Monthly Archives: August 2002

One of the most effective weapons in the defeat of Soviet Russia was rock and roll. American music. No single aspect of American culture contains within itself all of our independence, free-thinking and aspirations. Rock and roll is totally incompatible with totalitarianism, fascism or religious fanaticism.
That’s why, if we’re going to defeat today’s brand of tyranny, we should be exporting rock and roll to the Middle East. I’m not talking about cartoon music like Brittney Spears or Backstreet Boys, which we’re already doing and is probably doing more harm than good. I mean real rock and roll. The first shot fired at Saudi Arabia should be a good dose of the Blasters. The new CD, “Trouble Bound” will hit more targets than the smartest smart bomb. This is a CD that makes you want to dance, and makes you want to shake your fist at all who would tell you how to live your life. There have been few bands over the last 20 years that have embodied the true spirit of rock and roll better than the Blasters.
“Trouble Bound” is the first real Blasters record in more than a decade. By that I mean the line up includes Dave Alvin. The Blasters just isn’t the same band without Alvin, who has been busy building an Grammy-winning solo career. Dave Alvin is the heart of the Blasters, but Alvin will be the first to tell you that nobody sings his songs better than brother Phil. So, Phil and Dave Alvin on the same stage is a religious experience in itself. Fortunately, somebody at High Tone Records had the good sense to capture a spate of rare reunion shows in Southern California on tape and put out a CD of the magic.
The Blasters run through the heart of their catalog, dishing out such master pieces as “Trouble Bound,” “Long White Cadillac,” “Common Man,” “So Long Baby Goodbye” and “Marie Marie.”
Of course, they give a ripping performance of the one song that should make Islamofascists every where tremble: “American Music.” Has there ever been a truer lyric than: “The whole world digs that sound from the USA”?
Speaking of Dave Alvin and live music, his new “Out In California” is another suburb addition to his body of work. The CD shows Alvin at both his rocking best and his poetic subtlety.
I know nothing about Alvin’s politics. He’s obviously proud of America’s culture, but an ongoing theme of his music seems to be the gritty freedom enjoyed by America’s working class. So long as Dave Alvin is making music, freedom is in good hands. Continue reading →

True music fans take songwriting credits pretty seriously. The songwriter is where history begins. Good songwriting is a craft and a talent. Aficionados cringe when they here somebody say Elvis Presley wrote “Blue Suede Shoes.” When it comes to history making songs, it’s important that credit goes where credit is due.

So when I read an L.A. Times article that said Ike Turner wrote “Rocket 88,” I had to tell the Times how wrong they were.

My exchange with Assistant Reader Representative Barry Zwick has been an interesting excursion into just how difficult pinning down historical facts in music can be.

“Rocket 88″ was recorded as Sun Studio in Memphis, Tenn. in May 1951. It was first hit record recorded at Sun and helped Sam Phillips become an important record producer, making Sun an important destination for up and coming recording artists. Many music historians consider “Rocket 88″ the first rock and roll record in history, so the question of who wrote “Rocket 88″ is no trivial matter.

The song was released by Chess Records and songwriting credit was given to Jackie Brenston, the song’s lead singer.

I wrote a huffy note to the Times, feeling more than certain that Brenston was the songwriter.

Not so fast, Zwick replied. Not all historical accounts agree that Brenston was the actual writer. There is at least one account that says Turner wrote the song and that Brenston was falsely credited as author by Chess simply because he was listed as the singer.

Feeling some what chastised at my eagerness to show the Times up, I acknowledged in my reply that the person listed as the legal songwriter on old songs is not always the actual songwriter. For example, I read many times that Moon Mulligan wrote “Jambalaya,” not Hank Williams. In fact, Williams was chagrined that Acuff-Rose bought the songwriting credits from Mulligan and throughout his life, Williams aided Mulligan financially to make up for it.

So it isn’t hard to believe that Ike Turner wrote “Rocket 88″ and through music business machinations, was screwed out of the songwriting credit.

But the story that Chess accidentally gave Brenston the credit also has a ring of Turner exaggeration to it. If Brenston’s band was really Turner’s band, as Turner likes to tell the story these days, then why wasn’t Turner singing his own song? By Turner’s accounts, Brenston was not normally the lead singer of his band, or a long-time or regular member. When I toured Sun Studio a few years ago, the tour guide’s account was that Turner was little more than a session player.

My point is, Turner is not the most reliable source on this particular point. He does like to play up his importance to the development of rock and roll.

So who wrote the song? Well, ASCAP says that Brenston wrote it.

