Masterpiece: King Of The Delta Blues Singers

[Today: The King...]

It’s hard to overstate the importance of Robert Johnson’s influence on the sound of modern music. His ghostly wail and precise finger picking style, along with tales of hellhounds and cheating women, set the bar for what a bluesman should sound like. And because modern rock was born out of the Blues, it’s easy to connect the dots between the scratchy, scarifying music he recorded in 1936/37 and the songs on the radio today.

Johnson’s personal background is one of the most interesting and hotly debated stories in the history of music. An oft-told tale has him meeting the Devil at the crossroads one moonless night and trading his soul for the musical skills that would make him a legend. But the circumstances of his sudden, blazing talent aren’t the only myth surrounding him – his death in August of 1938 was allegedly due to poisoned whiskey fed to him by a jealous husband. In many ways – a quick rise fueled by some dark myths, transcendent music that grows in stature through the decades, an accidental death at age 27 – he was the template of the modern rock star.

But the songs are the real story, and King Of The Delta Blues Singers contains some of the finest examples of the Blues to be found on record. ‘Sweet Home Chicago’, ‘I’m A Steady Rollin’ Man’, ‘Ramblin’ On My Mind’, ‘Stop Breakin’ Down Blues’, ‘They’re Red Hot’ and ‘Love In Vain Blues’ – along with nearly everything else he recorded in his short life – would go on to become standards, and have been covered by everyone from Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and White Stripes. Johnson’s influence was particularly rampant during the mid-to-late 1960’s when many young rockers (including Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and Eric Clapton) turned to him for inspiration and material. And while Johnson had a deep influence on the British Blues, his hold over music continues into the 21st century. For as long as music is being made, the songs of this great, controversial bluesman will continue to resonate…

Listen: Love In Vain Blues

Listen: Hellhound On My Trail

Listen: Terraplane Blues

Listen: Traveling Riverside Blues

Buried Treasure: Mose Allison Sings

[Today: The real deal...]

Mose Allison has spent a long career in the shadows of the bridge that connects Jazz and the Blues. Not fully either, but a whole lot of both, he plays piano and sings in a distinctly jazzy style, but his music is built from the raw materials of the blues. His songs include prison sentences, tragic love, country shacks and mystical signifiers, but they’re always leavened with a wry, detached delivery. Because he’s a white man singing the Blues, Allison has often been suspected of musical tourism – one interviewer actually accused him of stealing the blues, an encounter that inspired his 1990 song ‘Ever Since I Stole The Blues’.

Born in 1927 on his grandfather’s farm near the small town of Tippo in the Mississippi Delta, Allison grew up absorbing the music of blues artists like Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red and Lightning Hopkins, as well as jazz pianists Nat King Cole, Fats Waller and Earl Hines. Regardless of his credentials, he has created a singular style that hasn’t changed much through the decades. “You have to suffer a little to do anything well,” he told the Phoenix New Times in 1992. “It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with singing the blues. If blues had to do with suffering, believe me, we’d have a lot more blues singers.”

On his 1963 album Mose Allison Sings, he covers a wide variety of artists (including Jimmy Rogers, Willie Dixon and Duke Ellington), but every song is tailored so well to his style that each feels like an original. The few true originals here are keepers, including ‘Parchman Farm’ and ‘Young Man’, which was later covered by The Who as ‘Young Man Blues’ on Live At Leeds. But Allison’s influence extends well beyond The ‘Oo – The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, J.J. Cale, Tom Waits, The Clash and Frank Black are just a few of the artists that have been swayed by his style. Black has even claimed that the Pixies’ song ‘Allison’ is about Mose. He’s frequently been cited as a primary influence on the blues-based British Invasion artists of the late-60s, and he’s still going strong – after a 12-year recording hiatus, he just released his 27th studio album, The Way Of The World.

Listen: Lost Mind

Listen: Parchman Farm

Listen: The Seventh Son

Sleeve Notes: Cheap Thrills

The psychedelic movement helped bring rock & roll to maturity, and it did the same for comic books. Like rock music, comics in the early-60s were the domain of juveniles and deemed unworthy of adult consideration. But with the rise of underground comic books like Zap Comix and artists like R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, comics suddenly started taking on mature topics like sex, drugs and rock & roll (even if these topics were handled in decidedly juvenile ways). Crumb was a fixture of the SF scene of the late-60s, peddling Zap Comix out of a baby stroller that he pushed up and down Haight St. While that might have made him a natural choice to take on the cover art for one of the SF bands, Crumb actually despised rock music and only accepted this job because it was a paying gig and Janis Joplin was a personal friend. He said, “Basically I did it because Janis Joplin asked me to do it… and I liked her, she used to hang around, she liked comics you know… I didn’t like her music, but I did it because she asked me to. And I needed the money. I got 600 bucks!”

Doubleshot Tuesday: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band/Surrealistic Pillow

[Today: Talking overrated...]

