How to use this Page

Add a Comment

Fast

Collect

Sad

Lost

Rock

Broken

Jump

Transport

Nervous

Scared

Tree

Wet

Battle

Escape

Flight

Squeeze

Big

Add a Comment

Add a Comment

Though David Robert Jones, the boy from Brixton, is no longer with us, David Bowie, the artist, through his music, films, plays, paintings, and explorations of gender, sexuality, religion, love, fear, and death, remains.

The post David Bowie: Everything has changed, he changed everything appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

The relationship between wine and the vineyard earth has long been held as very special, especially in Europe. Tradition has it that back in the Middle Ages the Burgundian monks tasted the soils in order to gauge which ones would give the best tasting wine, and over the centuries this kind of thinking was to become entrenched. The vines were manifestly taking up water from the soil.

The post On the unstoppable rise of vineyard geology appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

I've tucked away the porcelain creamer, little orange flowers and cascading drapery, replacing the objects with photo references for a project I'm really excited about doing.  The inspiration was a photograph of my oldest daughter taken about a year ago at El Capitan State Beach.  However, I'm changing the location from a rocky beach to a rocky riverbed with some trees in the background.

I'm looking forward to playing with some colors that have not been on the palette for other projects - mainly Phthalo blue and green.  I'm also excited about exploring colors and patterns of stones in water - I've always been drawn to that in nature.  But, most of all, I'm delighted to be working with a specific concept - trying to capture the moment of quiet contemplation or listening in prayer.

I have flashes of what I think the end product might look like, but I've learned not to get hung up in those fleeting visions.  They give me a direction, but the journey will likely take me down any number of possible paths.  But, this is merely a study for the sake of exploration.  Ultimately, I see this as a fairly large painting - large for my space, anyway, requiring more than a little tabletop.  By the time I'm ready to move on to canvas, the weather should be comfortable enough to work in the garage again.

