Townspeeps, I know it’s late notice and my time will be limited, but I’m going to be in Ann Arbor on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 25-26. I may have some time late Tuesday to meet up with any Townspeople in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area. I can think of at least 2 regulars out that way. Let me know if you’re out there and interested.
Until then, let us know what’s on your mind, in the news, on your turntable (or whatever). Thanks!
Good show.
Has anyone ever said the following you:
I hear [artist] puts on a good show.
Have you ever spoken that phrase? I never quite get what people mean when they say that. I often hear it applied to artists for whom I have absolutely no musical interest, like Lady Gaga or Bette Midler, or for really cheesy artists who only have a few songs I can enjoy hearing for the guilty delights of their processed cheese, like Neil Diamond. The funny thing is, even the people who say this phrase in regard to a musically suspect artist don’t seem to care for the artist’s music. I guess I’ve never gone out for an evening expecting a “good show.”
For me, music is music. Of course some performers are better on stage than others, but if I don’t like the music, how much can their stage presence affect my enjoyment of their show. What the fuck can Neil Diamond possibly offer me live, through his “good show,” I think to myself, when people say stuff like this. Does Neil tell great jokes or do a mind-blowing tap-dance routine?
Madonna is an artist who is purported to put on a “good show.” I actually like a few of her songs, but primarily, when people utter this phrase in regard to her, I imagine they’re saying she’s hot. Is that what they mean when they say Midler or Diamond put on a good show?
I look forward to your thoughts on this matter.
I was trying to think about what the legacy of recently deceased NFL Films cofounder Steve Sabol means to us, or how we might apply the mythology he built for his industry to myth-making in rock ‘n roll. Fear not, this will not be an attempt to equate football with rock ‘n roll.
For those who don’t know the first thing about Steve Sabol, his father Ed, and NFL Films, it was an small, independent company that won a contract to shoot highlights of NFL games beginning in the early ’60s. By the end of the decade, the company’s innovative, orchestrated, and dramatically narrated weekly highlight reels brought the game to sports fans like never before. Their style became the Look of the NFL, as described below, in a passage by longtime Philadelphia football writer and eventual NFL films employee Ray Didinger. as kids tuned in each Saturday morning then ran out to the nearest open field re-enacting the latest slow-motion sideline catch or safety blitz with their friends while the highlights were fresh in mind. This was what Sabol called the “backyard moment.”
A typical NFL Films piece will open with the pounding of kettle drums and a close-up of a player breathing steam through his face mask. There is blood on his jersey. His eyes scan the field in slow motion. The music swells and just like that, you’re hooked. Even if you know how the game turned out, you keep watching because you never saw it quite this way before.
I really believe a major factor in the surge of pro football popularity over the past 40 years was the influence of NFL Films. No other sport had anything like it. NFL Films took you inside the game and put you eyeball-to-eyeball with the players. They shoved your face in the snow in Green Bay. They made you feel what it’s like to be on the field. Above all, they made you care. – Ray Didinger, CSN Philly
Rock ‘n roll has never had a weekly highlights show (only Top 40 countdowns, which never really took viewers into the studio or on stage), but it does have its share of classic filmed and televised performances. What are the key myth-making cinematic moments in rock? What are the specific “backyard moments” of rock, not entire films or performances but key moments, like Pete Townshend’s slide at the end of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” in The Kids Are Alright?
Taking this idea one step further, if we could go back in time, to a time when kids actually cared about rock ‘n roll, and you were asked to launch a weekly rock ‘n roll highlights show, what aspects of musicians playing would you and your crew look to zoom in on and run in slow-motion? Who would be your narrator?
In the past I’ve been accused of not picking out stuff that’s bad enough for us to play nice. I admit, I’m not half the turdhunter as hrrundivbakshi, but lacking his leadership I will once more attempt to step into the void.
How about this 1970 clip of Hair star Robin McNamara performing “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me”; is this bad enough for you? I’ve been known to be a sucker for these kind of bubblegum songs, but the song and McNamara’s performance define candy ass. Sorry, I can’t say anything nice about this one. I bet you can.
If so and if you still think I make it too easy to play nice, try this next performance by McNamara, of a more recent vintage:
Return to Forever.
