Well, let's see now... First some housekeeping matters.... In response to some good suggestions from those trying to organize their iTunes and such, I do plan on re-posting a bunch of stuff in "album" format as zip files. Also, the rock onslaught will subside shortly, as I have some acoustical things to post. But first....
Links for iPads and such, go here and click "download" at top right:
http://www.box.com/s/yhugtebje3tqsopbmgoz
http://www.box.com/s/sxmjco8o5vsizbymppqk
Speaking of albums and rock, the next few posts will be some covers done by me and John Stackpole, a great high school buddy of mine, and member of my earliest quasi-band (along with the legendary Dillo, from whom we'll also be hearing soon). Anyway, Stag and I managed to get back in touch a few years back and he's made a yearly trip up to Harpswell, at which time we try and get a few recordings in the can. God bless the internets for allowing such conections to happen with so little effort! The first time we say down to play after 20+ years off, it was like we hadn't missed a day, except we'd both improved quite a bit, which was fortunate, to say the least. In a much-needed departure from the weird, claustrophobic, stressful, metronome-driven world of solo recording, it's great fun to stretch out and go with the dynamics of a song and see where you land up.
Not surprisingly, the songs we take up are straight out of the old-school classic rock that permeated our otherwise fairly drab suburban New York lives in the early '80s. Man, we used to live for those records, and Stag had (and has, in the very same room!) an absolutely tremendous collection. We learned some great things up there spinning those records and diving deep into the details. All the tropes of us vinyl obsessives certainly apply here. And when it wasn't those walls of well-cared-for records, it was tape decks in whatever car we were tooling around in (his Corolla, my Nova, Dillo's Nova, Bill's Malibu) or whatever boombox we had handy. Anything to keep the mostly vast wasteland of FM radio at bay.
For listening to, and certainly for jamming on and trying to impress our friends (and the girls we would've liked to be our friends), Creedence Clearwater Revival was often the go-to. Yep-- The ladies love cool Creedence! OK, maybe it was not the most stylin' choice, but we had workboots and flannel. Creedence songs were bountiful, easy to play, and EVERYBODY knew about 20 of 'em. "Effigy" is a deep cut off of "Willie and the Poor Boys" from '69. It's a hell of an anthemic burner, brimming with the palatable kind of Sixties outrage.
The flipside of this "single" is "Lover of the Bayou", a sorely unknown gem from the late-era Byrds (1970's "Untitled"). After Gene Clark left, and David Crosby too, and Gram Parsons came and went, and Chris Hillman left to form the Flying Burrito Bros. with him, Roger McGuinn soldiered on. By the early '70s the Byrds weren't making any good records (total stinkers, matter of fact), but they were a terrific live act, and this song was a creepy highlight of their sets. For me anyway, that 12-string Rickenbacker is just hardwired to my brainstem. We never played any Byrds with the bands back in the day but, man, we should have! Andy O'Brien even had the Rick, though he just used it for strumming. That, however is another inexplicable story...
Effigy (CCR):
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Stackpole- Keating, part 2: Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)
MP3 link for iWhatevers or anyone who needs it:
http://www.box.com/s/b7qc7ac8fvbb1f55018o
For your funkier-than-usual listening pleasure, today's hit rekkid is a version of Jimi Hendrix' "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" off the sprawling "Electric Ladyland" from 1968. It's precisely the kind of tune that I can't create or execute on my own--- the psychedelic appointments welded on top of the classic blues structure, the progressively speeding (in this version anyway) drum-conga-bass-organ groove, the dynamics.... and especially the presence of actual guitar playing,
Lemme tell you one thing that I am not: a guitar player. Yeah, you'd never know by the number of gitboxes that I own, and the amount of time I spend trying to play them. Sure, I can coax some passable noises out of them but doing so does not make me a player, the same way that being able to exchange some basic information doesn't make me a Spanish speaker or writing and playing a bunch of songs make me much of a musician. It's what my friend and pathology mentor Rich Jakowski refers to, in a slightly different context, as the "difference between a lightning bug and lightning".
Rich and I also discuss the world in terms of the difference between chimpanzee people and orangutan people. In the music world, us shrieking, easily distracted poop-hurling chimps are just grateful to have more measured primates to steer us right every now and again. Sometimes, I suppose, that orangutan is my buddy John Stackpole, with a guitar.
