More ‘Strobo Trip’

 

Clocking-in at 6 hours, I figured that The Flaming Lips’ song, “I Found A Star On The Ground” is so mind-bogglingly long it warranted slightly longer consideration.

 

I’m picking up on the track from where I left off last night, after being forced to retire. I mean, who, these days, has the potential to devote six consecutive hours of their life to listen to one song? Kids with a few tabs of acid and no commitments, that’s who.

 

Nine years back, The Flaming Lips flirted with the mainstream when they scored a hit with, “Do You Realize??” from their wonderfully titled, ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’. It lured the listener in with it’s opening line, “Do you realize, that you have the most beautiful face”, before revealing a truth nobody likes to entertain. “Do you realize, that everyone you know, someday, will die.”

The Flaming Lips, it would seem, like messing with our heads.

 

Around a decade earlier, they were a hot ticket in the (alleged), Alternative scene, with a peculiar single called, “She Don’t Use Jelly”.

 

The Flaming Lips are a contemporary image of what The Grateful Dead represented in the 60s, around the time they recast the image of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury as the world’s Hippie heartland.

 

They’ve released their share of melodic Stoner-Pop over the years, but its their equally shared aspirations to musique concrete that are given free reign on their latest EP. Lest one forget, The Flaming Lips have, for many years, been viewed with Keith Richards-like awe, vis-à-vis their appetite for various chemical entertainment devices. Or, to put it another way, Wayne Coyne does for Acid what Sam Kekovich does for Australian Lamb.

 

If there were any doubt, the band’s recent, “The Flaming Lips With Lightning Bolt EP”, released in July, offered songs like, “I’m Working At NASA On Acid” and “I Want To Get High But I Don’t Want Brain Damage”.

 

The new, ‘Strobo-Trip EP’ is more of the same in some respects. Its inclusion of the world’s first 6-hour Stoner Rock epic notwithstanding, ‘Strobo-Trip’ is a marketing coup in its employment of multi-media. We live in a world where marketing music is made more difficult by the ease of digital duplication. The record alone is barely enough anymore.

 

So, with the remaining synapses that do connect, The Flaming Lips conceived a device called the ‘Strobo-Trip Light Phase Illusion Toy’. It’s a chicken and egg debate as to which is meant to be more important, the toy, or the accompanying EP. One is intended to compliment the other, after all.

 

Earlier this week, Wayne Coyne introduced the toy to a handful of shoppers at a record store in Portland, Oregon, selling the packages for $45. There will be more of this limited edition on the way but the entire project reeks of exclusivity. Small wonder, people are prepared to part with their money.   

 

The package contains a strobe light and a small disc, which you are supposed to set spinning. The disc, according to Coyne, in a recent interview (with a big magazine), “has these little animations on it that kind of come to life when you put this strobe light on it.” And the music? Well, that’s what you listen to for the, presumably, endless hours of fun you derive from the toy.

 

Not included in the package but equally important to it’s enjoyment is the LSD. In the same interview (with the big magazine), Coyne further explained the band’s M.O.: “You know, that’s kind of our intention, so that people will buy it at, like, a festival, and then go back their parents’ and take some acid and play with it all night.”

 

Doubtless, Wayne is lobbying to be the pin-up boy for parents, everywhere.

 

As I mentioned earlier, the key track on the ‘Strobo Trip EP’ is, “I Found A Star On The Ground”, and thus far, it’s only claim to notoriety is it’s astonishing duration. But, is it any good? You know as well as I, the answer is entirely subjective. In six hours you will hear passages of sounds not unlike the 2 minutes of white noise Zappa used on the track, ‘Weasels Ripped My Flesh’. You will hear passages not unlike the industrial cacophony of Lou Reed’s ‘Metal Machine Music’. You will hear passages where a list of names are recited and where the song’s title, is invoked as a mantra, over a clash of instruments all playing in conflicting time signatures. And you will hear it rise and ebb for 6 continuous hours.

 

Like Eno’s Ambient soundscapes, this music is for the purpose of enhancing one’s environment. Think of it then, as a Dissonant soundscape. You don’t dance to this music (if you’re tripping, maybe), and neither is it conducive to meditation.

 

Is it Art? Most certainly, and whilst not without it’s rewards, “I Found A Star On The Ground” presents a marathon, and a challenging one.

 

Remember when you first heard “Revolution No.9” and you thought The Beatles had finally lost it? And how you still forensically studied it, searching for the clues confirming the death of Paul McCartney? Discovering “I Found A Star On The Ground” is a bit like that.