Add a Comment

The Last Waltz was a revolutionary documentary. It was the first concert movie shot in 35 mm, the record of a celebration of the Band’s last concert on the site of their first show as The Band. It is the visual evidence that more than thirty years ago Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel had the good sense to go out on top. There are many examples of actors, politicians, athletes and rock stars who didn’t. The movie itself, I hour, 37 minutes, was directed by Martin Scorsese. No matter what you think of Hollywood, his credentials as a director are undisputed. His list of credits, accomplishments and awards means that Scorsese is a serious director, not one to waste energy. At the time, 1976, a time when the underground half of the 60's generation was realizing that the other half was following in the footsteps of their parents, embracing the values that their governments, their elders and betters, praised and promoted, Scorsese was in the middle of directing NEW YORK, NEW YORK, a huge, expensive Hollywood project. Unbeknownst to the New York, New York producer who would have had a heart attack if he’d known, Marty (as he is referred to by almost everyone in the movie) took a weekend off, filmed the concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, put together the rest of it in a week and filmed three more songs on a Hollywood sound stage a few months later. It was edited and released in 1978. The sets, lighting, photography, sound and all the myriad details that go into movie creation were taken care of by hook or by crook, often improvised by world renowned experts in their fields. The project took on a life of its own. It was not made for profit and grew into an important cultural event. Before Scorsese made The Last Waltz, there was WOODSTOCK (where he worked as an assistant director and editor and learned what not to do), GIMME SHELTER, SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL and an Elvis film, but no other single concert had been as carefully choreographed, as meticulously set and photographed as this. There were seven cameras shooting at times, each run by a professional and, in many cases, a world famous cinematographer. Bill Graham’s lawyers forced Scorsese’s assistant to negotiate each camera movement because he controlled the stage and insisted that nothing impair the sight lines of the live audience. It is best to mention here that the DVD of The Last Waltz is available cheap at your local DVD purveyor. This one only cost ten Canadian dollars to buy, a great bargain for musicians, writers and anyone else interested in rock ‘n roll and the making of movies. The “Special Features” additions on the DVD contain a lot of comical and serious comments by the movie makers, Mac Rebenak, Ronnie Hawkins, Mavis Staples and the band members which can be listened to as the movie plays. As each band member, song and guest performer appears, someone talks about them. The story of The Band’s creation and growth through sixteen years of living on the road unfolds through a series of interviews with band members interspersed among the songs, mostly answers to questions posed by Scorsese himself, questions provided by a professional screenwriter. Many of the answers are funny, some ironic, some poignant, but one feeling permeates the whole movie, a sort of good natured humour, an amused observation of the world at large and a sincere appreciation of the music. The Band were aware that the odds of survival for such a long time in such a high risk lifestyle, were against them. Robbie Robertson says, at the end of the movie, “The road has taken some of the great ones” and “You can push your luck”. Three of the Band’s songs were filmed on an MGM sound stage where Scorsese could control everything and was free to use a crane and a camera as in normal movies. The Weight, in which Pop and Mavis Staples sing verses and all four harmonize on the choruses with members of the band, Evangeline, which is filmed in stunning colour with Emmy Lou Harris doing an achingly sweet call and response with Levon, and The Last Waltz theme song which is a waltz written by Robertson who is playing a double necked acoustic guitar as he performs it with the Band, were all filmed on sets designed by Boris Leven, a friend of Scorcese and the production designer on The Sound of Music and New York, New York. It was Leven who was responsible for renting the San Francisco Opera’s set for La Traviata and setting it up in the beat up, spruced up, old Winterland Ballroom for the concert. His original idea was to fill the place with chandeliers but they couldn’t afford more than three. It’s fitting that while the rest of their generation was trying to deal with the post Vietnam world, the plan for The Last Waltz was hatching and growing between Robbie Robertson and Martin Scorsese in a couple of months of creativity and hard work. At first, there was no budget, just an idea. It was cobbled together by the seat of its pants, almost an afterthought. The Last Waltz began, in a way, underground, and became the standard by which all concert movies are measured. When the concert was over, Scorsese and Robertson agreed that through all the craziness and frenetic activity, through the power of the music and the personalities, maybe, just maybe, they might have produced a gem. The movie begins with Rick Danko telling Martin Scorsese that the game is “Cutthroat” and breaking the balls on a pool table. Then, in a way which makes sense only when you’ve watched the whole thing and listened to the commentary, The Band returns to the stage for an unplanned encore after the concert’s over. They play Don’t Do It and Robbie Robertson’s lead guitar places the viewer in a car travelling through a beat up neighbourhood of San Francisco to the Winterland Ballroom where crowds are lined up and the huge vertical sign above the entrance has half of its lights burnt out. A young couple waltzes gracefully across the screen against the backdrop of The Last Waltz logo as the names of the guest performers appear: Dr John, Ronnie Hawkins, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Emmy Lou Harris, Muddy Waters, The Staples, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Paul Butterfield, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Wood. In the first interview Marty asks Robbie if they’re really “just friends” who showed up. Robbie tells him that no, the musical guests aren’t just friends, they’re probably the biggest influences in music to a whole generation. Michael McClure, the poet, appears on stage in a spotlight where he recites a short piece of Canterbury Tales in olde English, smiles and walks off. Lawrence Ferlinghetti appears at the end of the show, just before Dylan, with a quick, cool poem. They are the connection to the Beats, their presence welcomed. Kerouac’s spirit. As Robbie says, it isn’t about the audience so they don’t appear except for a few reverse shots which Scorsese loved. The concert itself is a mixture of Band originals beginning with Cripple Creek, interwoven with guests who play only one song each. Dr John displays that New Orleans piano style, slow drawl and dazzling smile on What a Night. Joni Mitchell’s strumming and phrasing make the room feel like everything’s in motion as she stands golden haired and innocent singing the naughty lyrics of Coyote. The floor shakes to the beat of everyone stomping to Muddy’s Mannish Boy. In the Special Features section there is a hilarious commentary on Van Morrison’s sequined outfit as he steals the show with his tour de force performance of Caravan and almost cracks a smile. He had lived in Woodstock when The Band lived there and was an old friend. Scorsese manages to get Joni’s profile in shadow when she sings an ethereal harmony to Neil Young’s Helpless. Garth Hudson’s head is suddenly illuminated as he stands to play a sax, trading solos with Robbie’s guitar in It Makes No Difference. Clapton trades licks with Robertson on Further On Up The Road after his guitar strap comes undone and Robbie picks up the solo without missing a beat. Neil Diamond, a companion from their Tin Pan Alley days, sings a song looking like he’s ready for Vegas. Paul Butterfield pulls off an amazing physical feat when he plays along with Muddy. Ronnie Hawkins, Muddy and Van the Man all exit the stage the same way, deliberately, with a flourish. In the commentaries Ronnie Hawkins tells the story of each band member as he was brought into The Hawks, Ronnie’s backup band which later became Dylan’s backup band, then The Band. He says he hired Robbie Robertson, the kid, to be a roadie as a favour to the boy’s mother. Robbie was hanging out with some guys who might end up in the penitentiary. Richard Manuel, quiet and gentle, always reminding me of The Furry Freak Brother comics in the interviews, roars the lyrics to The Shape I’m In with a strong singing voice made for the blues and slow dancing, rough and smooth at the same time. Levon Helm’s performance vocally and on the drums is hypnotizing . The physical energy required to play and sing that long and that hard is clear in the movie. Rick Danko’s voice is “mournful and strange with off the wall harmonies” as Mac Rebenak put it. It is sweet and harsh with power and feeling. Dylan (another funny commentary in the Special Features section) sings Forever Young and leads his former band into Baby, Let Me Follow You Down. The finale, with everyone onstage, is Dylan’s, I Shall Be Released. Robbie Robertson’s guitar playing is unique. He can play like a lot of people but no one ever plays like him, no one’s got his style , it’s really unique. Ringo and Ronnie Wood appear playing in an out take of a jam until, after 6 hours of filming, the cameras and people take a break. There may be better bands at some things but only these musicians could have pulled this off. A concert which requires a backup band for a variety of performers can be accomplished technically, but the life which The Band injected into the songs, the huge variety of styles they had to adapt to, could only have been done by them. They were a perfect backup band as well as the stars of the show. The sex is in the music. Understated and hinted at, never openly mentioned, the sex is in the music. In the interviews Scorsese asks about women on the road. The answers are, for the most part, as vague and euphemistic as the references to “fun” and other bad habits. Garth Hudson states with certainty that the greatest priests on 52nd street in New York were the musicians. Songwriters were the low men and women on the totem pole but the street musicians were the greatest healers. Thirty years after the movie was made, Martin Scorsese has done another concert film with The Rolling Stones called Shine a Light. Waiting to borrow my copy of The Last Waltz are a twenty year old drummer and a seventeen year old bass player. It means that Martin Scorsese and Robbie Robertson and everyone involved in the movie did produce a gem. And it means that all is not lost.

