Jazz in the Key of Bob May 23, 2011
Article written by Tom Wilmeth
Published on the JazzTimes web site – The Wilmeth Wyvern
Bob Dylan turned 70 last week. That statement alone is a mind-bender. That he is still on the road more than 100 nights of the year is amazing. Yet it’s true. I noted with interest Rolling Stone magazine’s new issue, which celebrates Bob’s 70th birthday with a list of his best 70 songs, as chosen by their editors. The issue also contains lists of Bob’s most inscrutable lyrics (“Gates of Eden”) and what they consider overlooked jewels (“Dark Eyes”). These lists put me in mind of a tape I compiled ten years ago, for Bob’s 60th birthday. Inspired by the famous bootleg Elvis Presley’s Greatest Sh*t, my idea was to create a set-list of Dylan recordings that would make a hilariously bad collection.
It sounded like a fun plan, an inverted exercise in fan devotion, and so I set to work. I drew, of course, from the notorious 1970 double album Self Portrait and from various back-roads of the Dylan canon. My final list included such original jewels as “Wigwam,” “Billy 4,” “Handy Dandy,” and “New Pony.” The tape also featured Bob’s covers of “Let It Be Me,” “Froggy Went a-Courting,” “You Belong to Me,” and “This Old Man.” All officially released tracks.
But damn -- once completed, the tape was not the humorous artifact I had intended. I instead discovered what perhaps I had known from the start -- that even a set spotlighting Bob Dylan’s strangest odds & ends held interest, and that the very selections I had intended for comic value held up well to repeated listening.
One of the songs I included came from the 1970 album New Morning. This was supposedly the album that Bob quickly recorded after the debacle of Self Portrait in order to shore-up a sagging reputation and to appease stunned fans. The song I used was not chosen because I thought it to be bad, but because it was like no other in Dylan’s canon. “If Dogs Run Free” is as close as Bob himself has come to recording a jazz tune. The number is a spoken work of hipster monologue, a la Kenneth Rexroth. Scatting in the background behind Bob’s narrative is Maeretha Stewart, along with the single-note improvisations of Al Kooper’s tinkling piano accompaniment. I am not arguing here for Dylan to be viewed as a jazz artist, of course, in spite of this one-song genre exercise.
The reason “If Dogs Run Free” stood out for me is because the concepts of Jazz and Bob Dylan are not often linked. While not obvious matches, they are also not mutually exclusive. Dylan has certainly had songs that do not adhere to traditional folk, blues, or rock chord changes – his “Too Much of Nothing” is interesting for its ascending chromatic chords, while other songs from this same era, such as “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread” and “Tiny Montgomery” each use only two chords.
Yet no matter the simplicity or complexity of the songs’ structure, few musicians seemed to have taken interest in arranging Dylan melodies for a jazz setting in the 1960s. This, even as Beatles’ melodies were making tentative inroads into jazz with albums like Basie’s Beatle Bag (1966) and George Benson’s The Other Side of Abbey Road (1970). Still, there were a few.
Among the first jazz renditions of Dylan’s material is Bud Shank’s 1963 release Folk & Flute, which included 3 songs credited to Dylan – “Quit Your Lowdown Ways,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” Although a jazz player, Shank was apparently riding the still-expanding Folk Music wave, as he had previously done with albums of jazz arrangements of Brazilian, Bossa Nova, and Broadway music. As such, even with an album title with the word Folk in it, a quartet including Joe Pass on guitar, Charlie Haden’s bass, and session leader Shank on alto sax and flute, this LP must be seen as an outing for jazz musicians.
Perhaps surprisingly, baritone sax-man and cool jazz pioneer Gerry Mulligan was another established jazz musician to record Dylan early-on. In his tellingly-titled 1965 album If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em, Mulligan included an unusual, piano-dominant version of “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
The first full album of jazz arrangements of Dylan songs appears to be Dylan Jazz, from 1966. One can argue about whether these arrangements are truly jazz charts, but with high caliber session cats like a then-unknown Glenn Campell on guitar, Jim Horn on reeds, and Hal Blaine on drums – it makes for some interesting interpretations. Also of note, this album was co-produced by Leon Russell.
Like Shank’s inclusion of Dylan’s then-unreleased “Quit Your Lowdown Ways,” Dylan Jazz also includes an original which had not yet been issued by Dylan, “Walkin’ Down the Line.” I believe that this is a clear indication that these musicians are making some of their song choices from publisher’s lead sheets and not necessarily from listening to Dylan’s albums.
This same theory can also be used to demonstrate that Elvis Presley was not extremely familiar with Dylan’s actual recording of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” since Presley follows the published Witmark sheet music version of the song. As such, Elvis sings the verses in an incorrect order – inverting verses two and three as performed by Bob on the Freewheelin’ album. A big deal? Well . . . Yes! By the way – Dylan has said that his favorite cover version of any of his own songs is Elvis’ version of “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” a song that, like some jazz arrangements, was released before Dylan’s own recording of the song. This too indicates song selection chosen from sheet music over album awareness, just like other albums of Dylan songs interpreted by performers from Odetta to Sebastian Cabot. Honorable mention must go to the 1972 release Lo & Behold by Coulson, Dean, McGuiness, Flint. The album contains this quartet’s renditions of ten then-unreleased Dylan originals, three of which remain unreleased by Bob to this day!
Music genres were in the midst of radical and unprecedented cross-pollination in the mid-1960s. One who was quick to grasp the possibility was Willie Nelson, who in 1966 would slyly slip The Beatles’ “Yesterday” into a live set for a rough Houston crowd by introducing it as a song by “a little country quartet you may have heard of.” Two years later vibraharp virtuoso Gary Burton plays Dylan’s “I Want You” at his 1968 Carnegie Hall concert. After the melody is introduced by Burton and guitarist Larry Coryell, this brief number becomes a solo feature for bassist Steve Swallow.
Dylan’s melodies seemed to lend themselves well to bass features for Bob’s early jazz arrangers. The same year that Burton played “I Want You” with his quartet, Keith Jarrett’s 1968 live trio recording of “My Back Pages” also becomes a bass feature – again for Charlie Haden – on the album Somewhere Before. This take of “My Back Pages” was used by Vortex Records as the B-side of a Keith Jarrett single. The A-side is an instrumental studio recording of another Dylan song, “Lay Lady Lay.” The song did not chart, and Vortex failed to include it any of Jarrett’s albums.
It’s hard to know whether the pianist himself had any input on the release of either side of this single, but what is unmistakable is Jarrett’s appreciation of Dylan’s music and of his lyrics. In an 1987 interview for the NPR radio show Sidran on Record, Jarrett tries to express to host Ben Sidran some of the indefinable aspects of music. At one point he attempts to sum-up his feelings by quoting, “Beauty walks a razor’s edge.” He repeats the line and tells Sidran that this type of beauty is what he is trying to create at each performance and on every recording. “Beauty walks a razor’s edge” is a line from Dylan’s 1974 song “Shelter from the Storm,” whose imagery clearly had an impact on Jarrett.
The Dylan numbers selected by Burton and Jarrett are interesting choices. I recall talking between sets to Texas guitarist Jimmy Raycraft. His band had just performed an instrumental medley of Dylan’s “I Want You” and The Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” I mentioned to Raycraft that the Bob song was a good choice for such a workout because Bob’s “I Want You” is so melodic. He immediately countered, “No man! It has no melody. That’s what makes it so great! All of those lyrics are sung on one note.” And after reflecting on this for a while, I saw that he might be right. He sure thought so. There are chord changes to the tune, and the bright accompaniment provided by Nashville’s studio A-team is infectious. But the memorable vocal passages of “I Want You” do not follow the melodic accompaniment.
In the late 1960s, Gary Burton and Keith Jarrett were among the young lions of jazz. They were arguably looking at music in a different way than their respected elder statesmen, most of whom were certainly not interested in Bob Dylan. Bassist Rob Stoner encountered this situation head-on when he accompanied Dylan to Chicago in December 1975 to be the closing act on the PBS special The World of John Hammond. The program was to bring together many of the music legends who Hammond had signed to Columbia Records. Among those performing on this two-part tribute were Benny Goodman, Red Norvo, Teddy Wilson, Benny Carter, and Milt Hinton. While Stoner does not get specific with names, he says that none of the jazz performers would even talk to him because he was associated with Bob’s band. These had been his “heroes,” laments Stoner, who was crushed by their collective snub.
It was rare for the old guard of any musical genre to embrace Dylan’s work in the 1960s. Flatt & Scruggs – the most famous of all bluegrass duos – broke-up their act because of Earl Scruggs’ fascination with Dylan’s songs. This may sound like an over-statement, but if Dylan’s music was not the cause for the split, it certainly embodied the different paths the two wanted to take. On their later albums, guitarist Lester Flatt and banjo master Earl Scruggs recorded enough Bob Dylan songs to fill a 60-minute tape. I know; I compiled one. Earl loved the new directions; Lester couldn’t relate. They parted.
No less a player than the great country guitarist Chet Atkins was never one to reject a melody because of genre. Atkins recorded instrumental versions of several Dylan compositions and even performed a medley of three Dylan tunes on a 1970 episode of Porter Waggoner’s syndicated television show. Atkins always seemed to have his ears wide open. I saw him play in St. Paul in the early 1980s, during one of his first visits to the Prairie Home Companion radio show. Seated alone on stage, he concluded tuning and said to the audience, “Well folks, you take a good song where you find it.” And with that he played a beautiful version of the recent #1 pop hit, “Heart of Glass” by Blondie. When I later spoke with Atkins, he voiced dismay over those among his fans who dismissed new music. Atkins had obviously held an unbiased view of melody for some time, as he recorded an instrumental version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” as early as 1965.
Another supremely gifted guitarist, Jim Hall, brings us full circle to jazz versions of Dylan songs. Unlike the late 1960s examples I cite from Gary Burton and Keith Jarratt, Jim Hall has released a 2008 recording of Dylan’s “Masters of War,” another jazz arrangement featuring bass, this time Bill Frizzell.
Known as a superlative wordsmith, it seems clear that Dylan has also worked hard on his melodies and song structures. In the first volume of his Chronicles autobiography, a somewhat defensive Dylan asks, “If my songs were just about words, then what was Duane Eddy, the great rock-and-roll guitarist, doing recording an album full of instrumental melodies of my songs?” Probably unaware of Duane Eddy, some jazz musicians would nonetheless soon follow his lead.
If most of the jazz community was slow to hear Dylan, he had certainly been listening to them. Also in Chronicles, Dylan remembers his early days in New York. “I’d listen to a lot of jazz and bebop records,” and to the arrangements of Gil Evans. “There were a lot of similarities between some kinds of jazz and folk music.” Dylan then lists several Ellington compositions, including “Tattoo Bride” and “Tourist Point of View” and concludes that, to him, “They sounded like sophisticated folk music.” It is also in this section where Dylan talks of the influence of jazz records by Roland Kirk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Christian’s sides with Benny Goodman. Living and working in an early 1960s New York City, Dylan attended various jazz clubs, being taken with the music of Thelonious Monk and speaking briefly with him. When Dylan introduced himself as a folk music performer, Monk would tell the young man from the Midwest, “We all play folk music.”
This article does not attempt to be comprehensive in its examination of Dylan jazz arrangements. Certainly many other artists of this genre have offered interpretations of Dylan’s work, from Duke Ellington’s recording of “Blowin’ in the Wind” to guitarist Michael Hedges’ cover of “All Along the Watchtower.” Surprisingly few jazz vocalists have waded in to this interpretive stream, although genre-crossing Janet Planet has recently released an entire CD of Dylan’s work. We should be surprised by none of these jazz interpretations. As Bob himself explains, “Musicians have always known that my songs were about more than just words, but most people are not musicians.”
#30# 2,275 words
Tom Wilmeth
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Essay: John Coltrane: Thank God He's a Country Boy!
John Coltrane -- Thank God He’s a Country Boy!
Essay written by Tom Wilmeth
April 27, 2011
There is a something very curious taking place right now on the Billboard Magazine Country Music chart. I’m certain there is no Grammy Award or even a statistical category for this anomaly, such as Artist with the Most Records Sold, the Single with the Most Weeks at #1, or even sub-categories such as the Longest Song to Make the Chart. Nonetheless, let me briefly draw your attention to a strange confluence now on country radio: There are specific references to the late jazz saxophone master John Coltrane currently found within not one, but in the lyrics of two separate country hits this week!
The jazz recordings of John Coltrane are about as far from country music as one can travel while still being on American soil. Briefly, Coltrane was born in 1926; he joined Miles Davis’ quintet in 1955; in 1960 he began his own solo career. Before his death in 1967, Coltrane was responsible for expanding not only the possibilities of the tenor saxophone, but of jazz itself.
So how is it feasible that two discrete references to a jazzman more than 40 years dead are simultaneously appearing on country radio in the spring of 2011? What does it mean? Why do we care? Let’s look:
The first Coltrane sighting is found on the latest single by guitar virtuoso Brad Paisley, whose abilities could make Eric Clapton stop and listen. Paisley offers another of his up-tempo hot and clever country numbers on the song “Old Alabama.” It is sung from the point of view of a young man wooing his lady to the sounds of the band Alabama – a country group with its own very impressive chart statistics. The kicker here is that Paisley, in a continuing nod to his country music roots, has persuaded Alabama itself to come out of retirement to accompany him.
As the young lovers of the song are entwined on the back roads, headed for the back seat, their music of choice is that of Alabama. Paisley sings:
“Forget about Sinatra or Coltrane / . . .
And Barry White ain’t gonna work tonight /
If you really want to turn her on.”