 

Interestingly, a guest collaborator on the piece turns out to be Sean Lennon. As a musician, Sean has never impressed me as anything more than a noodler. In the company of The Flaming Lips, he has been afforded a canvas of self-indulgence so large it must even impress his famous, multi-media mother.

And reflecting on the precursory influence of, “Revolution No.9”, I’m guessing, his dad would be extremely proud as well.

 

Whether “I Found A Star On The Ground” is deemed by critics to be good, terrible, or otherwise, is irrelevant. What makes “I Found A Star On The Ground” stand out as Art, is the bodacious grandiosity of its scale and its innovative use of a virtually limitless digital medium. The technological limits of vinyl, tape and CD formats have been swept away in the tide of progress. The potential for new innovations in both the way music is made and the perceived limits of its duration are up all for grabs, and pointing the way, is a weird little strobe light.

 

I Found A Star On The Ground

Remember when Richard Harris released “MacArthur Park” and The Beatles released “Hey Jude”? Remember when Don McLean released “American Pie”? Top 40 radio had an unwritten but universally held law, that a Pop song should not exceed 3 minutes in duration.

 

Less than 3 was preferable but if it was more than 30 seconds over, it had virtually no chance of airplay.

A couple of years earlier, Phil Spector dared to poke the beast with a stick by releasing The Righteous Brothers’ single, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”. Employing all the guile of a snake oil salesman, he printed a duration of 3:05 on the label when in truth, it ran a full 40 seconds longer.

Radio was suckered and allegedly never forgave him for it, despite it being a number-one hit.

 

I can distinctly remember one station in Adelaide introducing what it had the brass to call, “Hey Jude – Part One”, and simply fading-out the 7-minute, globe-rodgering epic just as Macca’s “Na-na-na-nah” refrain was reaching its climactic pitch. Such sacrilege wasn’t about to wash with Beatles fans, however. Radio’s psychological 3-minute threshold was universally relaxed, soon after. The path made clear for future epics like “American Pie” and “Stairway To Heaven” to be played in their entirety.

 

In the ‘70s, long tracks were the stamp of credibility for any self-respecting Prog band. Everyone knew about “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” back in the day but then, Jethro Tull came up with their first landmark, “Thick As A Brick”.

Ostensibly, one song, but because of the limitations of the vinyl format, split in half over a single LP record. It was innovative, sure, but not unique. “Tubular Bells”? Don’t even get me started.

 

The next time such a major forward step would be made, was in 1985. Driven by my infatuation with Eno’s, “Music For Airports”, I picked up a copy of “Thursday Afternoon” the week it came out. The remarkable thing about it was that Eno (Rock Music’s own ‘Man from the Future’) had released a single track on the then still infant CD format, which ran, uninterrupted, for 60 minutes. Like most of Eno’s Ambient works, though, “Thursday Afternoon” was music to inhabit rather than experience, and in 1985, only the audiophiles and trainspotters showed any interest.

 

Today, I discovered that all those flexing attempts at pushing the boundaries of duration (and audience tolerance) have been rendered utterly redundant. Even John Cage, with his audacious 1952 composition, “4’33” cannot match the extraordinary reach of what I am listening to, right now.

 

Where John Cage was moved to filter his concept of Minimalism through muslin the equivalent of a Black Hole to arrive at a composition in three movements comprising 4 minutes and 33 seconds of complete silence, Wayne Coyne has achieved the unthinkable.

 

His band, The Flaming Lips, have just released their fifth EP for the year. It’s called, ‘Strobo Trip’ and it has 3 tracks on it. The most astonishing (and I do not use the word frivolously) thing about it is that the second track, “I Found A Star On The Ground” is 6 hours long.

 

Are you still with me?

 

Yeah, read that again.

 

I’ve been listening to it all evening, and I’ve just hit the halfway mark. It is, without a doubt, the most overconfident musical expression I will hear this year and probably, next year as well. You may never get to hear “I Found A Star On The Ground”. Perhaps you wouldn’t wish to. But know that it’s out there.

 

No doubt, I’ll have more to say when it’s over but like the song, the length of this post, may also be testing the boundaries.

 

And it’s been so long since the last one.

 

The Majestic Silver Strings

Many are already aware of my great love of Americana. It’s that enormo-niche which, I believe, embodies the absolute, truest essence of American music.

As an Australian, and thus, an outsider, I also get to believe that it embodies an America of which, many Americans are not even aware. And if they are, they probably think of it as being something else. To someone like me, Americana, is as much a state of mind as it is a style of music. A hazy, mythical environment found only on the way to somewhere else. A place, every bit as mythical as that “somewhere” Australians call the Outback. A place people can speak of but never really go to. Proverbially, it lies beyond the black stump. Like the fabled Outback, the concept of Americana exists primarily in a world of imagery. It exists in the world of David Lynch films. But mainly, it exists in music.

