A Loss for Words

Yes, I sat out another week. If I could find the time to sit down...

In honor of Led Zeppelin receiving the Kennedy Center Honors this year and the recent release of Celebration Day, I'm going on the soapbox for one of my all-time favorite bands. There is a meme on Facebook (and other social networking sites, I'm sure) that has been getting on my nerves lately. At the top of the image is a sample lyric from "Kashmir," at the bottom either a Justin Bieber or Beyonce lyric from the last year or two. This meme is meant to point out the superficiality of modern pop music, though it's heavily biased and just a tad ageist.

Keep in mind that Led Zeppelin was a product of the '70s; lyrics about wizards and vikings were not considered "weird." Let it be known that for a brief, shining moment progressive rock was actually considered "cool." People bought records by Deep Purple, Yes, and King Crimson, three bands that would be considered strange and unmarketable in this day and age. These Bieber haters --not that I disagree with their vitriol-- pretend to forget that artists like Tony Orlando & Dawn, Wings, and Captain & Tenille were putting out cheesy, compatible dreck nearly two generations ago.  If you want musicians of lyrical substance in the 21st century, listen to college radio or any AAA format. Songcraft still exists.

On that note, I would like to raise a glass for the recently departed jazz legend Dave Brubeck. "Time Out" (1959) is one of the defining albums of jazz, and the sequel "Time Further Out" (1961) is no slouch either. What's even more amazing is that he was recording great music well into his 80s, including the underrated, understated "London Flat, London Sharp" (2005), not to mention touring until maybe a year ago.

Next Week: the year in music, 2012.

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Musical Odds and Ends

As most of you know by now, I've almost run of years to cover in my monthly music blog. My four-year is almost at an end, though I may revise and revisit some lists in the distant future. Even though I've written about the sound and substance of these great musical works, I have barely covered the artistic effort and assorted intangibles of these albums.

With that said, please enjoy these arbitrary lists:


Five Great Albums with Terrible Covers
Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles (1967)
Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! (live), The Rolling Stones (1970)
If I Could Only Remember My Name, David Crosby (1971)
Dirty Mind, Prince (1980)
Boys and Girls in America, The Hold Steady (2006)

Five Terrible Albums with Great Covers
Relayer, Yes (1974)
Chicago XIV, Chicago (1979)
Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, Stevie Wonder (1980)
KooKoo, Debbie Harry (1981)
Falling Into Infinity, Dream Theater (1997)

The Six Greatest Sixth Albums of All Time
1. Rubber Soul, The Beatles (1965)
2. Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan (1965)
3. Quadrophenia, The Who (1973)
4. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco (2002)
5. Green, R.E.M. (1988)
6. Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin (1975)

The Ten Best Albums with a Naked Woman on the Cover
Blind Faith, Blind Faith (1969)
Abraxas, Santana (1970)
Electric Ladyland (original version), Jimi Hendrix (1970)
Country Life, Roxy Music (1974)
Cut, The Slits (1979)
Candy-O, The Cars (1979)
Mother's Milk, Red Hot Chili Peppers (1989)
Ritual De Lo Habitual, Jane's Addiction (1990)
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West (2010)
The Haunted Man, Bat for Lashes (2012)

Three Albums with Semi-Legible, Handwritten Liner Notes by the Artists
After the Gold Rush, Neil Young (1970)
Live/1975-85, Bruce Springsteen (1986)
The Idler Wheel is Wiser Than..., Fiona Apple (2012)

Your thoughts?

That Wonderful Year in Music... 1975

In 1975 rock finally reached critical mass. After some lost years following the breakup of the Beatles, a whole genre that was once written off as the noisy noodlings of long-haired hippies by Middle America finally garnered some mainstream respect. Leading the charge was Bruce Springsteen, who followed two well-received but poor-selling albums with an almost flawless, commercially successful masterpiece (see below). Springsteen's third album generated enough buzz that in late October he became the first non-politician to appear on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week, no small feat for a guy who was barely holding onto his record contract just months earlier.