I take a fair amount of heat in the comments section of this blog – most of it deserved, some of it semi-coherent, drive-by noise that goes on all over the internet. Certain posts have drawn sustained ire over the three-year run of this blog, most particularly those that aren’t kind (although none more than my selections for the greatest Hip-Hop albums – that post practically has gunshots ringing out in the comments section). I’ve come to expect and enjoy the inevitable friction that some of my opinions stir up, and I appreciate passionate fans speaking out, even when their passion is pointed angrily at me.

One of my early posts on this blog was a list of the most overlooked albums of all-time. As an addendum to that post, I included a list of what I considered to be the most overrated albums of all-time (now I would totally make that into its own post, but whatever…). The overrated list included Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run, any Jimmy Buffett (shudder), Dave Matthews (double shudder), The Eagles’ awful Hotel California and The Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness, which unbelievably is the best selling double-album of all-time.

But the two albums on that list that have earned me the harshest fire over the years are The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s… and Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow. The comments from incredulous Beatles fans are there for your enjoyment. I know it’s hard for some people to believe that I can simultaneously like this album and think it’s overrated, but that is the case. Sgt. Pepper’s was important because it elevated the LP to the place of art. The iconic cover image, the lyrics printed inside (the first album to do so), the “concept” behind it – all of this made people take music more seriously, which made musicians take themselves more seriously, which was both a good and bad thing. It’s a great album, but Sgt. Pepper’s is not the greatest album of the 20th century, which means it’s overrated by the army of critics who call it that.

Surrealistic Pillow‘s inclusion on that list has drawn little in the way of reader comments. Instead, it was a red-faced friend of my hippie uncle who lowered the boom on me for daring to besmirch the name of the Airplane. His voice rising an octave or two, he scolded me that they were “a great band that could tear it up on stage.” From there we quickly progressed to I’m-shaking-my-head-sadly-because-you’re-a-worthless-piece-of-crap-who-will-never-get-it. In the years since that conversation, I’ve spent more time on Jeff Air, and I’ve come to think of them as a band whose whole was actually less than its parts. Their stage harmonies were horrible, and they had no business out-selling SF contemporaries like Moby Grape and Quicksilver Messenger Service. But that said, Jefferson Airplane had a few great tunes and some charismatic personalities on board (I’m not crazy about Grace Slick’s voice, but she carried herself like a superstar), and they wouldn’t be on that overrated list if I were compiling it today. Sgt Pepper’s however, still isn’t the greatest album of the 20th century, so it stays put…

Stuck In My Head: In The Year 2010 The Pope Is African

This little number is taken from the KPIG-FM broadcast of Michelle Shocked’s appearance at the 2002 Strawberry Music Festival. This still unreleased tune looked eight years into the future to see 40 million African children orphaned by AIDS. Over a rolling world music beat, Shocked wonders aloud “Wouldn’t it be great if the world’s biggest papa… took all those children to live with him in the Vatican?”

In the year 2010, that’s not actually such a great idea Michelle – the Catholic Church is about the last place you’d want to put kids for safe-keeping these days. Pope Benedict has recently come under scrutiny for his handling of molestation cases while he worked as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer. Depending on your point of view, Benedict either helped bury the charges against a molesting squadron of priests, or was forced to delay punishment because of church bureaucracy. Benedict earned the nickname ‘God’s Rotweiller’ for his tough defense of strict dogmatic interpretation, but to outside eyes, he appears much more interested in snarling at the Catholic Church’s critics than he ever was in defending young boys who were systematically raped by his institution.

This is an institution that to all the world appears tone deaf to any suffering but its own. It’s an institution that took 17 years to defrock a priest described as “satanic” by his own bishop, and then bristles at suggestions that it acted improperly. It’s an institution that dismisses serious concerns about its conduct as “petty gossip” that is “prompted by the devil.” It’s an institution that smugly asserts a statute of limitations for heinous crimes committed within its walls, while claiming that victims waited too long to come forward. That kind of fairy dust might have worked in the past, but today it just makes you look like an ugly bully.

In the year 2010 the pope isn’t African, but with each passing day he looks more and more like a thuggish, third world dictator. Who needs hell when you’ve got a church like this?

Listen: In The Year 2010 The Pope Is African

Bad Apple: The Beach Boys Love You

[Today: The Beach Boys don't bring me flowers - a review in three acts...]

