Years ago when Elliott Smith killed himself by stabbing himself in the chest twice with a knife (still not sure how he pulled the knife out & had the power to jam it back in) I was living in Huntington Beach & I remember my neighbor crying as she relayed the news to me. It was then that I knew that music had changed that perhaps we had lost the voice of a generation much in the same way I felt when I heard Kurt Cobain had offed himself. Much like Cobain, Smith’s songs were rife with personal emotion & inside references that we weren’t meant to understand. It was like he was writing his songs for someone like an old balladeer & we were merely eavesdropping.

Daniel Morones of She’s My Mistress is a revelation in the same vein as Smith. His songs, off his as yet untitled album, are conversations & pleas of forgiveness or contentment. He excels where others have not. He is not a Smith copycat, like many have tried to be, but the influence is definitely felt. Morones achieves great things when he sticks to the formula of acoustic guitar & let’s his voice be his greatest instrument.

Where he missteps is when he tries to “rock it out too hard”, to coin a phrase.  His voice is suited for melodic, harmonious folk rock & it is clearly evident that the two or three overproduced anthemic shots in the dark are not his strong suit. While creatively valiant in their structure they are far less personal & seemingly attempts for commercialism.

His cover of Bad Religion’s “Sorrow” is a brilliant decomposition of a song from Punk Rock Gods. Morones knows what will propel his success & it is obvious with songs such as this & “Candle Song”. The classically trained musician who studied under a scholarship in Chapman University’s highly regarded music program shows the jazz influence that clearly inspired the name of his band (Duke Ellington’s autobiography was entitled “Music is my Mistress”).

While a still unfinished album, Morones’ demos are a brilliant blueprint for a debut. It would behoove him, however, to realize that his voice is such that heavier songs he attempts would be better left to late night jam sessions with friends while inebriated instead of on the album. “A Hundred Zillion Dollars” is the song I speak mainly of as a song that could be slowed down & seems to strain what is a fantastic voice. That being said, it is clear that She’s My Mistress is destined for great things & actually get points for trying out different genres in an attempt to find a voice. Daniel Morones has found his voice & that voice could easily influence a generation much in the same way as Elliott Smith, Josh Ritter & Kurt Cobain assuming he stays away from sharp objects or shotguns.

She’s My Mistress

Sorrow

A Thousand Zillion Hundred  Dollars

Candle Song

As life continues to fluctuate in & out for me I came across a frequent nemesis from my bar tending days at Frankie’s Restaurant in Hollywood…Frank Sinatra. Tending bar while Frank Sinatra blared throughout the restaurant nearly killed any chance I would ever listen to another Sinatra song without cringing. Then tonight as I lay here for nightly worry session before falling asleep, Frank spoke to me through my I-Pod’s shuffle function. “Ol  Man River” as unconventional a Sinatra song if there ever was one.

If ever a song meant more to me at a point in my life I have already filed it away in my mind file. The file that makes time machines out of songs, escorting me back to a moment in a moment in my life when that song was the soundtrack of a milestone.

“What’s Up” by Four Non Blondes were there singing in the background in Gina Hubbard’s bedroom when I realized that I was in love for the first time. Consequently, every time I hear that song I think of her dark brown hair, her deep brown eyes & every curve of her bronze skin. It takes me back to a time when life was simpler. When in the Summer of ‘93 I fell in love with a girl that would eventually become the first girl to break my heart.

“Ol Man River” speaks to em in a different way. The song plays like an old Negro spiritual as the Narrator speaks of how hard he works picking cotton & “plantin’ taters” but how his hard work is to no avail. He yearns to get away, to escape his bondage. Then he sees the river & envies it. It has stories to tell, but won’t share with the Narrator. “He just keeps movin’ along”. Water, the giver of life, has a secret that can’t be shared. The river does not suffer the indignities of hard back-breaking labor that no cares about.

So how does this fit into my life? I, too, see that river at times. Obviously not in the same context as the Narrator, I do long to get away. I, too, daydream of escaping some place where I can just be like that “Ol’ Man River”. I think of things often in black & white terms not in terms of race, but more in terms of generalities. However, when things get bad you find yourself being more open to gray areas. I see that “Ol’ Man River” now & I envy him as well. I see that river just keep rollin’ along without a care & wish I could see the things he sees, the secrets he holds.

