I had originally intended to solicit new comments from participants in The Greatest Rock Story Ever Told for this holiday season, but, you know, life got in the way. Toddlers.
Anyhow, I didn’t want this day to pass without a gift from me to you of some sort, so I present you with this piece of found Rock art, entitled “Rock and Roll Eruption.” I’m hoping it can spark some discussion. In fact, I’m hoping it will become the new, official Rock Town Hall Theme. It is clearly superior to the current one.
“Rock, I cannot understand you” — truer words have never been spoken.
I just bought tickets to go see The Pat Travers Band at our little suburban club in Vienna, VA. As teenager, I was into this stuff for a short period of time, and it will be a fun retro trip back for me and my fellow-Midwestern buddy. I remember buying his albums, other than his big live album, in the cutouts. He was on Polydor records in the late ’70s, and for some reason a lot of their artists ended up in the $2.99 bin as I recall.
Most of Pat’s music strikes me as just missing the hard rock mark for some reason I can’t put my finger on. Is it because it wasn’t drilled into my head on what became Classic Rock radio?
It’s “off-brand” rock—not quite up to Bad Company or Aerosmith at their best, and probably more than a few notches below. It reminds me of Tommy Bolin solo records or Robin Trower or UFO. Of course, I am probably thinking about this the wrong way—because these folks have their diehard fans, I just grew out of it. Anyway, I am kind of looking forward to seeing what Pat is up to at age 61.
Do you have any “off-brand” rock in your stacks that you listen to?
Sad to hear of Joe Cocker’s death. Thanks to my Uncle Joe, he was one of my first Rock Superheroes. Uncle Joe bought me the early Cocker albums, including the mind-blowing The Mad Dogs & The Englishman live album, in which the band members were given little sobriquets, like Leon Russell’s (I believe) unattainable title of “Master of Space and Time.” My uncle saw a tour after that album at the Spectrum and brought me home a huge button with the cover shot and a cardboard cutout of Cocker’s wild face on a stick. I wish I still have that face on a stick. I loved the way Cocker and his band simply KICKED IT OUT. Even his ballads were delivered with force. He will be missed in this age of the navel-gazing artists who sing like Confederate soldiers taking their last breath while holding their newborn sons. Cocker, who was not a songwriter, made the most of so many other artists’ works. Here’s my favorite by him, “Delta Lady.”
As a stubborn, contrarian, authority-resisting teenager it was a joy to find The Clash and Joe Strummer, in particular, who immediately commanded my attention, respect, and, I’ll admit, idolatry. It was comforting to feel commanded. In my imagination, he was my rock ‘n roll big brother: pushing me, patting me on the back, whispering in my ear. He died this day in 2002. I truly regret never getting to sit down with him, but in some ways I felt like I did numerous times.
In these dark days of winter, I thought sharing a special video could make the season just a bit more light-hearted and bearable. But then I found this, thanks to my brother’s Facebook page, and I couldn’t resist sharing it with you:
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such a horrible video. It makes classic 80’s low tech, big hair synth pop videos look positively regal. In it’s absolute ridiculousness, however, it attains a level of almost surrealistic meta..something.
What if a song you love in a foreign language you don’t understand at all has terrible lyrics? The other day I was listening to “Kungo Sogoni,” by a woman named Nâ Hawa Doumbia. I forget what country she’s from, but I’m pretty sure it’s a country where I wouldn’t be able to make out a word anyone’s saying. I occurred to me: I hope the song doesn’t contain a deal-breaking couplet, like “My love don’t give me presents/I know that she’s no peasant.”
My close, personal friend Townsman Andyr and I were talking yesterday about what makes a satisfying show for our band, from our perspective (the hell with the audience!). Beside decent sound on stage, an engaged audience (oh, you know we love you!), a sectioned-off band room and moderately clean bathroom, and no more than a reasonable amount of mistakes, we agreed on the following under-acknowledged elements of a satisfying show—for our band, not every artist:
Songs are performed faster than they are on record
There’s a minimum of time between songs
Any song breaking the 3-minute mark is justified by a solo
We’re breaking a serious sweat
This led to comparisons between our approach to playing live and the visionary football strategies of Philadelphia Eagles coach Chip Kelly. We both like to work fast, get the plays in at the line of scrimmage, etc. Unlike Kelly, we’ve yet to develop visionary approaches to health and nutrition, what we will call “rock science” when we get around to developing these things. We’re not bothered by bills requiring us to play short sets. We’re not about “time of possession.” We can get in more “plays,” or songs, than most bands can in a 4o-minute set, with the soundman breathing down our backs. When we’re running on all cylinders, we could put our 40-minute set against one of Bruce Springsteen‘s 4-hour sets and give Him and His band a run for its money. Yeah, Andyr and I were talking some serious shit!
Then we talked about a certain segment of the local music scene that will never be turned onto what we do, not necessarily because they don’t like our music or us (either or both of which could surely be the case), but because we’re…”too macho” is not quite the right term for what we are, because if you know us we’re really not macho. That’s where the discussion took a turn into levels of shit so deep you may want to put on a protective suit before wading any further.
