Saturday Night (and Every Night and Day) Shut-In: A Relief Plan

 Posted by
Mar 302020
 
A sound salvation

Townspeople,

We hope you are healthy and abiding by your community’s social distancing practices. I’m keeping my hands as clean as Chris Martin’s.

COVID-19 has thrown us for a loop. I don’t know about you, but all this time shut in the house has made me long for an outlet that not even social media can satisfy. I need to mix it up with my most-intimate music-loving friends. I need to call bullshit with you on some things and, more importantly, have bullshit called on myself.

I’m not alone. A few of you have reached out to me and my close, personal friend sammymaudlin to ask if we could re-open the Halls of Rock, at least until we make it through this global pandemic. We’re brushing up things just enough to give us the rock-nerd shelter we may need to have the intimacy to kindly attack sacred cows, analyze the influence of facial hair on an artist’s musical development, and get a report on the Bill Wyman documentary on Netflix. This emergency trial re-opening of Rock Town Hall can even provide a safe haven for a discussion of Bob Dylan‘s new 17-minute song about the assassination of JFK, which I’ve been afraid to listen to without you.

Who knows where this goes? I hope it helps us through the coming months, if that’s what it’s going to take to get back out to clubs and backslap with friends.

Don’t hesitate to ask if you need a refresher on how to navigate things, how to post new content, simply how to log in. Of course, there is an auto-reset, if you’ve forgotten your password. Who could blame you?

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Is This Thing On?

 Posted by
Mar 252020
 

Townspeople,

Can it be? Will our time spent in relative isolation give us the opportunity to get back to the Halls of Rock?

Stay tuned.

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Last Man Standing: Songs that reference other bands’ members by name

 Posted by
Oct 312016
 

This LMS invites you to submit rock songs by rock bands /musicians that directly reference other rock band members / rock musicians by name. This being the ROCK town hall, I am specifically including the aforementioned requirements. More specifically:

  • It’s gotta be rock on both sides: a rock artist mentioning a rock artist. I think Abba mentioning Joan Baez would be straying too far afield, if it happened!
  • It must be a mention of person; mentioning a band not does not count.
  • It can be just a first name or last name if it’s clear who it’s talking about. “The walrus was Paul” would count, except that:
  • It cannot be a band mentioning a member of that same band, unless it’s about an ex-member.
  • Also, Bob Dylan is out as a mentionee. There was already a whole thread dedicated to Dylan mentions!

Here’s my starter submission to kick things off:

https://youtu.be/UNZbP3ZVem4

The Smithereens’ “Behind The Wall Of Sleep”:

“and she stood just like Bill Wyman / now I am her biggest fan”

One mention at a time, please!

 

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Weird Records: Fleewood Mac’s Time

 Posted by
Sep 272016
 

I was streaming some Fleetwood Mac this weekend, and taking a look at ther back catalog on Tidal — and came across this weird 1995 record Time—with Dave Mason! His song “Blow By Blow” is above.

Post-superstardom, I knew they did kind of a bad record without Lindsey Buckingham and one I actually like without Christine McVie, but replacing Stevie Nicks with Bekka Bramlett? Can you imagine in late 1995 or early 1996 going to see Fleetwood Mac and there’s no Stevie Nicks or Lindsey Buckingham?

I guess Mick Fleetwood thought he could assemble another “new” Fleetwood Mac for the mid-’90s like he did in the mid-’70s, but after listening to this, I will never complain about Mirage again!

What weirdo records have you come across lately? 

 

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Lou Reed: The Way He Was Meant to Be Reviewed

 Posted by
Sep 232016
 

Few personalities — particularly as one as protean and occasionally as brilliant as Reed’s — can be summed up in two syllables. But if you were to do a word cloud of memories of Reed in the various volumes that have been published on his life, the word asshole would turn up in surprisingly large type.

Maybe you’ve heard of this Lou Reed character? This article is worth a read, even if you think you’ve heard it all before. (And you probably have.)

One aspect of many of even Reed’s classic-era albums that doesn’t get talked about enough is the sonic inconsistency. It’s a subtle thing, but most decent rock albums have a sonic palette that forms the core of the work. It’s not that every song must be orchestrated identically, but a good album will generally sound like it was recorded a certain way in a certain universe. Reed’s own lack of sophistication and the B-level producers he used over most of his career combined to make many of his records sound internally random, and jarring. And even fans can point to few nuanced compositions to make the search worthwhile. Along the way he sold “Walk on the Wild Side” for a TV commercial for the Honda’s short-lived line of scooters; Reed appeared at the end of it, to say, “Hey — don’t settle for walkin’!”

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