Talkin' Bout Our Generation

The Rolling Stones, along with some feedback from friends, got me thinking about the way rock and roll has become interwoven into the fabric of our lives. The Stones’ started things off Sunday morning at Starbucks (where The Who was piped over the sound system). There was Mick staring at me from The New York Times Arts section in a vintage 70’s costume. When I got home, he and Keith and Ron and Charlie were smiling at me (sort of) from the cover of The Post’s TV guide. They had been dialing up folks from Paris to promote their documentary, “Crossfire Hurricane,” opening on HBO November 15 (as well as their book, new CD and arena concerts). Fiftieth anniversaries are golden and the “boys” in the band are still raking it in.

The anecdotes from friends included stories of a summer job in California and nights on the beach listening to Dick Dale and The Del-Tones and of breaking an embargo to play the latest single from the Young Rascals at WERK radio in Muncie, Indiana. Both stories had been prompted by an email or post and I realized how often old friends and I used music to reconnect, share old times and participate (again) in a common experience. This seems more prominent this year as we mark the half century point for the Beatles and Beach Boys as well as the Stones and others (The Who is in town this week on its Quadraphenia Tour, Pete Townshend has his autobiography on bookshelves and Roger Daltrey spoke at the National Press Club.)

Music fans love to debate cosmic questions (is it art?) and make endless lists (desert island discs) but seldom do we step back to see how large the forest has become from all the music trees that have developed since the early 1960’s. For our parents, the common cultural experience was World War II. For the post-war baby boomers, the predominant cultural experience was the influence of rock and roll music. Far more than television or individual historical events, it has been the common thread that so many of us now share.

How else to explain the longevity of the super groups? Or a governor who prides himself on the number of Springsteen concerts he’s been to? Madison Avenue figured this out years ago which is why rock anthems drive television commercials (“Like a rock!”), why movies have used CD collections to replace dialogue, and why you can’t go to a Home Depot or a Safeway without listening to a string of favorite oldies.

In Jon Pareles’ excellent NYT story, Keith sums up the phenomenon of the band in what could be an explanation of the impact of rock and roll on our lives.
“Once we get behind our instruments, there’s something bigger. The sum is greater than the parts. There’s just a feeling that we were meant to do this, we have to do this, and we’re just following the trail.”

So the next time you are debating whether to buy the boxed set of Paul Simon’s 25th anniversary of "Graceland" or the boxed set of 14 classic Beatles albums on vinyl (with 252-page hardbound book) ask yourself this question: What would Margaret Mead do?

A Rascals Review: Forever Young

A brief mention of a Young Rascals reunion concert on an XM radio program sent me deep into my archives and back down memory lane. As a summer intern for The Hartford Times, I got a backstage pass for their concert August 24, 1967 and a byline for one of my first music reviews:

Young Rascals Thrill Fans

All they see are lights—red, blue, green, yellow—changing constantly. Their fortune producing magic runs through a wire. They are the Young Rascals.

Twenty-four hundred people could see them, under the flashing lights, and twenty-four hundred people were turned on by their electronic New Jersey soul music Wednesday night in the Bushnell.

With girls shouting their names whenever the din diminished slightly, the four cats from New Jersey kept Hartford girls in 42 minutes of ecstasy with a medley of their hits.

Sustained by the driving Hammond organ which Felix Cavaliere dances across with both hands and feet, they opened with their first hit “Good Lovin” and followed it with “Grovin” and their current hit, “Girl Like You.”

(On the “lilting, dreamy Grovin”) Felix …leaned over the organ and sang gently into the mike. At several points he raised his arms over his head in a mannerism that looks like a cross between a signal and a religious ritual.

The review goes onto to describe how a groupie had thrown herself at Eddie Brigati backstage, how much drummer Dino Danelli was a dead ringer for Paul McCartney and how Gene Cornish demonstrated his guitar “virtuosity” on the group’s finale, “Kooks.”

This…opened with Felix’s organ at ear-splitting levels and went up from there. The 30-minute piece moved quickly into a jazz form (with each taking solo runs)…The long and beautiful improvisation proved tedious to much of the audience but its originality demonstrated while their singing was at times weak, they will be around for a long time as musicians. The crowd applauded wildly, however, when it was over. The Rascals are still theirs.

The callow reviewer, clearly infatuated by his chance to be backstage, was only partly correct in his forecast. The Rascals broke up in 1970, but their music does live on via classic rock radio. "Groovin" still evokes a wistful, warm summer of ’67 vibe, as does their hit from the next year, “A Beautiful Morning.” And their role in bringing a form of “blue-eyed soul” into the mainstream earned them a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

A couple of interesting trivia notes: The original foursome first played together as members of Joey Dee & The Starliters of Peppermint Twist fame. In 1982 Dino Danelli joined Steve Van Zandt’s Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul.

