizing original sources who worked on the original albums. In the 90s, Virgin released a nice set of Stones CDs, recreating early 70s gimmicks like the zipper on Sticky Fingers. Aside from such details and flourishes added to re-releases, not much can be said for new releases. Either the creativity has dried up or they’re saving everything for the box set.

When you hold an album in your hands — it takes two if you want to do it properly — you are holding history. Okay, they still make records, and more people are buying vinyl than they have since the beginning of the decade, but there’s still a good 50 years of music on vinyl that will never make it to CD. They may think they have it licked, but it’s an impossible task from the most logical standpoint. There will always be missing pieces. Economically, it probably doesn’t make much sense. That’s why they can’t rebuild Rome either.

Ever since Rob Halford returned to the scene of the crime with Judas Priest, expectations have been high for the Metal Gods. The 2005 reunion album Angel Of Retribution and subsequent tour got the ball rolling, but what did the leather-and-studded mavens have in mind for an encore? How about a bloated, overly ambitious concept album about the quirky 16th French prophet Nostradamus? No small feat indeed. For a metal institution like Priest, it certainly presented an odd range of obstacles to work around and overcome.

Priest press hard at selling the plight of Nostradamus in a fist-pumpin’ hard-rockin’ manner. Not that metal shies away from bigger-than-lifer images and concepts; on the contrary, it swallows them up whole and spits them out like shiny new jewels. On the surface, tackling a mythic figure like Nostradamus — whose cryptic quatrains of prophecy stretched the bounds of speculation and interpretation — may seem like a sound and calculated move for a band ready to throw down the gauntlet and roll in the mud, but is it powerful and accessible enough to keep the card-carrying masses’ heads a-bangin’? It really depends on which side of the grandstand you sit on.

The anticipation swells as “Dawn Of Creation” builds and explodes before “Prophecy” takes a big bite of the melody, pile driving the arrival of Nostradamus — “the voice of God.” Rob Halford’s shrieking and salient vocals shift and shape each song into another chapter of the story, with short instrumental passages guding the general rhythm and pace. “Revelations” entices the listener to forgive Nostradamus and his tormented admonishments as it swims through the orchestration, and embraces the frenetic fretwork of K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton. Whether singing in English, French or German, Halford’s commanding operatic style comes to the fore, driving the drama of “War” before delivering the ensuing catastrophe behind “Pestilence & Plague,” which eventually leads to “Death.”

At the halfway point, you’re either loving this grim tale or looking for an exit. The record assumes a far more introspective mode, imploring God in “Lost Love,” which obscurely addresses the loss of Nostradamus’ wife and children to the Plague in 1534. Moving from medicine to the occult, the prophecies of Nostradamus drew religious persecution and embroiled the former apothecary in further controversy. This is met head-on by Judas Priest who counter persecution with crucifixion for maximum impact. As the short segues alter the record’s moods, creating a template that is neither inviting nor dissuasive. It’s rather easy to get pulled into the next number by sheer curiosity.

And as the ultimate heavy metal group gets comfy with swirling choirs, sweeping orchestrations, and acoustic embellishments, the lyrics dance around the seer and his almanac full of prophetic quatrains that supposedly spell out the end of mankind. But it isn’t until the final number, ironically called “Future Of Mankind,” ambiguously outlining Nostradamus‘ own fateful demise, that we are clued into the power of the man’s premonitions. Still, it’s highly doubtful he announced his end with the velocity of Judas Priest.

As a heavy metal album, Nostradamus struggles to play along like the others, unforgiving of the tried and true ingredients to distinguish it from the denizens of ruffian riffs drowning in mediocrity. As a whole, Nostradamus is Priest flexing their mighty metal talons in search of copious and cerebral stimulus suffocating under the weight of three chords and common incoherency. For a band like Judas Priest to stomp on the soapbox without falling into a cesspool of mockery and misadventure is commendable, to say the very least. If they can pull it off live, they may set a new precedent for vintage metal and beyond.

During a conversation I had with Toby Gleason last year, he explained that because his father, famed music critic Ralph J. Gleason, had established very close relationships with both the Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead during the mid-60s, he was able to accurately document their historic evolution as the quintessential Bay Area bands of the late 60s. By all accounts, Gleason, who had previously produced the Jazz Casual series featuring guests like Dave Brubeck and John Coltrane, functioned as the catalyst between the mainstream and the underground, capturing the meteoric rise of the San Francisco psychedelic scene with a sense of cultural reverence. Gleason’s 2007 DVD, A Night At The Family Dog, features some vintage live performances from the Airplane, the Dead and Santana. The double DVD follow-up, Go Ride The Music & West Pole, delves further with more live Airplane and Dead footage, as well as performances from Quicksilver Messenger Service, Steve Miller Band, Sons of Chaplin and Ace Of Cups.

Plop in the Go Ride The Music disc and off we go with roadies moving gear in and out, traveling entourages, freaky audience members doing strange things, split screen shots covering the entire scene — typical rock-band-on-tour footage now, but then it was new, novel and wild. Jefferson Airplane indulges us with seven tracks from Pacific High Recording. The fiery interplay of bassist Jack Casady, new drummer Joey Covington, and guitarists Paul Kantner and Jorma Kaukonen provides the backdrop. Interspersed are generous close-ups of the svelte and commanding presence of Grace Slick slotted alongside a few inordinate ramblings from Marty Balin and even Jerry Garcia. For their part, Quicksilver Messenger Service set up at a park and dig in deep with their unique blend of psychedelic folk and blues.

West Pole builds on the cinématique contortions and elements of Go Ride The Music, but works as a snapshot in time, offering an overview of the emerging San Francisco sound. Gleason narrates, outlining the mass infusion of countless bands, while man-on-the-street interviews with fans help to reinforce the impact. Ace Of Cups, an all-girl fivesome, open the disc on a high, optimistic note before segueing into erratic MTV-style short films featuring the Dead, Airplane, Sons Of Champlin, Steve Miller Band, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Clearly, the filmmakers were testing the goods from Owsley Stanley’s private stash when they edited these clips together. Either that, or they were experimenting with a form that would pioneer the marriage of film and music. And what of Ralph J. Gleason himself? The late Rolling Stone magazine co-founder’s legacy has never been more important in a day and age where music stands as the great language of the universe.