Monday, February 21, 2011

When Everyone Else Smelled Like Teen Spirit…I Found Friends In Low Places… The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same…

It was September 24, 1991…Melodic Hard Rock/Hair Metal was dead…pretty much everything else with it…why you ask?... It’s the date that Nirvana’s “Nevermind” dropped and the musical world would never be the same…  As someone who was heavily caught up in the hard rock scene this came as a defining moment in my life and many lives of my friends… do we abandon the technical prowess of the shredders and embrace the “Alternative” rock that would soon become the mainstream…much to the chagrin of it’s creators..?....

We fought and bitched and hemmed and hawed…and in the end we couldn’t fight it… Mainstream hard rock was no longer the mainstream…it had to disappear underground for a while in the U.S. and move to Europe and Japan if it wanted to thrive… And out of the depths the “Alternative” was the norm… Which is good.  Change is good.  We went from the safe happy short haired pop of the 50’s to Elivs and the Beatles…and we changed with it.  We embraced psychedelic rock in the 70’s right along side the singers and songwriters like James Taylor and the burgeoning face of FM radio was developing…Punk..Disco…Heavy Metal…Hair Metal…Grunge…Boy Bands…Pure Pop…Dance…Techno…Rap…and the cultural phenomena that would embrace Madonna in the 80’s and Lady GaGa now.  Maybe we all have musical attention deficit, or maybe in the grand scope of things…there’s room for all of it... But that is the state of mind of someone in hindsight.  It’s taken me a long time and a lot of influences changing over time to get here.  I don’t think I missed out on anything, but I do think that I have a greater respect for a lot of different music. 

I went into the 90’s with the idea that something was going to change…it was inevitable, and I probably wasn’t going to like it.  When the record companies figured out that they could sign a band right off the Sunset Strip and sell a million records they all thought they could do it.  And the glut began.  There were some great bands, some good bands, and some that probably shouldn’t have been signed.  But the labels scooped them all up in hopes of hitting gold.  It made for an interesting time, and everyone thought their way to stardom was via Los Angeles, with a nod to the East Coast NY and NJ scene.  So they got off the bus just like Axl Rose in the “Welcome To The Jungle” video in search of fame and fortune.  Some we heard about, and some we’ve never heard from.  Some finished their records only to have the scene change and the album shelved forever.  It happened more than you think.  It happened with the boy bands in the late 90’s and it continues to happen.  Just because one sells does not guarantee one just like it will. 

That said, when the jangly guitar of Kurt Cobain [R.I.P] crashed through my speakers and the record labels moved their focus from Los Angeles to Seattle and found Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, that something that was different had arrived.  In my opinion I think that they were [and are] very talented, and I’m still a huge fan of Chris Cornell, but for me I think I was too pissed that some of my favorite bands were being forcefully retired.

So I hung up my rock t-shirts, I retired my can of Aqua Net, shed a tear when I hung up the spandex and leather and went out and bought a pair of boots, some wrangler jeans…and went country…yes country.  This is not an unusual phenomena, and a lot of people I know did the same thing, maybe not to my extreme, but to some.  For as ridiculed as the genre of hair metal was, it was fun, occasionally insightful, and these guys [and gals] could play.  When I first heard the “alternative” bands my first thought was “where the hell did they learn to play, or more importantly…why don’t they”…?  Narrow minded I know but I was still pissed.  And why does everything have to be so dark?  These were musicians who were filled with angst, and they let it pour out in their music.  Well…I wasn’t angry, I had no angst, I didn’t hate my parents, and I could find the silver lining in everything… I’m a half full kind of guy… so when the music world went dark…I found solace in a most unexpected area.