It was Little Steven who brought about the reunion concert with a Kickstarter campaign that raised $123,000. Once Upon A Dream, described as combination rock concert and Broadway show, is scheduled for December 13, 14 and 15 at the historic Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York. It will be their first appearance together in 40 years.

Wesleyan's Music Mafia

The moments of fame for my alma mater, Wesleyan University, have been fleeting and often for accomplishments outside academia. Dana Delany and Bradley Whitford (a newly elected trustee), Matthew Weiner (Mad Men) and Joss Whedon (Buffy) have cast some Hollywood luster.
Then there is the sports trivia department. “Which college has produced two NFL head coaches?” Answer: Wesleyan University for Bill Belichick and Eric Mangini.

And you may recall this scene from an episode of NBC’s “30 Rock” last season. The subject was Liz Lemon’s new boyfriend who is trying to raise money for a gourmet hot dog wagon in New York City.
Jack: You know, he probably went to Wesleyan.
Liz: You mean the Harvard of Central Connecticut?

Now Wesleyan (the first of some 37 similarly named schools founded by the Methodists in this country) is getting a newly burnished reputation for its graduates making big names and solid careers in the music business.

This current wave probably began in the mid 1990’s with the success of folk and alt-country recording artist, Dar Williams who has toured with Joan Baez and Patti Griffin and whose work prompted The New Yorker to describe her as “one of America’s very best singer-songwriters.” She was followed by Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls who created a performing style described as punk cabaret and pop-new wave singer Santi White whose stage name is Santigold.

Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser began playing guitar and keyboard in a dormitory courtyard for their classmates. Five years later, as MGMT, they were named a Top Ten Artist to Watch by Rolling Stone. Two Grammy nominations followed and in today’s measure of success, You Tube Views, their catchy tunes and psychedelic videos are monster hits. One video for “Kids” shows nearly 40 million views and “Time to Pretend” lists 27 million views.

Their classmates at Wes, Himanshu Suri and Victor Vasquez chose the route of rap and performing as the group Das Racist had similar success via the internet with their first hit, “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.”

The other newcomers, including Bear Hands and Francis and the Lights have combined to give Wesleyan newfound clout in the pop music world. In 2009, The Village Voice headlined an article: “The Wesleyan Mafia: How a Connecticut liberal arts school became the epicenter of surrealist Brooklyn pop.” (If you have heard of someone by the name of Rihanna, it is because Wes alum Carl Sturken discovered her for his company SRP Music.)


Among those who have helped put Wesleyan on the map of American music was John Cage who did two stints as an artist in residence. The sixties also produced John Perry Barlow, co-author of many Grateful Dead hits, and Darius Brubeck, one of the legend’s sons. That decade began with four Wesleyan folk singers who, as The Highwaymen, rowed that boat Michael was in all the way to #1 on the Billboard Charts.

That decade also produced a garage band with perhaps the best moniker of all time. Uranus and the Five Moons was what today we would call a great cover band, able to knock out the hits of the Stones, Chuck Berry, and the Rascals along with blues riffs from BB King and Paul Butterfield. It was music you could dance to and they would play as long as there was beer left in the keg. I am sure that much of my hearing loss was inflicted while listening to them in fraternity living rooms but mere mention of their name brings back some fond memories. To travel to campuses across New England, they bought a 1955 Cadillac hearse, a real measure of rock and roll success.

The End of Summer Concerts

There are a lot of things I will not miss about the end of summer: 50 days of temperatures at 90-plus, power outages, mosquitos or a case of poison ivy. But I will miss the free summer concerts in the park. As a kid, I used to go with my grandparens to Lions Club Park in Zionsville, Indiana. Now they are just down the street and the best music deal around.

Mason District Park (named for George Mason, the Virginian who came up with the idea of a Bill of Rights) is only about ten miles from the White House and two miles from where Lincoln reviewed troops during the Civil War. In those days it was a farm. Today, about 120 acres has been preserved for nature trails, athletic fields, sports courts and playgrounds and a small ampitheater with benches for about 150 people and room to picnic.

Saturday mornings it is home to music and puppet shows for the kids but three nights a week in summer, the venue hosts music from jazz and swing bands to zydeco and blues, folk and rock.