 

And the locale, like the music, is not so easy to pinpoint.

 

It’s kinda Country but not that bullshit hat-wearin’ kind. It’s Blues but not of the modern, urbane variety. It’s Folk music, but not the collegiate sweater wearing style, or from any place remotely called, Honalee. It’s Bluegrass, Hillbilly, Cajun and Zydeco but by way of inference, rather than, specifically.

 

Americana is that place where civilization gives way to desert. Where stones crunch underfoot and the horizon shimmers in the heat. Where dust endlessly rises, settles, and rises again on the eddying breezes.

 

On long car journeys as a kid, I’d bug my parents by asking, “Are we there yet?” knowing perfectly well, we weren’t. Instead, we were usually in just the kind of place I’m talking about.

 

Some musicians get it, and as a fan, they win my greatest respect, for bringing all that mythical imagery to life. It gives me reason to believe that someone actually has been to these places I can only have ever imagined. These are real musicians, who understand the sound of wide-open spaces, and allow their music to swell with the emptiness. The notes are important but the air between them is vital if a song is to be allowed to breathe.

 

A perfect example of this, is by a small ‘s’ supergroup of players you may never have heard of, including Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot, brought together by Buddy Miller, a man who is himself, one of the best in the business. The group is called The Majestic Silver Strings and when you watch the clips below, you’ll see, they are not being boastful without reason. No one could argue with Clapton, Bruce and Baker when they adopted the name, Cream. Likewise, no one can dispute that this gathering of silver strings players is anything less than majestic.

 

Known to you, or not, these cats are what people refer to as, “musician’s musicians”. They know what they’re doing. Watch the clip below and you’ll know, in an instant, that there were no costume changes during this show, no auto-tuned vocals, no lip-synching to compensate for possible flaws. This is high-flying trapeze artistry without a net. And it’s awesome to behold.

 

When I was a kid, I often heard Roger Miller songs on the radio. Songs like “King Of The Road”, which I actually grew to appreciate more as I got older, and songs like “Do-Wacka-Doo”, which proved the opposite. There was the nod to the British Invasion in, “England Swings”, which still has it’s naïve charm. And then there was that other one, “Dang Me”, with a chorus that rolled so easily from the lips, but verses I never bothered to get close to. Until now.

 

I must have heard Roger Miller’s version of that song a million times but after the take by The Majestic Silver Strings, I was left trying to fathom Miller’s reasons for writing a song of such deep pain and self-loathing and then tossing it off as a Top-40 novelty tune.

 

Sure, his masterpiece, “King Of The Road” allowed it’s hobo protagonist to hold his head high by having the inside edge on the man in the street in knowing “every lock that ain’t locked when no-one’s around”. But “Dang Me” never, ever, sounded so dark as it does in the hands of these guys.

 

Even the throwaway poetic license of Miller’s original, rhyming purple with “maple syrple” is not permitted entry to lighten the mood. The interplay of the three guitars on the track is that edge of the desert sound I was trying to allude to earlier and the blistering solo is just the sort of thing that is missing from anything you’ll hear on Robbie Robertson’s new album, even with Clapton in the room.

 

Please check this out, and try and tell me I’m wrong:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOT2RglJEw8

“Dang Me” – The Majestic Silver Strings

 

Both “Dang Me”, and the album’s opener, a version of Eddy Arnold’s 1963 tune, “Cattle Call” were featured in this week’s edition of ‘Just Released’ (the new radio show I’m co-hosting with Bill on ABC Digital). If you missed it today, maybe you’ll catch the Sunday afternoon encore broadcast.

 

Better still, go and buy a copy of ‘The Majestic Silver Strings’ album from your favourite record store while it’s still in business. If there’s anything remotely resembling my idea of Americana in your own collection, Buddy Miller’s band can only help improve its cred.

 

As a bonus, here’s another track that appears on the album. Sure, it’s a cover version of a George Jones song. Sure, it’s a Country number. But hey, it swings! And besides, do you see a hat anywhere? …Nope.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDM6nnDdJ4U

“Why Baby Why” – The Majestic Silver Strings

 

 

Robert’s Birthday

It’s Robert Johnson’s birthday.

More to the point, it’s his centenary.

The man known as the King of the Delta Blues was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi on the 8^th of May 1911 and lived a mere 27 years. That fact in itself is enough to give him notoriety, as he is generally considered the first member of the 27 Club, that growing list of musicians who had the distinct misfortune to check out at the age of 27 and remain, in the eyes of their fans, forever young. The list includes other such luminaries as Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Al “Blind Owl” Wilson of Canned Heat, Pete Ham of Badfinger, and Kurt Cobain. In 1938, Robert Johnson became the club’s inaugural member.

