Rock And Roll Soul

The late great Ray Charles was once asked what Soul was and responded by telling a story; After performing his signature hit, Georgia On My Mind, a fan came up to him, complimented him on his performance and said, “Man, you must really dig that girl,” referring to ‘Georgia”. “That’s soul,” Charles said.

What he meant was that soul was the level of believability a performer brings to a song. Back in the Fifties you could see plenty of popular entertainers who would sing the saddest love songs all the while having big, fake smiles on their faces. Did they even listen to the words they were singing? Some singers sang everything as though it was breaking their heart and that wasn’t appropriate either.

John Lennon was one of the best rock singers for bringing a level of ‘acting’ to his singing. Songs like I’m So Tired actually sound like he’s tired. I’m Only Sleeping sounds like he’s sleepy, he even yawns. His sighing in the song Girl accents his yearning and he sang Tomorrow Never Knows trying to simulate the sound of monks singing on a mountain top.

Help! is a song where the chorus sounds like someone shouting out for help. Each time he sings the word help the music modulates higher giving each time a growing urgency before the final scream of HELP at the end. The descending guitar lines between the shouts for help add to the sinking feeling of desperation and finally cascade into a falling arpeggio that ends at the verse.

Eric Clapton’s solo on George Harrison’s classic, As My Guitar Gently Weeps actually sounds like the guitar is crying due to Clapton’s sustained soulful finger vibrato. This level of involvement in a song and its meaning seems not to exist anymore.

One of the best examples of soul actually comes from an instrumental song. The surf song, Pipeline from the Chantays actually sounds like it’s underwater. The double picking bass string slide at the start simulates the experience of a wave crashing, the bass line is the thumping of a heartbeat caught in the curl and the electric piano melody line has a reverb effect and is played mello enough to sound like something being heard from underwater.

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What Makes Rock And Roll Rock?

Disco Queen Donna Summer recently died. I actually have an album she recorded that was given to me by my cousin who was a recording engineer on that record. I wasn’t a fan of Disco Music since I’ve always been too lazy to want to dance but I liked Donna Summer and I’m sorry she died as young as she did.

Elton John said in a statement; "That she has never been inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame is a total disgrace especially when I see the second-rate talent that has been inducted."

This raises the question; what exactly constitutes Rock and Roll? Why would someone labeled The Queen Of Disco be considered for the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame? Does Elton believe the term “Rock and Roll” means “Popular Music” and thus should include anyone that ever got Top Forty radio airplay?

Why should Michael Jackson, Madonna, Lady Gaga or Justin Timberlake be called “Rock Stars” when they simply do not play music that anyone, even their fans, would consider to be Rock and Roll?

I’ve never heard Donna Summer ever referred to as the Queen Of Disco Rock. In fact, even with all the Rock hyphens in existence such as Punk Rock, Prog Rock, Folk Rock, Country Rock, Jazz Rock, Southern Rock, etc., I’ve never heard the term “Disco Rock” or even “Dance Rock”.

I understand Elton wanting Rock and Roll to be all inclusive, like everything else in life (in a perfect world) but these musical terms are not designed to alienate or omit anyone. They’re just a category made to make it easier for the music buying public to find what appeals to their taste. Just being a popular singer or musician does not automatically qualify you for entrance into Rock and Roll heaven. Sorry Elton.

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The Story Of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

I love the movie Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story starring John C. Reilly as a fictitious rock star. A spoof of musician biopics such as Ray (Ray Charles) and Walk The Line (Johnny Cash) it is different than most movie biopics in that the characters are portraying actors in a cheap movie about a famous musician rather than actually trying to come off as the musician.

One of the real interesting aspects of Walk Hard is that a front page article in the L.A. Times Calendar section not long after the film came out was about how badly the movie flopped. It is rare when a movie that fails at the box office gets a full page write up about failing. But the article thought Walk Hard was a great film, which it is, and was actually asking how did a film as good as Walk Hard bomb so badly?

This really didn’t surprise me as I’ve noticed over the years and in many, many examples that fans of Rock and Roll really don’t like people making fun of it. I remember a Rock and Roll themed issue of Mad Magazine getting trashed by its readers in the Letters To The Editor section of the next issue. The letters to Mad’s editors were usually insulting but the writers were trying to be funny. These letters were very serious. At first the editors responded with their usually smart ass replies but as the letters became more and more virulent the editors’ replies became more and more serious until their final response was; “Okay, we messed up!”