My dad drove an 18 wheel rig for 56 years until he finally retired.  And all he listened to 1050 WHN  AM out of New York, and he only listened to WHN.  So growing up in the house it was Alabama, and Dolly Parton.  George Jones, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Hank Williams.  I guess I always had an appreciation for it, but I grew up hating it because my dad played it.  No other reason… and a really stupid one actually.  So when Nashville started turning it’s sights on a younger audience, there were a lot of us that didn’t want the grunge thing, so we naturally fell into country.  Now this wasn’t my dad’s country music.  It was Randy Travis, and George Strait, Alan Jackson, and a fellow from Yukon, Oklahoma [not really that far from here really…] named Garth Brooks that turned the whole radio world upside down.  It was more pop leaning that it’s predecessors, while still remaining relatively close to it’s roots. And it was happy… for the most part.  There were your tear in my beer songs and songs about losing your girl, your house, and your dog all in 3 minutes with a bright and catchy chorus too.  But what there was a lot of, was hope.  So I joined the wave of people who helped Garth sell over 100 million records.  Went to the festivals, and even learned to line dance [pretty well after a while believe it or not…]  I couldn’t always relate to some of the themes [I was the white guy from the burbs remember…]  but it just sounded right.  And in hindsight, maybe it was just that I was [gasp!] older.  The words fit better, the melodies were still in tact, and the session players in Nashville are some of the best in the world.  Guitarist Dann Huff from Giant [and from Nashville originally] became a hit producer for Faith Hill.  “Mutt” Lange went from Def Leppard to producing and marrying [and divorcing] Shania Twain. Together they sold over 39 million copies of “Come On Over” worldwide.   I eventually collected over 800 country CD’s and artists like Garth and Trisha, and Clint Black, Brooks & Dunn, Wynonna, Martina McBride and Faith and Tim became staples in my playlists.  This country dance party could only last for so long…

Now..guess what happened?…You guessed it.. the glut…  After mining every grunge band for profit and signing every guy and gal with a hat and boots the record industry did what it did best…it proved too much of a good thing can be bad.  Like that chocolate coma you get in after Halloween and Easter.  So grunge went the way of boy bands and pop music again.  Country suffered some setbacks, but they are their own world, and there’s always a new batch of artists out there.  Most recently Zac Brown is tearing up the charts, and Lady Antebellum is garnering their accolades.  In between we had the Musik Mafia led by Big & Rich, and Gretchen Wilson.  And you can never go wrong with virtually anything by Brad Paisley. The man is a monster on the guitar and an excellent songwriter. 

Eventually I went back to search for the melodic hard rock [which is still alive and well in Europe and Japan] side by side with the country stuff.  Grunge is now retro, and you can’t play an 80’s weekend without pulling out the Aqua Net.  I guess Rush said it best when in their song “Circumstances” they said “Plus ca change Plus c'est la meme chose”… The more that things change…the more they stay the same.  You find a good thing…and then you find more of it…and then it’s overload!...  Maybe moderation is the key.  I don’t know, I’ve never had moderation in anything.

I guess what I’m saying is keep an open mind.  And open ears.  Because what is at the top of your playlist today may be in the cutout bin tomorrow.  I traditionally don’t get rid of anything, but the used bins at your local cd store show a different picture.  Remember that music has an inherent value, and if you love it, that’s all that matters. 

It took me a long time to get over being pissed at the grunge movement, and I still think that they mix up “keeping it simple” with “I really suck on the guitar but when I play it I get chicks”… but I digress…  They all can’t play like the guys in Dream Theater…

Thanks for coming along for the ride…see you soon.

J.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Who Is This Guy Steve Miller And His Band…And How Many Times Do I Have To Hear The *#@*$*!! Joker?…and Radio Killed The Radio Star…

After taking the week to finish digitizing my disc collection, I’m back with more food for thought…  I did learn that roughly 3700 CD’s when the duplicate songs are weeded out can fill just about 1.2 Terabytes of information.  On the upside I don’t have to knock over piles of discs to get to my desk, and on the downside…no more album sleeves or CD cases to read.  You see, I’m a child of vinyl.  To me there was nothing like buying a record and poring over the artwork and reading all [yes all] of the liner notes.  It’s no wonder I didn’t date until later in my existence… It was what fueled my desire to find out who was on it that started the “Six Degrees” concept in my mind.  And audiophiles still lament the demise of the warmth of an analog record…but that’s for another time…