Many of the groups are local which brings out their loyal fans and prompts a lot chatting from the stage. When some of those like Last Train Home have gone on to national stages, the return to Mason Park is a homecoming. Other performers who live near here, like Tom Paxton and Robin and Linda Williams, make it part of their regular circuit, perhaps as a payback to fans who pay good money to see them at local club and in larger venues. Or maybe they just like the intimacy of a small place under the stars where a Tom Paxton can talk about his grandkids and then sing “The Marvelous Toy” for the one millionth time. Or because the band members can dress like the audience in Hawaiian shirts, shorts and sandals. Or the comfort knowing that the aging boomers in the audience will get their historical references and joking asides.

It’s also a place to showcase new material as Robin and Linda did with tunes from “These Old Dark Hills,” including a beautiful break-up ballad, “Arizona” that grabs you with this simple chorus:
We don't hear much news from Arizona
She said she'd be back in the fall
But it's warm and sunny in Sedona
And I don't think she'll be coming back at all

Everyone likes to perform with Robin and Linda (especially Garrison Keillor) and on this evening, they had two amazing musicans. Jim Watson, a veteran of the Red Clay Ramblers was on bass and the fiddle player down from Vermont was Dr. Chris Bashear, a full time veterinarian. (During one long guitar tuning break, he cracked, “Don’t make me start talking about heartworm diseases!”). That segued to their song about a favorite pet, “ Tessie Mae,” which ends on this tribute to The Band’s Levon Helm.

That Bessie girl he once knew
Tessie she sure sounds like you
But Levon had you pegged it seems
Cause Tessie, you're a drunkards dream
You mend me when I spring a leak
You defend me I don't have to speak

Like too many people with good things next door, we are guilty of not taking enough advantage of these concerts but we got to more this year and finished off by discovering another local group that specializes in Celtic music, The Ocean Orchestra. Led by composer and arranger Jennifer Cutting on keyboards and accordions, the group came came dressed as pirates for the evening. That led to Steve Winick’s hilarious sendup of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Modern Major General” as a “A Buccaneer Piratical.”

Our neighborhood music is one of nine summer series sponsored by Fairfax County Parks (plus one drive-in movie site). The concerts are supported by private funds, local businesses and donations at the door. But our taxpayers dollars bought,built and preserve the parks where we get to play in.

So as the day get shorter and colder, I will remember singing under the starts along with my neighbors and Tom Paxton,
And here's to you my ramblin' boy
May all your ramblin' bring you joy
And here's to you my ramblin' boy
May all your ramblin' bring you joy.

John Prine: Poignant and Powerful

On a dusty pew in a vestibule
Sits the Devil playing pocket pool
He’s waiting for the next poor fool
Who forgot that it was Sunday

Whenever I hear a John Prine couplet I never know whether to laugh or cry. Usually I can do both because he is the Zen Master of musical irony. John’s abillity to tug at your heart strings and tickle your funny bones was on full display during the recent evening when he shared the concert bill with Emmy Lou Harris.

Prine doesn’t so much re-invent himself for a tour as he re-tools his sound. This year it is a spare acoustic take provided by David Jacques on bass and Jason Wilber on guitar and mandolin. Looking a bit like nineteenth century undertakers in dark suits, they played serious sounds to accompany’s John’s repertoire of classics.

Here’s a lyric sampling from the evening:

Humidity built the snowman
Sunshine brought him down.

He voted for Eisenhower
Cause Lincoln won the war

Father forgive us for what we must do
You forgive us we'll forgive you
We'll forgive each other till we both turn blue
Then we'll whistle and go fishing in heaven

Prine can move from sublime to ridiculous faster than he can change guitars and that was highlighted in his duets with Emmy Lou. After they did the raunchy, rocking “In Spite of Ourselves” (She gets it on like the Easter Bunny/ He ain’t got laid in a month of Sundays), they crooned the classic, “Angel from Montgomery.”

Prine completely brought the house down as he battled his way through the hysterical, “Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian,”
The steel guitars are playin’
While she’s talking with her hands
Gimme gimme oaka doaka
Make a wish and wanta poka
Just reading this song (www.cowboylyrics.com) will crack you up.

Then as he wrapped up with a solo version of the haunting, “Sam Stone,” I was reminded how many of those protest songs of the sixties and seventies (Your flag decal won’t get you into heaven any more) are still relevant today.

Prine brought everyone back on stage to send us home on an upbeat note with “Paradise” and the satisfaction that once again The Singing Mailman had delivered.

Homecoming for the Queen of Country Rock

When Emmy Lou Harris comes to town, she brings all the traditional keys to a happy wedding…something old, something new, something borrowed and something bluesy.
On a recent summer night at Wolftrap Farm Park, Emmy Lou and John Prine filled the ampitheatre and lawns with fans who had grown up with the country music they helped define and popularize.

