May 062009
 


How many instances of real musicians/bands appearing on a prime-time television shows (variety shows excluded) primarily as an excuse to promote a new song can we recall? Pure acting gigs by musicians do not count, but we’ll accept acting/performing appearances as characters other than themselves, provided that their performing characters are not too different than their usual performing selves. For instance, there’s an episode of Columbo in which Johnny Cash acts and performs as a character, Tommy Brown. That would count because, as you can see in the following clip from that episode, Tommy Brown has just enough of a resemblance to Johnny Cash.
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May 062009
 


Drummers,

Although we often make fun of you, I hope you know you hold a pretty glamorous, enviable spot in a band. Despite your anxieties over the clarity of your snare, you are always heard. You get to burn off more physical energy than anyone else. Although it’s sometimes tough to see you bashing away behind a drum kit, a singer, and a few other musicians, your equipment is cool and what goes into your playing is worth the effort necessary to watch you at work.

Even when you’re playing a mellow, jazzy number, it’s cool to watch you work the brushes around the snare and coax a pulse out of the ride cymbal. However, there’s one part of your job that doesn’t jibe with our expectations: watching you accompany a country artist or Bob Dylan. That can’t be a lot of fun, can it? Name the greatest drum fill or drum part in a country song. You can’t really distinguish one country beat from another, can you? There are about three options for you and your equally bored bassist. At least the bassist gets some accompanying Bob Dylan, but for as much as I love Dylan’s best music, I never say to myself, That’s a great drum part! That must have been a blast to play!

I feel like, with a little practice, I could play drums for a country artist or Bob Dylan. As a hard-working drummer, who might have spent a year taking lessons on nothing but a practice pad until you mastered your paradiddles, what goes through your mind when playing a country number or a Dylan tune? Do you “lie back and think of England,” focusing on the content of the song itself, the lyrics, the performance of the singer? Do you ever feel like you’re “getting yours?”

If I’ve got it all wrong, let me know. That’s the point of the Is there a drummer in the house? series. I love drummers, everybody loves drummers, and we know we’re putting your through a lot of heavy stuff that you hold in for the good of the band. Lean on me. I care about what you’re going through.

I should note that partial credit – or blame – for this thread goes to Townsman jungleland2, I believe, who made mention of the difficulty in getting his drummer to cover Dylan songs.

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May 052009
 

Roxy Music‘s “Love Is the Drug” was tough, stylish treat on the radio when I was growing up. It wasn’t a smash hit on Philadelphia radio in my middle school days, but it would come on now and then and fit right in with the ’70s soul and downbeat-heavy rock that I sought out as hormones raged. Later in the ’70s, I’d dig rare FM radio spins of songs like “Over You” and “Manifesto.” As bad as commercial rock radio was becoming by that time, playlists still allowed for some “play,” some experimentation. Those chart-scraping Roxy Music singles occupied a similar place in my heart with other slightly dark, soulful not-quite-hits, like J. Geils Band‘s “One Last Kiss.” Some day I need to gather all those last-gasp, blue-eyed rockin’ soul numbers of the late-70s on one mix CD.


I never got around to buying an actual Roxy Music album (or a J. Geils Band album, for that matter) while in high school. The little bit of Roxy Music I was familiar with had qualities I liked, but it required more patience than I could muster. Compared with David Bowie‘s “Young Americans,” a TSOP-influenced song that continues to excite me in an immediately gratifying way from beginning to end to this day, the super-cool “Love Is the Drug” was much more…cool. And I wasn’t that cool.

It wasn’t until freshman year in college that I first heard the mind-blowing early Roxy Music I’d only read about in magazines and books. An older friend and mentor plied me with some of the tools for deeper understanding before throwing the band’s first album on his Bang & Olufsen turntable and and CRANKING UP his super-hi-fi system. I must have been grinning and rocking back like Danny DeVito’s Martini from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
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May 042009
 

Maria/Somewhere

I found this show tune track on the B-side of a Thrifty Music single from a Mystery Date-caliber artist, and was so impressed I tracked down the album in CD form. It’s not consistently good, but I’m glad I own it. So: this is both my entry into the Show Tune Hall Last Man Standing battle, and my Mystery Date challenge to you all. Who is this guy? For extra credit, tell me who produced the tune. Hint: he shows up in the RTH menu bar with some frequency.

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

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May 032009
 


The subject line pretty much asks all I want to know: What are you looking for most when you read a rock biography?

  • Is it technical/musical insight – what gear the musicians played, how things were mic’ed, stories about the development of favorite arrangements and performances?
  • Is it dirt: who slept with Jackson Browne, who slept with David Crosby, who could have slept with Yoko first?
  • Is it something deeper, like what is the key to a great artist’s greatness?

You may answer in the present, in your rock bio-reading peak, and all points in between.
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May 032009
 


I know some of you are touched by the simple, open-wound charms of The Beach Boys’ Love You album. Isn’t part of that album’s appeal the sympathetic vibe you get from a band hanging onto its gifts by a thread?

That’s at the root of my soft spot for The Byrds‘ “Chestnut Mare.” I’m a hard ass about The Byrds’ prime-era work, as some of you know, but I find “Chestnut Mare” most sympathetic. You can tell Roger McGuinn is still trying to catch that elusive sound he’d been chasing during the ups and downs of The Byrds. He’s the last of the original Byrds standing, but he’s not ready to think outside the band structure. Roger’s got a business suit on – just in case – and it’s not clear that everyone in this version of The Byrds makes sense (conga player???), but it’s not quite the season for the band to die.

Musically, I think there’s something to be said for the lack of cohesion and confidence in this performance. I wish the early Byrds could have shown more rough edges and vulnerability. I wish The Byrds had trafficked in more Loser Rock. OK, maybe not, but at least this weird, waning performance allows me to feel something wistful.

What’s your most sympathetic last-ditch effort by a band that’s clearly past its prime?

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