“Forget about Sinatra or Coltrane”? Frank Sinatra was, of course, the singer of choice for make-out artists of a previous generation. Barry White has similar appeal as the go-to guy for inducing romance. But John Coltrane? That’s a disconnect; a non sequitur. Why would this truck- driving Romeo even have Coltrane on his I-Pod? Just what sort of mood does the young man want to create? True, John Coltrane recorded many lovely ballads, but he is far better remembered for his lengthy, sometimes atonal exploratory improvisations which quickly leave any semblance of melody in the dust.
Maybe the inclusion of the sax-man’s name is a hip, inside joke by songwriters Paisley, Randy Owen, Dave Turnbull, and Chris Dubois, especially since the word Coltrane doesn’t even rhyme with any other lyric line. Maybe the girlfriend in the song is a meth freak. But no matter the reason – a reference to John Coltrane appears in a current Billboard Country Chart entry!
Unlike the one-time, passing reference in Paisley’s “Old Alabama,” the second example is even stranger as it links a young man’s positive attitude with a specific Coltrane composition. Uncle Kracker exudes extreme happiness during the sunny number “It’s Good To Be Me.” In the song’s culminating comparison, the singer’s euphoric attitude is equated with having “caught some Coltrane Love Supreme.” That’s odd.
John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme is a 4-part cycle of compositions praising God. Released in 1964, it is a well known concept album in the jazz canon. The work was embraced as a religious touchstone in the mid-1970s by guitarists Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin, and more recently on separate recordings by both Wynton and Branford Marsalis. Primarily instrumental, the piece does have a hypnotic spoken repetition of the title words “A Love Supreme” during much of its opening section.
Similar to the source itself, Uncle Kracker’s “It’s Good To Be Me” also repeats the phrase “Coltrane Love Supreme” numerous times. The reference only appears near the song’s conclusion, but becomes a shouted mantra of sorts as Kracker reaches his joyous finale. I suspect that songwriters Robert Ritchie, Brett James, Matthew Shafer, and Thomas Harding are purposefully mimicking the spoken chant in Coltrane’s original recording with the repetition found here. But why is it included at all?
I don’t know. Other than this specific reference, “It’s Good To Be Me” has no religious overtones. It is a number glowing with life-affirming optimism but is completely secular. Its tone bears little resemblance to the extremely sincere gratitude shown towards God or the humility found at the center of the Coltrane work it sites. I’ll say it again -- very odd.
So, what can we learn from these unexpected examples of musical cross-genre references? From Brad Paisley’s “Old Alabama” we discover – and guys take note – you should not attempt to create a romantic mood for your girl with John Coltrane tunes. Simple advice, perhaps, but well worth the reminder.
In “It’s Good to Be Me,” the words “Coltrane Love Supreme” become a late-song sing-along hook. It’s the part of the melody and lyrics which one remembers after the number is over. I maintain that if you can get a young Country Music fan to sing the words “Coltrane Love Supreme,” you are well on the way to planting seeds for one of the strangest musical pollinations imaginable. The true country devotee may one day wonder just who or what this Coltrane might be. And with just a cursory search, a new musical world could unfold. That is, if the listener doesn’t think that Uncle Kracker is singing about a Coal Train.
This type of discovery flash point happened to me, albeit in a less jarring musical transition. In about 1985, when I was just getting over being a snob about current country, I was enjoying a live set by George Strait on Austin City Limits. After a handful of hits he introduced a song that he said meant a great deal to him, called “Lefty’s Gone.” It immediately stuck in my brain, but I had no idea who Lefty was and I didn’t worry much about it. However, after continually singing these heartfelt lyrics to myself for a few days, I thought that the man who inspired this tune might be worth finding. Early in the search I found Willie Nelson’s tribute LP, From Willie to Lefty, and some of Merle Haggard’s recordings of Frizzell songs. But Lefty himself remained elusive.
When I finally tracked-down original recordings of Lefty Frizzell, I was transformed. I immediately realized why, in spite of only a handful of hits, his style had been so influential and important to country radio in the early 1950s. Hearing George Strait sing “Lefty’s Gone” that night ultimately resulted in my purchase of a 12 CD set of Mr. Frizzell’s complete works. Small seeds of interest can grow large. And perhaps this type of discovery is what will eventually occur with these two Coltrane citations. A few curious country fans may search-out the references found in songs they like and become devotees of John Coltrane. I hope it. And I doubt it.
But apart from possible repercussions of influence, I still marvel at two different country music songs dropping Coltrane’s name into the lyrics. Even stranger, how could these songs share the same chart? This seems like it should be a once-in-a-generation songwriting fluke. And who in the country audience did these songwriters expect to connect with by using jazz references? I’d give worlds to know. I began by saying that Billboard Magazine had no category for such an anomaly, but I would like to suggest one for next year’s Grammy Awards – Most Pleasantly Unexpected Reference to a Musician from Another Genre in the Lyrics to a Hit Song. Hey, why not? We already have two entries vying for the award.
#30# 1,329 words
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
(262) 243-4218
http://wilmethway.blogspot.com/
appears in JazzTimes May on-line issue; direct link at:
http://jazztimes.com/articles/27592-john-coltrane-thank-god-he-s-a-country-boy
Essay written by Tom Wilmeth
April 27, 2011
There is a something very curious taking place right now on the Billboard Magazine Country Music chart. I’m certain there is no Grammy Award or even a statistical category for this anomaly, such as Artist with the Most Records Sold, the Single with the Most Weeks at #1, or even sub-categories such as the Longest Song to Make the Chart. Nonetheless, let me briefly draw your attention to a strange confluence now on country radio: There are specific references to the late jazz saxophone master John Coltrane currently found within not one, but in the lyrics of two separate country hits this week!
The jazz recordings of John Coltrane are about as far from country music as one can travel while still being on American soil. Briefly, Coltrane was born in 1926; he joined Miles Davis’ quintet in 1955; in 1960 he began his own solo career. Before his death in 1967, Coltrane was responsible for expanding not only the possibilities of the tenor saxophone, but of jazz itself.
So how is it feasible that two discrete references to a jazzman more than 40 years dead are simultaneously appearing on country radio in the spring of 2011? What does it mean? Why do we care? Let’s look:
The first Coltrane sighting is found on the latest single by guitar virtuoso Brad Paisley, whose abilities could make Eric Clapton stop and listen. Paisley offers another of his up-tempo hot and clever country numbers on the song “Old Alabama.” It is sung from the point of view of a young man wooing his lady to the sounds of the band Alabama – a country group with its own very impressive chart statistics. The kicker here is that Paisley, in a continuing nod to his country music roots, has persuaded Alabama itself to come out of retirement to accompany him.
As the young lovers of the song are entwined on the back roads, headed for the back seat, their music of choice is that of Alabama. Paisley sings:
“Forget about Sinatra or Coltrane / . . .
And Barry White ain’t gonna work tonight /
If you really want to turn her on.”
“Forget about Sinatra or Coltrane”? Frank Sinatra was, of course, the singer of choice for make-out artists of a previous generation. Barry White has similar appeal as the go-to guy for inducing romance. But John Coltrane? That’s a disconnect; a non sequitur. Why would this truck- driving Romeo even have Coltrane on his I-Pod? Just what sort of mood does the young man want to create? True, John Coltrane recorded many lovely ballads, but he is far better remembered for his lengthy, sometimes atonal exploratory improvisations which quickly leave any semblance of melody in the dust.
Maybe the inclusion of the sax-man’s name is a hip, inside joke by songwriters Paisley, Randy Owen, Dave Turnbull, and Chris Dubois, especially since the word Coltrane doesn’t even rhyme with any other lyric line. Maybe the girlfriend in the song is a meth freak. But no matter the reason – a reference to John Coltrane appears in a current Billboard Country Chart entry!
Unlike the one-time, passing reference in Paisley’s “Old Alabama,” the second example is even stranger as it links a young man’s positive attitude with a specific Coltrane composition. Uncle Kracker exudes extreme happiness during the sunny number “It’s Good To Be Me.” In the song’s culminating comparison, the singer’s euphoric attitude is equated with having “caught some Coltrane Love Supreme.” That’s odd.
John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme is a 4-part cycle of compositions praising God. Released in 1964, it is a well known concept album in the jazz canon. The work was embraced as a religious touchstone in the mid-1970s by guitarists Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin, and more recently on separate recordings by both Wynton and Branford Marsalis. Primarily instrumental, the piece does have a hypnotic spoken repetition of the title words “A Love Supreme” during much of its opening section.
Similar to the source itself, Uncle Kracker’s “It’s Good To Be Me” also repeats the phrase “Coltrane Love Supreme” numerous times. The reference only appears near the song’s conclusion, but becomes a shouted mantra of sorts as Kracker reaches his joyous finale. I suspect that songwriters Robert Ritchie, Brett James, Matthew Shafer, and Thomas Harding are purposefully mimicking the spoken chant in Coltrane’s original recording with the repetition found here. But why is it included at all?
I don’t know. Other than this specific reference, “It’s Good To Be Me” has no religious overtones. It is a number glowing with life-affirming optimism but is completely secular. Its tone bears little resemblance to the extremely sincere gratitude shown towards God or the humility found at the center of the Coltrane work it sites. I’ll say it again -- very odd.
So, what can we learn from these unexpected examples of musical cross-genre references? From Brad Paisley’s “Old Alabama” we discover – and guys take note – you should not attempt to create a romantic mood for your girl with John Coltrane tunes. Simple advice, perhaps, but well worth the reminder.
In “It’s Good to Be Me,” the words “Coltrane Love Supreme” become a late-song sing-along hook. It’s the part of the melody and lyrics which one remembers after the number is over. I maintain that if you can get a young Country Music fan to sing the words “Coltrane Love Supreme,” you are well on the way to planting seeds for one of the strangest musical pollinations imaginable. The true country devotee may one day wonder just who or what this Coltrane might be. And with just a cursory search, a new musical world could unfold. That is, if the listener doesn’t think that Uncle Kracker is singing about a Coal Train.
This type of discovery flash point happened to me, albeit in a less jarring musical transition. In about 1985, when I was just getting over being a snob about current country, I was enjoying a live set by George Strait on Austin City Limits. After a handful of hits he introduced a song that he said meant a great deal to him, called “Lefty’s Gone.” It immediately stuck in my brain, but I had no idea who Lefty was and I didn’t worry much about it. However, after continually singing these heartfelt lyrics to myself for a few days, I thought that the man who inspired this tune might be worth finding. Early in the search I found Willie Nelson’s tribute LP, From Willie to Lefty, and some of Merle Haggard’s recordings of Frizzell songs. But Lefty himself remained elusive.
When I finally tracked-down original recordings of Lefty Frizzell, I was transformed. I immediately realized why, in spite of only a handful of hits, his style had been so influential and important to country radio in the early 1950s. Hearing George Strait sing “Lefty’s Gone” that night ultimately resulted in my purchase of a 12 CD set of Mr. Frizzell’s complete works. Small seeds of interest can grow large. And perhaps this type of discovery is what will eventually occur with these two Coltrane citations. A few curious country fans may search-out the references found in songs they like and become devotees of John Coltrane. I hope it. And I doubt it.
But apart from possible repercussions of influence, I still marvel at two different country music songs dropping Coltrane’s name into the lyrics. Even stranger, how could these songs share the same chart? This seems like it should be a once-in-a-generation songwriting fluke. And who in the country audience did these songwriters expect to connect with by using jazz references? I’d give worlds to know. I began by saying that Billboard Magazine had no category for such an anomaly, but I would like to suggest one for next year’s Grammy Awards – Most Pleasantly Unexpected Reference to a Musician from Another Genre in the Lyrics to a Hit Song. Hey, why not? We already have two entries vying for the award.
#30# 1,329 words
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
(262) 243-4218
http://wilmethway.blogspot.com/
appears in JazzTimes May on-line issue; direct link at:
http://jazztimes.com/articles/27592-john-coltrane-thank-god-he-s-a-country-boy
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
CD Review: Neil Young & The International Harvesters
Neil Young & The International Harvesters – A Treasure
Reprise Records / Neil Young Archive Series #9
Recorded in concert 1984/1985 – Released 2011
Review written by Tom Wilmeth
July 13, 2011
This one is a bit difficult to assess because it is hard to separate the music from the events surrounding Neil Young’s career in the mid-1980s. I mean, how many artists get sued by their own record company for not sounding enough like themselves? Few, but this what Geffen Records did to Neil after he submitted a string of albums which were not in line with label expectations.
Evidence for the prosecution include Trans from 1982, an odd experiment in vocoders and electronics. This was followed in 1983 by Everbody’s Rockin’, credited to The Shocking Pinks, on which Neil offers a brief Rockabilly rave-up. These uncharacteristic styles incensed his new label because the records sold so poorly. Young apparently tried to appease Geffen in 1985 with his appropriately titled Old Ways album, but then immediately toured with a band he christened The International Harvesters.
Neil took this country group seriously, hiring crack players and appearing on Nashville Now with Ralph Emory, who wasn’t quite sure what to make of his rock star guest. In fact, the first track on this live compilation CD comes from the Nashville Now cable show. Maybe Emory would not have been as surprised if he had been aware of Neil’s brilliant and respectful interpretation of Don Gibson’s “Oh Lonesome Me” a full 15 years earlier. Still, if Ralph Emory was a dumbstruck observer, many of Young’s actual followers had gotten off the fan boat years before. Neil followed the huge success of Harvest in 1972 with a tour of largely unrecognizable selections and dense electric sound, as documented on the live Time Fades Away LP. Neil’s new fans also faded away when his subsequent studio albums bore little resemblance to Harvest.