Add a Comment

When I finally got my hands on How To Become Clairvoyant, I could hardly wait to take it home and play it. I had to hear what Robbie Robertson had created, and was convinced that anything Robbie Robertson did with Eric Clapton would be good. And it is. How To Become Clairvoyant is a guitar player’s collection of songs. The songs are: Straight Down the Line: Where Robertson’s New Orleans delta affinity shines through. The man who wrote The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down displays his reverence of the spiritual south, whether it’s black magic or Southern Baptist gospel in this song. Robert Randoph, included in Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Guitar Players, plays a fiery solo on the pedal steel to answer Robertson;’s electric guitar solo. When the Night Was Young: My personal favourite, it’s got one of those hooky choruses that keep popping up in your head long after you’ve heard it. We had dreams when the night was young. We were believers when the night was young, We could change the world, stop the war, Never seen nothing like this before, But that was back when the night was young Angela McClusky, a native Glaswegian transplanted to L.A., replaces Richard Manuel’s vocals with hers and harmonizes perfectly with Robertson on some of the verses and all of the choruses. He Don’t Live Here No More: A song about addiction with appropriate wild guitar sounds as Clapton plays a solo on the slide guitar and Robertson surprises the listener, who is expecting a roaring electric guitar, by playing a solo on a gut-string guitar which starts with fine Flamenco picking. The Right Mistake: Of course Steve Winwood is a part of this project. He plays on three of the songs. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, named Singer of the Year in 1986 who’s been entertaining since before Clapton and Robertson had that visual spark in The Last Waltz in 1972. You can hear his organ clearly on this song which includes solos from Robertson and Clapton and Angela McCluskey’s soulful vocals. In the credits Bill Dillon is credited with playing the guitar and the guitorgan. A friend saw Steve Winwood at Bluesfest last summer and was very impressed with his live show. This Is Where I Get Off: Robertson’s first musical reference to the painful breakup of The Band wherein he and Clapton do simultaneous electric guitar solos and backup singers, Rocco Deluca, Angelyna Boyd, Daryl Johnson, Michelle John and Sharon White contribute as the song builds up to each chorus beginning, “So just pull over / To the side of the road.” Fear of Falling: “A mellow Clapton riff” is what I thought the first time I listened to this. Both Robertson and Clapton are credited with writing this song so only they know. It’s an easy going, well crafted blues based song where they both do electric solos and Clapton plays an acoustic guitar. The lyrics are sung back and forth in verses and the two men harmonize on the chorus. The lyrics give it the possibility of being a hit. Steve Winwood’s organ in the background is solid but not intrusive. The backup singers, Taylor Goldsmith of The Dawes, Michelle John and Sharon White supplement Robertson and Clapton’s harmonies on the chorus. Their blues roots shine through here. She’s Not Mine: “Anthemic” is the word which first came to mind when I heard this song, though that description sounds a bit grandiose now that I’ve listened to the song often. It’s very impressive with its strategic, distant drums, lyrical imagery and musical sound. It’s the only song in the collection which credits Jim Keltner (a mainstay for decades in the rock recording scene) on drums as well as Ian Thomas. The rest of the tracks feature Pino Palladino on bass and Ian Thomas on drums. Pino Palladino has played bass with everyone from The Who to Eric Clapton to Don Henley and Elton John, who has a Fender bass named after him. One of the best in the business. I became aware of fretless bass in Paul Young’s cover of Marvin Gaye’s Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home). I learn, all these years later, that Pino Palladino (from Cardiff) played the fretless bass on that song. Ian Thomas, also born in Cardiff, is as technically perfect as a rock drummer can get with just the right amount of emotion in his playing. Madame X: A gentle instrumental Clapton wrote. He plays it on a gut string guitar while Robertson plays electric guitar and Trent Reznor, former front man of Nine Inch Nails, adds “Additional Textures”. The song’s bridge evokes “Tears In Heaven.” Axman: In “Axman,” an homage to the tradition of the guitar slinger, Robertson names many of the old blues players, as well as Jimi and Stevie Ray, Doing the guitar solo on a song dedicated to “brothers of the blade” is an honour given to Tom Morello, of Rage Against the Machine. Won’t Be Back: A song by Clapton and Robertson, produced, as all of these songs were, by Marius de Vries, on which he plays keyboard and Eldad Guetta provides the horns. How to Become Clairvoyant: Written by Robertson, this song includes the playing of Robert Randolph on the pedal steel guitar as well as Robertson’s electric guitar with Marcus de Vries on piano. Pino Palladino and Ian Thomas provide the beat, while Dana Glover and Natalie Mendoza are the backup voices. Just when you think you’ve listened to some heavy guitar and it’s all very serious, Robbie Robertson speaks at the end of the song, “Now that would be a revelation / And I also enjoy levitation.” Tango for Django: It is natural and fitting that a guitar player’s recording contains a tribute to one of the greatest guitarists of all, Django Rhinehart. Robertson plays it on a gut string guitar as it leads with violins reminiscent of Stefan Grappelli, into a growing roll of kettle drums and on to the formal introduction of a slow tango. As he wrote a musically correct waltz for The Last Waltz, Robertson has written, with Marcus de Vries, a formally correct (I assume) tango using Frank Morocco on accordian, Anne Marie Calhoun on violin, and Tina Guo on cello in this tribute to Django. (I wonder if Henry Miller heard Django in Paris in the Thirties. I like to think he did.) There is always a texture to Robertson’s stuff, something a little wild and weird, usually in his intros. In The Last Waltz he is surrounded by extraordinary musicians so it shouldn’t be surprising that he’s again surrounded by the same. Eric Clapton isn’t named in “Axman” but he played on six of Robertson’s songs, co-wrote two and unveiled his Instrumental, Madame X, on How To Become Clairvoyant . His participation is his approval and his tribute. Even if you are not a rock guitar fan nor a fan of The Band or Eric Clapton, this collection of rock songs, sung unapologetically in rock language, is worth listening to. It has what all good rock ‘n roll has always had – surprise. They didn’t have to do it for money. Sometimes it’s as simple as two old guitar players having fun.