The other day I read a little interview in GQ with Bob Mould. Mould is an artist I’ve long tried and wanted to like in his various guises but never quite can. My interest in Mould starts with the strong sense that he’s a good egg and a real music lover. In the 5 minutes I spoke to him about favorite punk records of our youth after a Husker Du show years ago, he was a good egg. I actually passed out for a second, leaning against the stage during his show. My friend—a close, personal friend and Townsman who shall not go named—and I were wasted on an experimental combo of canned vanilla weight loss shakes and vodka. It was a tasty combination, but not one worth revisiting. I liked Husker Du that night as much as I could have imagined. I especially liked the vibe they gave off. It was like watching some local bands in our scene at the time, good eggs onstage and off, each with a couple of really good songs and fun people watching them from the floor to occupy my time during the boring numbers. Although seeing Husker Du live helped me like them more than my experiences skipping over 10 songs on each album for the 2 good ones, the combination of Mould’s horrible open-chords on a distorted Flying V tone and his bellowing Gordon Lightfoot-style singing voice were limiting factors in my long-term enjoyment.
The hardest trick to pull off in rock and roll is the dreaded “return to form,” that abstract idea that a veteran artist can somehow, after a few decades, reclaim both the sound and the energy of their earlier work. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been told that a new Pearl Jam album is “their best album since [insert favorite old Pearl Jam album here].” I can’t tell you how excited I was when Metallica released Death Magnetic and it sounded way more like old Metallica than new Metallica. Being an artist is a real bitch because fans always want you to go backward. They want you to recapture a moment of discovery in their lives that can’t truly ever be recaptured. And you’re supposed to do all of it without sounding repetitive. No wonder so many musicians are prone to smashing their instruments. – Drew Magary, from his intro to the GQ interview.
A few years later I bought Mould’s first solo album, Woodshedding, or something like that. It featured energetic, acoustic guitar-driven songs with cellos and the backstory of Mould wanting to move forward and develop a meaningful, direct approach to songwriting like that of his new hero, Richard Thompson. Remember that time in the mid-’80s, when Thompson suddenly became a guiding light for slowly maturing punks looking for a way to move forward? I was one of those punks; I sought guidance from Thompson, buying almost all his works leading up to the stuff Mitchell Froom started producing once he earned his long-overdue critical acclaim. Mould’s Woodshop album was pretty good, more in tune with Thompson’s hardwood folk-rock albums prior to Froom’s addition of a cheapening polyurethane finish. With the crappy Flying V out of the picture, the lone stumbling block to my fully embracing that album was Mould’s voice. He still sounded like a punk rock Lightfoot to me.
Ever get hassled for your rock-length hair? I’m curious to know if anyone ever got hassled for a reverse rock hair length, such as the first generation of punks getting haircuts in the era when long hair became the norm. Did you have a rock-hair advocate?
My Mom was ahead of the curve in the Dry Look movement of the early 1970s, when regular guys first followed the flowing hair fashions established by rock ‘n rollers and assorted mods and hippies in the 1960s. She was right there alongside Carol Brady in supporting workingmen’s rights to grow their hair to a well-conditioned groovy length. She saw that my hair was kept at least as long as the Rubber Soul-era Beatles. Among all the snobbish attitudes my Mom inspired in me and that I still call on in times of trouble, perhaps none matched her attitudes toward hair.
His Father’s Mustache. Mr. James. These are the names of the first “hair salons” that my Mom took me to after countless arguments with traditional barbers through my preschool years. There were two barber friends in the family, in particular, who wanted to get a hold of my hair, Elmer and Pat the Barber (he was never referred to simply as “Pat”).
Elmer, one of my grandfather’s oldest friends, a kindly Italian uncle figure with a ready laugh, would call me over. “Let me see that hair, Jimmy,” he’d say in his gentle voice, as he ran his fingers through it. Then his tone shifted a bit. “Why don’t you tell your mother to let me give you a real boy’s haircut.”
“Pat the Barber,” just as friendly a presence in my grandparents’ neighborhood and the father of boy I’d crawl through dirty factory lots with in the summertime, used to give me the same pitch. I’m a boy, I’m a boy, and my Mom could admit it.
Imagine, if you will, a series of short films documenting classic live albums. Directors would be commissioned to either assemble a concert film from archived or found footage or stage dramatic interpretations of the album. Each film would run the length of the live album’s original vinyl release.
You mission follows:
I’d like to see Paul Thomas Anderson direct a dramatic treatment of Lou Reed‘s Rock ‘n Roll Animal. It would be shot in grainy, washed-out color, somewhere between the porno look of Boogie Nights and the painterly oil drilling scenes from There Will Be Blood.
Staying with Lou Reed, I’d like to see The Velvet Underground‘s Live at Max’s Kansas City directed by Michel Gondry, who would find ways to make the most of the crumbling legacy of an already underground band as they plays what would be their farewell show. Song performances involving puppetry and primitive-futuristic technology would be expected.
The summer tentpole movies of this series would be KISS Alive I & II. I’ll leave it to fans of that band’s live albums to select the director(s) and sketch out the films’ treatments.
I’m sure you’ve got your own classic live album short films to produce.
