Masterpiece: The Wall

[Today: Tear down the wall...]

It was officially known as “Stützwandelement UL 12.11″ (retaining wall element UL 12.11) and construction on it began in June of 1961. It was 12 feet high and four feet wide, and it ran for 87 miles down the middle of Berlin, separating East from West and providing a symbolic divide between the Communist and Democratic spheres of the world. Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. For decades that wall stood implacable and unfeeling, and there were no signs at the time that it wouldn’t stand for 100 years more. But with the dull thud of sledgehammers and ecstatic cries of joy, the Cold War came to a sudden and surprising halt on November 9, 1989, when the world was treated to the astonishing sight of people partying atop the the Berlin Wall and breaking chunks of it away while crowds cheered them on. For just a moment, it seemed that soggy cliches like One Love, One World, One People might actually be coming true.

Pink Floyd released The Wall in November of 1979 – 10 years to the month before the fall of the Berlin Wall. But unlike Stützwandelement UL 12.11, the wall referred to in the title is no physical structure of concrete, barbed wire, and watchtowers. This double LP recounts the unhappy life and times of a fictional rock star named Pink, who has enclosed himself within an impenetrable emotional wall. A dead father, overbearing mother, psychotic schoolteacher, and cheating wife have driven him to the brink, and through song he recounts the circumstances that brought him to emotional paralysis. It isn’t a pretty picture, it’s often heavy handed, and it doesn’t forecast much hope. But like the Cold War, The Wall ends with spirited chants of “Tear down the wall!” and just a flicker of hope.

Listen: Goodbye Blue Sky

Listen: Comfortably Numb

Listen: The Trial

Buried Treasure: David Gilmour

[Today: David Gilmour steps out...]

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour released his debut solo album in May of 1978, between the release of Floyd’s Animals and The Wall. Like both of those albums, this music is shimmering yet tense, and features Gilmour’s lilting/biting guitar. But Gilmour’s vocals here are relaxed (as opposed to then Floyd-mate Roger Waters’ aural tantrums), and his lyrics contain none of the Mommy/Daddy histrionics that Floyd was starting to dabble in. Gilmour would contribute ‘Comfortably Numb’ to The Wall, and that song’s fevered, gauzy sense of longing runs the length of David Gilmour.

As Gilmour explained during an interview just after the album’s release, “This album was important to me in terms of self respect. At first I didn’t think my name was big enough to carry it. Being in a group for so long can be a bit claustrophobic, and I needed to step out from behind Pink Floyd’s shadow.” The specter of Floyd certainly looms over parts of this album – during ‘It’s Deafinitely’ Gilmour coaxes a rumble out his guitar that’s a dead-ringer preview of the sound that would drive ‘Run Like Hell’ on The Wall. In fact, enough riffs here are reminiscent of various Floyd tunes that this album sounds more like vintage Floyd than the last few albums released under that band’s name. [Suggested alternate album titles: The Softer Side Of Pink and A Kinder, Gentler Floyd.]

Gilmour has such a signature guitar style that it’s somewhat inevitable that this would sound like a Pink Floyd side project. But because it was his first solo album, it sounds more like Floyd than even his later solo works – just one reason it’s the best album released under his name. Side One is nearly perfect, as winding instrumental ‘Mihalis’ leads into claustrophobic ‘There’s No Way Out Of Here’, which segues into ‘Cry From The Streets’, a tough, cool song that fades into the tender ‘So Far Away’. It may lack the conceptual and theatrical panache that drives so many Pink Floyd albums, but David Gilmour interlocks as well as any of them. Who needs the drama?

Listen: Mihalis

Listen: There’s No Way Out Of Here

Listen: Cry From The Street

Listen: So Far Away

A Dozen Great Bob Dylan Songs

America’s greatest songwriter. Perpetual enigma. Constant live performer. Bob Dylan has created an everlasting body of work that contains dozens of influential, ground-breaking songs. Here are a twelve of my favorite…

The song: Masters Of War (from the album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan)

What makes it great: After nearly 50 years, ‘Masters Of War’ remains one of the most convincing and chilling protest songs against the military industrial complex of the United States – a righteous finger pointed at those who pull the strings on the war machine.

Listen: Masters Of War

The song: Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll (from the album The Times They Are A-Changin’)

What makes it great: Even if Dylan fumbled a few of the facts here, this is still an intense portrait of racism in the 60′s. With a barely controlled fury, Dylan recounts the tale of William Zanzinger, a wealthy tobacco farmer who received a six-month jail sentence for beating a maid to death with his cane.

Listen: Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll

The song: Subterranean Homesick Blues (from the album Bringing It All Back Home)

What makes it great: The first hip-hop tune? You be the judge…

Listen: Subterranean Homesick Blues

The song: Highway 61 Revisited (from the album Highway 61 Revisited)

What makes it great: Dylan looks at the highway that connects his native Minnesota to the Mississippi Delta, and finds it strew with gods and kings, and telephones that won’t ring. This is Bobby D at his myth-making best.