Add a Comment

Hey you! Yeah, you.


Get over here!


I want to have a word with you.


Oooh, you gonna get it now!

Angry rock by the side of the road wants to have a word with you.

Add a Comment

I'm finishing the plot's conclusion of 20/20 rock album as long as I did a reboot of  Innita, my beloved albino rocker character, as I telling it on her "Year One".

Add a Comment

Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. Earlier in the week we posted a musical riddle by Thompson and below he explains the answer.  Check out Thompson’s other riddles here.

Riddle me when, riddle me why; can you name the song this time?
Ole blue eyes thought this was the best, even if he named the rest.
More than nothing, a quiet plateau; some friendly help, a bass concerto.
Sthā’ī-antarā gat nahi; an unknown answer to a desperate plea.

Forty years ago, the Beatles were in the process of disintegrating: John Lennon and George Harrison were performing separately from the band and Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr would individually begin recording material for independent release. In the past, a separate but equally new single would shortly follow a new Beatles album. The first time they had done this had established the pattern: “From Me to You” (11 April 1963) came slightly less than three weeks after their first album, Please Please Me (22 March 1963), with both reaching the top of British charts in early May.

On 26 September 1969 (and on 1 October in the US), the Beatles had released the last LP they would record together, Abbey Road (see last month’s riddle). Returning to the studio to record a separate single presented an unlikely scenario: the fab four no longer functioned as a unified entity. Consequently, on 31 October 1969 (and on 6 October in the US), Apple released George Harrison’s “Something,” with John Lennon’s “Come Together” on the flip side of the 45 rpm disk. The recordings had already appeared on Abbey Road and the choice of these two songs suggested at least a partial symbolic ostracizing of Paul McCartney, the odd-man-out in the internal group negotiations.

Ole blue eyes thought this was the best, even if he named the rest.

George Harrison in the Beatles Anthology video seems to relish the ironic humor of Frank Sinatra (ole blue eyes) declaring “Something” to be his favorite Lennon-McCartney song. After years of laboring in the shadows of two of the most successful songwriters of the sixties (if not the century), George Harrison had grown into a consummate songwriter who saw his material routinely rejected by his band mates. These rejections meant more than simple social dismissal: a song on a Beatles album meant substantial income from royalties. While Lennon and McCartney held a substantial share in their publishing entity Northern Songs (a company their manager Allen Klein would soon let escape from their grasp), Harrison had recently established Harrisongs to handle the royalties accumulating from his material. “Something” would be one of the most substantial contributors to the coffers of that company.

More than nothing, a quiet plateau; some friendly help, a bass concerto.

“Something” (definitely more than nothing) began an era (a plateau?) of successful songs by the “quiet one” (as press coverage had characterized George Harrison). Songs like “My Sweet Lord,” “Wah Wah,” “Isn’t It a Pity,” and “All Things Must Pass,” which appeared on his first post-Beatles album All Things Must Pass, displayed a songwriter-producer-musician of substantial talent. They also revealed a musician who had discovered the art cooperative and communal creation. As he had initially with the Beatles and would later with the Traveling Wilburys, Harrison had learned how to let other musicians graciously and generously contribute to his recordings. In the case of “Something,” Paul McCartney’s spectacular bass playing compliments Harrison’s singing and guitar playing such that it almost takes the center of the listening experience, much the way a concerto is meant to contrast a soloist with the rest of the ensemble.

Sthā’ī-antarā gat nahi; an unknown answer to a desperate plea.