 

But there was more than his untimely death that made Robert Johnson a legend. During his lifetime Johnson’s success as a recording artist was modest, at best. The record business was merely a shadow of what it would later become and as an itinerant, African-American rural Blues musician, his releases were considered Race records, aimed squarely at the local music buying public in the South.

 

He only recorded 29 songs and just 11 of those were issued during his lifetime. In fact, he may well have fallen into obscurity were it not for an album of his rediscovered songs that was released in 1961, under the title, ‘King Of The Delta Blues Singers’. The album is now considered one of the most influential Blues albums ever released.

"King Of The Delta Blues Singers"

That influence touched on many of our contemporary music heroes including Fleetwood Mac founder, Peter Green, who has recorded every song in Johnson’s legacy. Robert Plant was another. That whole “squeeze my lemon, til the juice runs down my leg” line from Led Zeppelin’s “Lemon Song” was straight out of Johnson’s “Traveling Riverside Blues”.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecwW2fX1Yew

“Traveling Riverside Blues” – Robert Johnson

 

Brian Jones introduced Keith Richards to that Johnson album as well, prompting Keith to ask, “Who’s the other guy playing with him?” before coming to realise that there was only one person playing the guitar. The Rolling Stones would go on to record the best contemporary versions of two of Johnson’s songs, “Stop Breaking Down” on ‘Exile On Main Street’ and two outstanding versions of “Love In Vain” on both ‘Let It Bleed’ and the live album, ‘Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!’

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV6hqtD4rwc

“Love In Vain” – The Rolling Stones (1969)

 

The staunchest advocate for Robert Johnson, however, has always been Eric Clapton. At various times in his career, Clapton has described Johnson as “the greatest Bluesman who ever lived” and his music as being “the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice, really..”. In his recent autobiography, Clapton confessed that he had once been such a snob about it, “..if you didn’t know who Robert Johnson was, I wouldn’t speak to you”.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETELORdwmJA 

Eric Clapton on Robert Johnson’s guitar technique.

 

Clapton has recorded pretty much all of Johnson’s music as well, either as a solo artist or in his days with Cream or John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Most famously, perhaps was that live version of “Crossroads” from Cream’s ‘Wheels Of Fire’ album. It was probably that song, more any other, that alerted me to the magic of Robert Johnson’s music. I also suspect that it was largely through being such a fan of Clapton at the time that I was motivated to find out more about this mysterious character who loomed so large, both in the history of the Delta Blues and the age modern Rock that I was then growing up in.

 

Much of Robert Johnson’s life is steeped in mystery and shadowy myth, with the most compelling tale, largely fostered by other Blues musicians like Son House, an early mentor, concerning him selling his soul to the devil at midnight, at a lonely Mississippi crossroads. In exchange, Johnson received his seemingly unearthly ability to play the instrument Son House attested he’d been so useless with just a few months earlier. Unlikely as it may appear to we, mere mortals, rather than simply discounting the story out of hand, Blues historians in the modern day have actually argued over which crossroads the deal went down. For the record, the accepted site was at the intersection of Highway 61 and Highway 49.

 

Further supporting that myth, of course, was the devil’s early collection of Johnson’s soul, when he was poisoned by an allegedly, jealous husband, whose wife was offering the handsome young Bluesman some undue attention at what would be his last gig, on the 16^th of August 1938.

 

In celebration of the centenary of Johnson’s birth, there are two special editions of his music being made available, one of them, vinyl reproductions of the original 10-inch, 78rpm discs on which his recordings were first released. This is serious stuff, for serious collectors only but evidence of just how important Johnson’s name still is, even after a hundred years. And people are still recording his music today.

 

Robert Johnson is dead. Long live the King of the Delta Blues. You can bet this won’t be the only blog posted online today in dedication to his memory.

I rather think he would have been mightily impressed with all the fuss we’re making.

Mo’ Better Showtime!

This new radio show keeps getting bigger. Am I arrested by delusions of world domination? Well, not quite yet.

However, since the last report yesterday, there have been even further developments.

The show, tentatively dubbed, ‘Just Released’ will now be going to air on Saturday – and Sunday. We make our grand debut tomorrow at 12:05pm Australian Eastern Standard time, with the Sunday timeslot of 5:05pm AEST reserved for an encore broadcast.

Of course, AEST means, if you’re in Western Australia, for example, it will be at 10:05 am on Saturday and repeated at 3:05pm Sunday.