I would actually take a chance on a record I hadn’t heard before if I knew who the producer was, because I would have some idea as to what it sounded like by what else was produced before.  I could take a chance on a record if I saw who engineered it, because even if the record was crap at least it was good sounding crap.  If Alan Parsons, or James “Jimbo” Barton engineered the record, you knew it would sound good.  The same goes for Parson’s production.  If Bruce Fairbairn [R.I.P], Mike Stone [R.I.P], Kevin Elson, Robert John “Mutt” Lange, or Bob Rock produced it, I had a good idea how it would sound. [And if you’re into modern melodic hard rock anything with Dennis Ward producing is going to sound killer…] Sad but true, but it allowed me to take chances on new artists.  Some were good, some were bad, and some were just God-awful, but for $7.99 [the going rate for an album when I was younger] it wasn’t a big risk.  But now it’s just tiny words in a tiny booklet and sometimes there’s not even that…sad.. Moving on…

So who is Steve Miller? The point is actually just a jumping point but for the record he is the guitarist and lead vocalist of his self named band.  They had a string of hits from 1969-1978 and hit the charts again in 1982 with “Abracadabra”.  The Greatest Hits 1974-78 has sold over 13 million copies.  Past members of the Steve Miller Band include Boz Scaggs on guitar [solo with Lowdown, Lido Shuffle], Les Dudek [Allman Brothers, Dave Mason, Stevie Nicks], Ross Valory [Journey], Jim Keltner [Ringo Starr, George Harrison, John Lennon], and roughly 37 others over a series of years.  So…why am I picking on Steve Miller and his band…I’m not really.  They are just an example of oversaturation accompanied by the limited playlists of the classic rock stations. 

As the radio stations were bought up by conglomerates and the consolidation of the stations continued…the playlists began to shrink.  This is not just on classic rock radio but for radio in general.  And it’s gotten so endemic that you can turn on any station [that’s not strictly pop/top 40] every few hours and hear the same songs.  What’s sad is when a station promotes it’s “No Repeat Workday” like it’s something special…I can listen to my collection for example for 82 DAYS without duplication [that’s roughly 1968 hours…but I am by no means normal…].  So my question is…why can’t they play more from the artists catalogue?  Why do we have to hear “More Than A Feeling” over and over and over until we want to push a knitting needle through our brains [I digress..that’s just me…] You see…I LOVE the band Boston.  I LOVE the song More Than A Feeling. I Love the whole first Boston record [and it was the first record I ever owned when I was 8 years old in 1976…].  However, I just can’t listen to it unless I stop hearing it for a while. 

Rush has created 19 studio albums…and yet we hear “Tom Sawyer” over and over.  Kansas has 13 studio albums and all we hear is “Carry On Wayward Son” on the rock stations and “Dust In The Wind” on the AC stations.  Prince has produced a multitude of records with varying names and degrees of success…and we hear “Little Red Corvette” or “Let’s Go Crazy” like he made only 2 records.  I know they produced more music.  I know that they produced more great music..but it’s getting lost in the shrinking playlists and the shrinking minds of the radio programmers who think we’re a] stupid or b] lazy and would never venture out of our comfort zone in an effort to hear something more.  I know you’re out there, and I know you’re smarter than that.  In fact I don’t know anyone who listens strictly to the radio, or doesn’t have a favorite band that they will never hear on the radio.  But then again...I’m not sure I should be the measuring stick for anything normal here…

But since we don’t control the playlists of our favorite radio stations [if you’re not already connecting your iPod to your car stereo or have invested in satellite because you’re too fed up] I recommend a moratorium on some of these songs or maybe, just maybe…go deeper into the album cuts.  Early FM radio was about playing the whole record, not just the singles.  Maybe modern radio can take note and improve…[Let’s wait for it…Nope…can’t play it…not enough time between commercials…and we still haven’t had a cold snap in Hell or been successful in making pigs fly…]  So maybe since we can’t change the world…we can change the station…or shut it off…or hum…or whistle…or turn on conservative talk radio, get enraged, scream at the radio and punch the dashboard a lot [I don’t recommend that…but it will entertain the guy next to you at the stoplight…] Either way…it sets up our next segment…and I’d like you all to play along at home…

For my next segment, let’s call it… “10 Artists That Went Away…And I Didn’t Miss Them…” 