Although Harrison had first tried his hand at pop imitations (e.g., “Don’t Bother Me”), he made his mark as a songwriter-composer with his explorations of Indian music. His sitar contribution to “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” demonstrated his interest in the textures he had heard percolating in London in 1965. “Love You To” on Revolver showed he had the ability to merge the basic ideas of the South Asian tradition into a pop format. However, after studying in India with Ravi Shankar, his contribution to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, “Within You without You,” revealed a masterful combination of the Hindustani tradition and British pop. Taking the core instrumental idiom that North Indian classical musicians call “gat” (consisting of contrasting sections they identify as sthā’ī and antarā), he wove them together to produce perhaps the best representation of mid-sixties Indian-western musical fusion.

However, in the post-Sgt. Pepper world, he had found his own voice (e.g., “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”) and, in “Something,” Harrison’s musical sophistication shone brighter than it ever had previously. In Hindi, “nahi” negates what has just come previously. Not only did he forgo use of the sthā’ī-antarā gat form, he adopted a new style of musical composition built on what he had written in the past, but that had evolved into something new.

Part of the song’s charm lies in its internal contrasts. Where the verse finds the singer obsessed with the beloved (“Something in the way she moves…”), the chorus surprisingly questions the very nature of the attraction. In response to a question that the author perhaps asks of himself (“Will your love grow?”), he responds with an expression of ignorance: he does not know the answer, a strange acknowledgement for someone who otherwise finds himself transfixed by the beauty of his lover.

Add a Comment

Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. Below is a hint to a musical riddle with sixties British rock and pop as its subject. Be sure to check back Friday for the answer. Check out Thompson’s other riddles here. Feel free to guess the answer in the comments.

British pop musicians in the sixties transformed what had been quiet imitations of Americana into the height of hip artistic creativity. In the early sixties, the only British music to break into the American charts sounded weird (Joe Meek’s production of the Tornados performing “Telstar” in 1962) and wacky (Lonnie Donegan’s “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It’s [sic] Flavor (On the Bedpost Over Night)” in 1961). A few years later, Time declared London to be the self-evident center of the western cultural universe. Whether you considered James Bond, Twiggy, Mary Quant, or the Who, the Brits had established a place in pop culture that in the fifties we could hardly have imagined.

In another twisted attempt to obscure the obvious, I offer one more of my riddles celebrating an anniversary in sixties British pop. I look forward to your guesses. We will post a solution in two days.

Riddle me when, riddle me why; can you name the song this time?
Ole blue eyes thought this was the best, even if he named the rest.
More than nothing, a quiet plateau; some friendly help, a bass concerto.
Sthā’ī-antarā gat nahi; an unknown answer to a desperate plea.

Add a Comment

Add a Comment

In ten days I will be arriving in Rome for a long awaited visit. My good friends Maryann and Andrew moved there almost 2 years ago. Before Maryann's international move she was part of Crescent and Frost. A band that combines elements of folk, pop, country, and bluegrass, yet the final product is much more and distinctly its own. Sadly they don't have more videos to post.

Add a Comment

Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. Last week Thompson stumped us with a musical riddle that had sixties British rock and pop as its subject. The answer and explanation are below. Check out Thompson’s other riddles here.

The Beatles’ Abbey Road, Released 26 September 1969

Forty years ago, as college students returned to their classrooms from that summer’s music festivals, as other students dropped out of school to join the “counterculture,” and as still others headed for Vietnam, the Beatles released one of their best-loved albums. After an acrimonious winter of false starts, the Beatles asked George Martin to return and to help them record in the way they had during happier times. In the few short years since the recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band (1967), their manager Brian Epstein had died, they had formed their own record and production company (Apple), they had retreated to Rishikesh in India to meditate, and they had seen much of what had taken them so long to build begin to crumble from within. The more they became involved in the business of being the Beatles, the less they seemed to enjoy it.

The Beatles sensed their impending demise as a functioning ensemble and, over that alternately turbulent and ecstatic summer, they pursued two visions of what they wanted to do musically. No longer simply four teenagers exhilarated with playing rock ‘n’ roll in strip clubs, dance halls, and subterranean clubs, they knew that the music world had evolved around them. When they first topped the charts, their music challenged the status quo of pop: the world of teen idols promoted by Dick Clark and saucy black women produced by Phil Spector or Berry Gordy. By September 1969, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, and Ginger Baker (with Rick Grech) had formed Blind Faith, released an album, and were already in the throes of dissolution while the Jimi Hendrix Experience had played their last gig. The summer had featured a number of important music festivals featuring live music by many of the best-known performers of the era; but the band that had jumpstarted it all in 1963 was nowhere to be seen. Indeed, John Lennon would appear with Eric Clapton as members of the Plastic Ono Band in Toronto on 13 September 1969, suggesting that the Beatles were no longer able to function as a musical ensemble.

Although the Beatles discussed other names for this album (including Everest, suggesting the pinnacle of their recordings, albeit also the name of a cigarette brand), they settled on the name of the street where they had recorded in the EMI Recording Studios. The first side resembles the kind of album they had made in the past: individual recordings with no internal linking. Side two, however, attempts to join a number of songs together in part through performance, but also by simply splicing together different recordings.

The last begun, but not the last;
The end was coming very fast.