As a people when hit hard with crisis we look for someone to help us. Often times we seek refuge from those we put in elected positions but they seek not to help the people, but merely to keep getting elected. There is another faction that seeks help from religion. It would be fashionable for me as a frequent critic of organized religion & a Catholic School survivor to condemn this practice as a bunch of fools letting hokie superstitions cloud reality, but when times get tough & I have seemingly nowhere else to turn I too will take that time machine back to my days as a Catholic School student & say a quick prayer or two hoping there’s someone out there that hears them.

Times indeed are tough. Circumstances are dire & we are truly at a fork in the road. We’ve been here before, though. We will come out of tough time much like our Grandparents did before us in their Depression. I won’t happen overnight, things rarely do, but much like that “Ol’ Man River” we will keep rollin’ along.

If you listen hard enough to that “Ol’ Man River” he’ll spill his secrets. He’ll tell you that the worrying, the ambivalence, the acceptance of things that are patently unjust can no longer be accepted. We will come out of this tougher, wiser, more resilient & eventually thankful for the knowledge that this experience will garner.

“I get’s weary. I’m so sick of tryin’. I’m tired of living, but I’m feared of dyin’. And Ol’ Man River he just keeps Rollin’ along”

You must make a decision at this fork in the road. Are you going to continuously be envious of that Ol’ Man River or will you jump in & see where he takes you? For one of the first times in my life I’m taking the plunge. I’m sick of being an observer while others succeed. I hope you’ll join me.

Frank Sinatra – Ol’ Man River – Live 1968 Oakland Coliseum

Frank Sinatra-  Ol’ Man River

People rave about how good the Temptations were. They wax poetically on how great their sound was & how they innovated that ’60’s Motown sound. The truth, however, is that The Four Tops while not as widely recognized are in fact just as good if not better than the Temptations. This, though, is not a comparison piece, it is merely a testament to the effect of the Four Tops in the evolution of soul music.

The Four Tops lead singer Levi Stubbs had the voice of a gravely angel as he raspily sang songs such as: “Standing in the Shadows of Love”, “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch” & my favorite “Bernadette”. The problem the Four Tops face is that their music doesn’t necessarily translate to today’s society as their most popular song the aforementioned “Sugar Pie, Honey bunch” is filled with slang & colloquialisms of that time. This does not take away from the affection of the song, just makes it less palatable to this generation.

Soul music today, has been bastardized to the point of nearly no return. It has formed a partnership with Rap/Hip-Hop which is fine in that music must constantly evolve  but in some instances, this being one of them, a genre can lose it’s value to the point that it’s completely worthless. This is the case with modern Soul/R&B with a few exceptions, John Legend, Amos Lee, James Hunter & perhaps Jill Scott being those exceptions. They are far & few between, though. The Four Tops exemplified that harmonious street corner sound of 60’s soul.

Where Sam Cooke took gospel to new heights, the Four Tops took that soul sound & created a genre that the Temptations followed. it was the Four Tops, though, that from their inception in 1953 to their end in 1997 that not once had a personnel change. It was the sound of the Four Tops that created Motown. The Four Tops begot the Temptations & the Supremes who begot Marvin Gaye & Tammy Terrel. It was from this quartet that Soul escaped the Blues/Jazz/Gospel sound of the ’50’s & for better or worse became a marketable entity for white America in the ’60’s.

The ’50’s sound of gospel was very close to Blues & the Negro spiritual anthems that were the forebearers to R&B/Soul that Berry Gordy, in collaboration with The Four Tops among others, perfected. My contention  is merely that the Four Tops are simply not given the credit for which they so rightly deserve. The emotion that Stubbs sings with in the beautiful “Bernadette” about his longing for the girl that he adores & how he fears losing her to the “other men”, is palpable.

The Temptations are certainly more polished than the Four Tops. They go down easier. The Temptations are great in their own right, don’t get me wrong, but they are simply not as good as the Four Tops. Whereas the Four Tops are coffee black, the Temptations are 2 creams & a little sugar (nothing to do with race, sycophants).

The difference is & we’ll use the example of “Bernadette” once again, is the crescendo in the music as Stubbs goes right along with it. The music hits it’s peak just as Stubbs hits his, it’s brilliance is all consuming as you can sense the feelings in his voice getting more desperate as the song goes along. He pleads with “Bernadette” to “tell the world” of their love. Begging her to not leave him for the “other men” by expressing all the feelings of adoration he feels for her. All he wants is her to keep on loving him & then the best part when you think the song is going to end & Stubbs screams out her name without any accompaniment as one last plea for her to feel the pain he would feel if he were to lose her again to the “other men”.