Feel free to compile your own list either on paper or in your head of bands that you’ve heard so much, so often, that if they went away you would feel a sense of relief, a Zen moment, and a lifting of your spirits.  Maybe it’s just that you want to hear a different song every once in a while…This is by no means a reflection of the talent, style, or anything else to do with the band.  It’s just like video killed the radio star…except radio killed the radio star…over and over again… pencils up…start writing…

1] Boston [Anything from the first 2 albums] - Love the band, love the songs…grabbing my knitting needle every time I hear Foreplay/Long Time on the radio [and out here in OK, that’s a lot!!]
2] Rolling Stones [pretty much anything] -  So many records, so many songs…and I get to hear “Beast Of Burden” over and over on the radio…why can’t I hear One Hit To The Body every once in a while…
3] Van Halen – why Van Halen?…because I can’t hear Runnin’ With The Devil ever again…Might as well Jump…
4] ZZ Top – The Eliminator album killed them for me…they were blues, then they were pop, now they’re blues again…And I get to hear “Legs”…and that she knows how to use them…
5] Queen – All I want to hear is Radio Ga Ga…or Keep Yourself Alive…How about One Vision every once in a while…but NOOOOO… I see a silhouette of a man….scaramouche scaracmouche…will you do the fandango… MAMA MIA MAMA MIA LET ME GO…
6] Kiss – On a retro weekend we might get “I Was Made For Lovin’ You..” but for the rest of the time it’s Rock & Roll All Nite…” and I’m old…and I can’t do that anymore…I’ll die…how about a little blatant innuendo courtesy of “Love Gun” or “Shout It Out Loud”…
7] Guns ‘N’ Roses – If I could have one wish for Christmas is to never here Sweet Child O’ Mine ever again…thanks Santa…
8] Sheryl Crow – Can she sing? Yes…can she write songs? Yes.. Can she please go away now…I’ve had enough…maybe she never should have left Las Vegas where she could have had some fun [since that was all she really wanted to do anyway…] and I wouldn’t hear her anymore…especially Picture…blaahhh…..
9] Elton John – Give me Funeral For A Friend…Give me Levon, give me anything off Live In Australia…But don’t make me feel the love tonight…Hold me closer Tony Danza…
10] Any 80’s retro pop metal one hit [ok..maybe2…] wonder [for the sake of radio play…] [and I say this as a HUGE fan of commercial hard rock and pop metal]…  this is including, but not limited to “Unskinny Bop” by Poison, “Pour Some Sugar On Me” by Def Leppard, “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister, “Round And Round” by Ratt, and “Heaven” by Warrant… Great the first 3 million times…time to cash the royalty checks and check into that retirement home in Palm Springs… 

Well folks…that’s all for today… always remember to try the veal and tip your waiter….

And the answer to last week’s “Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon”?... you were asked to connect 70’s funk artists Sly & The Family Stone with Greek power metal band Firewind…How did you do?… Mine goes like this…

The saxophonist for Sly & The Family Stone is a gentleman named Jerry Martini.  After S&FS he started a band called Rubicon in the San Francisco Bay area with a group of musicians including Jake Blades on bass and Brad Gillis on guitar [They would go on to form Night Ranger…but we’re not going there…]  Brad Gillis was chosen as the replacement for guitarist Randy Rhoads in Ozzy Osbourne’s band after his tragic death in a plane crash.  Gillis played the MTV concert in his place.  Ozzy has just this year released a CD titled Scream featuring guitarist Gus G. [whose real name is Kostas Karamitroudis] and Gus G.’s band when he’s not playing with Ozzy is…you guessed it…Firewind…

So it goes like this… Sly & The Family Stone>Rubicon>Ozzy Osbourne>Firewind.. in 4 moves!!…how did you do…?

Thanks for coming along for the ride…See you soon…

J.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon & Don’t Stop Believin’…

Courtesy of Wikipedia…

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a trivia game based on the concept of the small world phenomenon and rests on the assumption that any individual can be linked through his or her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon within six steps. The name of the game is a play on the "six degrees of separation" concept.