So, battles with Geffen Records and the artist’s indifference to frustrated fans aside –
How is the music on A Treasure? It’s good, and this is a most welcome release. It could be called a historical document, but that doesn’t mean it’s an inferior set. The band is tight and Young is keeping the songs concise and clear – no 16-minute guitar workouts here. Also, nearly half of the songs are previously unreleased in any form. And of the rest, only the true Neil devotee attending these concerts would have recognized many of the tunes.
Young released his car-themed Fork in the Road CD in 2009, but it is clear that his mind has wrestled with the subject of efficient automobiles since at least the early 1980s. On “Motor City,” first heard on Re-ac-tor (1981), Neil is angry over North America’s automotive situation. Interestingly, the take included here comes from a 1984 Los Angeles show. I will leave it to the Neil obsessives to research whether the song was in his set-list throughout this tour or whether it was included on this night as a specific shot at the Los Angeles car culture.
One of the highlights of the CD is “Flying on the Ground is Wrong,” first recorded in 1966 when Neil was a member of the Buffalo Springfield. This is a fine arrangement of a number that shows the high quality of Young’s songwriting abilities at the beginning of his career.
On the other end of the time spectrum are the five songs which are new to Young’s canon:
If “Motor City” laments America’s relationship with cars, “Southern Pacific” is a love song to the railroads. “Amber Jean” is a more traditional love song, including references to the moon and to the girl’s pretty eyes. “Let Your Fingers Do the Walking” is a humorous western lament about a woman who formerly “gave good phone” to the singer. But no more.
The new “Nothing is Perfect” might first appear to be a criticism of “God’s perfect plan,” but is clearly a song of gratitude. Neil here sings of comparisons, urging the listener to “look in the shadow.” By viewing the dark side one will see that “we got so much to be happy about,” including “plenty of food on the table” and “lots of love in the house.” This unexpected song of appreciation perhaps speaks to the contented nature of the singer. He has an “honest, strong, and soft woman” who “helps me be a good man.” Yet in the midst of this description of bliss comes one verse about soldiers burying their dead and then “shooting blind,” and another verse about airport hostages and an abused workforce. A very odd lyrical juxtaposition, this, but Neil makes his point: Doesn’t an awareness of the bad make the good seem all the better?
“Are You Ready for the Country?” and “Get Back to the Country” are used as concert bookends of sorts. But without the brand of International Harvesters on the label, I doubt that all of these songs would be termed Country Music. Notwithstanding the oft-heard fiddle and steel guitar, some of these tracks would easily fit into live shows from Young’s other eras. This is never more true than on the final new offering, “Grey Riders,” which closes the album and whose thick electric guitars would be at home on last year’s fine Le Noise release. Interestingly enough, it is this song -- uncharacteristic of the set -- that has been released to radio as the CD’s first single.
I’m glad to have these beautifully recorded concert tapes released. Unknown material and surprising trunk songs placed within a well paced live overview. In its own way, this CD is “a treasure,” as it documents an unexpected and short-lived era of Neil Young’s performance history in a most engaging manner. So when do we get similar live document for the Shocking Pinks?
#30# 937 words
Tom Wilmeth
Grafton, Wisconsin
Former Home of the Paramount Records blues label
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
(262) 243-4218
Reprise Records / Neil Young Archive Series #9
Recorded in concert 1984/1985 – Released 2011
Review written by Tom Wilmeth
July 13, 2011
This one is a bit difficult to assess because it is hard to separate the music from the events surrounding Neil Young’s career in the mid-1980s. I mean, how many artists get sued by their own record company for not sounding enough like themselves? Few, but this what Geffen Records did to Neil after he submitted a string of albums which were not in line with label expectations.
Evidence for the prosecution include Trans from 1982, an odd experiment in vocoders and electronics. This was followed in 1983 by Everbody’s Rockin’, credited to The Shocking Pinks, on which Neil offers a brief Rockabilly rave-up. These uncharacteristic styles incensed his new label because the records sold so poorly. Young apparently tried to appease Geffen in 1985 with his appropriately titled Old Ways album, but then immediately toured with a band he christened The International Harvesters.
Neil took this country group seriously, hiring crack players and appearing on Nashville Now with Ralph Emory, who wasn’t quite sure what to make of his rock star guest. In fact, the first track on this live compilation CD comes from the Nashville Now cable show. Maybe Emory would not have been as surprised if he had been aware of Neil’s brilliant and respectful interpretation of Don Gibson’s “Oh Lonesome Me” a full 15 years earlier. Still, if Ralph Emory was a dumbstruck observer, many of Young’s actual followers had gotten off the fan boat years before. Neil followed the huge success of Harvest in 1972 with a tour of largely unrecognizable selections and dense electric sound, as documented on the live Time Fades Away LP. Neil’s new fans also faded away when his subsequent studio albums bore little resemblance to Harvest.
So, battles with Geffen Records and the artist’s indifference to frustrated fans aside –
How is the music on A Treasure? It’s good, and this is a most welcome release. It could be called a historical document, but that doesn’t mean it’s an inferior set. The band is tight and Young is keeping the songs concise and clear – no 16-minute guitar workouts here. Also, nearly half of the songs are previously unreleased in any form. And of the rest, only the true Neil devotee attending these concerts would have recognized many of the tunes.
Young released his car-themed Fork in the Road CD in 2009, but it is clear that his mind has wrestled with the subject of efficient automobiles since at least the early 1980s. On “Motor City,” first heard on Re-ac-tor (1981), Neil is angry over North America’s automotive situation. Interestingly, the take included here comes from a 1984 Los Angeles show. I will leave it to the Neil obsessives to research whether the song was in his set-list throughout this tour or whether it was included on this night as a specific shot at the Los Angeles car culture.
One of the highlights of the CD is “Flying on the Ground is Wrong,” first recorded in 1966 when Neil was a member of the Buffalo Springfield. This is a fine arrangement of a number that shows the high quality of Young’s songwriting abilities at the beginning of his career.
On the other end of the time spectrum are the five songs which are new to Young’s canon:
If “Motor City” laments America’s relationship with cars, “Southern Pacific” is a love song to the railroads. “Amber Jean” is a more traditional love song, including references to the moon and to the girl’s pretty eyes. “Let Your Fingers Do the Walking” is a humorous western lament about a woman who formerly “gave good phone” to the singer. But no more.
The new “Nothing is Perfect” might first appear to be a criticism of “God’s perfect plan,” but is clearly a song of gratitude. Neil here sings of comparisons, urging the listener to “look in the shadow.” By viewing the dark side one will see that “we got so much to be happy about,” including “plenty of food on the table” and “lots of love in the house.” This unexpected song of appreciation perhaps speaks to the contented nature of the singer. He has an “honest, strong, and soft woman” who “helps me be a good man.” Yet in the midst of this description of bliss comes one verse about soldiers burying their dead and then “shooting blind,” and another verse about airport hostages and an abused workforce. A very odd lyrical juxtaposition, this, but Neil makes his point: Doesn’t an awareness of the bad make the good seem all the better?
“Are You Ready for the Country?” and “Get Back to the Country” are used as concert bookends of sorts. But without the brand of International Harvesters on the label, I doubt that all of these songs would be termed Country Music. Notwithstanding the oft-heard fiddle and steel guitar, some of these tracks would easily fit into live shows from Young’s other eras. This is never more true than on the final new offering, “Grey Riders,” which closes the album and whose thick electric guitars would be at home on last year’s fine Le Noise release. Interestingly enough, it is this song -- uncharacteristic of the set -- that has been released to radio as the CD’s first single.
I’m glad to have these beautifully recorded concert tapes released. Unknown material and surprising trunk songs placed within a well paced live overview. In its own way, this CD is “a treasure,” as it documents an unexpected and short-lived era of Neil Young’s performance history in a most engaging manner. So when do we get similar live document for the Shocking Pinks?
#30# 937 words
Tom Wilmeth
Grafton, Wisconsin
Former Home of the Paramount Records blues label
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
(262) 243-4218
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Wilmeth -- Now a Columnist for JazzTimes Magazine -- Link
Friends: May 5, 2011
I now have a monthly column on the JazzTimes magazine web site. JazzTimes has been around since 1970, and I am pleased to be offered a regular spot with them. The articles I write for JazzTimes will eventually end-up on this site as well. Check out my first JazzTimes piece, called "John Coltrane: Thank God He's a Country Boy" at the link found below.
Thanks,
Tom Wilmeth
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
(262) 243-4218
http://jazztimes.com/
Well, the link won't take in this format, so go to the main site.
Go to: jazztimes.com
On the Main Page go to ARTICLES
Click on COLUMNS
Scroll down and look on the right-hand column for the list under ALSO IN COLUMNS
Near the bottom of this alphabetical list is my entry point for writings --
THE WILMETH WYVERN
I'll explain later.
Here is the direct address, but I could not get the format (of this blog) to cooperate:
http://jazztimes.com/articles/27592-john-coltrane-thank-god-he-s-a-country-boy
I now have a monthly column on the JazzTimes magazine web site. JazzTimes has been around since 1970, and I am pleased to be offered a regular spot with them. The articles I write for JazzTimes will eventually end-up on this site as well. Check out my first JazzTimes piece, called "John Coltrane: Thank God He's a Country Boy" at the link found below.
Thanks,
Tom Wilmeth
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
(262) 243-4218
http://jazztimes.com/
Well, the link won't take in this format, so go to the main site.
Go to: jazztimes.com
On the Main Page go to ARTICLES
Click on COLUMNS
Scroll down and look on the right-hand column for the list under ALSO IN COLUMNS
Near the bottom of this alphabetical list is my entry point for writings --
THE WILMETH WYVERN
I'll explain later.
Here is the direct address, but I could not get the format (of this blog) to cooperate:
http://jazztimes.com/articles/27592-john-coltrane-thank-god-he-s-a-country-boy
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Essay: "By the Time We Got to Mole Lake . . ."
“By the Time We Got to Mole Lake . . .”
Written by Tom Wilmeth
April 21, 2011
An article was recently published by an Assistant Engineer who worked on Bob Dylan’s 1974 masterwork Blood on the Tracks. As a former board operator, I read this piece with great interest. It brought back both fond and frightful memories of laboring in radio studios and over professional recording consoles. I have never worked with or at all close to Dylan, but a couple of people asked me to write-up these memories, believing they might offer some tangential insights into the one true Bob. They don’t, but as I thought about the weekend described below I realized that maybe I did have something worth recounting. So here we go.
I was 22 years old in the summer of 1977, about to start my senior year of college at the University of Northern Iowa at Cedar Falls. I had been working part-time at the school’s radio station KUNI for over three years, longer than a lot of the full time staff. I pulled 30-hour weeks of largely DJ work, most of which was on the weekends. But this was no house-current college station going out to dorm rooms; we were 100,000 watts of clean FM power covering a large chunk of eastern Iowa. It was fairly early in the National Public Radio era. We were still absolutely commercial free and could do as we pleased. There were some underwriters, but nothing obtrusive.
At KUNI we had classical music mornings but were known for specializing in Folk Music. Why? Because Station Manager Doug Vernier liked Folk Music. In fact, each weekday afternoon we had over 3 hours of it! From 2-4 P.M. we aired a record show called Folkways. Later in the day, after All Things Considered and the evening local news, we did another 90 minute show featuring Bluegrass. Then the Black Community would take over for 2 hours of soul and funk on Nationtime, and the night would conclude with several hours of current rock and whatnot on a program called Progression.
The music for these shows was all selected by the announcer, a fact that stuns current radio broadcasters into stupors of envy. I still occasionally come across an errant play list of mine stuck away in some music book – songs that I aired during one of my lengthy late night shows. These weekend shifts did little to help my social life in college, but I didn’t care. I now find these unearthed lists of songs simultaneously humorous, heartbreaking, and usually on-target. At least for their time. I got into radio for one reason – Music. And I was able to play my fill on KUNI from the spring of 1974 to the late fall of 1978. I was lucky to be there at an extremely fertile time.
By 1977 the station was getting some grants for special field recording projects. There was a Folk Festival to be held in upper Wisconsin, and Doug wanted it recorded. My recording partner and I loaded-up the car with a high quality Nagra reel-to-reel machine, some microphones, and blank tape. And off we went, not dreaming that an August weekend in Wisconsin might require something more than shorts and a T-shirt. Turns out, weather would not be our biggest surprise.
We arrived the day before the festival started and had a major culture shock. Never before had I seen such dire poverty. The roads within the Mole Lake Indian Reservation were mere dirt ruts; the houses were tin or cardboard shacks; everything looked abused and broken. In the midst of this community was a large field with a raised stage at one end. There were designated areas in the surrounding woods for both trailer parking and tent camping. I was glad that we would be staying at a hotel off the reservation, some 20 miles away. We needed a getaway from the long and pretty intense days. Although I had been an active camper during my Boy Scout era, this was not the same. Even before we left the festival grounds each night, things were getting loud in the camping areas with alcohol fueled fun and fights.
But the thing that I remember most vividly was that, in the midst of this extremely dire economic situation, the government was putting in concrete sidewalks. SIDEWALKS! When there was no real street for miles around -- only glorified cow paths where cars drove. With just a cursory look, I could have named a dozen things that this reservation needed before sidewalks. “Don’t worry about the government,” says David Byrne, but he wasn’t there.