For Harris, the Washington area is a true homecoming as her father was stationed here while in the military and it is where she got her start in clubs and bars.
She told how her break came when some guy was looking for a singer to help him recreate the sound of Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty.

After hearing her sing at Clyde’s in Georgetown, he offered her a bus ticket and a spot playing rhythm guitar. That was how she met, “my dear friend Graham Parsons.”

The evening was a perfect blend of her own songs—both old and new—and country standards. Introducing “Making Believe,” she paid tribute to Kitty Wells who made it a hit two decades before that torch was passed to Harris. And she gave a nod to Billy Joe Shaver for “Old Five and Dimers Like Me.” As she has done before with friends from The Seldom Scene, she brought out John Starling (“my favorite singer in the whole world”) to join her on “If I Could Only Win Your Love.”

What was new and impressive were Harris’ own compositions, from the mournful “Red Dirt Girl” (But one thing they don’t tell you about the blues/ When you got em/ You keep on falling cause there ain’t no bottom) to the moving “Ballad of Emmett Till” (I was just a black boy and never hurt no one) on her latest album, “Hard Bargain.” Unlike some of her contemporaries, Harris’ voice has lost none of its richness and when she soloes a chorus of “Aaaaahhh Aaaahhh Aaaahhh,” the sound in the night air is worth the price of admission.

Unlike the days when she traveled with Buddy Miller or had Daniel Lanois’ pulsating drumbeat sound, this year’s group of musicians is truly a backing band. For most of the evening, the spotlight was on Emmy Lou and her singing. One wonderful exception was when the Red Dirt Boys and the lady in charge put down their instruments and did an acapella version of “My Precious Children.” It gave you goose bumps.

The Queen can still bring it after all these years. Whether it was toasting “Two More Bottles of Wine,” rolling home on “Wheels” or steering “Luxury Liner” at warp speed, she proved she can rock whatever part of the country she’s playing.

Musical Oddities from Naptown to Londontown

Maybe it is the continuing heat wave in the dog days of August but there seem to more than the usual number of musical happenings that strike me as slightly off kiilter.

For starters, the elder statesman of American Rap, M.C. Hammer, is giving a free concert tonight at the Indiana State Fair. One hopes his drawing power will attract some paying customers who might have stayed home for fear of contact with flu-infected barrows and gilts. Still, it’s difficult to imagine young men and women skipping 4-H meetings to watch reruns of “Hammertime” on A&E. While his music has become what many would consider mainstream, my request tonight is “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt Em!”

Then of course there was the second musical spectacle of the summer from England. Last night’s closing ceremony was like an endless of loop of Super Bowl halftime shows that had the last day of the Olympics as an excuse for another orgy of dancers, waltzing extras, light shows, fireworks and even some singing. As a tribute to Britain’s musical heritage, it was a cavalcade of stars. As an Olympic event, it seemed comical every time there was an obligatory cutaway to participants dancing in the dark holding medals up to the camera. The disconnect from sports to spectacle reminded me of Robert Sherill’s great book title: “Military Justice is to Justice as Military Music is to Music.”

I suppose it was Britain’s turn to strut its stuff but it sure lacked the restraint and taste of the Queen’s Jubilee concert (where you could actually hear the lyrics) and seemed more like the Disneyfication of England’s Charttoppers. Annie Lennox in a gigantic ghost ship? Giant holograms of Freddie Mercury? The Spice Girls reuniting via London Cabs coated in electronic sequins? Fat Boy Slim spinning discs atop a huge inflatable octopus? Giant truck billboards of super models? What comes after “wretched excess?”

I guess Eric Idle, who can still poke holes in the pomposity by becoming a dud falling out of a cannon and leading a sing-a-long of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”
And whenever anyone revived a Beatles song, it gave the set list some class.

I confess I gave up before The Who made it onstage, only to find out today from the internet that NBC delayed them until midnight so they could air a new sitcom and let local stations do the news. What can you expect from a network that missed chunks of live competitions (volleyball and the men’s basketball final) to air commercials?

A happier note was the music used during the equestrian dressage grand prix. One contestant used the music from Elton John’s Lion King. The gold medalists, Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro performed to a wonderful British collection. It began with the theme from the “Great Escape,” followed by “Live and Let Die” and then segued into Edward Elgar’s “Land of Hope and Glory,” which we commoners would recognize as the “Pomp and Circumstance” march from countless commencements. In between Elgar selections, there were bells rung from Big Ben and the fanfare that has become an Olympics theme.

Their winning “dance” may not have rocked you but it was hauntingly beautiful.