In the decades I’ve read Mad Magazine I’ve never seen such a serious and negative response to a particular issue. And over what? Jokes about Ozzie Osborn biting the head off a bat and the guys in Poison wearing womens makeup? This vividly illustrated to me just how serious rock fans are about not just the music but the whole Rock & Roll lifestyle.

I myself, must admit that when I first saw the movie This Is Spinal Tap I almost teared up in the theater. Not because I was being sentimental or that the film was sad but because it made me realize the Great Era of Rock & Roll was over. Now was to come the jokes and making fun of it. Once they build a museum to something, it’s basically done.

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Punk Rock And Rap Still Lives, Really?

The death recently of Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys illustrates something sort of interesting; Punk Rock is still relevant almost thirty-five years later. Who would have imagined back in the late Seventies that Punk Rock would still be around in the second decade of the 21st Century?

Back in 1984 there was a movie called Body Rock which starred Lorenzo Lamas as a wannabe rapper. The film attempted to portray Hip Hop culture to the masses the way Saturday Night Fever introduced the Disco Era. In Body Rock one character was a break dancer, one was a “scratch” DJ, another was a graffiti artist and Lorenzo represented rapping.

I actually liked watching break dancers, their dancing was very acrobatic, required a great degree of skill, was imaginative and looked difficult and outright dangerous. I also appreciated scratch DJs who manipulated the turntable to get rhythmic sounds from records that the recording artists never intended and added those to other records to create something completely different and original. I could also appreciate the talent involved in some graffiti art despite it being a form of vandalism. The difference between art and crime was the difference between a canvas and a wall. But rap, which had been around for ages (Muhammad Ali was rapping in the 60s), seemed to require the least amount of creativity and talent. While the rest of the cast of Body Rock actually had to have some skill, Lorenzo, undoubtedly hired for his marquee value, was given the role of rapper since it seemed to take the least amount of skill. Of the four creative aspects of Hip Hop I never dreamed Rapping would be the one to survive and even thrive for thirty years.

The same is true for Punk Rock which seemed as a protest of mainstream rock and roll and wasn’t taken very seriously by anyone other than Punks who were viewed as a fashion trend. Perhaps it is because of the relative ease of playing Punk Rock or Rapping and the extremely low bar as far as a standard of quality for these forms that has helped them survive. After all, it’s often the simple life forms such as the cockroach that is the heartiest survivor.

I’m not saying there is not some talent working in Rap and Punk as both have evolved over the decades and Rap in particular has become very eloquent and sophisticated. Punk, however, when developed too far becomes something else like Green Day which has transcended Punk to Pop and now even Musical Theater. Like a virus, some Punk has metamorphosed completely out of being into something different, yet Punk in it’s raw form still survives and I find that surprising.

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My Epic Journey, So Far

I’ve always really disliked epics. I was brought up on fairie tales where the heroes were young, they had a great adventure and then they lived “happily ever after”. The great epics like the Odyssey and the Iliad really bothered me. The Trojan war lasted ten years?! And then poor Ulysses who was responsible for finally figuring out a way to end it got lost going home and that took him another ten years. I always found those stories that just went on and on, and on, extremely frustrating. Maybe it’s because the heroes never get any time to celebrate their achievements. Guys like Hercules had one trial after another and then they died.

If Ulysses, who was the King of Ithaca, became the king in his twenties then he was in his thirties when he finally got to sail home to his wife from Troy. His wife, who hadn’t seen him in ten years, is now also probably in her thirties but will still have to wait another ten years, until she’s in her forties to finally have him return. When he does come home he is able to successfully disguise himself as an old man enough to not be recognized by his former friends and neighbors. At forty or maybe even in his fifties, he is an old man. Who wants an adventure that takes you away from your home and everybody you love for the better part of your lifetime? That’s not a grand adventure, that’s a life sentence.

And now, alas, I have discovered that my own adventure is not the faire tale with the happily ever after ending I once believed it would be but rather an epic. I now realize that life is a series of small adventures, of tiny accomplishments, and that one leads up to, or directly is the cause, of the next and the culmination of these events is what constitutes a life. Maybe the record I made didn’t go Platinum, or Gold, or Silver, or Bronze, but hey, I made a record. The problem is when viewed through the eyes of those around you it seems every little adventure you have, if it’s creative, is seen as a failure if it doesn’t make money. Hercules had to clean out a stable and kill a lion and didn’t make a cent for it but we’re talking about him today because he did it. Whereas, King Midas, the Greek king so rich everything he touched turned to gold, literally, we only know today as a sad, pathetic character in a cautionary tale.

