I've been playing music since I was 7 years old. One day I was sitting at the Observatory Swimming Pool and there was a "ducktail" with an acoustic guitar singing Elvis, Cliff Richards and Beatles songs to a couple of very starry-eyed girls. I was as easily entranced as they were. For the next 6 months I begged my mother and father for a guitar every single day. They must have got sick of this and bought me one for my birthday.
At this point it all went a bit sour because my father forced me to play and I'm just plain old allergic to people who attempt to force me to do anything. There was a guy who lived down the road who played Afrikaans music and he was a much better "teacher". I used to spend time just looking at the way he strummed. It was a mixture of blocking and strumming that imitated a drummer's snare-shot. Those who know the style will recognise it as a hybrid banjo technique from Boere Musiek.
So, apart from the basic chords my career as a guitarist went into limbo until I went to the army and met some real musicians. The one I was most impressed with was Greg Georgiades who was a psychologist at 1 Military Hospital in Voortrekkerhoogte. He could play Al Di Meola's stuff and blew me away. He guided me towards Modal playing but I was way too naive to see the full picture. What really impressed me was that he chose a career in music over practising as a psychologist. That was in 1978 and he is still playing.
I then met Greg Van Schaik when I was transferred to 2 Military Hospital in Wynberg. I was busy waking up the night-duty staff by playing during the day with my amp set at 11. I don't really know what he must have thought because he was also a stone jazz player and my style is more bluesy. He also showed me some stuff but I didn't have the stomach for all that advanced scale business. Nevertheless, it all seemed to point to a lack knowledge on my behalf and I went and got a book of classical scales and did some woodshedding.
In spite of all this I soon came to the realisation that there are physical limits to the speed at which one can play. In the same way that I will never run the 100 metres below 10 seconds I will also never be able to make sense while improvising at 64 beats to the bar the way John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola do. My brain doesn't work that fast and my fingers aren't wired at that speed. In addition to that I found that my hands aren't large enough to grab the chords that Allan Holdsworth does. This meant I had to think of plan B.
Plan B was to work on my own idiosyncratic soloing style. I also figured that songwriters make more money than soloists and started writing songs. The problems there were easier to overcome and all was hunky dory until I started getting a good insight into the music industry. I suppose it is much like any other industry in that it is not the quality of music that is the issue. The prevailing mythology that is willingly spread by the media is that talent naturally rises to the top and yet I have seen vastly talented friends just give up because they couldn't bring themselves to kiss the right butts or were unwilling to keep hitting their heads against the insurmountable brick wall of corporate A&R people with tin ears.
Another part of the prevailing mythology is that "luck" has a lot to do with success in the music industry. This is similar to the "luck" stories in the film industry. In a way it is true. But it only applies to those that have been picked out of obscurity because of their good looks and willingness to be moulded and marketed by the record companies. To the recipient of such "good fortune" it might seem like luck but it is very well designed and tightly controlled by the people who pull the strings.
The only hope for the musician is when there is a change in what is the current popular style. At that brief moment in time there is a window of opportunity before the corporate producers get an angle on it and start creating their own (controllable) clones. These waves of "new" music are fairly well landmarked. I'm talking about Rock 'n Roll, Singer-Songwriters, The British Invasion, Heavy Metal, Jazz Rock, Disco, Reggae, Punk, The New Romantics, Hip Hop, Grunge etc ad neausum.....but for every Elvis Presley there is a Pat Boone, for every Bob Dylan there is a Donovan, Beatles/Monkees, Led Zeppelin/Twisted Sister, ...ok you make up the rest. It's a good after-dinner conversation that will keep you arguing for hours.
If you're into Classical Music the same logic can be applied there. I have a friend, Ben Segal, who has collected all the relevant classical music that was worth a damn. It's taken him donkey's years to get it all together and what makes it interesting is that he wouldn't, for example, get only Mozart's works....but he would also collect all of Mozart's peers for comparative reasons. The really astounding thing is that Mozart wasn't the only composer of any worth floating around at that time. A lot of the other guys were great and deserve study but, because of the narrow-mindedness of those in academia who set these fashions, they stay unknown to the great unwashed public. Which is a tragedy.