Bruce dominated the headlines, but he wasn't the only story in '75. It was the last big year for glam rock before it disintegrated and metamorphized into punk. Citing modal jazz and Kraut-rock as a mutual influence, artists like Brian Eno and Pink Floyd proved that rock can have a calming, ethereal effect, finding a spacey, melodic center without dabbling into passé psychedelia. This was the unofficial midway point of what radio programmers will call the "classic rock" era, with relative newcomers Queen and Aerosmith joining veterans like Led Zeppelin and The Who in packing arenas worldwide, stirring the masses with charging, power-chord driven sermons. Other subgenres that defined popular music in the 1970s were loud, clear, and present at mid-decade: metal, jazz fusion, funk, R&B, you name it.

BEST ALBUMS

1. Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen. Is this the apex of American rock? If not, it's hard to fuse the two major elements of The Boss' third album --a wistful look back at teenage street life, augmented with Spector-esque bombast-- into anything more luscious and perfect than this. "Thunder Road" sounds and feels like the first chapter of an epic novel, while the heavenly sax solo that bridges "Jungleland" brings everything full circle. The title track alone took six months to sculpt, and worth every second of tinkering. All in all, the defining album of a generation-defining artist.
2. Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin. Dubbed by Rolling Stone critic Jim Miller as a bid for artistic respectability, this sprawling double-LP is potpourri of musical styles and the near-seemless fusion of five years' worth of sessions and outtakes. Where the first disc is topheavy on heavy rockers like "Custard Pie" and "The Rover," disc two displays Jimmy Page et al. at its quirkiest, as demonstrated by the psuedo-country "Down By The Seaside" and the acoustic noodlings of "Bron-Yr-Aur" and "Boogie With Stu." This may not be the first album that I'd suggest to a Zeppelin neophyte, but it does a better job of covering the band's various personalities than any of the single-disc albums could.
3. Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan. In the early '70s, the unrequited king of the '60s counterculture was in a slump of sorts. Dylan had become self-indulgent, weird and oblique, and if he was releasing music for his own personal amusement. When his first marriage slowly crumbled, however Dylan refound his focus. Though he has repeatedly claimed that he doesn't write confessional music, the ten songs that comprise Blood on the Tracks revolve around the heartache, anger, and loneliness of a failed romance. Through it all Dylan still sounds like an iconoclast, defiantly indifferent to what others think of him and what they project him to be.
4. A Night At The Opera, Queen
5. Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
6. Horses, Patti Smith
7. Toys In The Attic, Aerosmith
8. Tonight's The Night, Neil Young
9. Katy Lied, Steely Dan
10. The Koln Concert, Keith Jarrett. What are the ingredients of the best-selling solo jazz album in history? Apparently, all you need is one man, one piano, and 1,300 enraptured Germans. Unplanned and entirely improvised, every gesture and flourish in this 66-minute live set is spontaneous. This album is not so much about Jarrett's ability to improvise on the piano as it is a mediation on the instrument itself and the nature of sound. A marvelous composition, and the paramount live jazz recording of the decade.

Honorable Mentions: Another Green World, Brian Eno;
The Basement Tapes, Bob Dylan & The Band; Captain Fantastic and the
Brown Dirt Cowboy, Elton John; Still Crazy After All These Years,
Paul Simon; Gnu High, Kenny Wheeler; Nighthawks at the Diner,
Tom Waits.

BEST SINGLES

"Ballroom Blitz," Sweet
"Fly By Night," Rush
"TNT," AC/DC
"Welcome To My Nightmare," Alice Cooper
"Bungle in the Jungle," Jethro Tull
"Slip Kid," The Who
"Teenage Letter," Count Bishops
"Sound Track," Be-Bop Deluxe
"Motorhead," Hawkwind
"To The Last Whale (Medley)," David Crosby and Graham Nash

"Lady Marmalade," Labelle
"You're The First, My Last, My Everything," Barry White
"One of These Nights," The Eagles
"At Seventeen," Janis Ian
"Laughter in the Rain," Neil Sedaka
"Sky High," Jigsaw
"Why Can't We Be Friends," War
"Miracles," Jefferson Starship
"Letting Go," Paul McCartney & Wings
"Magic," Pilot

I wish I had more funk/disco/R&B on the singles list, but it's hard to ignore all the great bubblegum in the Top 40 that year. Regardless, I'd love to hear what you think.