Listen: n/a

The song: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (from the album Blonde On Blonde)

What makes it great: Dylan’s a master of imagery, and this is one of his best and brightest pictures.

Listen: n/a

The song: Girl From The North Country (from the album Nashville Skyline)

What makes it great: Not Dylan’s greatest song, but this duet with Johnny Cash makes for a memorable tune featuring two giants of music.

Listen: Girl From The North Country (With Johnny Cash)

The song: Buckets Of Rain (from the album Blood On The Tracks)

What makes it great: Dylan didn’t make many ballads, but this is one of his best. A simple metaphor and sincere tone put this one over…

Listen: Buckets Of Rain

The song: This Wheel’s On Fire (from the album The Basement Tapes)

What makes it great: Filled with Old Testament fury and scorn, this wasn’t the first or last time that Dylan would get biblical on your ass…

Listen: This Wheel’s On Fire

The song: Gotta Serve Somebody (from the album Slow Train Coming)

What makes it great: A terrific reminder that you’re somebody else’s appetizer, no matter where you sit on the food chain.

Listen: Gotta Serve Somebody

The song: Tangled Up In Blue (from the album Real Live)

What makes it great: More short story or movie treatment than mere song, this epic finds two souls ricocheting around the country and occasionally crashing into one another. This live version features compelling alternate lyrics…

Listen: Tangled Up In Blue (Live)

The song: Political World (from the album Oh Mercy)

What makes it great: Dylan practically spits out this disgusted missive on the state of the world that’s enslaved to politics.

Listen: Political World

The song: Love Sick (from the album Time Out Of Mind)

What makes it great: Dylan’s never been what you might call sentimental, but here he sings like a man who’s very soul has been scorched black by love gone bad. To the chagrin of his fans, it would also serve as the soundtrack for his first commercial – for Victoria’s Secret, no less.

Listen: Love Sick

Doubleshot Tuesday: Cahoots/Fleet Foxes

[Today: Falling into Fall...]

We moved the clocks back an hour on Saturday night, always a sure sign that Autumn has us once again in its wooly grasp. The Bay Area enjoys an indian summer each year – October, not July, is the typical month for our sweltering, 100° days. But even here, around about the end of October, once Neil Young’s annual Bridge Benefit concert is in the books and the kids have come by for their Halloween candy, the air gets a nip to it and the trees start to do the color thing. Daylight Savings is when the boom really falls, and all of a sudden it’s F-A-L-L , or more truthfully, pre-Winter – a few weeks of falling leaves, then the rains set in until Spring. Wash, rinse, repeat…

This is the time of year I start reaching for any album by The Band, as well as Josh Ritter’s Golden Age Of Radio, Neil Young’s Harvest, Gary Higgins’ Red Hash, Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, Fairport Convention’s Unhalfbricking, Skip Spence’s Oar, The Cure’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter, The Peddlers’ Suite London and a handful of other albums that have come to epitomize the season for this old geezer.

After their first two LPs, The Band made a series of sturdy if unspectacular albums that each contributed a couple of songs to their subsequent Best Of compilations. Cahoots has ‘Life Is A Carnival’ and ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’, but it’s the stuff off the beaten path that makes this one worthwhile. ’4% Pantomime’ is allegedly the result of an all-night, drunken jam session (with a certain Celtic singer who’s barred from these premises) and, as the story goes, the song was a made-up-on-the-spot, one-take affair. ‘Smoke Signal’ sounds like something from the world’s best hoe-down. ‘Volcano’ features plenty of horns, and sharp, smart guitar solos courtesy of Robbie Robertson, and is one of their great unsung tunes. Recounting a summer picnic gone by, ‘The River Hymn’ sounds like Autumn itself. But for these ears, so do most of The Band’s songs…

I’ve spent the last year flogging Fleet Foxes like Billy Mays on crystal meth, so I’ll spare you additional exclamations. But here too is an album that sounds like it was hewn from virigin timbers, by the golden light of a harvest moon. Some people dress for the weather – I listen for it…

Listen: 4% Pantomime [The Band]

Listen: Blue Ridge Mountains [Fleet Foxes]

Listen: The River Hymn [The Band]

Listen: White Winter Hymnal [Fleet Foxes]

*****

QUESTION: What album reminds you of Autumn?