Bearing all of the above in mind I am still a fan in the true sense of the word. If it tickles my fancy then I want to hear it as the soundtrack to my life. So here goes :
Bach is where everyone who cares about music should start a life-long love-affair. He is to me the most sublime musical talent of all time. He combines craft with elements of genius in a way that is lucid and direct. He very rarely shows off the way Mozart does and sticks to the point. I suppose a lot of his discipline comes from the fact that he worked in fairly rigidly defined forms and this brings strength to his work. I once saw Vermeer paintings in Holland and his work reminds me of Vermeer. So meticulous. Yet all of western music is, for me, encapsulated by Bach's work. What really gets me going about him is that he is rarely morbid or self-obsessed. aahahhh....I have it .....he is Transcendental. That's a nice way to describe it. It's a quality I wish I had.
Mozart. I don't care if some people say he is a genius. I'm sure his parents told him the same thing. It shows. Mozart is a bit like looking at Swiss landscapes all day long. It's just too damn pretty. I'm sure that he and Paul McCartney would have got along fine. I'm more of a John Lennon fan. Which brings me to....
Beethoven. What can I say ? I loved him as a teenager but all that sturm and drang got to me. Great music in small doses.
ok...let's skip past Paganini's virtuoso violin solos and Chopin's virtuoso piano delicacies and Stockhausen's theoretical nightmares and move along swiftly to the meat and potatoes of what we hear on the radio. Everyone has their favourite starting point and mine is Robert Johnson. One of the reasons I'm a Robert Johnson fan is because of the Crossroads mythology. It's a song that I first heard Cream do. I've since heard many versions of this song and they all ring true. There must be something about it that musos identify with. What brings weight to the song are the stories surrounding Robert Johnson's life. The recordings he left seem to reflect the life of a man with hellhounds on his trail. Implied (with hindsight) is that this song is about a man alone in this world and being tempted by the devil. Does he succumb or doesn't he ? There is a strange place that musicians inhabit when playing in full flight. It is most obvious in the work of Jimi Hendrix. It is both base and transcendental. The music seems to be playing itself. Some people fear it and others spend a lifetime trying to achieve it. Some musicians believe they they don't compose the music they play. If not, then is this a source for good or for otherwise ? Rumours surrounding the early blues was that it was the devil's music. These rumours later cropped up at the birth of Rock 'n Roll and distracted Jerry Lee Lewis for a while. Damnation seems to preoccupy a lot of musicians hehe....
CROSSROADS
I WENT DOWN TO THE CROSSROADS
FELL DOWN ON MY KNEES (X2)
ASKED THE LORD ABOVE FOR MERCY
SAVE MY SOUL IF YOU PLEASE
STANDING AT THE CROSSROADS
I TRIED TO BEG A RIDE
NOBODY SEEMS TO KNOW ME
THEY ALL PASS ME BY
YOU CAN RUN YOU CAN RUN
TELL MY FRIEND POOR WILLIE BROWN
I’M STANDING AT THE CROSSROADS
I BELIEVE I’M SINKING DOWN
SUN’S GOING DOWN
DARK’S GONNA CATCH ME HERE
I AIN’T GOT NO SWEET WOMAN
WHO WANTS TO BE MY GIRL
After Robert Johnson I like to pick up my story with Charlie Christian who, like Johnson, died early and left very few recordings. Charlie Christian was one of the earliest electric guitarists working in jazz and, with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, helped create Bebop. He is a very fluid player who is, for me, a real giant landmark in guitar playing. None of the Christian clones, like Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel, have managed to map out the territory much further than he did in his brief career. Great tone and great licks. What I find humorous about Bebop is that it was created mostly because the musicians were tired of pissant players wanting to jam with them onstage so they created a form so obtuse that only the cream of the crop would have the balls to attempt it.
In the meantime we have Sinatra. I didn't come easily to Frankie's stylings but, hell, the older I get the more I respect what he did. There is no sexier singer to put on as background or foreground music. It must be a guy thing because I have yet to find a woman who gets off on him. It must be all that Italian testosterone. But if I want to sink my teeth into some jazz singing my preference is for Billie Holliday. In the same way Sinatra is a guy's Guy I feel that Billie Holliday is a primordial woman. Before she died it was touch and go as to whether her or Ella Fitzgerald were flavour of the month. Like all of those that died young it will remain a mystery as to what Billie Holliday would have done if she had lived.
