Rock Town Hall • Rock Music Discussion

Rock Town Hall Bar Set to New High (NSFW)

May 052012

CAUTION: Please be aware that some of the following content is likely Not Safe for Work viewing, depending on where you work. I don’t add the potentially offensive material for salacious reasons. Rather I only offer the truth of the situation.

For every moment of triumph,

for every instance of beauty,
many souls must be trampled.
– Hunter S. Thompson

I hate to post this on the heels of the, arguably, new high water mark set by KingEd and Mr. Mod. Their interview and backstage hang with Nick Lowe was indeed impressive and I don’t want to detract from that in any way. However I do want to say that I, sammymaudlin, have been fortunate to top even that mountain top.

Last night, Ms. Maudlin and I went to a local-ish fair, Conejo Valley Days, to watch and dance to a local Fleetwood Mac tribute band called Belladonna, http://www.belladonna-music.com. Note that they, and rightly so, said to beware of http://www.belladonna.com. Don’t shoot the messenger. Here they are making lovin’ fun:

Good and fine. They were fun as usual. BUT the band that opened for them was far, far more. They were so much more than I, or you, could possibly have hoped for. That I was able to glimpse them at a place like this is beyond comprehension. And “no,” I was not able to interview them. And “no,” I was not able to hang backstage with them. But no matter, as who they are and that I was within eye-shot of them is enough to humbly put me at the pinnacle of the RTH mountain top. I should note that, due to my respect for them I chose not to make eye contact and rather looked nervously to the side when the opportunity presented itself. For the record, I did not drink a drop, yet the shear power of their performance impacted me severely when the show was over:

This Shit Ain’t Right: Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch Dead at 47

Posted by Mr. Moderator

May 042012

Wow, as I wrapped up a long day at work on a mighty 2 hours of sleep I just read that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys has died from cancer at the age of 47. This feels sadder to me than most celebrity deaths involving artists I’m not particularly involved with. To be honest, there’s a chance I wouldn’t be able to tell you which Beastie Boy was Yauch if you showed me a picture of the three of them. However, I liked their team spirit, and no member of a team as funny and spirited as the Beastie Boys should have to die like that. I remember reading that Yauch was battling with cancer a couple of years ago, but come on, this was a guy pretty much my age with a lot of energy and a great sense of humor. He’d laugh his way through cancer and send it scurrying on its way.

It took me awhile to like much in the way of rap music, and to this day I’m skeptical of the genre, but the Beastie Boys’ appeal was hard to deny. They were in your face and funny, the way a couple of my friends were funny. Even before I liked any of their music I couldn’t help but like them, if only because they had tapped into a pop culture humor completely specific to my generation. The following fanboy video, in which a group of friends possibly much like my own mates re-creates the band’s amazing “Sabotage” video, says a lot about what made the real McCoys so lovable.

Supposedly Influential Musicians Who May, In Fact, Be So Idiosyncratic That They Could Not Have Influenced Many Other Musicians

Posted by Mr. Moderator

May 042012

It’s not often we get to see Robert Fripp laugh, is it? I forgot King Crimson played on the failed early challenger to Saturday Night Live, Fridays. Clearly, Fripp had a good time that night.

Collective critical wisdom probably considers Robert Fripp to be an “influential” musician, much like it does his old partner in crime, Brian Eno. However, unlike the body of work Eno produced, I’m not sure Fripp’s work as a guitarist, composer, producer, conceptualist, and iconoclast actually influenced many musicians. Who else plays in that weird scale that’s so distinctive of Fripp’s work? Who else uses Frippertronics? What other rock guitarists play seated on a stool? Eno inspired a generation of non-musicians to produce music, and he actually helped change the way we hear music. Fripp’s body of work suggests a musician needs to spend a lot of time practicing. Baby, that ain’t rock ‘n roll!

I’m not criticizing Fripp, mind you. I like his body of work. I like that one circular scale he plays repeatedly—and the other one, involving 2 notes that don’t quite go together yet move up the neck in some weird harmony. I love those soaring, melodic solos he occasionally plays on Eno records and The Roches’ “Hammond Song.” I consider Fripp to be an inspiring musician but not an influential one, if that makes sense. Along the same lines, I call bullshit on most folks who claim Captain Beefheart as an “influence.” His music is inspiring, but how can one be influenced by Beefheart without aping him? “Yeah, man, I like to stick daggers in the blues and sing ‘out there’ lyrics!” With rare exceptions (eg, Pere Ubu, early PJ Harvey), that is Beefheart more than it is influenced by Beefheart. I think he’s too idiosyncratic to be that useful an influence.

If you can get on board with this concept, are there other musicians you can think of who may be so idiosyncratic that they do not leave much room for influence, in terms of “building off” their work?

Sound Off!

Posted by Mr. Moderator

May 042012

This one goes to zero!

Rock Town Hall has a long and honored tradition of rock video analysis, with Townspeople often incorporating the distinctive technique of commenting on videos with the sound off. In honor of alexmagic‘s legendary analysis of a video of Tom Jones performing with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, we are instituting a new feature, Sound Off!

The way a Sound Off! thread works is simple:

A video is posted for us to view with the sound off.
We comment on what we’re seeing with the sound off.
We most likely share in the sense of wonder that there’s much to learn about music with the sound off.

You will be entrusted to view the following video with the sound off. If we could disable the video’s sound we would, but something tells me the copyright holder of the video might object to that. Trust us, for the purposes of this thread the sound will get in the way. Beside, you may be viewing this at work, in which case coworkers will only be distbured by your giggles; you won’t have to worry about the artist’s music leaking into their cube.

After the jump, why don’t you turn the sound off and watch the following video!

Blessed

Posted by Mr. Moderator

May 032012

I could do without the drummer’s mullet and Dennis Miller, but how blessed was Matthew Sweet during his Girlfriend-era breakthrough (yeah, I know, it wasn’t “overnight”) to have been surrounded by the likes of Robert Quine, Richard Lloyd, and, in this clip, is that Peter Holsapple I see?

What other relatively “unknown” musicians come to mind who seemed to burst onto the scene with the benefit of cool surrounding musicians, musicians who were more than ace session men and women?

This thread is not to suggest that Sweet and other musicians who will be named didn’t actually do the work to arrive at their blessed state.

It’s the Singer AND the Song, Right?

Posted by Mr. Moderator

May 032012

I caught the following Daryl Hall performance on Conan last night. It was a re-run.

I don’t have what’s called a “good ear.” In band practices, for instance, I’m often the last to know that someone’s singing off-key. It’s probably because of my limited vocal abilities that I treat vocal pitch like horseshoes and hand grenades.

As soon as this performance got underway, however, I suspected that Hall was singing way off key. He is, right? Please confirm that this is not just a matter of the song sucking.

Bring back Oates—and his ‘stache. And the blond beard’s still not working, Daryl.

Worst All-Star Hair Jam Ever?

Posted by Mr. Moderator

May 022012

Can you find a more comprehensively bad collection of All-Star Hairdos? I bet you can. There may be few hideous cuts in this relatively tasteful late-’80s jam, granted, but the regrets do pile up as cultural and racial boundaries are wiped clean.

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