Voodoo Chile (Slight Return):
http://www.box.com/s/b7qc7ac8fvbb1f55018o
For your funkier-than-usual listening pleasure, today's hit rekkid is a version of Jimi Hendrix' "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" off the sprawling "Electric Ladyland" from 1968. It's precisely the kind of tune that I can't create or execute on my own--- the psychedelic appointments welded on top of the classic blues structure, the progressively speeding (in this version anyway) drum-conga-bass-organ groove, the dynamics.... and especially the presence of actual guitar playing,
Lemme tell you one thing that I am not: a guitar player. Yeah, you'd never know by the number of gitboxes that I own, and the amount of time I spend trying to play them. Sure, I can coax some passable noises out of them but doing so does not make me a player, the same way that being able to exchange some basic information doesn't make me a Spanish speaker or writing and playing a bunch of songs make me much of a musician. It's what my friend and pathology mentor Rich Jakowski refers to, in a slightly different context, as the "difference between a lightning bug and lightning".
Rich and I also discuss the world in terms of the difference between chimpanzee people and orangutan people. In the music world, us shrieking, easily distracted poop-hurling chimps are just grateful to have more measured primates to steer us right every now and again. Sometimes, I suppose, that orangutan is my buddy John Stackpole, with a guitar.
Voodoo Chile (Slight Return):
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Kink-y New Year! (Supplemental)
Hello again Apple users-- To link directly to the song via BoxNet, cut and paste this here into your Safari or whatever fancy browser you're running:
http://www.box.com/s/fadm8yx23egaumpmg1n6
And a good day to the rest of youse also! Things have been hectic lately, including a typically "hectic" swing down to Baltimore, if you know what I mean... Anyway, I apologize for the slackness in posting, and hopefully can make it up to you with one last Kinks cover I had in the hopper. "Strangers" is one of little brother Dave Davies' many minor hits, and it's a predictable fave of the Kinks cognoscenti, in all its yelpy, 5/4 glory and garbled syntax. Being a member of one of the leading lights of the British Invasion certainly propelled Dave to stardom and, taking advantage of that, he did stepp out under his own name a tad in the late 60's. I like to think there's little doubt he'd have been a successful solo artist irregahdless, or at least a niche fancy for the usual music obsessives. (Matter of fact, his output has just been slapped onto a 27-cut import compilation of wheezy, wailing Dave-ness, so there is some justice in the world...)
So I'd been meaning to cover this one for a long while and before I was finished, I saw some YouTube/ Onion Undercover videos of the Baltimore band Wye Oak doing their stellar take on it. I almost hung up the enterprise right there but figured "Ah, the heck with it--- Let's just steal the idea of a fuzz-laden guitar spasm in the solo part, and be done with it." Enjoy!
jk
Strangers:
http://www.box.com/s/fadm8yx23egaumpmg1n6
And a good day to the rest of youse also! Things have been hectic lately, including a typically "hectic" swing down to Baltimore, if you know what I mean... Anyway, I apologize for the slackness in posting, and hopefully can make it up to you with one last Kinks cover I had in the hopper. "Strangers" is one of little brother Dave Davies' many minor hits, and it's a predictable fave of the Kinks cognoscenti, in all its yelpy, 5/4 glory and garbled syntax. Being a member of one of the leading lights of the British Invasion certainly propelled Dave to stardom and, taking advantage of that, he did stepp out under his own name a tad in the late 60's. I like to think there's little doubt he'd have been a successful solo artist irregahdless, or at least a niche fancy for the usual music obsessives. (Matter of fact, his output has just been slapped onto a 27-cut import compilation of wheezy, wailing Dave-ness, so there is some justice in the world...)
So I'd been meaning to cover this one for a long while and before I was finished, I saw some YouTube/ Onion Undercover videos of the Baltimore band Wye Oak doing their stellar take on it. I almost hung up the enterprise right there but figured "Ah, the heck with it--- Let's just steal the idea of a fuzz-laden guitar spasm in the solo part, and be done with it." Enjoy!
jk
Strangers:
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