I was born in 1957 and I've found that the older I get the more I am attracted to the music of the 50's. I haven't figured it out yet because the stuff I get off on wasn't given airplay in South Africa at that time. I'm talking about Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly. The formative years of Rockabilly and Rock & Roll. Of them all I love Eddie Cochran the most. I like "in your face" stuff and he sounds better if you turn that dial way up. It is no accident that he was covered by The Who and The Sex Pistols. Of the bunch I figure that Buddy Holly had the most talent. He certainly got more pretty tunes out of 3 chords than anyone I know apart from Paul McCartney. And McCartney owns the Buddy Holly back-catalogue.
My other fave-rave from that period are all the doo-wop groups. I just love harmonic singing. I'm also partial to the Gregorian chants that go way back in time but have been put off by their sudden over-exposure in the "new age music" market. It just gets on my tits that people think religious chants form the appropriate backdrop to eating health food.
The first pop album I can remember hearing and being impressed by was the soundtrack to "A Hard Day's Night" by the Beatles. I think it was the distinctive harmonies that did the trick for me. Nevertheless, I never owned any pop music because I didn't have any money and it never occurred to me that I liked music that much that I had to go out and buy the stuff. The first time I did become financially liquid was my birthday just after I saw the movie 2001. So I bought that soundtrack and got many hours of listening pleasure from what is a mixture of Strauss and some rather experimental classical music. Having twisted my synapses by that experience I found my next listening extravaganza in an album hosted by Yehudi Menuhin. It was called "The Music of India" and had only two long cuts on it. The morning and the evening Ragas played some Indian virtuosi (Ustad Ali Akbar Khan [Sarod], Pandit Chatur Lal [Tabla] and Shirish Gor [Tamboura]). I used to sit for hours and trance out to this stuff in front of the hi-fi system. It was truly mind-altering.
I never did fully recover and this led me down the very self-destructive path of Polyrhythmic and Microtonal virtuosity. I became positively allergic to pop music in general. I just didn't know any better.
The next album I bought was when I was about 18 years old. It was a Hendrix greatest hits compilation. I will not tell a lie. I was disappointed. I think I was expecting something like Clapton and what I got was something so raw I couldn't get into it at first. But the more I listened and the more I got into guitar the more I grew to love it. So I immediately backtracked and started purchasing Eric Clapton and Roy Buchanan who were a lot more accessible (sonically speaking). I eventually landed up getting all of Clapton's records and I forgave him some of his pop flirtations as he found his way back to the basics. I think Eric Clapton has been rather lucky in the amount of leeway permitted him by a very forgiving public. I'm still annoyed by the stuff he did with Phil Collins. All that over-the-top production just goes nowhere. Clapton had always sounded best to me with a fundamental backing. Bass, Drums and Organ or Piano. But I suppose the lure of big money can lead one down many cul-de-sacs.
At about this time I purchased Return to Forever's "Romantic Warrior". What a line-up ! Chick Corea on Keyboards, Stanley Clarke on Bass, Lenny White on Drums and Al Di Meola on Guitar. I drooled. The muso in me just went all gooey. I couldn't believe the level of musicianship. Soon after that I started collecting Al Di Meola and Stanley Clarke's music. But it was Al Di Meola who kept me enraptured through my 2 years in the army. If I lay back in bed I could visualise the music in the form of bar charts and geometrical patterns. And I wasn't taking psychedelics at the time. To this day I think that the track "Dinner Music of the Gods" is one of the ultimate musical compositions of the 20th Century (although the rest of that particular album was iffy). I got bored with his softer acoustic stuff although "Friday Night in San Francisco" was an eye-opener and led me to start collecting Paco De Lucia. I love flamenco but I found I needed to take a siesta after listening to a few tracks.
It was a more interesting exercise to follow John McLaughlin's journey through the electric medium to gut-string acoustic jazz, with or without electric backing. I have found McLaughlin a much more intriguing experimenter during his career. He has made very few "turkey" albums and he always seems to march to his own drummer. Nevertheless, I can't name any truly satisfying McLaughlin album. I always have to garner a "greatest hits" together on tape to listen to him. Which is a bugger because sometimes the tracks don't make good bedfellows if one goes all the back to the 60's. For those who don't know... it is worthwhile checking out the track "Extrapolation" (which blew Larry Corryell's mind and is still a humdinger) and his live incarnation when he had Katia Labeque on keyboards. The album "John McLaughlin ; Electric Guitarist" is a favourite of mine.