Despite a location set deep in the Upper Wisconsin Nowhere territory, the festival was to have some known names -- both country and folk. Doc Watson was there, Lester Flatt’s band performed, and several other lesser local groups I can’t recall right now. Most of the big name acts were from the South, and I could tell right away that I was not the only one somewhat irritated by the surprisingly cold nights. Doc Watson played fairly late on the first evening and seemed very aware of the time remaining in his set. He was undoubtedly eager to return to the relative warmth of his tour bus. Still, he put on a solid show and the crowd loved it. I remember late in the set he said, “Well, it’s pretty cold for him tonight, but let’s saddle up that ‘Tennessee Stud,’” and he proceeded to play the song in stellar fashion.
Doc’s son Merle was with him, as usual. I interviewed Merle briefly, but he was more interested in chatting-up the local girls who were inviting him to a party. Still, he answered my questions about record labels and album obligations without haste or hesitation. (Their contract at the time called for one album a year, if you are interested.) The one time I tried to speak to Doc Watson, he told me to go find Merle. That’s fine – Doc needed Merle’s eyes. Merle Watson was killed a few years after this festival, when a tractor ran over him. Doc would later say how he could never have been able to tour had Merle not been there to help with all aspects of the road. Thank you Merle for delivering Doc to us!
Lester Flatt’s band did a full show as headliners the second evening. The steel guitar player noted how holding his instrument’s silver bar “was just like hanging onto a piece of ice all night.” I’m afraid that I didn’t appreciate Lester Flatt’s set as much at that time as I should have. First, I was behind the stage, recording – not able to see the performance – and second, the scales had not yet truly fallen from my eyes about the brilliance of some country music. The next day I was told by several audience members that this had been an exceptionally good night for the veteran performer.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because Lester didn’t once leave the stage during the entire set,” I was told.
I at first thought they were joking, but they weren’t. These were devotees who had already seen the man perform several times that summer. This was during Lester’s later days, when health problems were sidelining him during shows with some regularity. He would often need to go into the wings and rest for a bit as his band played-on. I recall seeing Mrs. Flatt backstage, dressed as if she herself were going to perform – ready for the Opry spotlight – aging elegance incarnate. But I felt badly for her as she looked very concerned all the time her husband was on stage. When I learned of his declining health, I understood. At the other end of the age spectrum that night was a young Marty Stuart, a talented sideman for Flatt in the 1970s.
By the time of this Mole Lake gathering, Folk and Bluegrass Festivals had already been big for over a decade. Even so, I was still enthralled with the whole idea of being at a festival! And being there to record the music made me feel like a useful part of the scene. Woodstock was a full 8 years over and done with, but its shadow remained a long one. The title of this piece bears witness – we must have said that line every three minutes: “By the time we got to Mole Lake, we were half a million strong,” an intentional variation of Joni Mitchell’s tribute to the Woodstock festival.
I don’t recall a lot about the other bands except for one local group opening with a hot, bluegrass take on The Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen a Face.” There were the typical show business elements that are not especially fond memories – self-important organizers chief among them. We had real trouble getting some of the performers to sign-off on broadcast rights for the recordings we were making. Doc Watson consented without hesitation, but some of the lesser names wanted to hear the sound mix on the tapes before signing and really gave us ego-trip troubles. We finally had enough with one guy and said, “Hey! Doc Watson trusts our mix. Are you a bigger star than Doc Watson?” This shamed the guy into signing. I forget who it was, probably with good reason.
Eric Weissberg was also on the bill, still getting bookings from his huge 1973 Top 40 hit “Dueling Banjos,” an instrumental duet with Steve Mandell. The number was featured during an unforgettable scene early in the movie Deliverance. In fact, Weissberg named his backing band Deliverance, although he seemed a bit embarrassed by the whole thing. Prior to his unexpected success with “Dueling Banjos,” Weissberg had largely been a first-call studio musician, recording with performers from Barbra Streisand to Billy Joel. He also occasionally did film soundtrack work. But I didn’t search out Eric Weissberg to talk about Billy Joel or “Dueling Banjos” or soundtracks. I wanted to ask about his work backing Bob Dylan on the Blood on the Tracks album. Weissberg was tolerant, but not enthusiastic about our conversation. {endnote 1}
The afternoon had warmed-up considerably. As we began to talk, a couple of his band members looked-on, bored. I began to ask my questions when he interrupted me: “I have sort of a thing I say to interviewers, and if this doesn’t cover what you want, then we can speak in specifics.” I agreed, of course, and he then recounted his work as a studio cat with occasional film work. He told me that after Deliverance was released he got a phone call from his agent, telling him that “Dueling Banjos” was racing up the chart. Weissberg couldn’t believe it and thought it was a put-on, having been given no idea that it was even being released as a single. He acknowledged the hit as a fluke, but he was understandably making the most of it while he could.
That biographical nutshell was fine and all, but what about Bob Dylan? Why did Bob call you to play on the Blood on the Tracks album, and what’s your connection? “I met Bob in the very early 1960s, when I was at school in Madison and he was en route to New York City for what I think must have been his first trip there. I didn’t think he remembered me, so I was surprised when I got a call to play on a session for him. It was odd from the start. I didn’t know if he wanted just me or if he wanted me to bring my band. So I brought the group along.”
Weissberg’s responses became slower and more thoughtful; I was now entering into non-standard interview territory. I asked him if it was a pleasant, relaxed session or if there was a lot of tension in the room: “I’ll tell you – It was the strangest recording session I have ever worked on. Bob barely ran down the tune to us and then we were off recording it. Then the engineers immediately backed-up the tape so he could hear it. And while they played back the song we had just recorded – loud! – Bob was running down the changes to the next tune to us. At the same time! I had never seen anything like it. Completely unorthodox studio method. I didn’t really enjoy the session, and I can’t imagine that Bob enjoyed it.”
Eric Weissberg & Deliverance appear on one song on the Blood on the Tracks LP, “Meet Me in the Morning.” So when he mentioned chord changes for a second tune, I immediately asked about it: “As I recall, we did two songs -- the one that shows-up on the album and one other one. Seems like it was a blues, but I can’t be sure.” {endnote 2}
I asked him if multiple takes of either or both songs had been recorded: “We did each tune once. That was it. Then we packed-up and it was over.”
With the interview concluded, I thanked Eric Weissberg for his time and he departed. But then, after their boss was well out of ear-shot range, members of the band chimed-in with force: “That session was an absolute joke. Weissberg was being nice about it. Dylan got so drunk that night that Eric had to re-string his guitar for him when Dylan broke a string. And it wasn’t even good stuff. He was getting smashed on his ass on Ripple or some cheap-o crap.”
These guys had been there, and were clearly not impressed. Not fans. Anger in their voices. No one among them was the least bit in awe of Dylan; they sounded disgusted. I don’t know who from the band was making most of the proclamations, but all were in agreement: it was a bizarre night. I tried to question them more about the date, but they had said their peace – everybody hated the experience. {endnote 3}
The All Music Guide lists Deliverance’s personnel for live dates during this era as: Steve Mandell (guitar), Charles Brown (guitar), Tony Brown (bass), and Richard Crooks (drums). Clinton Heylin indicates that Weissberg, C. Brown, T. Brown, and Crooks played on the Blood on the Tracks sessions. But to repeat, I don’t know who made these pointed remarks to me that afternoon. But I do know that the live show Weissberg and these guys gave was as hot as anything that the Mole Lake festival saw that year.
It does seem that Weissberg was taking the high road in our conversation, although he was clearly frustrated when recalling the experience. And let me stress what Eric Weissberg did say that afternoon about the oddness of the Dylan session: He had never seen anything like it – had never been a part of a recording experience run that way. And this assessment from a professional studio musician who had previously played on hundreds of recording dates!
And that was pretty much it. We began our long drive back to Iowa late that night, some festival glamour and mystique having been drained from our consciousness. It had been a good time, often a fun time, but nothing to romanticize. And people hating-on Bob! Go figure.
As we drove through the Northern Wisconsin night we saw in the distance what appeared to be a major forest fire. It was spread over several hilltops, raging some miles away from us but very clear in the distance against the dark sky. I wanted to drive toward it for a closer look but was told that was a stupid idea. True, of course. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the fire, even years later, and how beautiful it had appeared that night. Like the dangerous flames which had attracted me, I also escaped largely unscathed from my experience with a music festival. I saw some unpleasant business elements, social problems, and personality quirks up close. But I returned to Cedar Falls largely undaunted -- still the unsinged optimistic concerning the regenerative powers of live performances and of Music itself.
][][][[][][][][[][][] ][][][[][][][][[][][] ][][][[][][][][[][][] ][][][[][][][][[][][] ][][][[][][][][[][][]
Endnotes & out-takes:
1 – I use quotation marks throughout my conversation with Eric Weissberg and his band. But since I don’t have the interview tapes for reference, these should be seen as close paraphrases. Having offered this disclaimer, though, I can hear Mr. Weissberg say each of these sentences to me. His words still ring in my ears.
2 – The other tune he mentioned was “Call Letter Blues,” which would finally be released by Columbia in 1991 on the first of The Bootleg Series CDs. And Weissberg’s memory was accurate; it was a blues number they had recorded.
3 – [While the following section is accurate, I removed it from the body of the essay as it seemed to muddy the water as far as who was likely playing with Weissberg that day.]
The drummer’s Anvil cases had the name of the group Fat Mattress stenciled on them. If this was the drummer with Weissberg at that time, it would have been Eric Dillon. But the drums could have been on loan, and Dillon’s presence seems unlikely.
][][][[][][][][[][][] ][][][[][][][][[][][] ][][][[][][][][[][][] ][][][[][][][][[][][] ][][][[][][][][[][][]
Silent out-take – [I didn’t want to close the body of the essay with a lament.]
OK -- So what happened to those reels of music and the interview tapes? Most of them were broadcast at least once on KUNI (FM), but after that they seemed to drift away. Which is odd, in retrospect, because I made myself safety copies of just about everything at that time. But not these. Because they were played over the air in a well publicized special, air-check copies from the broadcast could be sitting in somebody’s basement in Iowa on cassette tapes. But where the master reels went, I don’t know. Over the ensuing years, I have asked former and current employees of the station to keep an eye out for these tapes, but they are not to be found. That’s OK – they would be nice to have, but . . . perhaps anticipating their eventual return is even better.
#30# 3,008 words
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
(262) 243-4218
http://wilmethway.blogspot.com/
Written by Tom Wilmeth
April 21, 2011
An article was recently published by an Assistant Engineer who worked on Bob Dylan’s 1974 masterwork Blood on the Tracks. As a former board operator, I read this piece with great interest. It brought back both fond and frightful memories of laboring in radio studios and over professional recording consoles. I have never worked with or at all close to Dylan, but a couple of people asked me to write-up these memories, believing they might offer some tangential insights into the one true Bob. They don’t, but as I thought about the weekend described below I realized that maybe I did have something worth recounting. So here we go.
I was 22 years old in the summer of 1977, about to start my senior year of college at the University of Northern Iowa at Cedar Falls. I had been working part-time at the school’s radio station KUNI for over three years, longer than a lot of the full time staff. I pulled 30-hour weeks of largely DJ work, most of which was on the weekends. But this was no house-current college station going out to dorm rooms; we were 100,000 watts of clean FM power covering a large chunk of eastern Iowa. It was fairly early in the National Public Radio era. We were still absolutely commercial free and could do as we pleased. There were some underwriters, but nothing obtrusive.
At KUNI we had classical music mornings but were known for specializing in Folk Music. Why? Because Station Manager Doug Vernier liked Folk Music. In fact, each weekday afternoon we had over 3 hours of it! From 2-4 P.M. we aired a record show called Folkways. Later in the day, after All Things Considered and the evening local news, we did another 90 minute show featuring Bluegrass. Then the Black Community would take over for 2 hours of soul and funk on Nationtime, and the night would conclude with several hours of current rock and whatnot on a program called Progression.
The music for these shows was all selected by the announcer, a fact that stuns current radio broadcasters into stupors of envy. I still occasionally come across an errant play list of mine stuck away in some music book – songs that I aired during one of my lengthy late night shows. These weekend shifts did little to help my social life in college, but I didn’t care. I now find these unearthed lists of songs simultaneously humorous, heartbreaking, and usually on-target. At least for their time. I got into radio for one reason – Music. And I was able to play my fill on KUNI from the spring of 1974 to the late fall of 1978. I was lucky to be there at an extremely fertile time.
By 1977 the station was getting some grants for special field recording projects. There was a Folk Festival to be held in upper Wisconsin, and Doug wanted it recorded. My recording partner and I loaded-up the car with a high quality Nagra reel-to-reel machine, some microphones, and blank tape. And off we went, not dreaming that an August weekend in Wisconsin might require something more than shorts and a T-shirt. Turns out, weather would not be our biggest surprise.
We arrived the day before the festival started and had a major culture shock. Never before had I seen such dire poverty. The roads within the Mole Lake Indian Reservation were mere dirt ruts; the houses were tin or cardboard shacks; everything looked abused and broken. In the midst of this community was a large field with a raised stage at one end. There were designated areas in the surrounding woods for both trailer parking and tent camping. I was glad that we would be staying at a hotel off the reservation, some 20 miles away. We needed a getaway from the long and pretty intense days. Although I had been an active camper during my Boy Scout era, this was not the same. Even before we left the festival grounds each night, things were getting loud in the camping areas with alcohol fueled fun and fights.
But the thing that I remember most vividly was that, in the midst of this extremely dire economic situation, the government was putting in concrete sidewalks. SIDEWALKS! When there was no real street for miles around -- only glorified cow paths where cars drove. With just a cursory look, I could have named a dozen things that this reservation needed before sidewalks. “Don’t worry about the government,” says David Byrne, but he wasn’t there.