It is music like this that should be recognized as the epoch of R&B brilliance, but instead they are a footnote to the easily digestible Temptations. It is my goal as a lover of the purity of all forms of music that they should be as widely recognized as the Temptations or the Supremes or even Marvin Gaye. The Four Tops live in the hearts & minds of those that have experienced their enduring legacy & learned from their example of stability & brilliance.

THE FOUR TOPS

Bernadette

Don’t Walk Away Renee

It’s the Same Old Song

I have this standing offer to any band to send me some of their material & I will listen to it & give a fair critique. Now, obviously I won’t love everything & there are times where I will downright hate it (see: Jonathan Levi Band), but for whatever it’s worth I will always be fair. That’s where the Goodbye’s come in…I was actually tweeted about their existence. Someone said you should check this band out. Then while looking for them noticed that they were already following me…small world.

I would love to say they’re from here or their first gig was here, but honestly I can not seem to find out much information about them except that right now they are unsigned. That’s a mistake that I’m sure will be rectified. They have a very distinct sound that cuts through the malaise that seems to be enveloping the music world right now. To me they’re very reminiscent of Sugar Cult, but when they became good not when they were a pop-punk nightmare.

The Goodbyes are a band that exemplifies what the post-punk era should be about while still sticking to a under 4 minute song formula. I thoroughly enjoy their album & I’m sure you will as well. Check them out here & here.

Maybe – The Goodbyes

Penny – The Goodbyes

For this bootleg Thursday I bring you “The Birdman Sessions”. In the spring of 2000 while in Miami at the studio of Sean “Birdman” Gould. As the story goes, Gould bumped into Eddie at a bar on South Beach and offered an open invitation to record. Eddie Vedder spent a drunken night in the studio with a few random musicians recording off-the-wall covers.

The session was dubbed “The Birdman Sessions”, and copies of the recordings were made for all of the participants. Copies of these tapes eventually leaked out amongst the Pearl Jam trading elite, and it stayed amongst those elite for quite a while.

What came out of the “Birdman Sessions” were covers of Tom Petty’s “American Girl”, Radiohead’s “Creep” & the Doors “Roadhouse Blues”. They aren’t the best of Eddie’s work, but they show that he has a firm grasp of both his fore-bearers & his contemporaries. The vocals are a little too high & the instruments are a little too low, but it still makes for interesting listening.

There are some odd answering machine messages that I’ll include as well. One where Eddie is apologizing for something & the other where he calls the “Birdman” from Spain. They almost sound like he drunk dialed Gould, but he’s very considerate & congenial & in a weird way sounds like Johnny Depp in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s a nice little collection for any true Pearl Jam fan.

My absolute favorite song on the Bootleg is “Hunger Strike” though & truth be told I actually like it more than the original with Chris Cornell & not because he made a shitty album with Timbaland. It seems like the background voices aren’t fighting each other for control of the song like they do in the original. They just nicely compliment one another which is exactly the way it should be.

THE BIRDMAN SESSIONS

American Girl

Creep

Let’s See Action

Roadhouse Blues

That Feel

Answering Machine Message #1

Hunger Strike

Perfect Girl

Running Out of Time

‘Cheers’

Against the ’70’s

Answering Machine Message #2

I’ve been reading a lot more recently, much about Bob Dylan. What I don’t understand is why every song the man wrote must be dissected to the point that there are classes that are meant to figure out the meanings of his songs? Dylan is a brilliant writer. He is the seminal poet of our parents generation & for that matter ours as well. It is not a far off distinction to compare him to Keats or Dylan Thomas. However, does that mean that every word he writes should mean something? I’ve read numerous articles & books extolling his life as one big mystery for us to solve. Perhaps, it’s time to let the man be. Perhaps, it’s time to just enjoy the music without trying to make it fit something.

This is a major theme when it comes to music. Does a song become worthless if it does not suit your purpose of meaning? For instance, what if you loved the song, “Martha, My Dear” from the Beatles’ White Album until you found out that Paul McCartney wrote it about his Old English Sheepdog & not Jane Asher as everyone suspected? Would that change your opinion of the song? I’m guilty of this as well & I’m not saying there aren’t some songs that are directly related to an event or person. Sometimes, though, songs are just good writing about nothing in particular.

Often people need a song to mean something so that they can relate it to their own life & their own personal struggles. It’s a coping mechanism that makes the music so much more personal. Good music is supposed to be personal & much like life itself the search for meaning is essential to our evolution. It’s why people turn to religion, higher knowledge & in some instances drugs. We are all yearning for a higher ethereal plain to find that intricate thing that separates us from the animals so that we don’t feel like this life is just some cosmic clusterfuck in which we just meander through.