After bringing the ASCAP link to the attention of Zwick, his first response was that given the ambiguity over the songwriting credit, he didn’t think a correction was warranted. In a follow up e-mail, he said he had reconsidered and was instead bumping the issue over to the author of the article in question and the section editors. It would be there call whether to run a correction.

Given the fact there is some dispute over the songwriting credit, I would agree that a correction is probably not in order. But a clarification would certainly be good idea. The undisputed claim that Ike Turner wrote “Rocket 88″ should be allowed to just hang out there unchallenged. I would further suggest that if the Times wants to pursue maximum accuracy, they would get Sam Phillips on the phone and see if he remembers who wrote “Rocket 88.” Phillips might be the best source for an unbiased account of how this song came to be. That is, if Phillips even knows, since the song was probably completed before Brenston and Turner arrived at Sun.

For more on Sun Studio, and the music born there, I recommend:

• The Sun Records Collection;
• Good Rockin’ Tonight
• The Ike Turner Sun Sessions (I don’t have this, but it looks worth while)
• And check out this DVD coming out in October … anybody want to buy it for me?

Continue reading →

Les Paul is one of the greatest guitar players ever, and one whom all modern guitarist owe a debt to. Besides being a great inovator in instruments and recording techniques, he was a master of six strings. His recordings reveal a man who played faster and cleaner than any one — including the heavy metal shredders of the last few years — ever. Ed Driscoll has a fine profile of Mr. Paul on Blogcritics.com. Continue reading →

Supreme Beings of Leisure’s new CD, “Divine Operating System” is now available through Amazon.com. It’s out Sept. 10, but I recommend you order an advance copy. It’s so good, you’ll want it ASAP. If you missed my review, here it is again. Continue reading →

They promised we could “listen forever,” but it appears Listen4Ever.com has gone off line.

The record companies ganged up on the pirate Web site, filing lawsuits against giant ISPs, trying to force them to block access to the China-based Web site, which offered free copies of copyrighted CDs. The crush of publicity, apparently, caused the Listen4Ever.com servers to crash, or convinced the current site hosts to take it off line. Either way, it isn’t accessible at the moment, and according to one report, hasn’t been available since Friday.

I never tried accessing the site until today. I tried through my normal DNS configuration and kept getting a “domain not found” error, so I reconfigured my DNS settings, putting in the IP addresses for a couple of alternate public domain servers, and seemed to be getting passed by ISP at that point, but the site seemed to be down.

Maybe bringing the site down by swamping it with traffic was the RIAA’s evil scheme all along. How many people knew about the site before the lawsuit was filed? How many know about it now?

While I don’t necessarily support music piracy, I do support any efforts to break the major-label hold on music. Hopefully, the Net will keep finding ways to route around the RIAA’s heavy-handed, major-label supporting, artist-destroying tactics. Continue reading →

When Supreme Beings of Leisure burst onto the scene in 2000 — largely through word of mouth on the Internet — they were placed squarely in the trip-hop camp, with their electronica inspired grooves, sampled sounds and programmed loops. SBOL was a dance band, but fans also recognized SBOL was a band with a difference — songs that were actually songs, a singer who could really sing and a laid back aura that recalled Martinis and turquoise counter tops in a smoke-filled lounge.

It’s been two years since that momentous debut for the L.A.-based SBOL, and a lot has changed. Gone are founding members Kiran Shahani and Rick Torres, and much of the trip-hop edges have been polished away. The new CD, “Divine Operating System,” due out Sept. 10 (it’s not even in Amazon’s catalog yet), is lusher, groovier and more soulful. It could very well be the kind of break-through effort that transforms SBOL from Internet-phenomena to mainstream star.

The trademark lounge-cool is retained in this collaboration of Geri Soriano-Lightwood and Ramin Sakurai, but the R&B-tinged dance rhythms are smarter, more sophisticated and more infectious, if that is possible. This is stuff that makes even a 40+ rock-and-roll loving man like myself want to move. Guys like me aren’t supposed to like dance music, but this music is just too good to ignore.

The sound is so full and lush that it’s hard to believe these songs were written and recorded in somebody’s bedroom on a PowerMac. Apparently there are some natural instruments on the record, but the electronica essence never faulters. The truth is, electronica has never sounded so life-like. This is real music — real pop music, but it envelopes you. The music is so luxurious that it fills you with a desire to wrap yourself in the songs and let the pleasure waves embrace you.

And the feeling doesn’t subside through all 11 tracks on “DOS.” From the opening “Give Up,” and “Ghetto,” through the radio-friendly “Rock and a Hard Place” and “Divine” (my pick for smash-hit potential), “DOS” is a marvel of aural delight. This is the kind of music that belongs in a science fiction film about a future filled with computer-aided amusement. It’s no wonder SBOL has seemed so perfect for the Internet age.