Depending on where you live then, you will need to allow for the appropriate time adjustments to tune in, which, I’m guessing, will also affect the broadcast times for those listening to Radio Australia. If you use AEST as your default you will know when to tune in. I know it makes it easier for people on the east coast but at least we’re not subject to the added confusion of daylight saving right now.

Here’s another link that may help you tune in, on either day.

http://www.abc.net.au/radio/

For the digital signal, just click on the site for ABC Local Radio and connect to your capital city station, or to Radio Australia, at the appropriate hours.

We’re looking to make friends here so, if there are any more developments on this front, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Tell your Mum!

Irony

I think that’s what it’s called. Or, maybe, its just stupidity.

 

You know, when someone posts a blog about a new radio program under the bold heading of, “Showtime!” and then, doesn’t actually mention the time the show is on. Or, for that matter, the name of the show.

 

It’s so ludicrous, even I’m laughing about it. I began to suspect that something was up when the emails started arriving so, to make it that much easier, you might look out for a show called ‘Just Released’ (no, it’s not a countdown of the latest offenders freed from incarceration) and it’ll be on between 5 and 6pm from this Sunday afternoon, on your ABC Local Radio Digital station, online http://www.abc.net.au/local 

and Radio Australia http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/waystolisten

 

Now, if I can just find my way to the studio…

 

Showtime!

 

Since starting these blogs a few years ago, even before they began to appear online, I tried to keep the focus on the music as opposed to the rather mundane life of the author. Of course, there have been insights, on occasion, as to how music had made a great impression on that life, being a valuable link to the world outside for a kid growing up in the wilderness of a remote mining community, or providing a comfort in times of personal heartache.

 

These insights, rather than being confessional, simply for the sake of the author’s ego were aimed at sketching a parallel. Geography aside, I expect that in many cases, music has played a similar role in your life as well, bringing colour, excitement or comfort when you needed it most. That’s the great thing about music. It has the power to unify people. Nobody expects to be alone at a concert, whether its Bob Dylan or Bobby Sherman. Music is meant to be a shared experience.

 

As a kid, I’d often be trudging off to a friend’s place with a heap of singles or albums under my arm. We’d sit on the floor and listen to each other’s records and discuss their merits and marvel at the complexities of production. We knew who wrote the songs and who’d produced them, and though we’d never been there, we knew which record company was located at 2120 South Michigan Avenue, thanks to an instrumental recording by The Rolling Stones. We enjoyed the ephemeral delights of Bubblegum Pop and were well aware of the importance of the Blues long before we’d even heard the names of Charley Patton or Son House.

 

The armful of records may have changed over the years but the desire to share music with others has not. It was the primary reason I was drawn, more than 30 years ago, towards a precarious career in radio and the same reason I started this blog. It’s always been about music. Sometimes, I wish I had a similar fascination and commitment to making money.

 

Since technology has allowed, I’ve kept my continually expanding music library on hard drive. It is organised into specific genres for accessibility and I have no idea how many albums or songs are there in total. What I do know is that it caters to my every mood and contains nothing that I would not want to listen to.

 

It’s said, that you’ll find happiness when can do for a living, something you actually enjoy so, for those who don’t know me, and remain blissfully unaware, here’s a little more personal insight: I have, what is for me, the greatest job in the world. As Muddy Waters used to say, “I live the life I love, and I love the life I live”.

 

I work for ABC Local Radio, assisting with the programming of music for a network of about 68 radio stations around the country. The National Music Programmer is a guy named Bill Riner. His life-long passion for music is the same as mine. His knowledge, in some areas, and his experience in most, however, exceeds my own. No doubt, there are people who believe we just sit around in lounge chairs all day listening to our favourite records and imposing our personal tastes onto an unsuspecting audience. Invariably, however, such people tend to have their own agendas and no real understanding of what we actually do. But at the risk of this post sounding like its all about the author, I’ve outlined all the above purely so that I can tell you this.

 

Commencing this Sunday, the 8^th of May, both Bill and myself will begin hosting a new radio show exposing music that has recently been released, is soon to be released or, for some other reason is considered notable. For the first show, we have some songs from new releases by Paul Simon, Mark Seymour, Emmylou Harris, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and New Orleans musician, Trombone Shorty. There will also be something for fans of Hugh Laurie of the TV show, ‘House’ and a special treat for fans of The Rolling Stones. We only have an hour each week to cram it all in, but if you’re a music fan, I think it might be fun.

 

To listen, here in Australia, you’ll need to tune in to the Digital channel of your capital city’s ABC Local Radio Station. Now, that’s easy, if you own a Digital radio, of course, but if you don’t have one, you can listen online via the station’s website. http://www.abc.net.au/local   

Its important to note that this is distinct from your normal, terrestrial radio signal, which, at the same time, will be featuring it’s usual sports program, “Grandstand”.