Meanwhile back at the ranch I was also sussing out the bass players. Stanley Clarke used to get me off in a big way but he kind of lost the point when he started playing Piccolo Bass. I have found recently that a lot of what Stanley Clarke did which made the world pay attention in the 70's sounds a bit dated now. In retrospect I still draw deeply at the well of Jaco Pastorius. This guy is way beyond cool. In another time and place I figure he would have as much cultural impact as Jimi Hendrix did. I feel truly sad about his death and, on reflection, it is his story and those of Danny Gatton, Roy Buchanan, Patsy Cline, Billie Holliday, Charlie Parker, Buddy Holly and so many others that leave me beyond words. It's just not fair ! I feel like I've lost potential friends and keep waiting to hear the (musical) punchline. Jaco Pastorius did not do a lot of solo albums and he is as important for what he brought to the collaborations as he did in his solo guise.
Somewhere in this morass I hear the sound of "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" on the radio. That Voice ! geez...it didn't take me long to start loving the alien. Some friends I have see David Bowie as nothing more than an opportunist. I have always seen him as an experimental musician who has had the good fortune/design of finding chart success to further the cause of said experimentation. Either way, it makes a great body of work and unlike most musicians he does have albums that are consistently good. I figure that all good homes should have a copy of "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars", "Hunky Dory" or "David Live" in the same way all good homes should have copies of The Beatles' "White Album", Eric Clapton's (Derek and the Dominoes) "Layla and other Assorted Love Songs", Frank Zappa's "Overnight Sensation" or Jeff Beck's "Beck, Bogert and Appice" album. They're not quite pop and have yet are very approachable....and I believe that The Youth will catch up with these albums as cultish items the way they often treat The Doors and Jimi Hendrix's work. Then again, I'm also living in hope that Talking Heads will have a revival.
Out of my David Bowie phase I came across Mick Ronson and Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp. I went and got Mick Ronson's "Slaughter on 10th Avenue" but never pursued him further than that. I loved the title track and love what did to Bowie's music but he just didn't have the legs for me. Robert Fripp I took a little further and really got off on his theory of guitar playing without really liking his style. But he still made money off me when I got hold of all King Crimson's work and it was one of my favourite party tricks to haul Crimson works (The "Discipline" era.) out of the closet to play to snobbish jazz fans and watch their ears curl to Fripp's poly-rhythmic melt-downs. Of these guys it was Adrian Belew I found the most intriguing. I had also heard his work with Talking Heads and Frank Zappa and his technique left me laughing. (which is a Good Thing) I think it is a great pity that his solo stuff never became popular because I think he has a great pop ear and knows how to combine fun songwriting with tasty guitar abuse. Perhaps that's the curse of not being pretty or young.
I kinda meandered in and out of Frank Zappa's orbit since I was about 15? years old. I was at a girl's house when I first heard "Overnight Sensation". She was blonde and out of my league but I was mightily impressed by Frank. (Her name was Anna McKean and I was very jealous of the fact that she went to a school that didn't have a uniform code and the kids smoked at break. Which I thought was so cool.) It sounded good to my ears. I'm talking about ears that couldn't deal with anything more complex than Creedence Clearwater Revival. Which is, I suppose, proof of Zappa's skills as a composer and producer. It took me another 10 years to catch up with him at the time of "Joe's Garage" and "Sheik Yerbouti" when we used to sit around with headphones and get off on the stereo effects the way we did with Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" and Hendrix's stuff. I suppose the dope had something to do with that. Come to think of it, the art of stereo really seems to be lost. All this concentration on The Groove in modern music is probably to blame. Don't people actually listen anymore ? In an attempt to get people to listen to Zappa's work at a novice level I have, for years, made compilation tapes of his vocal stuff. The Zappa estate must have twigged on the same thing because they brought out an album "Strictly Commercial" which is very similar in concept. But the real revelation regarding Zappa is when his music is scored for string quartet. What used be dense and impenetrable when played by an electric band becomes lucid and revelatory in a "classical" format. I strongly suggest that musos search out this stuff as it is definitely worth it.