Despite a location set deep in the Upper Wisconsin Nowhere territory, the festival was to have some known names -- both country and folk. Doc Watson was there, Lester Flatt’s band performed, and several other lesser local groups I can’t recall right now. Most of the big name acts were from the South, and I could tell right away that I was not the only one somewhat irritated by the surprisingly cold nights. Doc Watson played fairly late on the first evening and seemed very aware of the time remaining in his set. He was undoubtedly eager to return to the relative warmth of his tour bus. Still, he put on a solid show and the crowd loved it. I remember late in the set he said, “Well, it’s pretty cold for him tonight, but let’s saddle up that ‘Tennessee Stud,’” and he proceeded to play the song in stellar fashion.
Doc’s son Merle was with him, as usual. I interviewed Merle briefly, but he was more interested in chatting-up the local girls who were inviting him to a party. Still, he answered my questions about record labels and album obligations without haste or hesitation. (Their contract at the time called for one album a year, if you are interested.) The one time I tried to speak to Doc Watson, he told me to go find Merle. That’s fine – Doc needed Merle’s eyes. Merle Watson was killed a few years after this festival, when a tractor ran over him. Doc would later say how he could never have been able to tour had Merle not been there to help with all aspects of the road. Thank you Merle for delivering Doc to us!
Lester Flatt’s band did a full show as headliners the second evening. The steel guitar player noted how holding his instrument’s silver bar “was just like hanging onto a piece of ice all night.” I’m afraid that I didn’t appreciate Lester Flatt’s set as much at that time as I should have. First, I was behind the stage, recording – not able to see the performance – and second, the scales had not yet truly fallen from my eyes about the brilliance of some country music. The next day I was told by several audience members that this had been an exceptionally good night for the veteran performer.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because Lester didn’t once leave the stage during the entire set,” I was told.
I at first thought they were joking, but they weren’t. These were devotees who had already seen the man perform several times that summer. This was during Lester’s later days, when health problems were sidelining him during shows with some regularity. He would often need to go into the wings and rest for a bit as his band played-on. I recall seeing Mrs. Flatt backstage, dressed as if she herself were going to perform – ready for the Opry spotlight – aging elegance incarnate. But I felt badly for her as she looked very concerned all the time her husband was on stage. When I learned of his declining health, I understood. At the other end of the age spectrum that night was a young Marty Stuart, a talented sideman for Flatt in the 1970s.
By the time of this Mole Lake gathering, Folk and Bluegrass Festivals had already been big for over a decade. Even so, I was still enthralled with the whole idea of being at a festival! And being there to record the music made me feel like a useful part of the scene. Woodstock was a full 8 years over and done with, but its shadow remained a long one. The title of this piece bears witness – we must have said that line every three minutes: “By the time we got to Mole Lake, we were half a million strong,” an intentional variation of Joni Mitchell’s tribute to the Woodstock festival.
I don’t recall a lot about the other bands except for one local group opening with a hot, bluegrass take on The Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen a Face.” There were the typical show business elements that are not especially fond memories – self-important organizers chief among them. We had real trouble getting some of the performers to sign-off on broadcast rights for the recordings we were making. Doc Watson consented without hesitation, but some of the lesser names wanted to hear the sound mix on the tapes before signing and really gave us ego-trip troubles. We finally had enough with one guy and said, “Hey! Doc Watson trusts our mix. Are you a bigger star than Doc Watson?” This shamed the guy into signing. I forget who it was, probably with good reason.
Eric Weissberg was also on the bill, still getting bookings from his huge 1973 Top 40 hit “Dueling Banjos,” an instrumental duet with Steve Mandell. The number was featured during an unforgettable scene early in the movie Deliverance. In fact, Weissberg named his backing band Deliverance, although he seemed a bit embarrassed by the whole thing. Prior to his unexpected success with “Dueling Banjos,” Weissberg had largely been a first-call studio musician, recording with performers from Barbra Streisand to Billy Joel. He also occasionally did film soundtrack work. But I didn’t search out Eric Weissberg to talk about Billy Joel or “Dueling Banjos” or soundtracks. I wanted to ask about his work backing Bob Dylan on the Blood on the Tracks album. Weissberg was tolerant, but not enthusiastic about our conversation. {endnote 1}
The afternoon had warmed-up considerably. As we began to talk, a couple of his band members looked-on, bored. I began to ask my questions when he interrupted me: “I have sort of a thing I say to interviewers, and if this doesn’t cover what you want, then we can speak in specifics.” I agreed, of course, and he then recounted his work as a studio cat with occasional film work. He told me that after Deliverance was released he got a phone call from his agent, telling him that “Dueling Banjos” was racing up the chart. Weissberg couldn’t believe it and thought it was a put-on, having been given no idea that it was even being released as a single. He acknowledged the hit as a fluke, but he was understandably making the most of it while he could.
That biographical nutshell was fine and all, but what about Bob Dylan? Why did Bob call you to play on the Blood on the Tracks album, and what’s your connection? “I met Bob in the very early 1960s, when I was at school in Madison and he was en route to New York City for what I think must have been his first trip there. I didn’t think he remembered me, so I was surprised when I got a call to play on a session for him. It was odd from the start. I didn’t know if he wanted just me or if he wanted me to bring my band. So I brought the group along.”
Weissberg’s responses became slower and more thoughtful; I was now entering into non-standard interview territory. I asked him if it was a pleasant, relaxed session or if there was a lot of tension in the room: “I’ll tell you – It was the strangest recording session I have ever worked on. Bob barely ran down the tune to us and then we were off recording it. Then the engineers immediately backed-up the tape so he could hear it. And while they played back the song we had just recorded – loud! – Bob was running down the changes to the next tune to us. At the same time! I had never seen anything like it. Completely unorthodox studio method. I didn’t really enjoy the session, and I can’t imagine that Bob enjoyed it.”
Eric Weissberg & Deliverance appear on one song on the Blood on the Tracks LP, “Meet Me in the Morning.” So when he mentioned chord changes for a second tune, I immediately asked about it: “As I recall, we did two songs -- the one that shows-up on the album and one other one. Seems like it was a blues, but I can’t be sure.” {endnote 2}
I asked him if multiple takes of either or both songs had been recorded: “We did each tune once. That was it. Then we packed-up and it was over.”
With the interview concluded, I thanked Eric Weissberg for his time and he departed. But then, after their boss was well out of ear-shot range, members of the band chimed-in with force: “That session was an absolute joke. Weissberg was being nice about it. Dylan got so drunk that night that Eric had to re-string his guitar for him when Dylan broke a string. And it wasn’t even good stuff. He was getting smashed on his ass on Ripple or some cheap-o crap.”
These guys had been there, and were clearly not impressed. Not fans. Anger in their voices. No one among them was the least bit in awe of Dylan; they sounded disgusted. I don’t know who from the band was making most of the proclamations, but all were in agreement: it was a bizarre night. I tried to question them more about the date, but they had said their peace – everybody hated the experience. {endnote 3}
The All Music Guide lists Deliverance’s personnel for live dates during this era as: Steve Mandell (guitar), Charles Brown (guitar), Tony Brown (bass), and Richard Crooks (drums). Clinton Heylin indicates that Weissberg, C. Brown, T. Brown, and Crooks played on the Blood on the Tracks sessions. But to repeat, I don’t know who made these pointed remarks to me that afternoon. But I do know that the live show Weissberg and these guys gave was as hot as anything that the Mole Lake festival saw that year.
It does seem that Weissberg was taking the high road in our conversation, although he was clearly frustrated when recalling the experience. And let me stress what Eric Weissberg did say that afternoon about the oddness of the Dylan session: He had never seen anything like it – had never been a part of a recording experience run that way. And this assessment from a professional studio musician who had previously played on hundreds of recording dates!
And that was pretty much it. We began our long drive back to Iowa late that night, some festival glamour and mystique having been drained from our consciousness. It had been a good time, often a fun time, but nothing to romanticize. And people hating-on Bob! Go figure.
As we drove through the Northern Wisconsin night we saw in the distance what appeared to be a major forest fire. It was spread over several hilltops, raging some miles away from us but very clear in the distance against the dark sky. I wanted to drive toward it for a closer look but was told that was a stupid idea. True, of course. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the fire, even years later, and how beautiful it had appeared that night. Like the dangerous flames which had attracted me, I also escaped largely unscathed from my experience with a music festival. I saw some unpleasant business elements, social problems, and personality quirks up close. But I returned to Cedar Falls largely undaunted -- still the unsinged optimistic concerning the regenerative powers of live performances and of Music itself.
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Endnotes & out-takes:
1 – I use quotation marks throughout my conversation with Eric Weissberg and his band. But since I don’t have the interview tapes for reference, these should be seen as close paraphrases. Having offered this disclaimer, though, I can hear Mr. Weissberg say each of these sentences to me. His words still ring in my ears.
2 – The other tune he mentioned was “Call Letter Blues,” which would finally be released by Columbia in 1991 on the first of The Bootleg Series CDs. And Weissberg’s memory was accurate; it was a blues number they had recorded.
3 – [While the following section is accurate, I removed it from the body of the essay as it seemed to muddy the water as far as who was likely playing with Weissberg that day.]
The drummer’s Anvil cases had the name of the group Fat Mattress stenciled on them. If this was the drummer with Weissberg at that time, it would have been Eric Dillon. But the drums could have been on loan, and Dillon’s presence seems unlikely.
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Silent out-take – [I didn’t want to close the body of the essay with a lament.]
OK -- So what happened to those reels of music and the interview tapes? Most of them were broadcast at least once on KUNI (FM), but after that they seemed to drift away. Which is odd, in retrospect, because I made myself safety copies of just about everything at that time. But not these. Because they were played over the air in a well publicized special, air-check copies from the broadcast could be sitting in somebody’s basement in Iowa on cassette tapes. But where the master reels went, I don’t know. Over the ensuing years, I have asked former and current employees of the station to keep an eye out for these tapes, but they are not to be found. That’s OK – they would be nice to have, but . . . perhaps anticipating their eventual return is even better.
#30# 3,008 words
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
(262) 243-4218
http://wilmethway.blogspot.com/
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Charlie Sheen & De Cordova – Neglecting the Dog
Charlie Sheen & De Cordova – Neglecting the Dog
By Tom Wilmeth
Written April 3, 2011
Interesting how timing works. Just last night I was reading Mark Twain’s thoughts about one of his contemporaries. The theme of undeserved recognition in the world of arts & entertainment surfaces regularly when Twain recounts his own years as a platform performer. But the familiarity of this particular instance seemed uncanny:
Mark Twain was commenting on how a humorist identified only as De Cordova had quickly achieved a reputation with scant talent as a writer. People were anxious to see De Cordova in person and to hear him deliver some comedic tales. In the case of this novice performer – long forgotten even when Twain related the incident in 1898 – this new celebrity had packed a large hall with an audience eager to be entertained. It was a generous crowd, so sure of the humor that was about to be poured forth that they initially laughed at almost anything this man said or did.
However, as De Cordova failed to deliver the comedic goods – the audience’s demeanor quickly shifted. There were walk-outs; there were cat calls; there were demands for refunds. Mark Twain and his fellow, seasoned platform speakers took no small delight in this failure. It seemed that arrogance had gotten the best of the recently elevated De Cordova. Part of Twain’s purpose in writing the brief, previously unknown vignette was to stress the importance of preparation. In this instance, the man thought he was above getting his act ready for a major engagement by rehearsing to smaller and less scrutinizing audiences.
According to Mark Twain, this type of performance preparation is called “Trying It Out on the Dog.” To get any comedy act into shape, it must have constant revision and polish – there is no substitute. Twain stresses that this preparation is only possible in front of an audience. I have been told that Bob Hope and The Marx Brothers, to name only two subsequent acts, would regularly book halls in the Midwest to try-out new material and to hone their comic timing before taking new pieces to radio, Broadway, or the movies. (I guess this makes The Midwest “the dog” in this analogy, but that’s OK with me.)
In this morning’s paper I see that Charlie Sheen’s first live show in Detroit bombed. The parallels recounted by Mark Twain in 1898 and the Detroit reviewers of 2011 are remarkable – walk-outs, cat calls, demands for refunds, an audience’s unmasked hostility for a performer who could not deliver. But while parallels abound, let’s be fair. De Cordova apparently did not openly taunt or purposefully insult his audience. De Cordova did not mock the patrons for spending their money on the evening’s alleged entertainment. De Cordova did not glibly admit that he was using this engagement as a testing ground for his future performances. De Cordova was just plain bad – an entertainment rookie with a falsely inflated sense of his talent. Sheen was hyperspace bad in a warp nine free fall.
What is the point of the present commentary? To embarrass Charlie Sheen? Of course not – he does that himself every waking minute. No, I write to stress the obvious, placed in my head this morning by simultaneous encounter of these two reviews. And the obvious is – There is nothing new under the sun, history repeats, and we can learn from the past. And especially that Mark Twain is still well worth reading. Maybe Charlie Sheen should give it a try.
561 words #30#
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
(262) 243-4218
http://wilmethway.blogspot.com/
By Tom Wilmeth
Written April 3, 2011
Interesting how timing works. Just last night I was reading Mark Twain’s thoughts about one of his contemporaries. The theme of undeserved recognition in the world of arts & entertainment surfaces regularly when Twain recounts his own years as a platform performer. But the familiarity of this particular instance seemed uncanny:
Mark Twain was commenting on how a humorist identified only as De Cordova had quickly achieved a reputation with scant talent as a writer. People were anxious to see De Cordova in person and to hear him deliver some comedic tales. In the case of this novice performer – long forgotten even when Twain related the incident in 1898 – this new celebrity had packed a large hall with an audience eager to be entertained. It was a generous crowd, so sure of the humor that was about to be poured forth that they initially laughed at almost anything this man said or did.