As well, the show will also be available in South East Asia for people listening to Radio Australia.

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/waystolisten  

     

Hope you can tune in sometime.

 

 

Phoebe Snow

The first three months of this year had been a search for inspiration in new music that just wasn’t there. It was like staring at a blank page at the start of a high school exam and wondering, what happens next.

There were attempts to participate and get excited. Like, International Record Store Day, on the 16^th of this month. I dutifully went into my favourite independent store, fully determined to buy something new and show my support for the dying cause but I found nothing. On the day, it was hard to shop because the place was full of people leaning against the shelves, listening to some Indie musician I’d never heard of and blocking all access to what was in the racks.

It was easier finding stuff online but it was mostly old stuff like vintage Country Blues by the likes of Willie McTell and Curley Weaver or vintage Jazz by Stan Getz and John Coltrane. Everything new was failing to excite.

The buzz online was all about the surprise “success” of Rebecca Black and her song, “Friday”. And why would anyone be surprised? The album is supposed to be dead, right? The music industry is in ruins and the new highpoint is in auto-tuning kids who can’t sing to make it appear as though they can. If you haven’t heard of Rebecca Black or her song, don’t bother chasing it up. You’ve missed the boat already. It was a sideshow I first tried to ignore but now, through all the internet buzz, she’s scored a major label record deal by slipping through the back door. If you’re looking for substance there is none to be found.

Same goes for Justin Beiber. Even radio, in its currently diminished state, isn’t willing to buy into that story. I’ve never heard a Justin Beiber song on the radio and chances are, neither have you. He ‘played’ in my town on Tuesday night (against doctor’s orders) and all the news reports were concerned with was the pre-pubescent fans staking out the hotels he might have been staying in. It was as if the threat of a plague had swept through town and although a few felt the onset of its symptoms, nobody actually got ill.

Many of us grew up in what can retrospectively be considered the Renaissance era of Pop. A time of cultural shift, where people were inspired, by each other, to create greater art than their peers. Then the insidious age of opportunism crept in. People saw that there was room for improvement (ie. money to be made) but these people were window dressers, hucksters, who used smoke and mirror devices to attract more money through the door and they made a poultice too. But more and more, it was at the expense of the product they had attached themselves to.

In the end, they found they could do away with the product altogether, employ technology to compensate for talent and disguise it all with the glitz of the show. There were plenty of willing participants to help them. Everybody wants to be famous, don’t they? They offer themselves up to those abysmal Reality shows all the time and who takes all the money? The TV stations and Simon Cowell’s of this world, that’s who. While some were studying Elvis, others were studying the Colonel.

One word that kept popping up on my radar during this past month was, substandard. It seemed to typify most of what I was hearing that was new. Somehow, I’d stopped being a fan and simply become a collector.

Nothing was inspiring me to write, so I thought I’d take some time away from it. The ennui had set in and it was starting to piss me off. Not only was the album apparently dead, the Renaissance was over as well. In radioBrandon’s proverbial state of Denmark, something was quite noticeably rotten. I needed a catalyst.

Not long after I arrived home last night, Bill phoned to ask if I’d heard the news about Phoebe Snow. I hadn’t. Seems the media was too busy with the more immediate threat of Beiber Fever hitting town. Besides, it probably wouldn’t rate Phoebe Snow as being exactly newsworthy. So it was left to the grassroots media to pass it on. Kathleen had told Bill, and Bill had told me. Phoebe Snow had died on Tuesday.

These days, it is mostly left to Easy Listening radio to play her music, but it doesn’t. The best you’ll get on the commercial stations is her version of “Every Night”, the sweet little love song from Paul McCartney’s first solo album, that Phoebe covered on her own disc, ‘Against The Grain’, back in 1978.

Against the grain seems to sum up Phoebe Snow’s career pretty well. Arriving in the music world of today, she probably would have struggled to get a gig. She wasn’t pretty, she wore glasses, she was unfashionably overweight and her style was just too hard to categorise as being Pop, or Jazz, or even Blues. But she could sing, with a voice that was distinctively her own.

In 1974 though, people still listened to music for the sake of the music itself. If they liked what they heard, they told their friends about it. Careers were born from the shared experience, sans hype. The frippery of the industry’s smoke and mirrors was still yet to manifest in all its ugly emptiness. People warmed to Phoebe Snow and by the following year, her unpretentious debut had spawned an unlikely hit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5AaNLyFpoI

“Poetry Man”

The news of her passing, might not have made much of an impact on me had it not been for the rediscovery of her self-titled, 1974 debut a little over a month ago. I loved that record when it came out but lost touch with it, along with her low profile career, sometime before the ‘80s set in.