Although Abbey Road would be the last album project that the Beatles would begin, it would not be the last album they released. The fiasco of trying to film themselves rehearsing and then playing in a concert—material that would later prove the basis for the film Let It Be—American producer Phil Spector would take the tension riven sessions of early 1969 and turn them into the album Let It Be, which they released in 1970. Not only did the Beatles sense the end quickly approaching, but the album Abbey Road also officially comes to completion with a song called “The End.”

Why did the chickens cross the road?
Maybe they had a heavy load.

Although they discussed the idea of a portrait of them posing in the Himalayas (apropos of the possible title Everest), they instead chose a much closer location: walking across Abbey Road, a few hundred feet from the front door of EMI’s Recording Studios. These facilities were where they had gotten their break, where they had made their historic recordings, and where fans had regularly congregated to greet them. While hardly chickens (I just could not resist the reference to the classic joke), the cover photo has inspired considerable interpretation, if not imitation. For those convinced that the Paul McCartney had died in a car crash and that the Beatles management had brought in a double, the image of John Lennon in white (the priest), Ringo Starr in a dark suit (the undertaker), a barefoot Paul McCartney in a suit (the corpse), and George Harrison in denim (the grave digger) proved too much to resist. Moreover, one of the closing numbers, “Carry that Weight,” itself became part of the PID (“Paul Is Dead”) rumor mill tied to the cover.

They come together and salute the Queen;
But something happens in between.

To open the album, John Lennon provided a song he had initially written for Timothy Leary’s bizarre campaign to become the Governor of the State of California. But like many other things in his life, Lennon had grown suspect of the benefits of LSD and the intentions and abilities of people like Leary. “Come Together” instead contributes some of Lennon’s darkest verbal gobbledygook since “Glass Onion” and grows from a snippet of a Chuck Berry tune.

At the very end of the album, indeed even after “The End,” they place a bit of McCartney whimsy that pokes affectionate fun at the Queen. They did not list “Her Majesty” in the contents of the album, but instead left it an uncomfortable distance from the sentimental ending (“The love you take is equal to the love you make”) of the closing medley. Just as the almost discarded edit had surprised them in the studio, they intended it to startle listeners the first time they waited for the tone arm to head into the end groove.

But perhaps the most surprising aspect of this album is George Harrison’s “Something.” Positioned immediately after “Come Together” (and on the other side of that single), “Something” would be their biggest hit of the fall and ironically Frank Sinatra’s favorite Lennon-McCartney tune.

Add a Comment

Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. Below is a hint to a musical riddle. His introduction is below and be sure to check back tomorrow for the answer and to try his other riddles here. Feel free to guess the answer in the comments.

Sixties British pop created a wealth of musical material that we now describe as classics, not that classicists are likely to embrace them. Not just the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Who, but a wealth of musicians of that era competed to produced recordings that would catch the listening public’s attention, draw them to their concerts, and sell disks. This month’s riddle celebrates another anniversary from that milieu.

Riddle me now, riddle me then,
Can you tell me what again?

Brothers rage against the right,
But this song came before the night.

Not quite crooked, and not perverse;
Replace with “girl,” improve the verse.

Proto-punk, a random slice,
A wild guitar, a roll of the dice.

Add a Comment

Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. Last week he provided three hints to his music riddle.  Today he provides the answer! His introduction can be read here. Let us know if you guessed correctly in the comments.

If you were a young musician or an promoter looking for the next star at the dawn of British rock ‘n’ roll in the mid to late 1950s, you had a singular destination: The 2i’s. The renowned birthplace of British rock ‘n’ roll hosted many an ambitious British teen with a guitar or drum kit who sought to secure a place on the tiny stage. Big Jim Sullivan, who would play with Marty Wilde and the Wildcats before moving on to become one of London’s busiest session guitarists during the sixties, described the 2i’s as “the center”: “The hardened rockers used to go down the 2i’s, ‘cause you could have a play.” Carlo Little, drummer for Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages, described the 2i’s as “a coffee bar upstairs with a basement what held about fifty people…, and that was really pushin’ it. A very small place underneath with a tiny little stage…, very small, you know, maybe 25-foot by 12-foot. You got about fifty people in there and it was hot… It was just concrete walls!”
The 2i’s mythology claims that Cliff Richard got his start here and that his guitarists for the Shadows—Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch—washed dishes at the establishment. In my book, Joe Moretti—the guitarist who would play the classic lead guitar part on Johnny Kidd’s “Shakin’ All Over” and so many other hits—tells of getting married in Scotland and bringing his bride to London, only to leave her at the hotel while he went to the 2i’s to snag a gig. (He succeeded, leaving his bride in London while he headed to Italy with Colin Hicks.)
Although the coffee bar’s importance waned in the sixties, its reputation kept it on calendars. Thus, it was in the 2i’s that the Beatles’ first manager, Allan Williams somewhat miraculously stumbled upon Hamburg promoter Bruno Koschmider during the summer of 1960, setting in motion an entirely different story.

Now for an explanation of the riddle.

“Henry so hoed what’s underfoot,
He doubled the site of what took root.”

You found the 2i’s in London’s “Soho” district, so named for the foxhunts that once ran over the farmland confiscated by Henry VIII. The “roots” of British rock happened not just “underfoot,” but under the pavement in a basement that extended out towards the street. The name of the establishment played on the words “two eyes,” thus the “doubled the site/sight” passage.

