Rock Town Hall • Rock Music Discussion

Listening In: Gear Talk

Apr 242009

Do you partake in gear talk? I don’t. Although I’ve played guitar since I was 16 and have been recording music in studios and at home since I was 17, yet I have almost no interest in nor, more importantly, ability to discuss gear.

Is it a classic brand guitar of guitar, like a Fender, a Gibson, or a Rickenbacker – rather than some new-fangled “pointy” guitar?
Is it a funny model among one of those classic brands, like a Gibson Grabber bass?
For recording equipment, does it have big knobs?

That about does it for my interest in guitar and recording gear, the gear I’m most likely to handle. Likewise, I can’t be bothered to talk about stereo stuff. Will it play music? Yes? Great!

I do, however, get a kick out of listening to two drummers talk about their gear. The other night, for instance, I spent about 15 minutes listening to discussion between our band’s drummer, Townsman Sethro, and Billy Ficca, the “wackoid” Television drummer touring with his old bandmate, Richard Lloyd. When I walked over, Sethro told me wide-eyed that Billy was playing the snare he’d used on Marquee Moon! I had to admit, that was pretty cool, but given the chance to open a dialog about the recording techniques employed by producer Andy Johns, I just sat back and listened to them talk about what the snare was made of, what kinds of heads they used – on the bottom as well as the top – and so forth. Drummers have lots of necessary gear, and I think it’s important that a drummer know about that stuff, much more important than it is for a guitarist to be a gearhead, for instance. Plus, you don’t have to understand anything about electronics to at least get the gist of what drummers are talking about when they talk gear. Have you ever heard a bassist go on about his or her gear? No offense, but that may be the gearhead discussion I least want to hear.

Do you talk gear? Do you listen in to gear talk? Do you prefer to talk gear that you know or listen in to discussions over gear you don’t really understand?

This will likely be the most discussed topic EVER on Rock Town Hall, so please be patient if the servers slow down. Thanks!

Slow Burns

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Apr 242009

I don’t have the world’s longest attention span, especially when it comes to rock ‘n roll. I tend to get fidgety during long intros, slow songs, and the like. Sometimes even the opening minute of a generally fine meat-and-potatoes pinky rock song by a band I really like on an album I love tests my patience. For years this was the case with “The Have Nots,” the closing song on X‘s fantastic third album, Under the Big Black Sun. The song was never a needle lifter for me, but if I had to get somewhere while spinning the record, I never felt compelled to listen past the penultimate side 2 song, the energetic “How (I Learned My Lesson).”

Then, one day, my close personal friend, Townsman Andyr, told me how much he loves “The Have Nots.” I’d already spent a few rockin’ nights in the presence of this music lover, and although I knew he shared my love for this album, I had no idea this was his favorite cut on the album!

“Why?” I asked. He told me he liked the way it built up steam. He told me to wait for the verse with the handclaps and to follow the progression of Billy Zoom’s guitar parts. I tried it, and damn if he wasn’t right! I’ve since loved that song too and now consider it one of my favorite songs on that album. However, even knowning the payoff that’s to come, to this day when “The Have Nots” starts off I get a little fidgety. I know the song is a slow burn, but something inside me wants to douse it with lighter fluid.

What’s your favorite slow burn? I don’t necessarily mean a song that’s constructed as a slow burn, such as Otis Redding‘s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” I’m looking for your personal slow burn.

Musicians Who Play Super-Cool Stuff While Lacking an Even Remotely Cool Stance

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Apr 232009

Here’s my last bit of thoughts generated during the long, fun night opening for Richard Lloyd and The Donuts recently. As I watched some Richard Lloyd videos leading up to the show, thought about past live performances I’d seen of his, and then watched him live that night, it occurred to me that his guitar stance in no way supports the cool licks he whips out. He wears his guitar pretty high, which some might argue is automatically uncool. He often holds the neck up, Bill Wyman style, which almost everyone agrees is uncool. What I find is most uncool about the neck pointing up is what it does to the elbows: it crowds them into the check. A cool, rockin’ stage stance should be about expansion, about owning the stage. Cramped elbows do not promote ownership. Check it out.
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The Rock Town Hall Interview: Richard Lloyd, Man on the Marquee Moon

Posted by KingEd

Apr 202009

I owe the Philadelphia Library (Cottman Avenue branch, to be exact) an apology. And some money. I used to transfer SEPTA buses to and from school at that spot. There was a pretty cool record store next to the library with punk and new wave records. A couple days a week I’d stop in the store and marvel at the records, posters, and buttons. It was at this store I’d buy the latest copy of Trouser Press, which was tapping me into a way out of the doldrums of late-70s rock ‘n roll. One day I actually stopped into the library instead. I was researching something for a class, when I noticed that the library had records — and so the research was put on hold. Flipping through the bins I found a copy of an album I’d been reading about, Television‘s Marquee Moon. I took the record home and quickly became so entranced by its hypnotic, woven guitar parts and impressionistic lyrics that it became part of my permanent collection. About 10 years ago, I finally removed the album sleeve from its thick, plastic protective library sleeve and accepted the fact that I would never return it to the library.

While a lot of the punk bands I was getting into tapped into my boyhood love of energetic, mid-60s British Invasion music, Television took my understanding of punk rock back to the hippie rock I used to listen to in my uncle’s bedroom, more expansive stuff like Traffic and Jimi Hendrix. The rocking songs, like “See No Evil” and “Friction,” contained twin-guitar riffs and short, explosive, melodic solos worthy of Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds and early Hendrix. The mid-tempo songs, like “Venus” and the epic title track, built slowly, doubled up on themselves, and allowed me to sit in my shade-drawn room and drift off as I did as a young boy listening to “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” on my uncle’s 8-track.