If you’ve ever tried this game…you know in some strange cosmic way it works.  Part of it is that being able to connect everyone gets easier the more movies come out, so from year to year the degree of difficulty decreases…It also may be that Kevin Bacon is an extraordinarily hard working actor who just keeps showing up in our favorite movies, and some duds as well…maybe he should ask his agent what he’s thinking… [Now you gotta cut loose…Footloose…]

Before there was Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, rock and roll had it’s own system going, more resembling a family tree.  Although it does follow the same concept, and my friends and I used to play a game to see how many bands we could connect to each other, and the weirder the connection the better.  There was a publication called “The Harmony Illustrated Guide To Rock & Roll” when I was in high school, and it featured hand drawn family trees to show the many line-ups of a particular band, and this just takes it a step further.  It’s really more like a spider web than a tree.  I remember seeing the seven million incarnations of Deep Purple and wondering why it changed so constantly. [as a disclaimer this can also be played with Rap & R&B artists. However due to the commonality of being featured on each other’s records and singles, the game is over much more quickly…]

The concept is simple.  Connect as many bands through their ever changing line-ups to see who worked with whom.  There are a few bands that actually make this easier such as Yes, Whitesnake, and Rainbow [Yngwie Malmsteen is equally guilty], given their sheer number of members over the years.  It could be that the stability of the lineup was directly related to the egos involved…but that’s just an educated hypothesis. 

To give you a simple example… let’s connect Led Zeppelin to Vanilla Fudge..it goes like this…

Jimmy Page played guitar in Led Zep…He went on to play with The Firm [with Paul Rogers of Bad Company, Tony Franklin, and Chris Slade]…Bassist Tony Franklin went on to work with Blue Murder, whose drummer is Carmine Appice, who used to be the drummer of…you guessed it..Vanilla Fudge.

Led Zeppelin>The Firm>Blue Murder>Vanilla Fudge

To make it harder… you can go from Led Zeppelin to Kansas…you go from Led Zeppelin>The Firm>Blue Murder and from Blue Murder we go with guitarist John Sykes…who played with Whitesnake..from there we choose lead singer David Coverdale, who also sang for Deep Purple, to guitarist Steve Morse, who also played with Kansas…so it then goes like this…

Led Zeppelin>The Firm>Blue Murder>Whitesnake>Deep Purple>Kansas…  The number of degrees becomes as many as needed, but we try to keep it to 6. 

One last one before your head explodes and then I’ll challenge you…  Let’s connect British rock band Genesis to 80’s L.A. pop band Missing Persons… it goes like this…

From Genesis we pick guitarist Steve Hackett, who played in GTR with guitarist Steve Howe from Yes, who played in Asia with bassist John Wetton, who played in U.K. with drummer Terry Bozzio, who played drums in Missing Persons with his wife, Dale, on vocals…

Genesis>GTR>Asia>U.K.>Missing Persons…in just 5 moves…  quite simple really… ;-)

Now the challenge…Can you connect 70’s Funk band Sly & The Family Stone with Greek progressive metal band Firewind in 6 moves?... Good Luck!...

And Now…Don’t Stop Believin’…  It was the summer of ’81 and the song was all over the radio.  Upon the release of the record “Escape” on July 31, 1981 this monster was born.  I remember playing Adventure on the Atari 2600 and listening to this record all summer long at my friend Tim’s house.  We were geeks [Rush’s Moving Pictures was also a favorite on the turntable…].  It’s in my opinion one of the best pop songs ever written.  Journey performs it flawlessly.  And there’s not a person on the planet who doesn’t know the song from the first few chords on the piano…so…what’s my problem with it… Oversaturation has killed it for me…  From the T.V. show Glee doing their take on it to it being played at every sports event known to man, to the various instrumental covers from the harmonica to the kazoo…it makes my head want to explode…  I vote for a moratorium on the song for a few years…give it a rest so that we can still appreciate it.  I still have trouble listening to Free Bird and Stairway To Heaven from all the Jr. High and High School dances I endured in my youth.  What person thinks that Free Bird with it’s last 5 minutes of purely guitar solo to be an acceptable choice at a dance anyway?... I don’t know…maybe someone can figure that one out…

On to other things…

I have been remiss in not mentioning the passing of guitar great Gary Moore.  From his work with Thin Lizzy, his forays into hard rock, and his blues expertise, he was a true innovator and a true guitar hero.  Mr. Moore you will be missed but your contributions are going to inspire many for a very long time.  Thank You.