Weekend Playlist

“I got rabies shots for biting the head off a bat but that’s OK – the bat had to get Ozzy shots.” ~ Ozzy Osbourne

Bon Iver | For Emma, Forever Ago

Bob Dylan | Bringing It All Back Home

Them | Featuring Name Withheld Lead Singer

Johann Sebastian Bach | Brandenburg Concertos
[Album cover not pictured]

The Stooges | Fun House

Judas Priest | British Steel

Metallica | Kill ‘Em All

Michael Jackson | Thriller

Joy Division | Peel Sessions

White Zombie | Astro-Creep: 2000

Ozzy Osbourne | Bark At The Moon

Jane’s Addiction | Nothing’s Shocking

Fleet Foxes | Fleet Foxes

Fairport Convention | Unhalfbricking

John Fahey | The Best Of John Fahey 1959-1977

The Peddlers | Suite London

Stephen Stills | Stephen Stills

Dire Straits | Dire Straits

The Band | Cahoots

Captain Beefheart | The Spotlight Kid

On The Fence: The Monkees Greatest Hits

They influenced the Sex Pistols and toured with Jimi Hendrix, but… they’re The Monkees. They were a group manufactured for television stardom, but they still managed to make some excellent pop tunes. What to make of these guys? Let’s weigh the pros and cons…

THUMBS UP: It’s pretty easy to mock or just plain ignore The Monkees, but in spite of their Hollywood origins, they were first-rate pop interpreters, and at least three songs on this collection reach close to the apex of pop music: Neil Diamond’s ‘I’m A Believer’ and Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart’s ‘Last Train To Clarksville’ and ‘(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone’. Against all odds, the latter became a staple in live sets for the early Sex Pistols, and was then ingrained as a Punk standard. For those who claim The Monkees weren’t really musicians (sadly true in Davey Jones’ case), I give you Michael Nesmith. His song ‘Listen To The Band’ is a sneak preview of his later, ground-breaking country-rock work with The First National Band. For those of us introduced to The Monkees through MTV’s late-80′s re-runs of their TV series, it can be extremely difficult to take these guys seriously. But if you can force yourself to sit down and give their best a listen, you’ll hear that they had their moments…

THUMBS DOWN: More than the Merry Pranksters, the 1968 Democratic national convention, Altamont, or a string of political assassinations, The Monkees were proof positive for me that my parents generation was totally and certifiably nuts. Pop idols? These goofballs?? Well, yes and no. They certainly had their fans, but they inherited most of the 12 year old girls who abandoned The Beatles when the Fab Four went psychedelic. The Monkees’ teenybopper crowd was the main reason that Jimi Hendrix bailed on opening for them after only a few dates of a scheduled tour. But their constructed-for-television origins made them suspicious to most hipsters in the 60′s. And really, any Greatest Hits collection that includes a song like ‘The Monkees Theme’ (“We’re too busy singin’/To put anybody doooooown”) is worthy of serious suspicion. ‘Daydream Believer’ grates. ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’ fizzles. Some of this collection is great, most of it isn’t. In most cases I could probably accept that, but not from a band with this much artistic baggage…

[And thus began a thoughtful, measured discourse on The Monkees...]

Bad Apple: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band OST

[Today: The accidental parody...]

“Disaster” is a word that should be reserved for the Hindenbergs and Titanics of the world – actual life-consuming accidents of epic proportions. To my knowledge, nobody was killed during the making of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Original Soundtrack, which is rather a shame. The movie that spawned this album is laughably bad – a musical featuring the songs of The Beatles and starring Peter Frampton as Billy Shears and The Bee Gees as The Lonely Hearts Club Band, with cameos from Steve Martin (Dr. Maxwell Edison), George Burns (Mr. Kite), Alice Cooper (Father Sun), and dozens more who wish they’d just said no.

Amazingly, Martin’s leering, jackass take on ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, Burns’ pathetic ‘Fixing A Hole’ and Cooper’s confusing duet with the Bee Gees on ‘Because’ don’t come close to qualifying for Worst Moment status. That’s reserved for everything featuring Paul Nicholas and Diane Steinberg, who sing with over-emotive, off-off-Broadway voices that radiate fake good cheer and turn songs like ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ and ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ – great songs, let me remind you – into accidental parodies of The Beatles.

There are a few good moments here – Aerosmith’s ‘Come Together’ is perfectly wicked, Earth Wind & Fire’s ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ is a top-shelf Beatles cover, and Billy Preston’s ‘Get Back’ is a worthy, funkified rival to the original. There are even a few unintentionally hilarious moments that work – Donald Pleasance does a weird rap in the middle of ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ that almost redeems the number, and my LP copy skips during Frankie Howard’s acrid ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, so that the phrase “dirty old man” plays over and over. But truly, there are so many misguided, careless covers on this album that pointing out its bright spots is akin to saying that, while it did turn into gaseous fireball, The Hindenburg provided some killer views.

This project was produced and bankrolled by Robert Stigwood, who was coming off back-to-back blockbusters with Saturday Night Fever and Grease. And on the strength of massive, expensive hype, this double LP actually went double platinum, which is one reason it can be found in every dollar bin in America today. But buyer beware – Sgt. Pepper’s… OST is more travesty than tribute – the musical equivalent of repainting Picasso’s masterpieces using only cow dung and glitter.