Music & writing lends to us others feelings & brilliance so that we may equate that to our own personal experiences. It is in these experiences that we turn to the artist & try to figure out his/her meaning. It is what drove Dylan to create the Motorcycle crash mythology that led to a 7 year touring hiatus. It is what pushed J.D. Salinger underground. That feeling that says I’m just a writer/musician don’t look to me for guidance, look to yourself.

I have been on a Bob Dylan kick lately & it pretty much culminated in me listening to Blood on the Tracks & reading about this was about Dylan’s marriage & divorce to his wife Sara. It is a brilliant album, perhaps my favorite as it holds at times a melancholic view of the relationship & at others a romantic nostalgic view of something that meant a great deal to him at least at one point.

A few years they toyed with the idea of getting remarried but it never happened. All 10 songs on the album were originally recorded at New York City sessions produced by Phil Ramone. With Columbia set to release the LP, Dylan pulled back at the last minute, and at year’s end re-recorded five of its songs in Minneapolis with a crew of area session musicians assembled by his brother, David Zimmerman. All but one (“Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”) of the scrapped New York songs have seen official release. The New York version of “You’re a Big Girl Now” was released on 1985’s Biograph. The other three (“Tangled Up in Blue”, “Idiot Wind”, and “If You See Her, Say Hello”) were released on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3 in 1991. Also included on that box set was “Call Letter Blues”, an outtake from the New York sessions.

Dylan’s fans theorize endlessly about his reasons for revamping the album, with one unconfirmed view being that the musical feel of the album had been monotonous, with too many songs in the same key and the same languid rhythm. It has also been said that, just two weeks before the release of Blood on the Tracks, Dylan played an acetate of the record for his brother, his ensuing comments leading Dylan to re-cut the album.

Told of the album’s lasting popularity, Dylan was later to say (in a radio interview by Mary Travers): “A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It’s hard for me to relate to that. I mean, it, you know, people enjoying the type of pain, you know?”

THE NEW YORK SESSIONS of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks is this week’s bootleg Thursday post. It has quite a few different recordings of classic songs that many will find enlightening or different but not monotonous in any way. This includes Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts which before today has been previously unreleased.

Tangled Up in Blue

Simple Twist of Fate

You’re a Big Girl Now

Idiot Wind

You’re Gonna Make me Lonesome When You Go

Meet Me in the Morning

Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts

If You See Her Say Hello

Shelter From the Storm

Buckets of Rain

This from the AP,

The story that a little boy had floated away in a giant helium balloon was a hoax concocted to land a reality television show, authorities said Sunday, and the boy’s parents will likely face felony charges.The stunt two weeks in the planning was a marketing ploy by Richard and Mayumi Heene, who met in acting school in Hollywood and have appeared on the ABC reality show “Wife Swap,” Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden said. The Heenes have reportedly been working on a reality TV deal in Los Angeles.

Excuse the language, but Fuck these people. I wasted my time watching this fucking balloon thinking some kid was in there & wasting my feelings & good will & even though I’m pretty much Agnostic with a hint of Atheism I spoke aloud,”please don’t let anything happen to this little boy.” & it was a fucking hoax!!!??? I hope they nail these mother fuckers to the wall. Wah! they’ll put they’re kids in an orphanage!! Good!

Any shit bag that takes pleasure in exploiting & teaching his kids to lie, trick & be deceitful enough to lie to an astounding amount of good natured people who watched in horror as this balloon coasted through the sky with the thought that a 6 year old was inside deserves to lose their fuckin’ kids. I have 0 sympathy for them in any regard. I have wasted all my sympathy & hopeful thoughts on a hoax. Nothing angers me more than being lied to & deceive

Felix Adler once said, “The human race may be compared to a writer. At the outset a writer has often only a vague general notion of the plan of his work, and of the thought he intends to elaborate. As he proceeds, penetrating his material, laboring to express himself fitly, he lays a firmer grasp on his thought; he finds himself. So the human race is writing its story, finding itself, discovering its own underlying purpose, revising, recasting a tale pathetic often, yet none the less sublime.”

Is this our base essence? Have we devolved to this extreme?  Is this what the extremely rapid evolution of Technology has come down to?

or is it more like Gandhi said, “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”?

Are these just bad drops in the larger ocean? Are people inherently good, but with distractions they become misdirected? What will the future inhabitants of this Earth think of us compared to past generations? The 60’s are revered as a tenuous era in a radically changing society. What will we be known for Jon & Kate…Perez Hilton…fucking balloon boy?