Robert William Gary Moore (4 April 1952 – 6 February 2011)  R.I.P.

In Business News… Activision has decided to discontinue creation of it’s “Guitar Hero” game.  The company statement is as follows:

"Due to continued declines in the music genre, the company will disband Activision Publishing's Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011," Activision said in its financial statement.

Bottom Line…It’s gone the way of Space Invaders and Intellivision… It was fun to play the first few hundred times but people didn’t see the need to continue purchasing the updates every year.  With the cost of licensing all the songs to create the game it’s no surprise that turning a profit has become difficult.  Maybe now people will go out and pick up REAL instruments and learn to play them!… and of course there’s always air guitar…

Things to look out for this year….

New Journey for 2011…the second recording with Arnel Pineda on vocals will be the follow-up to the platinum release “Revelation”…

New project from former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, who is in the studio with Steve Morse on guitar, [Dixie Dregs, Kansas, Steve Morse Band, currently with Deep Purple], Neal Morse, vocals, keys, guitar [Spock’s Beard, Solo] and Dave LaRue on bass [Steve Morse Band].  And the producer of this project is the one and only Peter Collins [Rush, Queensryche, October Project, Alice Cooper, Bon Jovi]… Stay tuned!

And…courtesy of Classicrock.com…Rush are planning to totally remix their 2002 album Vapor Trails.
Talking exclusively to Classic Rock, guitarist Alex Lifeson revealed: “We were never happy with the production. Perhaps we should have taken more time over the record. But now we’ve got the chance to improve things. There will be no re-recording, just a remix”.

Two of the tracks were remixed for their compilation Retrospective III.  Rush is currently working on their latest album “Clockwork Angels” for a 2011 release, and will tour thereafter…

In closing, I must say that I LOVE the Chrysler ad with Eminem.  Very classy…

Thanks for coming along for the ride…see you soon…

J.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Pimping Your Music And Unskinny Bop…

Commercial – [kuh-mur-shuh] - able to yield or make a profit; suitable or fit for a wide, popular market [Thank you Mr. Webster…]

Growing up a very popular rally cry of the disenfranchised youth was that their favorite band had “sold out” or “gone commercial”, in essence going from a small ‘cult’ fan base into the mainstream market.  This was typical when the album that sold 200 copies to friends and family on the small independent label is followed by the “breakthrough” album on a major label [because they saw the potential of the band] selling hundreds of thousands of copies, making the band a household name, and making the fan base cry “I heard of them before “X” album came out!”... thus giving them more street credibility. 

This is something that always amused me.  You love the band, you worship the band, everything is about the band…but you don’t want anyone else to know?  What sense did that make?  Unless you’re holding the checkbook to finance the band and keep them eating, living, and supporting their family, there’s a really good chance they want some level of success to be able to continue what they are doing.  The mathematical fact is that if they can’t afford to play, they have to quit, and then there’s no music.  So given that trade off, does it make sense to begrudge a band for actually creating a greater audience for their music and thus sustaining any sort of lifestyle?  I’m not saying that under the guidance of the record label things don’t change. They can and do.  And again going back to making a financial stake in the band, they want to see a bottom line profit. 

History has shown that there are some amazingly passionate people involved in making music.  Berry Gordy from Motown.  Clive Davis from Arista.  Ahmet Ertegun from Atlantic.  These are men who have guided the careers of some of the most successful artists on the planet.  And the one thing that set them apart was that they knew what they heard, and more importantly they knew how to market it and get it out to the masses.  Now not to bore you with the nuts and bolts of how a label makes money [they always get paid before the artist…] Lets just suffice to say that if a record label signs you, they want to make money off of you.  And therein lies the challenge of a moderately successful band getting in bed with the big guys…sometimes they get better, sometimes they get worse…

I understand what it’s like to follow a band and love their music. Then once they found major label success they changed. There are probably too many to mention that have changed their sound, or their line-up, or their target audience, all at the insistence of the record label.  Do they know better? Sometimes, sometimes not.  Most of the time, the record labels are chasing the curve to sign the next big thing, and by the time they’re done grooming them for release the tide has changed.  But the bottom line is the bottom line.  On average, there are 50 new releases per week. So doing the math, that’s roughly 2600 per year.  Of those, only a fraction are going to make money and only a smaller fraction are going to make it big.  And of that small fraction…only a few bands can say they made the album completely their way.  And if they did they certainly paid their dues.

