More Music; Austin City Limits, Great Songs, and More

Time for a random music post. I listen to so much music, and think about it both when listening and not, the ideas just start to pile up. Waiting to do full-blown essays on each is a prescription for silence. So here goes.

1. One of my favorite Saturday afternoon activities is to have a beer and pull up old Austin City Limits episodes on YouTube. I don't think it's this way now, but ACT was a real cultural phenomenon at the time, and to this day, probably the best music performance TV series ever. There have been a lot of good ones, but none as long lasting. I also watch clips from the 70s shows including The Midnight Special and Don Kirchner's Rock Concert, and later shows like the stellar Night Music with David Sanborn, but they were more fleeting. What ACT did was take the then very hot Austin alt-country scene and put it out there for everyone to hear. And that scene was indeed hot and happenin'. Now the show has indie rock and stuff, but then it was roots music all the way. The cool thing was they did what were called simulcasts with NPR stations. So you would tune into the show on your local PBS station and listen over your sound system tuned to the radio. Early transitional tech. Here's the beauty part. I had it hooked up to my tape recorder and taped tons of the shows that way. I listened to those cassettes all across the Rockies and even brought them to Boston with me. One favorite was from one of their "songwriter circle" episodes. In these they got all the hippest country-oriented songwriters to sit around and trade renditions of their best songs. There was one that was absolutely sick. It had Willie Nelson, John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver and a couple other heavyweights. Man did I cherish that cassette. Another favorite featured Jerry Jeff Walker's brilliant sideman Gary P. Nunn. He wrote "London Homesick Blues," which they used for the ACL theme song. "I wanta go hooome with the armadillos!" Last week I watched Neil Young with his country band, the International Harvesters. It showed Neil's absolute mastery as a performer and musician. Can't say enough about him and the show.

2. Well, I never ever get tired of great songwriting. I've had a couple in heavy rotation over the last few weeks. Tops is Paul Westerberg performing his song "Things." A real master class that one. Westerberg is one of those cases who broke through as a punk rocker of sorts; but the truth was that he was a bona fide musician and serious songwriter whose interests expanded beyond whatever niche his band The Replacements represented. As he put it, they lost a lot of fans when they started using acoustic guitars. "Things" is from his first solo LP and plays with the title word in cool ways, mixing up registers and resonances and hitting on a real emotional level, communicating raw emotional ambivalence. Another song I always have in my rotation is "All I Want" from Amy Rigby, a prominent figure in the NYC/Hoboken indie rock world back in the, when, 90s? 80s? Well, let's just say when we were young and such music meant a whole lot to us. Talk about a master class. This gem utilizes those sweet 1950s chords to tell the very modern/indie story of a woman who "doesn't flowers and fancy things" and who even "gave up on a diamond ring" and who for all her concessions ends up taken for granted. I'm into "love" songs that take a different angle than intense love and rejection and betrayal and hearts breaking and all that and instead portray something very real and maybe even worse: in this case, indifference. This awesome song was actually covered by the great Ronnie Spector, whose girl group recordings with Phil Spector really established the template for the kinds of chord changes Amy uses here. As a bonus, on Ronnie's version none other than Keith Richards sits in a guitar. 

3. Here's one I've intended to write about for a long time. My thesis is that Bruce Thomas from Elvis Costello and the Attractions is the most underrated and indeed one of the greatest bassists in all of rock music. Maybe he's underrated because no one thinks of the Attractions as a chops band. Indeed, their instrumental arrangements, mostly done by keyboardist Steve Nieve, make them come across like a rock and roll chamber group. This does not mean tame. They can get loud and rude, but there is a balance and care in the arrangements that make them a unique. Elvis plays guitar but he doesn't solo, so there really is a sense that the four instruments are equal. But it could be that Thomas's bass is more equal, as Orwell put it. This is because his lines are often so melodious that it contributes greatly to the overall tunefulness of things. Thomas has remarkable touch and a beautiful rounded tone. In fact these are so pleasing that some bass fanatics put him in the same league as Paul McCartney and James Jamerson. Also, he is very agile. There is no sense of forcing or laboring over anything. Interestingly, Thomas's profile is notoriously marked by his bitter feud with Costello, which developed after they had recorded many LPs together. It's no secret that after so many years bandmates can begin to annoy each other. I mean, it's not like they chose each other as married life partners. Be that as it may, consulting a bass blog and also using my own recollections, I will recommend four cuts to begin with to appreciate the art of Bruce Thomas: "Fish and Chip Paper," Watch Your Step," "Opportunity," and "Shabby Doll."

4. Classical. We don't talk a lot about classical music here, do we? Well, it's not because I don't listen to it. I do have a particular way of listening though. I don't do a lot of symphonies and full chamber suites and such. Quite simply, it's rare that I'm going to listen to a composition in that vein straight through for 40 minutes or whatever. One factor is that symphonies, being pure art creations, always include the full dynamic range from really soft to really loud. Unless you are giving it your undivided attention it can be startling. Usually I'm doing something else while listening, even if just reading, so I prefer recital-styled recordings, where the performer plays individual movements from longer pieces. These usually have a bit more of a homogeneous volume and tonal range, which makes it more like listening to pop music. They also feature pieces with strong melodies, which is always a plus. My favorite go-to in this vein are the recordings of the early 20th century violin superstar Fritz Kreisler. Not only do I love his expressive sound and choice of material, but for some reason I love the sound of the earliest classical recordings. The fidelity is not what we have today, or even what they had mid-century, but there is something vital and moving about it. I don't know. I just click with it. My other go-to is listening to anything by the French chamber music ensemble Cafe Zimmerman, so named for the Leipzig coffee house where many of Bach's earliest compositions were performed. What I can tell you is that their renditions of Bach and other Baroque pieces are unbelievably fresh. They even swing in a natural not ham-fisted manner. Apple Music tells me I'm one of their top listeners in the world. But that's because I have all their recordings in my library and just put it on shuffle while I work. But, yes, highly recommended. 

5. Oh, a quick comment on my listening during our three week tour of Japan. I have a playlist with about 1400 songs consisting entirely of jazz singers and instrumentalists playing the Great American Songbook, or the standards, as they are called. This was my only soundtrack. It provided a consistent through line for that kind of travel consciousness you slip into. What could be better than the best melodies in American music and the sensitive and virtuosic interpretations of the great jazz giants? The Japanese certainly appreciate these things. In fact, they have many bars and cafes that feature nothing but the best jazz played on state of the art sound systems. That is so Japanese.