Bruce Springsteen has been a favorite of mine since I can remember. His music more than any other artist since Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger best describes America. The heartbreaking feeling one gets when you listen to a sad Bruce song or the exuberant feeling you get in a happy Bruce song is palpable in everything he does. Bruce Springsteen is a brilliant musician & lyricist.

So to show you an example of that brilliance on this Bootleg Thursday I offer you one of the earliest performances of Bruce Springsteen, 1975 at The Main Point on Lancaster Ave. in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

The Main Point was formed in 1964 by Jeanette Campbell as a small folk-based coffeehouse venue. The venue was popular among both musicians and listeners. Dan Fogelberg cited the venue as one of his two favorite places to perform^.

The venue was popular for not only its music, but also for its homemade food and homebaked goods. The venue constantly ran into financial troubles related to its intimate size (ironically, its size was what made it so popular). Musicians gave benefit concerts for the coffeehouse to help it out of its financial straits. Some of these concerts were broadcast over the local progressive rock radio station WMMR, and many well known bootleg recordings have been made from these performances. The Main Point finally closed its doors in 1981.

The caliber of the performers, coupled with the intimate venue, resulted in many memorable performances. One concert stands out as a particularly legendary event. On February 5, 1975, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band played at The Main Point. Springsteen played for 160 minutes, offering epic versions of “New York City Serenade” and “For You”. The concert also featured the first live performance of “Thunder Road”, under its earlier title, “Wings for Wheels”. The concert was given as a benefit, broadcast over WMMR, and hosted by deejay Ed Sciaky.

Bruce Springsteen February 5, 1975 at the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

Incident of 57th Street

Mountain of Love (first performance)

Born to Run

Intro to E-Street Shuffle

E-Street Shuffle

Wings for Wheels (Would later become Thunder Road – First performance)

I Want You (Bob Dylan Cover)

Spirit in the Night

She’s the One

Growin’ Up

It’s Hard to be a Saint in the City

Jungleland

Kitty’s Back

New York City Serenade

Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)

4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy)

A Love So Fine

For You

Back In The USA (Chuck Berry cover)

I come from a long line of military people in my family. Uncles (My Uncle Manuel was in Vietnam, Uncle Phil was dodging bullets in Grenada in the 80’s) Cousins (My cousin Eric fought in Operation Desert Storm & was photographed with General Schwarzkopf, lost my cousin Seth in Iraq a couple of years ago) & my Grandfather (My Grandfather holed up in a cave for 3 days in the Philippines in WWII with a bullet wound in his leg). So, needless to say,  I have a strong affinity for the welfare of soldiers. Which is probably why I’ve been in a perpetual state of 80’s rewind this week as I can’t get enough of “Love Vigilantes’ by New Order.

It speaks of a soldier returning from the war & all he wants is to see his wife & child. He speaks of being proud to be able to put his life on the line for his country & glad that he’s alive to see it again. He then discovers that when he gets home his wife is in tears because she was informed of his death. For all intents & purposes the song ends there.

It is rare today outside of hokey country music songs that we have songs that share things from the side of the soldier. Though, I will say this, we have come a long way as a country since Vietnam. The condemnation of soldiers for going somewhere they have no choice in going to is never acceptable. I’m not trying to get on a soapbox & tell people how to act, but I find it telling that we as a country care so much about our soldiers now. We should.

Throughout history we have been regaled with stories of bravery from the Knights of the Round Table, General Sherman’s Troops in the Civil War, the Great Roman Troops of Julius Caesar to today’s brave young men.They do what we cannot. They risk their lives for complete strangers, for an idea that the country is bigger than the self. It is the most noble of causes to sacrifice oneself for the greater good. Something many of us could not fathom as we sit in our comfortable, air conditioned rooms.

Robert E. Lee said:

What a cruel thing is war:  to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.

We continue to send young men to their deaths for our ideals. As a writer it is my duty to take a stand on one side or the other, but herein lies the conundrum I face. On the one hand is the family tradition of brave soldiers who feel the weight of war on their backs & live with that burden daily & yet on the other I despise war. I find it to be an awful way to find peace. To kill for peace is to seek the lowest form of compromise.I condemn war for all that is, but I adore those that give their young lives to save mine.

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”  – George McGovern

“The military don’t start wars.  Politicians start wars.” – William Westmoreland

Love Vigilantes – New Order

Love Vigilantes – Laura Cantrell

Love Vigilantes – Voxtrot