The sleeve for Marquee Moon didn’t give much information, but one thing I noticed was credits for who played what solo. I learned that most of the driving, biting solos were by Richard Lloyd while most of the cleaner, spacey solos were by Tom Verlaine. During the verses, though, there was no telling who played what. For an aspiring punk, flashy guitar heroes had become a joke. Television found a way around this, allowing us to absolutely love the guitar heroism while not getting bogged down in the notion of guitar heroes. It was an approach that showed a way forward for punk rock, that suggested there was a future after all. I hope the Philadelphia Library can understand my moral lapse.

For whatever reasons Television was unable to capitalize on their smoking debut, releasing a fairly flat follow-up album and then, 14 years later, a reunion album that smoothed out the fluid rhythm section of bassist Fred Smith and drummer Billy Ficca. The band would tour, on and off, over the next 14 years, but a fourth studio album would never arrive. Lloyd quit Television in 2007, and has since kept an active pace, touring and recording with his own band, The Sufi-Monkey Trio. We talked in anticipation of his tour, which brings him to Philadelphia today, and he explained his big move. “Television commands good money when we play live, but we hadn’t made a record in 14 years, and you know, Tom is impossible to deal with.” Lloyd explains that it was time to finally move forward. “In order for me to sort of go my own way, you know, I couldn’t have a first loyalty, which I had maintained for 35 years to Television. If I was working on my own projects and Television wanted to do something, I would drop what I was doing for Televison, because I had made a magic circle around Television, but Tom didn’t respect it, and so what.”
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This One’s for You, Great48: On Fine Food and Rock and Roll Pig’s Knuckles

Posted by hrrundivbakshi

Apr 202009

So here I am, back from a long weekend in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany, where I went to attend a wedding. Nothing particularly noteworthy to share in the music department, other than to say: you think American wedding bands are bad? Try dancing to a German one, Jack! (Side note/confession: I did in fact boogie down to a medley of Boney M’s finest hits.)

Anyway, I write to discuss a revelatory experience that struck me as having relevance to the world of Rock, and it’s this that I want to briefly describe to Townsman Great48 and the rest of you.

See, I knew going in to this wedding that the bride’s family was a.) very happy to see their wonderful daughter married; and b.) on the upper end of the economic scale — but I didn’t realize the family would pay to have the whole weekend catered by a Michelin two-star restaurant. And so it was that I was served jellied this, served in a reduction of that, next to stone-roasted the other thing, for two solid days. Pretty amazing.

But my last meal — in a beer hall in Zurich the night before I flew home — was the one that really knocked me on my keister: a huge plate of braised pig’s knuckle, home-made sauerkraut and boiled potato. Nothing fancy — at all — but I washed it down with first a Swiss lager, then a crazy good Dunkel, and I was astonished at how much more satisfying this meal was for me. And I’m a snob about these things!

As I sat there wolfing this down, I thought: there must be interesting analogs to my Swiss food experience in the collective brain trust known as Rock Town Hall. I mean, I feel certain that without thinking too hard, G48 and the rest of you can share stories about otherwise delicious, rich, complex Rock *that you loved hearing* in the same way that I loved every minute of fancy foodiness over the wedding weekend — that suddenly paled in comparison to the simple gustatory delights found in a slab of hard-charging Rock meatloaf, once you weaned yourself off the fancy stuff.

Am I making sense here, or is my jet lag forcing me to stretch things a bit too far?

I want reports!

HVB

Who Would Have Thought Metalheads Could Have the Best Rock Talk Show on TV?

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Apr 192009

Have you ever seen the VH1 Classic show That Metal Show? Every once in a while I’m flipping channels and, although I have almost zero interest in heavy metal music, I stop flipping when this show is on and watch for about 15 minutes. It’s really well done, and I’m envious that Rock Town Hall doesn’t have its own VH1 Classic show on which we could do our thing, discuss our music, with a live audience composed of our Townspeople.

For as little as I know and care about metal, I know even less about the hosts, some guy named Eddie Trunk and his two middle-aged buddies. I know not a thing about these dudes, in fact, but I care about them. They’re funny enough. They’re nerdy, knowledgeable, and opinionated about the music they love. They love the music they love for many of the same reasons, from solid to ridiculous, that we love the music we love. Unlike other, rare rock discussion shows I’ve seen on tv or heard on the radio over the years (eg, that radio show out of Chicago), That Metal Show doesn’t seem to be loaded with stock, publicist-inspired crit-ass kissing. This show seems more natural and sincere.

If you’ve never seen this show, I suggest you check it out. If you have seen it, what do you think?

Dedication

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Apr 192009

During the mid 70’s, Randy Hansen played professionally in the Las Vegas style show band called “Kid Chrysler and the Cruisers”. Within the floorshow, individual band members developed impersonations of famous rock stars. Subsequently Hansen created the first Jimi Hendrix Tribute act, for the reason of love, the music and the people he sought after keeping Jimi’s music alive.

Hansen breaks new ground in Rock & Roll’s history in 1975, by pioneering the first Rock Tribute act in the United States and soon spreads though out the world.

In 1978, while further exploring the Hendrix role, Hansen formed “Machine Gun”. A tribute to Jimi Hendrix, with a wig and make-up, the moves perfected and the songs duplicated note for note. As the transition was complete, he went on tour opening shows for another young Northwest band called “Heart”.

That’s not all, folks!

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