However, as De Cordova failed to deliver the comedic goods – the audience’s demeanor quickly shifted. There were walk-outs; there were cat calls; there were demands for refunds. Mark Twain and his fellow, seasoned platform speakers took no small delight in this failure. It seemed that arrogance had gotten the best of the recently elevated De Cordova. Part of Twain’s purpose in writing the brief, previously unknown vignette was to stress the importance of preparation. In this instance, the man thought he was above getting his act ready for a major engagement by rehearsing to smaller and less scrutinizing audiences.
According to Mark Twain, this type of performance preparation is called “Trying It Out on the Dog.” To get any comedy act into shape, it must have constant revision and polish – there is no substitute. Twain stresses that this preparation is only possible in front of an audience. I have been told that Bob Hope and The Marx Brothers, to name only two subsequent acts, would regularly book halls in the Midwest to try-out new material and to hone their comic timing before taking new pieces to radio, Broadway, or the movies. (I guess this makes The Midwest “the dog” in this analogy, but that’s OK with me.)
In this morning’s paper I see that Charlie Sheen’s first live show in Detroit bombed. The parallels recounted by Mark Twain in 1898 and the Detroit reviewers of 2011 are remarkable – walk-outs, cat calls, demands for refunds, an audience’s unmasked hostility for a performer who could not deliver. But while parallels abound, let’s be fair. De Cordova apparently did not openly taunt or purposefully insult his audience. De Cordova did not mock the patrons for spending their money on the evening’s alleged entertainment. De Cordova did not glibly admit that he was using this engagement as a testing ground for his future performances. De Cordova was just plain bad – an entertainment rookie with a falsely inflated sense of his talent. Sheen was hyperspace bad in a warp nine free fall.
What is the point of the present commentary? To embarrass Charlie Sheen? Of course not – he does that himself every waking minute. No, I write to stress the obvious, placed in my head this morning by simultaneous encounter of these two reviews. And the obvious is – There is nothing new under the sun, history repeats, and we can learn from the past. And especially that Mark Twain is still well worth reading. Maybe Charlie Sheen should give it a try.
561 words #30#
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
(262) 243-4218
http://wilmethway.blogspot.com/
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Concert Review: Motorhead
Concert Review: Motorhead at The Eagles Ballroom; Milwaukee, Wisconsin
w/ support acts Clutch and Valient Thorr
Wednesday; February 17, 2011
Review written by Tom Wilmeth
“Motorhead? You are going to see Motorhead?”
“Hear them, more likely.”
“Why?”
“I’ll regret it if I don’t.”
“What was their big hit?
“They didn’t have one.”
[silence]
“‘Ace of Spades’ probably comes closest.”
“Never heard of it.”
And so the conversation was repeated with various people during the weeks before the concert.
“Who are you going with?”
“Can’t find anybody who wants to go.”
“And you’re going anyway?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
[See above . . . ]
Since starting to take really heavy metal more seriously a few years back, some bands went from being quasi-joke status to worth checking out. The single thing that had the greatest impact on my change of attitude was XM’s Liquid Metal station, and especially Ian Christie’s informative show Bloody Roots. I listen to this show and the Devil’s Dozen overview of new metal releases each week, learning quite a lot along the way.
Motorhead’s early 80’s live album No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith opened a world of rock that had largely been outside my experience. I knew some guys who were into Black Sabbath back in high school 40 years ago, but that was about it. Hearing Hammersmith – I was strangely impressed, but I certainly did not immediately embrace this genre. In fact, for a long time I thought of it in the same way I viewed the most avant-garde of jazz – as almost joke music. Not that the musicians weren’t deadly serious and dedicated to their vision, but I just found it more amusing than engaging. And preferably taken in very short doses.
I especially wanted to see Motorhead now, in part, because I knew they wouldn’t be around forever. I wanted to see this elder statesman Metal Band! This differs considerable from the elder statesman of Hard Rock. I’m not talking about the The Who or even Led Zeppelin. I’m talking about thrash metal. Clever lyrics, a la Pete Townshend? Why bother? A strong melody? What’s that? A vocalist like Robert Plant? Unimportant to this level of metal.
As I said to my wife upon returning from the concert –
“Remember Dylan’s performance at the Grammys?
Bob sounded like Jim Reeves compared to Motorhead’s Lemmy.”
Which recalls another friend’s astute summary –
“Some people can’t get past the fact that vocals can be used as a rhythm instrument.”
Good one. And he wasn’t talking about scat vocals. Lemmy was indeed singing lyrics, but I don’t think it mattered much. Still, the guy next to me apparently knew the words to every song. I think this because I could see his lips move. Lemmy introduced the various songs as being about certain things, so it’s clear they do have substance. But I don’t think many people in the large crowd were there for the lyrics, whether they could sing along or not.
But let’s start at the beginning.
I went to the 8 P.M. show quite early because it was a choice of waiting at home or waiting at the club. Limited street parking was available, so I showed-up about 45 minutes before the first band was suppose to start. I knew I had a substantial wait in front of me – rock time, after all. The venue is a beautiful old structure on Wisconsin Avenue, The Eagles Ballroom, built in 1926. Acts from Glenn Miller to Buddy Holly had played this hall in its younger days. I had been there a few times in my 20 years as a Milwaukee resident to see varying folks – Bob Dylan, Bela Fleck, Kenny Wayne Shepherd. But I hadn’t been back in several years.
Maybe it was because I scanned older than the target audience, but everybody working the place could not have been nicer. “Use the side door please, sir.” “Do you have a ticket or do you need a ticket?” Professional folks. And because I was early, there was not a mad crush to get in. I was thoroughly frisked by a large security guard at the entrance. He hit a solid mass in my coat pocket and looked at me quite surprised. “Binocs,” I said. He smiled and nodded. I was not the Droid they were after.
I wasn’t really sure how well Motorhead would draw. They are highly respected by the Metal community, but they had played Milwaukee just over a year ago, at this same venue. Part of the reason I felt comfortable in attending tonight’s show was a review of the previous appearance that stressed the aging nature of the audience. I expected a large motorcycle contingent of tough guys and lots of leather. There was some of each, but not nearly as much as I had seen at an Emerson, Lake, & Palmer concert in Milwaukee some years back. Now those boys draw a leather clad crowd!
I walked-in to a smallish bar in the building’s basement, where a quartet was playing hard. Bag of Balls was their name and I was pleased – at least there was some music from a live band to kick things off. The room was crowded and too warm, but not terrible on either front. I was, however, immediately glad that I had switched-out my heavy winter coat for my own leather jacket. After about their sixth largely interchangeable number, Bag of Balls’ singer said something about Motorhead playing in the adjacent room later in the night. That made sense – this was a pretty small stage for headliners.
I wandered over to the main room – it was the large cavernous area that made-up most of the building. This was the original, 25,000 square foot oval wooden dance floor, now a standing area for those wanting to be near the bands. Because I was there when the doors to the main room opened, I walked to the metal railing that separated the crowd from the stage. Between the two was a space for security and photographers. I was arguably too close, but at least I had a place to throw my jacket and (more importantly) I had something to lean on – both would become important as the evening progressed.
I saw that the guy next to me had his earplugs in place, so I thought I would follow suit. Mine did a fine job, but worked best if I kept my stocking cap on, to keep the plugs from expanding out of my ears. Before too long the first of the advertised groups took the stage. I was glad that they were at least pretending to be on time – with three bands, I knew this would be a long night. The group’s name was Valient Thorr. I thought at first it might be sort of a joke name, a band with a sense of humor – willing to gently mock the very genre they also embrace. After all, they seemed clueless about the correct spelling of their own name and claimed to come from Venus. Then I thought that with a name like Valient Thorr, they might be a gay metal band. That would be cool -- and something different! I’d welcome it. But I was wrong on that front, too. Everybody was very serious and starkly hetero about this music, Venusian or not.
These guys had the most stereotypical metal look of the night – very long, very greasy hair, prominent tattoos, and a flying V guitar! The standard line-up of two guitars, bass, drums, and vocalist. Valient Thorr looked the part of a metal band and sounded it, too. I was right in front of the lead guitarist, but the other guitar at the far end of the stage seemed to also be constantly soloing. The sound was loud, of course, but I was unable to distinguish what each instrument was doing. Lyrics were largely unintelligible, but before the last song, the band’s vocalist directed the audience’s attention to the banner hanging behind the stage. “That’s not just some band logo,” he shouted. “That design symbolizes ‘Peace through Rock & Roll’!” OK – his heart was in the right place, it seemed. This impressed me much more than the tough-guy Satan worshipping attitude that some metal bands claim to promote. I don’t know – will these bands be playing long sets in Hell some day? I can’t think that most of them really believe the Satanic crap that is often spewed forth in this genre. Copping an attitude, as we used to say. And maybe this is where a lack of intelligibility in the lyrics is an asset to the music.
As to musical genres and sub-genres, even the most popular of the so-called Alternative Country acts recently admitted that labels were immaterial – they were struggling bands just trying to get their music heard. Jeff Tweedy, now of Wilco, said that his seminal band Uncle Tupelo never billed itself as Alt Country, but they weren’t going to argue if this tag helped sell records and get people to their concerts. Ralph Stanley didn’t cal his own music bluegrass, but if you bought a ticket he wouldn’t dispute the point. Perhaps the same is true of some metal – if a band can sell records by implicitly riding the tail of Satan, what the hell (literally). Having said this, none of the three bands on this bill seemed especially interested in overtly promoting Satanic rituals to the crowd.
Valient Thorr’s front man seemed very appreciative of having the opening spot on this leg of the tour. More than once he said how nice it was to “play the big stage” and to be opening for Motorhead. He told us to hold tight for Clutch and then left to the same great enthusiasm which the crowd showed for their entire set. Even so, no chance of an encore with a tightly packed night such as this. That’s fine – I’d heard what they could do. The roadies were efficient – monitors and drums sets switched-out, the banner replaced at the rear of the stage. Mikes checked, and here we go!
Clutch sauntered into view looking more like well groomed construction workers than a metal band. Short hair, black t-shirts and black baseball caps, both without logos or demarcation -- normal attire that would have been considered conservative in its own audience that night. These guys came to play and they too were deadly serious about it. A quartet, Clutch ripped in to a 45 minute set that I enjoyed greatly. These guys were . . . well, if a metal band can be subtle, they sometimes were. Still positioned at the front of the stage, I noticed that this guitarist took interesting, even thoughtful solos on his Les Paul. That, and he was dripping sweat from beneath his baseball cap from song one.
Unlike most of his metal guitar contemporaries, Clutch’s Tim Sult had a very dark tone. Not dark like a Kenny Burrell fat-note jazz sound, but Sult played almost all of his solos down on the low E and A strings. This is very different from most guitarists who go screaming up past the high octave range on the B and high E strings. Refreshing. Restrained. Also, Sult was not speedily trying to play every note or every lick he knew on each solo – they were well paced, and I could actually hear what he was doing.
Clutch had a better mix than the first band. At least, it sounded better to me through my ear plugs and a wool cap. What an odd way to experience music. I felt badly for some of the folks around me who had no ear protection – live and learn. It took me a few days of ringing ears after several concerts in my youth to become convinced that ear safeguards might be worth the effort.
Speaking of which -- This concert was certainly among the loudest shows I have attended, but maybe not THE loudest. The top three on that front would belong to Grand Funk Railroad – Des Moines, Iowa; December 31, 1970. The Doobie Brothers in St. Paul, ca. 1982 in the first of their alleged Farewell Tours was pretty painful on the ears. But the dubious winner (surprisingly) must go to Earth, Wind, and Fire in Ames, Iowa, about 1977. That was a true soul review -- with The Emotions, The Brothers Johnson, and then Earth, Wind & Fire. I wanted to enjoy it, but my recollection equates that concert to ice picks being stabbed into my ears.
I was a little concerned that if Clutch and Valient Thorr were this loud, then they may save the really high wattage for headlining Motorhead. And Lemmy’s band WAS loud, but they didn’t seem that much louder than the others. Of course maybe my ears were already numb. At one or two points I briefly removed an ear plug. Wow. The high end of the sound spectrum returned, but at what cost! So I lived with a muffled but tolerable sound level. I do wonder what the decibel level measurement would have been. Just as I wonder what the size of the crowd was – certainly a couple of thousand enthusiasts. At least. The place was packed.
Both of these opening bands were absolutely traditional in gear: Fender basses with 4 (not 5) strings, all cords plugged-in to amplifiers (no wireless connections), drum sets with a single bass drum, and the requisite Gibson Les Pauls. Yep – no doubting the pedigree of the equipment! The other thing that I liked was that the guitarists stayed on one instrument all night. They had racks of other axes sitting near-by, but each guy had a guitar he liked and played it throughout the set. No switching around for special sounds or alternate tunings. No need. I interpreted that (rightly or wrongly) as having few pretensions. Just play the damn thing. And while Les Paul guitars are a gold standard for many players, Marshall Amplifiers are the long-favored weapons of choice for assaulting a crowd with loud music. And this stage had stacks galore of Marshall amps. In fact, it seemed that each player in every band had his own double stack of Marshalls. Visually impressive. Aurally frightening.