“A Nelson, by half, surveyed the grounds,
To steel young Herbert’s bravest sounds.”

Everyone knew the 2i’s as a coffee bar (with coffee grounds) in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Its owner, former wrestler Paul Lincoln had gone by the name “Dr. Death” during his professional days (thanks to Roger Dopson for that tidbit). Lincoln hired other ex-wrestlers (such as manager Tom Littlewood) to serve as his bouncers, although some less imposing figures also served in this capacity. Consequently, many knew how to execute a “half-Nelson” hold on unfortunate louts. Among those who went on to stardom after early performances at the 2i’s, Cliff Richard appeared as “Bongo Herbert” in the film Expresso Bongo, which author Wolf Mankowitz loosely based around the story of the “discovery” of Tommy Steele. Also, not a few musicians and promoters found ideas and performers to “steal” in the 2i’s.

“The way was old, but not the fare.
The both of me saw who’s not there.”

Located at near the end of Old Compton Street, the coffee bar featured the latest in rock during the late fifties. The 2i’s (“both of me” serves as your second clue as to the name of the establishment) offered much too small a space for the crowds that grew during the sixties, so the Who never played there.

Hope you enjoyed the riddle.

Add a Comment

Chris Smith is a music journalist and professor of cultural criticism at the University of British Columbia.  In his most recent book, 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, he presents his opinion of the albums that changed music - we know you may disagree and Smith addresses this issue below.  Be sure to check back tomorrow for a look at this book through music videos.

What is this human obsession with lists? What is the source of our compulsion to compare, to rank, to lord one work of art just inches over another when their differences can barely be defined? Is it genetic? Is it cultural? If vervet moneys had opposable digits and the intelligence to use them, would they strap on giant foam rubber “We’re #1” fingers and taunt the other species at the watering hole?

These were the questions I asked in December, 2007, when I embarked on a two-year project naming the 100 Greatest Albums of all time in a weekly column for the Vancouver Sun. I had been involved in the Rolling Stone list machine as a music critic in the late 1990s, and in 2006 published my fourth book, 100 Albums That Changed Popular Music.

The answer to my soul-searching inquiry was an unexpectedly satisfying copout: “Who cares?” It’s fun to make lists, and as philosophers from Aristotle to Saussure have noted, we understand things by virtue of their contrasting relationships to their peers. So if the Hendrix’s groundbreaking Are You Experienced was forbidden access to the top of the charts by the Beatles’ Sgt Peppers, then the takeaway detail isn’t that it was Number 2, but that it wasn’t Number 1.

But my book eschewed such hierarchal contrast, instead detailing these albums in chronological order to show how each album influenced (and was influenced by) its peers (hence the book’s emphasis on the most “important” albums rather that the “greatest.”) The Sun editors, however, insisted on a “countdown” list, so the readers could follow along for two years, each week coming one step closer to “the world’s greatest album.” The problem is, I don’t believe such a thing exists—while enough objective data can be gathered to loosely construct a list of the “most influential” albums, the notion of “greatest” albums infuses the equation with subjective criteria based on individual aesthetics, thus changing the nature of the criteria from person to person. (The same is true of all such ranking systems, whether they rate your favorite albums, movies, politicians, or family members).

The solution was simple: surrender to subjectivity. We titled the column “100 Albums You Have to Own,” and told our readers: “Agreeing or disagreeing with our picks is beside the point—write us a letter, rant to your friends, or sit down and make your own list. Great works of art invite such engagement, and we hope these will catch your ear. We only ask you to listen.”

Ultimately, I believe, such lists do serve a vital purpose as a stepping off point for critical engagement with a work of art—provided the author is honest about his intentions and criteria. My second favorite part of the entire process is discussing my selections with readers who object to my choices. My favorite part, of course, is ranking their objections.

Add a Comment

Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry.  In the post below he looks at “The White Album”.

“The White Album”: One need not say much more to evoke the alternately dreamlike and daunting experience of encountering the Beatles’ 1968 magnum opus. The year 1968 shaped our aesthetic interpretation with student riots in Europe and race riots in the U.S., assassinations (Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy), political repression (in Chicago and Prague), and the inevitable loss of innocence as pop psychedelia began unraveling into drug addiction and death. What had begun in exhilaration and optimism had crested the hill and now careened in descent towards dissolution; but for the moment, the Beatles’ eponymous double album offered a breathtaking vista of monkeys, tigers, and blackbirds entertaining kings, queens, children, cowboys, and Jamaicans. Their sentiments could range from deep inside love (“I Will” and “I’m So Tired”), through outright sarcasm (“Sexy Sadie” and “Piggies”), to sheer terror (“Revolution 9”).

These recordings still hold the ability to capture our collective attention and individual fantasies, reminding us of how new and exciting music was. The album begins with a tip of the hat to the Beach Boys (and indirectly to Chuck Berry) as a jet roars into “Back in the USSR” (even as the USSR roared into Czechoslovakia). As the jet’s roar fades into “Dear Prudence,” we begin to wonder if this song about Mia Farrow’s introverted sister shields some darker purpose in the thicket of bass and drums. McCartney and Lennon seem to be talking about two different realities. Journalists of the time gossiped about the impending dissolution of the Beatles, sensing the internal tensions and multi-polar tug of personal interests. Listeners wondered about the future of civilization.