As I listened the first two or three times through the CD, the sound called to mind new romantic acts from the early ’80s like Spandau Ballet and ABC, as well as a touch of Human League and plenty of ’70s era R&B funk. The melodic bass playing of Sheldon Strickland is just the thing to anchor the groove. But the heart and soul of SBOL is the voice of Soriano-Lightwood. Her clear and powerful voice is reminiscent of Annie Lennox, but without the masculine overtones. It is a freer, more refined instrument.

Most bands stumble on second CDs, and after losing two members, you wouldn’t expect SBOL to even survive. Not only has the band survived, it’s actually gotten better — and better in a way that should thrill old fans and scoop up legions of new ones.

UPDATE: Amazon is now taking orders. Continue reading →

For most of the 20th Century, if you were poor and dreamed of wealth, you dreamed of owning a Cadillac. The Caddy was as much a part of the American dream as a three-bedroom house and a white picket fence. Look at the poor boys who struck it rich and bought themselves Cadillacs — Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens and, of course, Elvis. In the 1950s and ’60s the only car that came close to the Cadillac as a status symbol was the Lincoln Continental, but it was a distant second. In the 1970s, you couldn’t be a proper pimp without a Caddy. Even in the ’80s and ’90s, Cadillacs lost little of their appeal even as General Motors produced substantially crappy cars.

Of course, as the gloss wore of Cadillacs, a new generation wanted to turn away from their parents’ status symbols and define their own. First they gravitated toward another classic brand, the Mercedes Benz, but BMW and later upshot like Lexus grabbed market share.

These new buyers seemed oblivious to the fact that as pure statements of conspicuous consumption, these other vehicles were mere imitators. Nothing could truly capture the allure of a Cadillac. Tradition won’t allow it.

You don’t think a Cadillac has allure and panache? Look at all the great songs about Cadillacs:

• Brand New Cadillac — written by Vince Taylor, revived by the Clash and covered by Bruce Springsteen, Wayne Hancock and Brian Setzer;
• Pink Cadillac — written by Springsteen, covered by the Pointer Sisters;
• Guitars, Cadillacs, etc. — Dwight Yoakam;
• Long White Cadillac — written by Dave Alvin and covered by Yoakam;
• Maybelline — Chuck Berry;
• One Piece at a Time — Johnny Cash;
• Cadillac Ranch — Nitty Gritty Dirt Band;
• Red Cadillac A Black Mustache — Warren Smith;
• Baby, Let’s Play House — which originally did not mention a Cadillac, but Elvis added the line (as well as rewriting the chorus) to “You may drive a pink Cadillac, but don’t you be nobody’s fool”).

That’s eight songs right there and I’ve got a list of another 40 I’ve collected over the years.

Sure, you have your occasional song about other cars — “Hot Rod Lincoln” (which also mentions a Cadillac) or “Mercedes Benz,” or “Mercury Blues,” but no song has played a starring role in more songs than the Cadillac. In fact, just as a test, I typed “Cadillac” into the search engine for All Music and came back with 90 different song titles that begin with “Cadillac.” No other brand of car I can think to run through the search even comes close. Mercury has 40, which ain’t bad. “Chevrolet” came back with about 90 titles, but that’s a make of car, not a brand. “Ford” got about half that — btw: who would be interested in a song about a Ford Taurus?

Granted, this unscientific search doesn’t find songs with titles that don’t begin with the car name, nor does it fine songs about a car that isn’t mentioned in the title (such as “One Piece at a Time”), but still, that’s a pretty impressive domination by Cadillac.

You would think the smart people over at General Motors would realize what a marketing bonanza they have on their hands — a ton of Cadillac songs to use in their commercials, and free CDs of Cadillac songs for people who take a test drive, etc. It seems like a natural, but they’ve never thought of it, apparently. Through the Cadillac Web site, I tried pitching the idea once, but General Motors doesn’t accept unsolicited marketing ideas.

Why am I writing this? Because tonight, on TV, I saw a new commercial for Mercedes Benz. It kicks off with Janis Joplin and then segues into two lesser Mercedes songs. After the initial excitement of the Joplin line, “Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz,” the commercial peters out. But with it, so does a missed marketing opportunity for Cadillac. Sure, using Led Zeppelin to market to the younger baby boomers now reaching Cadillac buying age was a good idea, but not as good as tapping into the romantic tradition of Cadillac as evoked by so much great music.

And, FWIW, if anybody from Rhino Records happens to read this piece — you really should hire me to put together a box set (at least 6 CDs) of Cadillac songs. Continue reading →

Writer Tom Sinclair says Elvis sucks.