The other, more important similarity between Valient Thorr and Clutch was that each group did hit some grooves at various points of their sets. They straddled the fence between Valient Thorr’s competence and some pretty accomplished musicianship, as exemplified by Clutch’s Tim Sult. Clutch was not a newcomer to the field, as I had supposed – they were on tour supporting their 9th studio release! Although quite stable in personnel make-up since 1991, they had just dropped their organist, returning to a 4-piece band and to their original guitar dominated sound. That was OK, really. The presence of keyboards at this show would likely have been too exotic for most of the crowd. Sort of like adding Steve Vai to a wind ensemble. (Although I’d listen to that.)
As with Valient Thorr, Clutch’s front man Neil Fallon indicated the group’s great pleasure in being on this tour. “When you wake-up every morning and realize that your band is going to play with Motorhead that night . . . it’s amazing!!” He may have dropped an F-bomb or two in there along the way – I just can’t recall. Clutch played its last song and were gone. Their set had actually sped-by for me.
The roadies again took the stage. This break was quite a bit longer and the crowd grew somewhat restless, but not terribly so. When I had initially entered the hall, I grabbed a place on the far side of the stage. This was unintentional but turned out to be fortuitous, as the center section had become a mosh pit of sorts, with some pretty fierce dancing / slamming starting to take place during Clutch’s set. Now between bands, with the recorded music on the sound system, the frenetic dancing continued. I didn’t mind watching it, but had no desire to participate.
One thing that was good about being so close to the stage was the lack of beer in my area of the hall. It was a long haul back to the bars, especially through the densely packed crowd. As such, drunks seemed few and nobody was spilling drinks on each other. That is, on me. There were photographers taking pictures of the excited and happy crowd. It was still a good, if intense vibe.
Huge security men positioned themselves in front of the stage – not so muscular as just plain large. Lights dimmed and Motorhead hit the stage. Yep – this was different. The cords were gone – this was a wireless outing all the way. The drums were on a highly raised pedestal – and this time it was a double bass drum set-up. Loud? Yes, but not that much different from the other bands. I was glad – it had been a loud enough night for me from note one. I don’t want to downplay the volume. Even though I became resigned to the expected stunning sound levels, I still couldn’t help but notice that my blue jeans felt at times as if they were being blown by a pretty stiff breeze around my ankles. Sounds waves & shock waves. Too damn much. Just as I had expected.
Lemmy’s bass guitar looked to be a modified Rickenbacker – a large, beautiful instrument that seemed to be wrapped in tooled cowhide – somewhat like country artist Hank Snow’s acoustic guitar. Very cool. Lemmy came to the microphone and announced, “We are Motorhead! And we play Rock & Roll!” The crowd screamed approval, and with that the trio roared into the anthem “We Are Motorhead!”
The thing that immediately stuck me was how healthy Lemmy appeared. I was expecting a road weary, bedraggled presence. But Lemmy looked great and was absolutely running the show with strength. The huge, thick sound of his bass carried the songs. The rest of the band also made their presence known, however. Unlike Clutch’s Sult, who stood still and played guitar with head bowed beneath his cap – Motohead’s guitarist Phil Campbell was a showman, striding the boards and repeatedly coming to the very lip of the stage to engage the crowd. In fact, I could have reached him if he and I had both stretched our hands toward each other. But I had no desire to touch him, and I’m also sure that the security guards would have taken exception to this. Campbell had the more traditional style of fast licks played high on the fret board. It wasn’t a Les Paul, but the design of this white guitar was similar. And, as with all of the guitars that night – the strings’ tuning pegs were where they were supposed to be – that is, at the visible end of the fret board. No weird, modern empty sticks for guitars. Not in the world of Metal, which is traditionally conservative in its own way – but they would cut me for saying that.
I didn’t recognize the types of drums that Mikkey Dee played – probably custom jobs. Dee was an energetic drummer who would have been more of a positive presence if we could have actually seen him play. But with such a huge drum set, he was largely hidden from view -- although the few glimpses I got of his face indicated that he was having a great time. A drummer who kept things surprisingly interesting and a hot guitarist who added energy and color to the set were both indispensable, but this was Lemmy’s band and Lemmy’s show all the way. He retained the crowd’s attention all night – the undeniable focal point of the stage.
I did not know any of the songs after the first one, but I assume that many were from the new CD that the band had released that very week, The World is Yours. Earlier in the night, I heard two guys quoting a recent interview with Lemmy about the new release: “Lemmy, why do all of Motorhead’s albums sound alike?” To which Lemmy answered, “It’s the same band.” Those two guys loved that response, as did I when they related the story. And this comment summed-up the evening. The songs were very similar, but also exciting and well executed.
At one point Lemmy announced, “Here is an old one. It’s from 1983 – before you were born!” A girl’s voice behind me protested that this did not apply to her. They played a tune I didn’t know, but I thought it was good that the back catalogue was being acknowledged. I took a pen with me and was planning to take a note or two, but there was no chance of having enough room to do this. I was pretty packed-in, increasingly pushed into the unyielding steel mesh fence. At one point I moved sideways from the fence so a young girl could throw her room key at Lemmy -- in hopes of a post show rendezvous. Witnessing that act was by far the creepiest part of the evening.
The crowd was changing. The mosh pit was expanding. I felt two hard blows. These were not accidental shoves, but some of the folks a few people away were starting to flail themselves recklessly into others. I was the indirect recipient of what was passing for dancing. I had already checked the exits, and it looked like it would be a slow road out of the hall. Having experienced uneasiness at the size of the departing crowds during last year’s Summerfest late one night, I had planned to make my exit before the encore. But now I thought that maybe 45 minutes of Lemmy would suffice for the evening. A couple more strong body blows and I was convinced – time to leave. I started to progress down the metal fence to the side of the crowd. There was a green Exit sign close to the edge of the stage. The crew behind the fence, although still very polite, pointed me away from this exit, around the periphery of the crowd to the far exits. OK -- Probably illegal and undoubtedly a fire department violation, but OK.
In fact, that exit strategy was fine. Being stage side for the whole night, I hadn’t the opportunity to do any people watching. So I slowly wound my way around the outer edge of the crowded, but not impassible ballroom. I was amazed that there was a coat check room in operation. I stopped at the merchandise alcoves for all 3 bands, but didn’t really see anything I wanted. I almost bought a Clutch CD, but they all looked pretty beat-up and road weary for being new copies. As is true at all such gatherings, there were quite a few people there just for the event and not to hear the band. I looked a little more in line with the age of some of these back-of-the-room folks at the bar and those just hanging around.
I wanted to get out before the set ended, so I kept moving. I knew I would miss “Ace of Spades,” which I did want to hear, but that would be near the very end of the show. And I was ready to go. I walked back to the side door where the same people who had initially welcomed me were still there. I told the woman that I had a fine time, but it was getting just a wee bit violent near the stage. She didn’t seem especially shocked at this, but was glad I had a good time, thanked me for coming to the show, and I was out the door. One thing that surprised me on the street was how little of the band sound leaked out of the hall. That was one solid building, now on the National Record of Historic Places. And that seemed appropriate to me as I drove home – after all, it was the historic nature of Motorhead that got me to come to this very “unWilmeth” type of gig, as good friend Pete proclaimed it.
I enjoyed the night; I was not above it; I wanted to be there. I was guilty of raising a fist in the air once or twice in pure excited metal joy and of occasionally pointing at the guitarists in admiration. As Motorhead’s set progressed I saw body surfing up-close and I almost became an unwilling member in a mosh pit. And I escaped unscathed. Who could ask for more?
The next morning, I woke-up feeling like I had been in a minor car wreck. My body ached. My head throbbed; I felt pretty hung over. What the hell? I knew that I had absolutely nothing to drink the previous evening. Ah yes – the Motorhead concert! Of course. My ears rang a bit, especially the left, but not terribly – similar to the aural after effects of a rough plane ride. I went to school to teach my classes. The few colleagues who knew of my plans were intrigued as to whether I really, actually went. I showed tangible evidence by taping the ticket stub to my office door.
“Well?”
“What?”
“So how was it?”
“What?”
“HOW WAS IT?”
“Oh. It was great – had a good time. Glad I went.”
“Do you plan to write something about it?”
“Probably not.”
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Best,
Tom Wilmeth
2/19/11
(262) 243-4218
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
w/ support acts Clutch and Valient Thorr
Wednesday; February 17, 2011
Review written by Tom Wilmeth
“Motorhead? You are going to see Motorhead?”
“Hear them, more likely.”
“Why?”
“I’ll regret it if I don’t.”
“What was their big hit?
“They didn’t have one.”
[silence]
“‘Ace of Spades’ probably comes closest.”
“Never heard of it.”
And so the conversation was repeated with various people during the weeks before the concert.
“Who are you going with?”
“Can’t find anybody who wants to go.”
“And you’re going anyway?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
[See above . . . ]
Since starting to take really heavy metal more seriously a few years back, some bands went from being quasi-joke status to worth checking out. The single thing that had the greatest impact on my change of attitude was XM’s Liquid Metal station, and especially Ian Christie’s informative show Bloody Roots. I listen to this show and the Devil’s Dozen overview of new metal releases each week, learning quite a lot along the way.
Motorhead’s early 80’s live album No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith opened a world of rock that had largely been outside my experience. I knew some guys who were into Black Sabbath back in high school 40 years ago, but that was about it. Hearing Hammersmith – I was strangely impressed, but I certainly did not immediately embrace this genre. In fact, for a long time I thought of it in the same way I viewed the most avant-garde of jazz – as almost joke music. Not that the musicians weren’t deadly serious and dedicated to their vision, but I just found it more amusing than engaging. And preferably taken in very short doses.
I especially wanted to see Motorhead now, in part, because I knew they wouldn’t be around forever. I wanted to see this elder statesman Metal Band! This differs considerable from the elder statesman of Hard Rock. I’m not talking about the The Who or even Led Zeppelin. I’m talking about thrash metal. Clever lyrics, a la Pete Townshend? Why bother? A strong melody? What’s that? A vocalist like Robert Plant? Unimportant to this level of metal.
As I said to my wife upon returning from the concert –
“Remember Dylan’s performance at the Grammys?
Bob sounded like Jim Reeves compared to Motorhead’s Lemmy.”
Which recalls another friend’s astute summary –
“Some people can’t get past the fact that vocals can be used as a rhythm instrument.”
Good one. And he wasn’t talking about scat vocals. Lemmy was indeed singing lyrics, but I don’t think it mattered much. Still, the guy next to me apparently knew the words to every song. I think this because I could see his lips move. Lemmy introduced the various songs as being about certain things, so it’s clear they do have substance. But I don’t think many people in the large crowd were there for the lyrics, whether they could sing along or not.
But let’s start at the beginning.
I went to the 8 P.M. show quite early because it was a choice of waiting at home or waiting at the club. Limited street parking was available, so I showed-up about 45 minutes before the first band was suppose to start. I knew I had a substantial wait in front of me – rock time, after all. The venue is a beautiful old structure on Wisconsin Avenue, The Eagles Ballroom, built in 1926. Acts from Glenn Miller to Buddy Holly had played this hall in its younger days. I had been there a few times in my 20 years as a Milwaukee resident to see varying folks – Bob Dylan, Bela Fleck, Kenny Wayne Shepherd. But I hadn’t been back in several years.
Maybe it was because I scanned older than the target audience, but everybody working the place could not have been nicer. “Use the side door please, sir.” “Do you have a ticket or do you need a ticket?” Professional folks. And because I was early, there was not a mad crush to get in. I was thoroughly frisked by a large security guard at the entrance. He hit a solid mass in my coat pocket and looked at me quite surprised. “Binocs,” I said. He smiled and nodded. I was not the Droid they were after.
I wasn’t really sure how well Motorhead would draw. They are highly respected by the Metal community, but they had played Milwaukee just over a year ago, at this same venue. Part of the reason I felt comfortable in attending tonight’s show was a review of the previous appearance that stressed the aging nature of the audience. I expected a large motorcycle contingent of tough guys and lots of leather. There was some of each, but not nearly as much as I had seen at an Emerson, Lake, & Palmer concert in Milwaukee some years back. Now those boys draw a leather clad crowd!
I walked-in to a smallish bar in the building’s basement, where a quartet was playing hard. Bag of Balls was their name and I was pleased – at least there was some music from a live band to kick things off. The room was crowded and too warm, but not terrible on either front. I was, however, immediately glad that I had switched-out my heavy winter coat for my own leather jacket. After about their sixth largely interchangeable number, Bag of Balls’ singer said something about Motorhead playing in the adjacent room later in the night. That made sense – this was a pretty small stage for headliners.
I wandered over to the main room – it was the large cavernous area that made-up most of the building. This was the original, 25,000 square foot oval wooden dance floor, now a standing area for those wanting to be near the bands. Because I was there when the doors to the main room opened, I walked to the metal railing that separated the crowd from the stage. Between the two was a space for security and photographers. I was arguably too close, but at least I had a place to throw my jacket and (more importantly) I had something to lean on – both would become important as the evening progressed.
I saw that the guy next to me had his earplugs in place, so I thought I would follow suit. Mine did a fine job, but worked best if I kept my stocking cap on, to keep the plugs from expanding out of my ears. Before too long the first of the advertised groups took the stage. I was glad that they were at least pretending to be on time – with three bands, I knew this would be a long night. The group’s name was Valient Thorr. I thought at first it might be sort of a joke name, a band with a sense of humor – willing to gently mock the very genre they also embrace. After all, they seemed clueless about the correct spelling of their own name and claimed to come from Venus. Then I thought that with a name like Valient Thorr, they might be a gay metal band. That would be cool -- and something different! I’d welcome it. But I was wrong on that front, too. Everybody was very serious and starkly hetero about this music, Venusian or not.