I think I read about Ry Cooder for a year before I finally heard a note of what he had played. There was a lot of press regarding The First Fully Digital Pop album before "Bop Till You Drop" came out. I went and bought it and was mightily impressed by the fidelity and laughed at the humour but I don't think I "got" what Ry Cooder was up to until I heard his "Jazz" album. The penny finally dropped. I still prefer the "Jazz" album to a lot of what he did (as album concepts) in spite of the fact that he considers it "a failure". Then again, Jeff Beck sees his "Beck, Bogert and Appice" collaboration as a failure and I see it as one of the ultimate examples of arranging music for 3-piece bands. Go figure. Ry Cooder has the capacity to make my hair stand on end when he cranks up the power and plays distorted slide-guitar. His remakes of some Elvis standards are awesome and some of the licks he has come out with on some throwaway movie soundtracks leave me breathless. I have a strange feeling that he could have thrown The Rolling Stones into an even higher orbit of critical acclaim if he joined them instead of just doing a few sessions with thwm. I also want to meet Jim Keltner someday. He and Cooder conspired to come up with some really perverse rhythms in Cooder's work that I've never heard Keltner do elsewhere. I'll bet there is a good book waiting to be written about Ry Cooder's career as a musical catalyst. Now that I think of it, there are other intriguing tales still to be told. I've read about Hendrix&Les Paul, Bowie&Brian Eno, Elvis&etc....and it is really revelatory to gain insights into the methods used. How about the full Pink Floyd studio story, or the Truth behind George Martin and The Beatles, or how how is Steve Vai able to make crappy bands sound so good ?
Disco was anathema to me because I found it so dumb but I think the real reason I hated it was that I can't dance at 120 beats per minute. And disco is a relentless, monotonous, 1-fucking-20 unrelenting beats per minute. In retrospect the advent of rave and all it's devil-spawned, ambient, music for-machines, by-machines, created by tone-deaf morons, corporate nazi music has left disco looking pretty good. At least disco used musicians occasionally.
...as I was saying, I found the Punk/New Wave aesthetic a breath of fresh air although I also loved the "dinosaurs" like Emerson, Lake and Palmer still valid and fun to listen to. The difference was that I could now dance to The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Police, Madness, Joe Jackson and The Specials. When a slow song was called for, a bit of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh found it's way onto the turn-table. Good Times. hehe... Of this bunch, the one that left me breathless was Joe Jackson. His career has been really spotty compared with The Police or Madness but I always identified with the stuff that kept Joe Jackson awake at night. I also think that the Sound he got on his first two albums ("I'm the Man" & "Look Sharp!") have got to rate as a milestone in arrangement and mixing the same way other people respect Sinatra's "Songs for Swinging Lovers" or "Sergeant Pepper" and "Dark Side of the Moon". ok...I'm biased, but this is my essay.
I've always found it interesting what people use as background music. When I was young a bit of J.J.Cale, Bob Marley, Sky or Pink Floyd was considered non-intrusive enough to hold a conversation over. Nowadays the kids tend to put on Trance and other mechanistic stuff. I'm sorry, but there has to be something wrong with a society that thinks that Muzak has any place in one's personal life. I have heavy arguments with these teenagers that willingly dumb themselves down. If Mozart was The Sistine Chapel then modern dance has got to be the equivalent of a blank white wall.
Don't get me wrong. I love minimalism. I was really entertained by Trio's album with "Da, Da, Da" on it. I'm also a fan of Einsturzende Neubauten and early Industrial Music and Brian Eno's ambient-music experiments. But I wouldn't want to have these things as an integral part of my daily life. Geez...modern drugs must be really boring....or people are getting dumber....actually that reminds me of some conversations I've had with teenagers that think that dumb is good, but that's another story.
Diametrically opposed to the dumb ethic would be Nina Hagen who is the Jimi Hendrix of voice. I just wish she would get off her soap-box but I suppose extreme talent sometimes implies extreme world-views. It is a minor tragedy of the music industry that ageism and "lookism" should mean the stagnation of Joni Mitchell's, Rickie Lee Jones's, Joan Armatrading's and Laurie Anderson's careers while mediocrities with big breasts earn millions.
But then, I should be used to the Menudo/Milli Vannilli/Spice Girls/Britney Spears syndrome. BUt i'M NoT aND iT PiSsEs ME OFF !!!
Around about the time of the Punk the computer chip started making serious inroads into the musical instrument market. Keyboards started becoming cheaper with a wider variety of sounds. The Drumbox was similarly effected. This was a double-edged sword. Cheapness in instrumentation and, ultimately, recording led to more bands being able to create music which was a Good Thing. It also meant that money saved in the studio could be re-routed into videos (which were also becoming more affordable), it drastically cut the demand for real drummers and led to cookie-cutter music with bog-basic rhythms and this was a Bad Thing. This gave rise and serious impetus to the New Romantic genre which stuck in my craw. Yugh ! I don't even want to comment on it. I gave up all hope regarding music after that point as the images on MTV became more important than the actual content of the music. And in spite of the ever faster recycling of old styles and images it is still precisely where we are today.