With the passage of time the financial and social successes we have in our lifetimes will not be remembered or appreciated, it will be what we leave behind for others that will be our legacy. That may be art or music that is put out into the universe (Internet) for all to discover at some future time, or perhaps the founding of an organization or school of thought, or just a line of progeny that grows into an social unit with influence in the world of its own.

For us, now, it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters and our stories are important not because of the riches we acquire along the way but because of the entertainment and educational aspects they depart to those who hear them and choose to follow in our path.

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The Results Of The British Invasion, Thus Far

The original British Invasion took place in 1964 with the arrival of the Beatles and the Mersey Beat groups that followed in their wake.* But that invasion wasn’t just singing groups, as rock bands were called back then, but also the second biggest craze of the mid Sixties, secret agents. James Bond lead this wave with The Avengers, The Saint, Noel Harrison from The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. and Secret Agent man, Patrick McGoohan.

The second wave of the British Invasion took place in the 1980s with Duran Duran, Def Leppard, Flock Of Seagulls and a whole host of English Newwave bands.

Now, in the second decade of the 21st Century the British Invasion has finally infiltrated American Pop culture like never before. Just a quick survey of popular television shows, American television shows, illustrates just how prevalent the English occupation of American airwaves has become. Besides the remakes of British television shows like The Office, which has been going on since the 70s with shows like All In The Family and Sanford And Son, there are now celebrity chefs Gordon Ramsay of Kitchen Nightmares and Robert Levine of Restaurant: Impossible, beauty salon makeover queen Tabatha Coffey of Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, Piers Morgan (replacing American Larry King), Sharon Osborn of America’s Got Talent and the entire cast of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.

This use of the British as the supreme arbiters of taste probably started with Simon Cowell of American Idol, that’s right, AMERICAN Idol. Now, whenever an obnoxious, pretentious, demanding character is called for, it is inevitably an Englishman. But that’s not the most insidious aspect of this English takeover.

Some of the most popular television series currently on television have as their stars English actors pretending to be American. Hugh Laurie of House, Jason Issacs of Awake and Charlie Hunnam of Sons Of Anarchy are English actors who are portraying decidedly American characters. And Irishman Coin Farrell and Australian Sam Worthington star as Americans, or at least characters with American accents, so often that it’s rather shocking to hear them on a talk show using their real voices. Oh, yes, Hugh Jackman as well.

What is wrong? Are there really not enough American actors to play these roles? Do the English actors work that far below scale that hiring them saves that much money? Runaway production and outsourcing to foreign countries is bad enough but now we’re importing workers to to take our jobs in this country?

My folks were right. Those damn Beatles will be the ruin of this country. It just took fifty years.


* The real original British Invasion took place during the war of 1812.

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Mad Men Enter The Age Of Mad Everything

In a recent episode of AMC’s Mad Men series advertising exec Don Draper has been requested by a client to find a Beatles song for an ad campaign. The episode ends with his wife giving him the Revolver album to listen to and suggests he listen to a particular song. He puts on Tomorrow Never Knows.

What is interesting is seeing the contrast between the forty year old Don in 1966 and the Beatles proto-psychedelic classic based on the writings of Timothy Leary and the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. Don doesn’t make it through the whole track before he turns it off.

The scene vividly illustrates the clash of two worlds within one culture that was happening in the late Sixties and which has largely been forgotten. Don’s world is changing all around him while he, at forty, is well beyond the age of fads and trends and will most likely go to his grave, probably an early one with his health habits, the same man he is at that point.

Next season will have the show set in 1967, presumably, and Sixties hip culture will be the culture. Will Don adapt and start wearing paisley, neckerchiefs and Nehru jackets (the older man’s hip attire), or will he stay the Brooks Brothers symbol of Fifties manhood he so epitomizes? Maybe he’ll at least grow his hair to his collar, stop using his “greasy kid’s stuff” in his hair ( a slogan he’ll probably help sell), and grow some sideburns. Will that be “selling out” for Don Draper or will he go with the flow and adapt to the times?

Old dogs can learn new tricks but sometimes they look pretty silly doing them.

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