The Beach Boys don’t love me. They barely even like me. Trust me, I’m pretty perceptive about these things. At the last company holiday party, they hardly talked to me, acted bored when I was telling them about the Monte Rio cabin, and kept interjecting comments that made it clear they weren’t even listening to what I was saying. Just plain rude. That doesn’t mean that they ratted me out for peeing in the boss’ office, but they might have, the sneaky bastards. No, there’s no love there…

*****

You call this love? If the Beach Boys really loved me, they’d rub my feet and bring me flowers like they did back when we were dating. Sure, I’ve gained a few pounds and don’t look as good as I used to in a swimsuit, but I don’t deserve those faraway gazes at the dinner table, the group hugs so devoid of passion. You Beach Boys think you can stay out carousing all night, come home drunk in the wee hours of the morning, and then win me over with a few nice words. Well, I see through your tricks and it’s not going to work this time, misters…

*****

If the Beach Boys really loved me, they wouldn’t challenge my perception of them as top-shelf musicians by churning out schlock like The Beach Boys Love You. As a 6 year-old, I fell in love with my mom’s Beach Boys 45s – each one a catchy signpost of the summer fun that I was still several years away from enjoying myself. Coincidentally, much of this album sounds like it was written by a 6 year-old. There are cloying love songs (‘Love Is A Woman’ and ‘Let’s Put Our Hearts Together’), strange wanna-be kids songs (‘Roller Skating Child’ and ‘Ding Dang’) and one epically embarrassing grasp at fame gone by (‘Johnny Carson’). In spite of its gee-whiz title, this album doesn’t make me feel loved at all. Embarrassed, annoyed and puzzled, yes. Loved? Not even a little bit…

Buried Treasure: Budos Band II

[Today: Tough, bearded funk...]

Any band that offers an album credit for cowbell is on to something good, and The Budos Band more than qualifies for that distinction. They bring several brands of funk under one umbrella: the hypnotic grooves of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, the military precision of the JB’s, and the salty brass-knuckle funk of 70′s Blaxploitation soundtracks. Not bad for an all-white, 10-piece group out of Staten Island whose members all keep day jobs and full beards (their name is a truncated version of the spanish phrase for “The Bearded Ones”). Initially inspired by Brooklyn’s Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra and the funk re-issue label Desco, the bearded ones make all-instrumental funk that sounds more like 1974 than 2007.

Saxophonist Jared Tankel told the L.A. Record that “[The] initial discovery of Desco was big and then just following that train… once you get into it there’s never an ending – so we got the soul thing and the funk thing and then the Afrobeat thing and then the Ethiopian jazz thing which was huge for us.” With congas, bongos, farfisa organ and a full horn section pushed into the red, The Budos Band makes music that sits comfortably alongside that of their idols. The cover of their first album featured a photo of lava flowing from a volcano, while their second self-titled album went with a golden scorpion. Both images are appropriate visual metaphors for a band that churns out relentless, non-stop funk that’s punctuated by stinging horn blasts.

Budos Band II is throwback in all the best ways, right down to the invitation on the back of the album cover to “Join The Budos Band Fan Club” – complete with the whole self-addressed stamped envelope bit. That might be a gag, but the music is deadly serious. Album opener ‘Chicago Falcon’ is among the best pieces funk released since George Clinton’s mothership got stranded on Mars. This infectious bit of retro groove is ballsy enough that it could have served as the theme song for a 70′s TV show about tough cops who kick ass in the ghetto. They have beards of course…

Listen: Chicago Falcon

Masterpiece: Part 3

[Today: Let the Sunshine in...]

No band of the Disco era was done more disservice by the negative implications of the genre heading than KC & The Sunshine Band. Bubbling up from Miami in the early 70s, KC et al played a super tight version of funk that actually broke across the US through black radio stations before crossing over to a more lucrative white audience. In fact, before their first headlining tour, most listeners assumed that this integrated group was actually all black. Lead singer and keyboardist Harry Casey (aka KC) and bassist Rick Finch, the white guys in the group, were studio wunderkids, working with record label TK Productions as teenagers from its inception in the late-60s. Finch was enough of a production prodigy that he was running sessions for Betty Wright and Clarence Reid by age 16, and along with Casey, formed the house band that played on most TK productions. That group eventually became KC & The Sunshine Band.

Unlike Disco that sounded shiny because it was over-produced, KC & The Sunshine Band got their sound because they could play the heck out of their instruments. Their production was actually pretty simple – ‘Rock Your Baby’ (a hit for George McCrae that was written and produced by Casey) was cut on an 8-track board, but used only seven of those tracks. When you listen to Part 3, you’re not hearing studio gimmickry – this is the real funk. Explaining his musical philosophy in a 1978 interview, Casey said, “My songs intentionally have simplicity – they are built around a chorus and verses, that’s all. You can add a million gimmicks in there but we aim for simplicity and reality.”

There’s nothing profound about KC & The Sunshine Band’s music. It’s mostly about dancing or screwing, but it does what it’s supposed to do (ie, make you shake your booty). Their 1976 release Part 3 plays like a Greatest Hits compilation, but was actually the group’s fourth LP. It’s stacked with hits, and that rainbow on the cover leads to a pot of gold singles inside, including ‘(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty’, ‘I’m Your Boogie Man’ and ‘Keep It Comin’ Love’. This was the de facto sound of dancefloors everywhere at that time, the groove behind the spirit of ’76. And it still plays large…

Listen: (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty

Listen: I’m Your Boogie Man

Listen: Keep It Comin’ Love