On that first album, Phoebe Snow had faced her own perceived shortcomings in songs like “Harpo’s Blues” and “Either Or Both”, with an honesty that was as stark as it was poignant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SESmndcKI0

“Harpo’s Blues”

Elsewhere on the record she touched on Sam Cooke’s “Let The Good Times Roll” and Jesse Fuller’s “San Francisco Bay Blues” in a manner we’d not heard before. If you have the time, check them out at this link. If you decide to buy the album after hearing these songs I would not be surprised.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxap04Y82ko

“Let The Good Times Roll”; “San Francisco Bay Blues”; No Show Tonight” 

In January this year, Phoebe Snow suffered a stroke and fell into a coma from which she would never recover. In her career, she had played or recorded with some of the greatest names in music. She had performed for a US President and First Lady at Camp David and won scores of awards and accolades from her peers. When death came to Phoebe Snow this Tuesday, she was aged 60. Here in Australia, we were still celebrating the fifth day if what had been a very long weekend. If her passing made the news at all, I certainly missed it.

Maybe you did too.

The Real Kid Charlemagne

By the time LSD was ruled an illegal substance in the United States, on the 6^th of October 1966, the genie was already out of the bottle. A month earlier, Timothy Leary had uttered the new manifesto for youth: “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”. And it had been almost a year before that, when Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters conducted the first of their infamous Acid Tests. Suddenly, Pop Culture went Counter-culture, and youth went Technicolor.  The Beatles had already experimented with the drug, as had many other musicians. The whole hippie thing, still in embryo, was soon to make Haight-Ashbury the most famous neighbourhood on the planet. For a while there, it seemed like everyone was taking acid. Well, everyone, but me, and my friends. We were still in primary school and wearing short pants. It was 1966 and we were eleven years old.

The public profile as the world’s greatest advocate for acid may well have been assumed by Leary, but working away in the background, in deepest, darkest Los Angeles was Augustus Owsley Stanley III, a man intent on producing the finest LSD the world had ever known.

By the time The Man showed up to outlaw the substance in late ‘66, Owsley had been working at it for three years. If the truth between the myth, and the legend, of what would later unfold is to be believed, he succeeded in his quest. The trouble with making LSD, he discovered, was that you can’t just make a little of it and Owsley Acid, as it came to be known, began to set the new standard among people like The Beatles, Eric Clapton and The Grateful Dead.

Socio-Political commentator Frank Zappa name-checked him in the Mothers of Invention song, “Who Needs The Peace Corps?” in the line, “Think I’ll just drop-out! I’ll go to Frisco, buy a wig and sleep on Owsley’s floor.” He was the subject of The Grateful Dead song, “Alice D. Millionaire”, and Blue Cheer, the loudest band in the world® (pre-Zeppelin), even copped its name from a batch of Owsley’s celebrated chemical entertainment device.

Owsley went on to become The Grateful Dead’s sound engineer, financial backer and graphic artist. He was also responsible for recording many of the now truly astonishing number of live performances by that band, still in circulation.

The greatest Owsley homage, though, was the opening song on Steely Dan’s sweeping masterpiece, ‘The Royal Scam’, recasting the psychedelic apothecary as, “Kid Charlemagne”.

“Just by chance, you crossed the diamond with the pearl,

You turned it on the world,

That’s you turned the world around.”

The song also pointed to the changing of the times and with it, Owsley’s eventual demise:

“All those day-glo freaks who used to paint their face,

They joined the human race,

Some things will never change.”

And the more scathing:

“Son, you are mistaken, you are obsolete,

Look at all the white men on the street”

As well as heralding one of Larry Carlton’s best-ever guitar solos, “Kid Charlemagne” also boasts one of the most quotable lines in a Steely Dan song:

“Is there gas in the car?

Yes, there’s gas in the car!”

The line alludes to an occasion when Owsley was busted after simply having the misfortune to run out of fuel.

In its lyrics, “Kid Charlemagne” revered, cautioned, mocked and even commiserated with its protagonist:

“Could you live forever? – Could you see the day?,

Could you feel your whole world fall apart, and fade away?”

Owsley’s activities were, ultimately, called to account. He did serve time in the big house and eventually, the world switched it’s allegiance to the ‘80s and ‘90s and a more fashionable predilection to cocaine decisions and heroin chic. Owsley had made his mark as a midwife to the Summer of Love and then, all-but consigned to history. Many people today will not be familiar with his name and for those old enough to remember, many will not have been aware that he had become an Australian citizen and living in far north Queensland.