These guys had the most stereotypical metal look of the night – very long, very greasy hair, prominent tattoos, and a flying V guitar! The standard line-up of two guitars, bass, drums, and vocalist. Valient Thorr looked the part of a metal band and sounded it, too. I was right in front of the lead guitarist, but the other guitar at the far end of the stage seemed to also be constantly soloing. The sound was loud, of course, but I was unable to distinguish what each instrument was doing. Lyrics were largely unintelligible, but before the last song, the band’s vocalist directed the audience’s attention to the banner hanging behind the stage. “That’s not just some band logo,” he shouted. “That design symbolizes ‘Peace through Rock & Roll’!” OK – his heart was in the right place, it seemed. This impressed me much more than the tough-guy Satan worshipping attitude that some metal bands claim to promote. I don’t know – will these bands be playing long sets in Hell some day? I can’t think that most of them really believe the Satanic crap that is often spewed forth in this genre. Copping an attitude, as we used to say. And maybe this is where a lack of intelligibility in the lyrics is an asset to the music.
As to musical genres and sub-genres, even the most popular of the so-called Alternative Country acts recently admitted that labels were immaterial – they were struggling bands just trying to get their music heard. Jeff Tweedy, now of Wilco, said that his seminal band Uncle Tupelo never billed itself as Alt Country, but they weren’t going to argue if this tag helped sell records and get people to their concerts. Ralph Stanley didn’t cal his own music bluegrass, but if you bought a ticket he wouldn’t dispute the point. Perhaps the same is true of some metal – if a band can sell records by implicitly riding the tail of Satan, what the hell (literally). Having said this, none of the three bands on this bill seemed especially interested in overtly promoting Satanic rituals to the crowd.
Valient Thorr’s front man seemed very appreciative of having the opening spot on this leg of the tour. More than once he said how nice it was to “play the big stage” and to be opening for Motorhead. He told us to hold tight for Clutch and then left to the same great enthusiasm which the crowd showed for their entire set. Even so, no chance of an encore with a tightly packed night such as this. That’s fine – I’d heard what they could do. The roadies were efficient – monitors and drums sets switched-out, the banner replaced at the rear of the stage. Mikes checked, and here we go!
Clutch sauntered into view looking more like well groomed construction workers than a metal band. Short hair, black t-shirts and black baseball caps, both without logos or demarcation -- normal attire that would have been considered conservative in its own audience that night. These guys came to play and they too were deadly serious about it. A quartet, Clutch ripped in to a 45 minute set that I enjoyed greatly. These guys were . . . well, if a metal band can be subtle, they sometimes were. Still positioned at the front of the stage, I noticed that this guitarist took interesting, even thoughtful solos on his Les Paul. That, and he was dripping sweat from beneath his baseball cap from song one.
Unlike most of his metal guitar contemporaries, Clutch’s Tim Sult had a very dark tone. Not dark like a Kenny Burrell fat-note jazz sound, but Sult played almost all of his solos down on the low E and A strings. This is very different from most guitarists who go screaming up past the high octave range on the B and high E strings. Refreshing. Restrained. Also, Sult was not speedily trying to play every note or every lick he knew on each solo – they were well paced, and I could actually hear what he was doing.
Clutch had a better mix than the first band. At least, it sounded better to me through my ear plugs and a wool cap. What an odd way to experience music. I felt badly for some of the folks around me who had no ear protection – live and learn. It took me a few days of ringing ears after several concerts in my youth to become convinced that ear safeguards might be worth the effort.
Speaking of which -- This concert was certainly among the loudest shows I have attended, but maybe not THE loudest. The top three on that front would belong to Grand Funk Railroad – Des Moines, Iowa; December 31, 1970. The Doobie Brothers in St. Paul, ca. 1982 in the first of their alleged Farewell Tours was pretty painful on the ears. But the dubious winner (surprisingly) must go to Earth, Wind, and Fire in Ames, Iowa, about 1977. That was a true soul review -- with The Emotions, The Brothers Johnson, and then Earth, Wind & Fire. I wanted to enjoy it, but my recollection equates that concert to ice picks being stabbed into my ears.
I was a little concerned that if Clutch and Valient Thorr were this loud, then they may save the really high wattage for headlining Motorhead. And Lemmy’s band WAS loud, but they didn’t seem that much louder than the others. Of course maybe my ears were already numb. At one or two points I briefly removed an ear plug. Wow. The high end of the sound spectrum returned, but at what cost! So I lived with a muffled but tolerable sound level. I do wonder what the decibel level measurement would have been. Just as I wonder what the size of the crowd was – certainly a couple of thousand enthusiasts. At least. The place was packed.
Both of these opening bands were absolutely traditional in gear: Fender basses with 4 (not 5) strings, all cords plugged-in to amplifiers (no wireless connections), drum sets with a single bass drum, and the requisite Gibson Les Pauls. Yep – no doubting the pedigree of the equipment! The other thing that I liked was that the guitarists stayed on one instrument all night. They had racks of other axes sitting near-by, but each guy had a guitar he liked and played it throughout the set. No switching around for special sounds or alternate tunings. No need. I interpreted that (rightly or wrongly) as having few pretensions. Just play the damn thing. And while Les Paul guitars are a gold standard for many players, Marshall Amplifiers are the long-favored weapons of choice for assaulting a crowd with loud music. And this stage had stacks galore of Marshall amps. In fact, it seemed that each player in every band had his own double stack of Marshalls. Visually impressive. Aurally frightening.
The other, more important similarity between Valient Thorr and Clutch was that each group did hit some grooves at various points of their sets. They straddled the fence between Valient Thorr’s competence and some pretty accomplished musicianship, as exemplified by Clutch’s Tim Sult. Clutch was not a newcomer to the field, as I had supposed – they were on tour supporting their 9th studio release! Although quite stable in personnel make-up since 1991, they had just dropped their organist, returning to a 4-piece band and to their original guitar dominated sound. That was OK, really. The presence of keyboards at this show would likely have been too exotic for most of the crowd. Sort of like adding Steve Vai to a wind ensemble. (Although I’d listen to that.)
As with Valient Thorr, Clutch’s front man Neil Fallon indicated the group’s great pleasure in being on this tour. “When you wake-up every morning and realize that your band is going to play with Motorhead that night . . . it’s amazing!!” He may have dropped an F-bomb or two in there along the way – I just can’t recall. Clutch played its last song and were gone. Their set had actually sped-by for me.
The roadies again took the stage. This break was quite a bit longer and the crowd grew somewhat restless, but not terribly so. When I had initially entered the hall, I grabbed a place on the far side of the stage. This was unintentional but turned out to be fortuitous, as the center section had become a mosh pit of sorts, with some pretty fierce dancing / slamming starting to take place during Clutch’s set. Now between bands, with the recorded music on the sound system, the frenetic dancing continued. I didn’t mind watching it, but had no desire to participate.
One thing that was good about being so close to the stage was the lack of beer in my area of the hall. It was a long haul back to the bars, especially through the densely packed crowd. As such, drunks seemed few and nobody was spilling drinks on each other. That is, on me. There were photographers taking pictures of the excited and happy crowd. It was still a good, if intense vibe.
Huge security men positioned themselves in front of the stage – not so muscular as just plain large. Lights dimmed and Motorhead hit the stage. Yep – this was different. The cords were gone – this was a wireless outing all the way. The drums were on a highly raised pedestal – and this time it was a double bass drum set-up. Loud? Yes, but not that much different from the other bands. I was glad – it had been a loud enough night for me from note one. I don’t want to downplay the volume. Even though I became resigned to the expected stunning sound levels, I still couldn’t help but notice that my blue jeans felt at times as if they were being blown by a pretty stiff breeze around my ankles. Sounds waves & shock waves. Too damn much. Just as I had expected.
Lemmy’s bass guitar looked to be a modified Rickenbacker – a large, beautiful instrument that seemed to be wrapped in tooled cowhide – somewhat like country artist Hank Snow’s acoustic guitar. Very cool. Lemmy came to the microphone and announced, “We are Motorhead! And we play Rock & Roll!” The crowd screamed approval, and with that the trio roared into the anthem “We Are Motorhead!”
The thing that immediately stuck me was how healthy Lemmy appeared. I was expecting a road weary, bedraggled presence. But Lemmy looked great and was absolutely running the show with strength. The huge, thick sound of his bass carried the songs. The rest of the band also made their presence known, however. Unlike Clutch’s Sult, who stood still and played guitar with head bowed beneath his cap – Motohead’s guitarist Phil Campbell was a showman, striding the boards and repeatedly coming to the very lip of the stage to engage the crowd. In fact, I could have reached him if he and I had both stretched our hands toward each other. But I had no desire to touch him, and I’m also sure that the security guards would have taken exception to this. Campbell had the more traditional style of fast licks played high on the fret board. It wasn’t a Les Paul, but the design of this white guitar was similar. And, as with all of the guitars that night – the strings’ tuning pegs were where they were supposed to be – that is, at the visible end of the fret board. No weird, modern empty sticks for guitars. Not in the world of Metal, which is traditionally conservative in its own way – but they would cut me for saying that.
I didn’t recognize the types of drums that Mikkey Dee played – probably custom jobs. Dee was an energetic drummer who would have been more of a positive presence if we could have actually seen him play. But with such a huge drum set, he was largely hidden from view -- although the few glimpses I got of his face indicated that he was having a great time. A drummer who kept things surprisingly interesting and a hot guitarist who added energy and color to the set were both indispensable, but this was Lemmy’s band and Lemmy’s show all the way. He retained the crowd’s attention all night – the undeniable focal point of the stage.
I did not know any of the songs after the first one, but I assume that many were from the new CD that the band had released that very week, The World is Yours. Earlier in the night, I heard two guys quoting a recent interview with Lemmy about the new release: “Lemmy, why do all of Motorhead’s albums sound alike?” To which Lemmy answered, “It’s the same band.” Those two guys loved that response, as did I when they related the story. And this comment summed-up the evening. The songs were very similar, but also exciting and well executed.
At one point Lemmy announced, “Here is an old one. It’s from 1983 – before you were born!” A girl’s voice behind me protested that this did not apply to her. They played a tune I didn’t know, but I thought it was good that the back catalogue was being acknowledged. I took a pen with me and was planning to take a note or two, but there was no chance of having enough room to do this. I was pretty packed-in, increasingly pushed into the unyielding steel mesh fence. At one point I moved sideways from the fence so a young girl could throw her room key at Lemmy -- in hopes of a post show rendezvous. Witnessing that act was by far the creepiest part of the evening.
The crowd was changing. The mosh pit was expanding. I felt two hard blows. These were not accidental shoves, but some of the folks a few people away were starting to flail themselves recklessly into others. I was the indirect recipient of what was passing for dancing. I had already checked the exits, and it looked like it would be a slow road out of the hall. Having experienced uneasiness at the size of the departing crowds during last year’s Summerfest late one night, I had planned to make my exit before the encore. But now I thought that maybe 45 minutes of Lemmy would suffice for the evening. A couple more strong body blows and I was convinced – time to leave. I started to progress down the metal fence to the side of the crowd. There was a green Exit sign close to the edge of the stage. The crew behind the fence, although still very polite, pointed me away from this exit, around the periphery of the crowd to the far exits. OK -- Probably illegal and undoubtedly a fire department violation, but OK.
In fact, that exit strategy was fine. Being stage side for the whole night, I hadn’t the opportunity to do any people watching. So I slowly wound my way around the outer edge of the crowded, but not impassible ballroom. I was amazed that there was a coat check room in operation. I stopped at the merchandise alcoves for all 3 bands, but didn’t really see anything I wanted. I almost bought a Clutch CD, but they all looked pretty beat-up and road weary for being new copies. As is true at all such gatherings, there were quite a few people there just for the event and not to hear the band. I looked a little more in line with the age of some of these back-of-the-room folks at the bar and those just hanging around.
I wanted to get out before the set ended, so I kept moving. I knew I would miss “Ace of Spades,” which I did want to hear, but that would be near the very end of the show. And I was ready to go. I walked back to the side door where the same people who had initially welcomed me were still there. I told the woman that I had a fine time, but it was getting just a wee bit violent near the stage. She didn’t seem especially shocked at this, but was glad I had a good time, thanked me for coming to the show, and I was out the door. One thing that surprised me on the street was how little of the band sound leaked out of the hall. That was one solid building, now on the National Record of Historic Places. And that seemed appropriate to me as I drove home – after all, it was the historic nature of Motorhead that got me to come to this very “unWilmeth” type of gig, as good friend Pete proclaimed it.
I enjoyed the night; I was not above it; I wanted to be there. I was guilty of raising a fist in the air once or twice in pure excited metal joy and of occasionally pointing at the guitarists in admiration. As Motorhead’s set progressed I saw body surfing up-close and I almost became an unwilling member in a mosh pit. And I escaped unscathed. Who could ask for more?
The next morning, I woke-up feeling like I had been in a minor car wreck. My body ached. My head throbbed; I felt pretty hung over. What the hell? I knew that I had absolutely nothing to drink the previous evening. Ah yes – the Motorhead concert! Of course. My ears rang a bit, especially the left, but not terribly – similar to the aural after effects of a rough plane ride. I went to school to teach my classes. The few colleagues who knew of my plans were intrigued as to whether I really, actually went. I showed tangible evidence by taping the ticket stub to my office door.
“Well?”
“What?”
“So how was it?”
“What?”
“HOW WAS IT?”
“Oh. It was great – had a good time. Glad I went.”
“Do you plan to write something about it?”
“Probably not.”
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Best,
Tom Wilmeth
2/19/11
(262) 243-4218
thomas.wilmeth@cuw.edu
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