Forty years ago on Friday 22 November 1968, the Beatles’ commercial venture, Apple Records, issued their anti-Sgt. Pepper’s album, The Beatles. Gone were Peter Blake’s pop art colors and crowded imagery. The Granny Smith apple, known for its sourness, replaced the aura of fab-four comradery—of first moustaches and satin band-uniforms—with individual portraits and collaged domestic snapshots spread like memories on a bed sheet. Now, like other groups of the era, the Beatles sought to re-imagine themselves more as individuals than as a group.

The very same day that the Beatles released their eponymous “white album,” Pye released The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (with catchy Ray Davies’ tunes like “Picture Book”). Two weeks later, the Stones would finally see their own much-delayed Beggar’s Banquet released, with its carefully constructed DIY sound. But the Beatles would dominate the Christmas market that year, even as they inspired a cottage industry of cryptographers who believed they had deciphered from John Lennon’s clues the meaning behind Paul McCartney’s apparent death in a car crash. Lennon, when interviewed by a young teen from Toronto, spoke about multiple layers of meaning in the music, even as he backed away from the youth’s interpretations. Indeed today, we still find ourselves disaggregating the sounds and words of this compilation, wondering what it all means…, if anything.

We look back on this era and see a generation trying to make sense of the chaos, searching for meaning in songs and art. Perhaps we see ourselves trying to understand our selves, wondering what our future might hold, just as the Beatles struggled with these issues. Perhaps in repeatedly returning to this album, we continue to ponder our choices.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry, and will be published in August. In the article below he looks a Beatles’ revolution.

On 21 August 1940, Winston Churchill famously declared, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” The RAF had been dominating the Luftwaffe in the air and Churchill saw an opportunity to bolster British morale amid the fire, smoke, and death on the ground. In Liverpool less than two months later and during the Blitz, a mother would celebrate the Prime Minister’s resolve by naming her son John Winston Lennon, someone else to whom many would owe much and no less so than for what he contributed in another turbulent August.

On 11 August 1968, the Beatles announced “National Apple Week” and launched their own label, Apple Records, as a declaration of independence from corporate media. In many respects, they were babes in the woods with the wolves of the industry at their heels, but during a summer of increasingly violent riots and protests, Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr defied expectations of their demise. In August 1967, their manager and friend Brian Epstein had died after naïvely mixing drugs and alcohol, leaving the band and their finances in shock and disarray. Almost immediately, the Beatles went into a brilliantly destructive tailspin, launching one ill-fated venture after another: a divisive retreat to India with the Maharishi, a clothing store on Baker Street renowned for shoplifting, and the Boxing Day disaster of their film, Magical Mystery Tour. A year after Epstein’s death, they returned to what they knew best: making records.

Apple released three charting records on 30 August 1968: Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were the Days” (produced by Paul McCartney), Jackie Lomax’s “Sour Milk Sea” (produced by George Harrison), and the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and “Revolution.” Both the Hopkin and Beatles disks would climb to the top of British charts, but where the former simply updated a nostalgic Russian ditty, the latter broke new ground in more ways that we can discuss here. In particular, Lennon’s “Revolution” challenged the violence that the Rolling Stones seemed to be embracing in “Street Fighting Man.” Although a master of obfuscation (consider “I Am the Walrus”), Lennon openly and plainly questions politicos of every stripe while striking down a path he would follow for most of his short life, his most poignant articulation coming with “Imagine” (1971).

Released a little over a week after soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia quashing the Prague Spring democracy and only days after Chicago police rioted against war protesters, “Revolution” scathingly chastised the chattering of authority, right and left. Rather than the catalyst for revolution that Richard Nixon had imagined Lennon to be, the Liverpudlian born in a milieu of bombs and death called upon a generation to stop and to consider the consequences of violence and demagoguery. Evoking his stature as a Beatle, he essentially asked everyone to step back and take a deep breath. He succeeded in taunting both conservatives and radicals, but he also gave voice to reason. In that summer of human conflict, his cynicism rang true.

ShareThis

Add a Comment

Add a Comment

Michael J. Klarman is the author most recently of Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History and is the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. His book From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality won the 2005 Bancroft Prize. In the post below Klarman commemorates the dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock by reminding us why this was such a pivotal moment. Read more posts by Klarman here.

Why Little Rock Mattered

Sept. 24, 2007 (50th anniversary of the dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock)

Fifty years ago today, President Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas to defend the right of nine African American students to attend formerly all-white Central High School. For three reasons, Little Rock was an epic event in the modern civil rights movement. (more…)

Share This

Add a Comment

Display Comments Add a Comment

This week’s monthly gleanings from Anatoly mark a special moment for me and my family. (more…)

Share This

Add a Comment

I had a lovely email from my publicist at Tricycle who shared this very nice news with me:

Hugging the Rock has won a place on VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates) Magazine¹s Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers. It will be announced and published in their February issue. 

I am doing a big WOOHOO here at work and scaring all the engineers.

Add a Comment