Kid Charlemagne may well have felt his world fall apart on occasion but in the end, it didn’t get the chance to simply fade away. Last Sunday, the 13^th of March, Owsley Stanley died after being involved in a car accident, not far from his home in Mareeba, on Queensland’s Atherton Tableland.

Owsley may not have been one of music’s greatest heroes in the ‘60s but he was, nevertheless, responsible for having quite a major impact on it. Hell, without Owsley, the Summer of Love may not have even happened.

Get along, Kid Charlemagne! R.I.P.

So Beautiful or So What

I’ve been waiting for something like this.

Waiting is what you have to do these days if you’re looking for something to fire your interest. We’re such a long way from the time when music drove our culture, when events of historical significance could happen on any given day, and classic albums spilled from the creative well with astonishing regularity. Now, in the age of single track downloads and the wholesale adoption of portable mp3 players, the importance of the album format has been called into question and, on occasion, pronounced dead.

Not everyone is quite ready to buy into this idea, however, and the latest to throw his weight behind the preservation of the album format is Paul Simon. Historically, one of music’s heavy hitters, Paul Simon has been responsible for some of the greatest albums of the last several decades, including, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and ‘Graceland’. He’s delivered the occasional stinker as well like the ill-fated and costly, ‘Songs from The Capeman’, but generally, even when the audience is not paying attention, his music far exceeds the undernourished efforts of your average navel-gazing Indie artist. There was the sadly neglected ‘Hearts And Bones’ for example, and more recently, his 2006 album, ‘Surprise’. Made in collaboration with Brian Eno, ‘Surprise’ was criminally overlooked in Australia, where it barely cracked the top 100 before falling through the cracks. I still listen to that disc today and tip my hat to Paul for venturing such an artistic risk. The album brimmed with Eno’s famous atmospheric treatments and pushed Paul Simon’s music into neighbourhoods his traditional audience was too wimpy to hazard. They just wanted another ‘Graceland’. Too bad for them.

Paul Simon is never one to take the easy ride and stay in the middle of the road just to please his audience. Like Neil Young, he likes to get into the rough and push the artistic boundaries a little. If things should go horribly wrong, as they did in ’97 with his short-lived Broadway musical, ‘The Capeman’, he can always hook up with his old sparring partner, Art Garfunkel and go out on the road to recoup his finances.

Five years after the release of ‘Surprise’, Paul Simon is pondering the merits of the album as a legitimate art form and a generation of kids who no longer afford it the same level of importance. In this age of apps and single song downloads, Paul has not lost faith in what essentially remains his chief stock in trade. He believes the album concept can be successfully reintroduced to this new generation. That the making of albums remains a legitimate art form which should not be “discarded”.

He also believes his forthcoming, 12^th studio album, ‘So Beautiful or So What’, is his best work in twenty years. (Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?) Of course, I can’t be nearly quite so enthusiastic until I get to hear it but from what I’ve sampled thus far, I can say, I’m certainly optimistic.

The first taste arrived late last year with the appropriately titled, “Getting Ready For Christmas Day”, featuring samples from a 1941 sermon by Christian preacher and sometime Gospel singer, the Rev. J.M. Gates. Next is a song called “The Afterlife”, which I warmed to the first time I heard it. There’s humour and pathos as the singer reflects on his recent “death” and his difficulty in coming to terms with the not so blessed, hereafter.

“After I died and the makeup had dried, I went back to my place.”

He’s not scared, however, just a little disoriented. No biggie.

“Still I thought it was odd there was no sign of god, just to usher me in.”

Before he discovers that the afterlife is, perhaps, a little overrated.

“Then a voice from above sugar-coated with love, said: ‘Let us begin’”

More to the point, the afterlife seems not all that different from the one he’s just left.

“You got to fill out a form first,

And then you wait in the line.”

You’ve got to give to Paul Simon he’s the thinking person’s Rock Star and has been since 1966. Too creatively muscular to be dismissed as a Folkie wimp, he stands quite comfortably among the likes of Bob Dylan and Randy Newman as one of songwriting’s master craftsmen.

‘So Beautiful or So What’ will land in mid-April. Meanwhile, the link below will give you an insight into Paul Simon’s thoughts on the challenges faced by the artist in the present day and how he still pushes the boundaries of his craft in the pursuit and creation of new sounds to confound and entertain his audience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E652VTb2ubI

‘So Beautiful or So What’ – Album Preview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA81JjI40V0

“Getting Ready For Christmas Day” – Paul Simon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlmcLPACAMk

“The Afterlife” – Paul Simon