Now, when you really break it down, how would you know if they wouldn’t have sounded that way anyway?  You can’t know…but you know that in your mind, if they got better, it was because of the band’s talent, and if they got worse, the evil record label did it.  And the phrase “sold out” goes from filling an arena, to being the death knell for the band.  I guess the simplicity of it all is this…if you want to be in a band, and you want to be successful, there’s a really good chance unless you’re footing the bill, someone else is calling the shots.  And that’s the math…

So…to all the fans out there who cry “sell out!”… to their favorite bands, I ask you to open up your wallets, put your money where your mouth is, and finance the next record and tour so that your favorite artists can continue to create and perform music the way you like it.  [the band Marillion actually did this successfully, by the way, but that’s a later story] And…to all of the artists crying like whiny babies who abhor the attention and say things in the press that you blame the media for ruining your private life…grow a pair.  Or, go back to playing in your garage for your friends and family, because the moment you signed on the dotted line you knew what you were getting into, and there are too many “Behind The Music” programs for you to claim you didn’t know… So suck it up…

And as for “Unskinny Bop”…do you know what it means?  Well…nothing.  When Poison wrote the song for their 1990 album “Flesh And Blood” they had the melody before the lyrics, and when they were recording they used the phrase unskinny bop to as a place holder for the 4 syllable phrase they hadn’t written yet.  When they recorded  the song, producer Bruce Fairbairn [R.I.P.] didn’t know what an “unskinny bop” was…but said the phrase was perfect, so it stuck…and from the musical world we’ve added it to our lexicon…  

In other news… Jon Bon Jovi wants to buy a stake in the Atlanta Falcons for $150,000,000 [it looks even more impressive when written out….]  Looks like Tommy and Gina did pretty well… To his credit he is founder and was primary owner of the Philadelphia Soul football team in the Arena Football League.  I applaud his generosity and charitable work in his giving back to the community, as well as his ability to keep his family strong in the crazy world of rock and roll. 

Christina Aguilera destroys the National Anthem at Super Bowl XLV… She’s not the only one, just the most recent to botch it.  Michael Bolton screwed it up in Boston during the 2003 American League Championship series, and sadly…Stevie Ray Vaughn turned it into a god-awful mess at Houston Astros ’85 season opener [He supposedly confessed to Mickey Mantle that HE DIDN”T KNOW HOW TO PLAY IT!...]  Is that really something you should be winging?... 

And finally… Rihanna had the video for her new single “S&M” banned in 11 countries.  Now I’ve seen the video. There is no nudity and no profanity.  It is quite provocative, but I think in more of a tongue in cheek fashion [Perez Hilton walks on a leash like a dog..].  However the powers that be in these countries find it offensive.  Even the lines “Sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me” are done for effect but it’s all show, and she’s an amazing performer.  I think that in the end, it’s marketing genius. Remember “Justify My Love” by Madonna… when released as a single from her hits package The Immaculate Collection in 1990, the accompanying video single was banned by MTV for being sexually explicit.  It went on to be the highest selling video single of all time [and was her ninth #1 single…]  So…as long as there will be a Tipper Gore in the mix, they’ll always be controversy…and sales!...

Thanks for coming along for the ride…see you soon…

J.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Confessions of a fractured mind….