Rather than just call him an idiot, a musical moron, a tone-deaf jackass, I’ll explain why I think he’s shown his ignorance.

He writes:

But my problem with Elvis has always been the absurd degree to which this guy — the bulk of whose post-’50s career was, by most yardsticks, an extended embarrassment — has been lionized. Jeez, the cat didn’t even write his own songs, and he barely played guitar, pioneering the use of that instrument as pure prop. Stacked up against his contemporaries — Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis — Elvis falls short in terms of both artistry and creativity.

Never in the history of Western civilization has a supposed music critic written such a load of crap.

Granted, Elvis did some exceedingly silly things in the ’60s and ’70s, but his musical output was far from an embarrassment. Few artists — possibly no artists — during the same period recorded as many great songs, so many great performances as Elvis Presley. I’ve made my own custom CDs of Elvis’ best work from that period, and it fills nearly four 75-minute CDs. That’s a hell of a lot of music. I can’t do that with either the Beatles (unless I include all of the solo work by the four lads) or Led Zeppelin.

As a performer in the in those two decades, Presley was unmatched. Nobody had his charisma, his dynamism or his sense of showmanship.

He “barely played guitar”? Listen to those Sun recordings again, Mr. Sinclair. There are few finer rhythm guitarists in the history of rock and roll. Elvis was a natural. Listen to “That’s All Right, Mama.” It isn’t Scotty Moore or Bill Black who created that acoustic guitar part. It was Elvis. And it’s dead on perfect and it revolutionized popular music and solidified the beat of rock and roll. Scotty is brilliant, of course, and his leads and fills give the song added excitement, but the foundation of the song, as with most of the Sun sides, is the acoustic guitar. And nobody I’ve ever heard did that better than Elvis.

Elvis also played bass and piano. He was no slouch as a musician.

Which brings up another point. Singers are musicians, too. It takes just as much musical talent to be a good singer as it does to play another other instrument. It also takes practice and hard work, just like any other instrument. There have been few singers in the history of popular music who have even come close to matching Elvis’ vocal range, or his range as a performer. Song interpretation is one of the great arts of civilization. It is also, largely, a dead art. Elvis may have been the last of the true masters, in the tradition of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Pearl Bailey, Peggy Lee and Tony Bennett.

As for writing his own songs — which of the greats in the preceding paragraph was also a songwriter? It is a greatly misguided conceit of many a modern music critic that only performers who write their own songs are worthy of veneration. There’s only one word for the conceit: stupid. It demonstrates a huge misunderstanding of what goes into a great song. Frankly, there are many songwriters who probably shouldn’t be performing their own songs. Dave Matthews springs readily to mind. As much as I love Bob Dylan, the best versions of his songs are usually performed by other artists. And in today’s studios, who knows how many contemporary singer-songwriters really suck as performers? The worst flaws can now be digitized away. Pro Tools is the sucky musicians’ best friend. But when you hear Elvis, you are getting the real deal — pure analog, baby.

As for Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis — as wonderful as they were in their prime, what did they do besides record a handful (each) of great songs that pretty much all sound alike? They all made tremendous contributions to the history of rock and roll, but none of them can match (it’s an insult to Presley and every intelligent music fan to even make the comparison) Elvis for artistry and creativity. None of them recorded the vast body, the vast repertoire of Presley. None of them would even attempt it. None of them had even a tenth of the talent for it.

Like Sinclair, I wasn’t around in the 1950s. My first exposure to Elvis was an LP my dad bought me called “Elvis Presley Gold Vol. 1.” It had such great songs “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Honey Don’t,” and “All Shook Up.” I wore the LP out, I played it so much. As a child, I also watched Jailhouse Rock many times, along with other Elvis movies. I was mesmerized. I tried to imitate his every move. The night of his Aloha special, my parents went out to dinner and it was my first night home alone without a baby-sitter. I danced all over the house during the entire concert. Elvis was King.

It wasn’t until high school that I heard Elvis’s Sun Sessions. I immediately gravitated toward those records to the neglect of everything else Elvis ever did. The raw energy was the epitome of rock and roll. Elvis was the first punk. I bought into the common notion that only Elvis’s ’50s sides mattered. Years later, when I got the ’60s and ’70s box sets, and bought some of Elvis’s gospel records (Elvis may be the greatest gospel singer ever), I came to appreciate the artistry and creativity of his later career.

Face it, Elvis is the King. Only a few musicians from the 20th Century are even worthy to share his stage — Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Patsy Cline, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and U2 round out the list.

Sinclair is an idiot. Continue reading →