The only way out of this morass is if serious artists with political clout in the industry start putting some real content in the music. Whether this is of a musical or political nature I don't really mind. But, God knows, we can't keep listening to aural Prozac.
There are many ways to approach the malaise and many arguments pro and con. The reality of the situation is that the corporations are firmly in control of the music that hits the market-place. When the industry was fairly young in the 50's and 60's it was pretty much a hit and miss affair as to what was going to become the Next Big Thing. As a result of this many bands got aired because of the shotgun methods the record companies used in attempting to create hits. Nowadays they have got their shit together and are much more skilled in creating hits out of nothing. We're coming close to the point were we will be listening to hits that are designer-made for certain demographics according to the fashion of the day.
This process is already in place in politics in America where surveys and polling determines the actual content of political speeches and morality has been pushed out in favour of expediency. 60 Minutes recently did a program that showed this mechanism and the punchline was that President Clinton, for example, merely holds up a mirror to American society in his speeches. He says exactly what The People want to hear. You Can Con All The People All The Time. Similarly, one can see the same process in the "A" movies coming out of Hollywood. They are all Blockbusters but they ceased to have any real content some way back. They are devoid of any real wit or integrity. Which is why I'd rather watch sitcoms. New sitcoms are guaranteed of at least one season where the writers are really trying. Which is another story...
One of the guys whose careers I find fascinating is Jeff Beck. There are players who studied and got all the chops in the world and then there are players who have an Ear. (In the same way George Martin said "All You Need Is Ears".) It is the misfortune of some musicians to have more technique than ears. Jeff Beck is not one of them. He has a great ear and has the capacity to take melodies to very unexpected places. It is almost sad that he didn't attempt more jazz. His albums "Blow by Blow" and "Wired" left me feeling that there was more to come. I'm not complaining though. He has amused me ever since the Yardbirds. "Beck's Boogie" is one of my favourite guitar tracks along with Roy Buchanan's "After Hours", John McLaughlin's "Extrapolation", Adrian Belew's "Ballet for a Blue Whale" and Hendrix's live version of "The Star Spangled Banner". Jeff's most recent outings "Who Else!", "You Had It Coming", and "Jeff" are brilliant.
Talking of which...there are certain moments where music becomes more important than any of it's constituent parts and reaches Landmark status. Jimi Hendrix's live "Star Spangled Banner" is for me the defining musical moment of the 20th Century. Technically it is very interesting in that there are moments that would be extremely difficult to replicate at will. There is one point where he holds a note that goes through 5 harmonic stages of feedback, for example, and whether this was accident or design I have no idea. But to take a tune like that and deconstruct it live at that point in history and at Woodstock left me breathless. One could write an entire thesis of what was happening and what the musical/political comment actually meant. When I'm bored I think of how I can hear Stockhausen, Jazz, Folk-Music, Rock, Trance, Industrial Music, Blues and so much more of the past and futures genres all inside that one piece. It becomes almost becomes irrelevant as to what Hendrix "meant" while doing it. The point is that he did do it and it provides a well of inspiration for others. In a strange way I think Hendrix was a conservative in that he had a definite romantic impulse and was more American than the jaded politicos who conspired to make the 60's so bizarre. I figure he must have walked a very fine line between the patriotic impulse that led him to join the army and his love of traditional forms of music and the desire to be free from those elements that constrained him and others at that time.
A certain amount of tension is often-times needed to create interesting music. For example ; Paul McCartney's "Band on the Run" album was made under stressful circumstances in Nigeria and is way ahead of the rest of his solo albums in terms of consistency. McCartney has also created better music when he collaborates with people who are a little more cynical than him and balance the compositions. John Lennon and Elvis Costello immediately spring to mind although I do also remember arguments surrounded the royalty situation regarding "Mull of Kintyre" which was a monster hit and appears to have been a collaboration. His music just seems more muscular when he is working with peers that he respects like Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson, whereas his solo stuff often descends into musical pap. On the other hand there might just be musicians who are so excellent at what they do that they always bring something to the party. John Lennon on David Bowie's "Fame" and Elton John on John Lennon's "Whatever gets you through the night" are good examples of someone bringing an extra dimension. Even if it is just the subliminal effect of hearing a famous voice singing harmony. In this regard I think that David Bowie is one of the wisest collaborationists. He seems to have had an uncanny knack for choosing very interesting people to work with and has the humility to allow input while being brave enough to put the full weight of his fame behind the new hybridisation that occurs. (Although I sometimes wonder if these people must feel like ex-lovers after he moves on to something Newer and Hipper.)
