Townspeople,

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Bill Murray was on Late Night with Conan O’Brien last night. I’m a bit disappointed that, 11 hours later, no one has yet posted a YouTube clip of his appearance, but I did find another clip that will do the job of illustrating my concern. Go to around the 3:53 mark (or watch the excruciating if occasionally funny intro, if you want to hate white folks at Blooz festivals).

Conan must have been hipped to this performance. He brought up the fact that Murray can only play “Gloria” on guitar and asked if he would perform it with the Max Weinberg 7. Murray, ever the showman, readily complied. He kicked off the song playing at least one totally wrong-sounding chord. After about two rotations through the progression, Conan’s guitarist covered for him, and they pulled down Murray’s guitar in the mix. As is the case in this Blooz fest clip the second chord in the progression seemed to be the culprit. This has raised at least two questions:

1) Isn’t the chord progression to “Gloria” E-D-A? That’s how I’ve played it for the last 30 years.
2) If so, does Murray have no idea where to fret a D chord? I know his guitar at the Blooz fest isn’t perfectly tuned, but it can’t be that two different guitars have intonation problems around the D chord only.

A third question might be, Does anyone in the entertainment industry break the news to Bill that he doesn’t even know this one song on guitar?

Townsman Mwall suggested we take up the broader discussion of a rock artist’s relevance, or lack thereof, in a separate thread. Great suggestion. I’m bringing his comments from the ongoing XTC/Nonsuch discussion to The Main Stage. Here’s what Mwall had to say. Add to the man’s thoughts as you see fit!

The concept of relevance/irrelevance is certainly worth saying more about at some point, and debating, perhaps in another post. For me it usually begins at that point at which a band starts making albums that no longer contribute significantly to the value of their own musical legacy, or at best (which I guess is under discussion here re XTC) are dotting a few final i’s and crossing a few t’s. It tends to correspond, although not always exactly, with that same moment at which any new fans of the band (of which there are likely to be fewer and fewer) tend to “discover” them as something to look back at. If you first heard the Stones in 1988, for instance, you still don’t think that 1988 was “when they were really great.”

Here are some moments like that: Graham Parker after The Real Macaw, The Stones after Tatoo You, REM after… well, what? I’ll be damned if those later albums aren’t so deeply indistinguishable that I’ve never bothered to tell them apart.