Blog…Blog...Blog!... The new world order and the thought police all in one… Was Orwell right?... We ponder, maybe…

Actually in the grand scheme of things…there is no grand scheme.  Just random thoughts and ideas in a time where everyone feels their opinions matter.  I don’t think my opinions matter any more than yours do, but maybe somewhere along the way I’ll amuse you, give you pause to think, or maybe you will learn something that you didn’t want to learn in the first place…and will shortly forget.  It’s all minutiae anyway…

Music, music I hear music…over my head I hear music [with props to King’s X]…

I have been called many things.  Some I agree with and some I’ve earned.  Some are just mean-spirited and some I’ve discarded completely.  One that has stuck is the nickname “Rain Man”… why so?  Well it’s a mixture of things.  For one…the OCD that has driven my passion for music and musical knowledge has at times been overwhelming.  And where Rain Man drew on the miniscule facts of pop culture [K-Mart does suck most of the time…but they have a pretty good sale on Thanksgiving morning…as long as you’re up early…] I drew on the band histories of who played with whom, who produced, who engineered, sometimes I would scan album [yes..album] covers to see who worked on an album.  Truly I needed more of a life as a kid, but growing up a middle class white kid in the ‘burbs didn’t exactly prepare me for anything particular. 

My wife calls me the Musical Rain Man… Now in the context of the movie, Rain Man was actually Raymond, the brother, but the name has become synonymous with the lead character who knows all kinds of unusual facts and randomly offers that information to other people…so it stuck. Now, back to my wife…She’s an amazing woman who really should just get credit for putting up with my musical ramblings, but supports it as well.  She’ll also be the first to tell me, after me taking 15 minutes to explain something about a band, that she doesn’t care, and that she stopped listening about 3 minutes in, but smiled complacently anyway, and we’d laugh about it.  Maybe she’s as crazy as I am.

I’m sure along the way you’ll figure out more about me…but back to blog…

Music. The calm that soothes the savage beast [or so Bugs Bunny once said].  It’s something that’s ubiquitous with every stage in my life.  So after all these years of gathering useless information I thought I would find an outlet for it.  So here we are.  I thank you in advance for listening.  The topics will change and I’m sure the rants will too.  But that’s with anything.

First and foremost…I’m a reformed musical snob.  How exactly would you define that?  Well, it sort of goes like this…  Growing up you had opinions about music, and only they mattered, and you would put down basically everything that wasn’t what you liked.  Maybe it was a guy thing, but it was like that for a long time.  My friends in school had the same problem, and we would promote the virtues of the technical prowess of Rush, or ponder the sheer insanity of Roger Waters while watching The Wall [on VHS of all things…], or wondering why Triumph was the most underrated band in the world when they’ve got one of the greatest guitarists on the planet playing with them [Rik Emmett really is a god by the way…].  Bands that were in our crosshairs included anything alternative, anything purely pop, essentially anything on the radio. 

We’d go to concerts and buy the t-shirts, and wear them out over and over.  Whenever anyone says they’re going to an 80’s party they ask what we wore back then.  For us it was simple.  Jeans, rock t-shirt and sneakers.  Nothing fancy, and nothing really different.  My wardrobe would be jeans and Black Sabbath t-shirt one day, and then jeans and Iron Maiden t-shirt the next.  I do recall in 8th grade I had 5, count ‘em…5 Rush shirts, one for every day of the school week.  Sadly…I’m not kidding.  Now… Back to being a reformed snob… I have been a mobile dj for just over 23 years.  For the first 10 years I bought every pop and radio song I needed to do a show and never listened to it much at all.  It was for the business.  Which was how I would explain away the New Kids On The Block cd that my friends would find in the road case.  It took me a very long time to actually listen to the various radio singles and [gasp!] enjoy them.   But my musical palate expanded with time, with friends exposing me to new artists, and sometimes out of sheer musical boredom, the search for that next great band.  Not a perfect system, and still there are bands that I hear, that are very popular, and I think “WTH”…why? [Justin Bieber does come to mind here…] At this point, music is music.  I know what I like, I know what I dislike, and it’s not a matter of the level of talent or the type of artist.  Either it works or it doesn’t.  I’m sure that everyone out there feels the same way.  And everyone has their musical guilty pleasures, which will be a topic at a later date.  Here we’ll talk about the minutiae, because Jennifer’s eyes have glossed over one too many times, and I need to give her a break every once in a while…

This is the nuts and bolts of it and it’s just the beginning…thanks for hanging on for the ride…

Thanks for listening…

J.