Then again, one encounters awesome talents that seem incapable of communicating. The guy that springs to mind is Allan Holdsworth who owes me a big thank you for buying everything he ever did including tracking down stuff where he guests on other people's stuff. No one apart from some serious guitarists have heard of Holdsworth, so for the uninitiated here goes...this fella has an awesome guitaring technique that is, in parts, based on fret-tapping, gargantuan chords and a perverse rhythmic sensibility. Suffice to say that Eddie Van Halen made millions out of only one of those dimensions. I once read an interview with Holdsworth where he was bemoaning his fate and saying that he was tired of being poor and that he doesn't really have corporate or public support for what he does. Yes, he is correct. But he is also so very wrong in that the first job of art is to communicate. Allan Holdsworth does not composed accessible music. The stuff is so obtuse to the average listener that most people can't take more than one track before their brains explode. Wouldn't it be better to package the stuff in a more palatable format ? Goodness knows, Prince, Hendrix, Bowie and The Beatles all managed to make musical and technical innovations while topping the charts. Or easier still, why not arrange to guest on someone famous's album and earn extra capital that way. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Steve Vai and Jeff Beck have all done that. When in doubt you could also join a working band like Steve Morse with Deep Purple. (hhhmmmm...lotta "Steve's" seem to play guitar. Perhaps I should change my name?)
Meanwhile back at the ranch, Muddy Waters is the Man. When I think of blues with balls I think of Muddy. It's almost a travesty that so many lesser artists are coining it in the new blues revival just because of their longevity while Muddy had such a raw deal in his time. If it wasn't for Johnny Winter I suspect that Muddy would have languished out of the public eye and his huge contribution to the blues would have been gathering dust in the musicologist's archives. The Johnny Winter/Muddy Waters collaborative albums are a great way to get into Muddy's music. If you feel like watching something then get a copy of "The Last Waltz" on video (which was hosted by The Band and filmed by Martin Scorcese in a very interesting Deal that is seldom mentioned). "The Last Waltz" has Muddy Waters, Dr John, Eric Clapton (watch the guitar-strap come off), Neil Young and a spate of other great performances apart from those of The Band which are worth the price of admission all on their own. The Band are musicologists in a similar way that Ry Cooder is a musicologist. I think a monument should be raised in their honour. They have the capacity to drive me to tears in that they preserved and play pure Americana although I wish that they had made at least one album with the power of their performance in "The Last Waltz".
While you're at the video store get a copy of "Stop Making Sense" by the Talking Heads. It's a lot of fun and well filmed and makes me wonder about the pathetic attempts at showmanship by the latest crop of artists. Ok, I'll admit it, Freddie Mercury and Mick Jagger are possibly the only people capable of communicating with the back row of the audience at a concert of 300,000 in Brazil but David Byrne is a movement anthropologist and it is fascinating the sources he draws on. Everything from Fred Astaire to Bible-Belt Preacher techniques are all grist to his mill. And you can dance to the music. Alternatively, if you want something so anti-PC it will make your hair stand on end yet contains musicianship of an awesome level go and find Frank Zappa's "Is there Still Humour in Music ?". The interviews with Zappa are both funny and wise and a great antidote to bullshit.
This could go on forever but my brain is really tired. I "lost" my few thousand albums in a foreign country and it's really difficult to remember all the track titles and who-did-what-with-whom from memory. In retrospect, there is a downside to having listened to tons of music and that is my ears became "faster". Part of this was due to having experience in recording studios. It's a bit like watching movies and being aware the whole time of all the camera-angles, lenses and special effects and never being able to enjoy the movie as pure entertainment. I have found that is very little music I can listen to more than once. Which is a pity.
I was once crapped out by some Dutch friends because I managed to take in the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijkmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum in one morning while in Amsterdam. What can I say ? My eyes got faster somewhere along the line. I paused for Vermeer and Rembrandt. Perhaps I'll write something about art and irritate some people.