The Trifecta Of Musical Genre Flash In The Pans

Recently my brother -in -law attended the Van Halen shows at the Staples Center in L.A. He didn’t seem to enjoy it very much and said he was never a big fan like I was. Too bad he didn’t enjoy the show but I wasn't a big fan either. My brother worked for them, I got to see them several times in concert (for free) and as a guitar player I certainly appreciated the musicianship of the entire band but I was too old for the Sunset Strip Heavy Metal scene. 

Even though my band Womanizer was getting acceptance in that scene we thought of ourselves as a "skinny tie" New Wave band like the Knack or the Cars but the Troubadour had us as a house band on KWST nights which was for a San Gabriel Valley Heavy Metal station and Blam Magazine gave us a good review and described us as "entertaining, energized Pop Metal" which freaked me out.

I guess I bet on the wrong horse. Metal is still around today (like Punk and Rap, two other genres I never thought would last) and New Wave lasted all of about 18 months. Before starting my New Wave band in the late Seventies I was in a Psychedelic band in the late Sixties / early Seventies. Another flash in the pan genre. Even Disco bands can get gigs today. The other style I really like, although much too tough for me to play, was Prog Rock. I guess I don’t have the taste of the masses that’s needed to sustain a long term career in music.

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Ban The Bomb Not The Bong

In 1966 Bob Dylan recorded the song Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 for his Blonde on Blonde album. Its chorus includes the line “everybody must get stoned”. 1966 was not 1967 when using the word “high” in a song got that song banned from the radio but the banning of tunes because of drug references had already begun and Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 did indeed get banned.

Dylan, being Dylan, probably recorded that tune specifically to make a point about censorship. He knew his fans were loyal enough to seek out his new single wherever it was getting played on the radio which means they would be tuning away from whichever stations refused to play it. It’s a deliberate attempt to “censor” the radio stations involved in censorship.

Although the word “stoned” predominately featured in each chorus and almost every line in the verses begins with “They stone ya when...” he didn’t use the term as part of the title. I don’t know exactly what the “#12 & 35 means but Rainy Day Women is probably a variation on the term “fair weather friends” which refers to people who show support only when it benefits them. That’s an apt description of the radio stations that touted Dylan as the new Messiah, only if he said what they liked. That wouldn’t sit well with a guy like Bob Dylan. After all, he did name his album after a lesbian sex act.

Of course he also could simply have been referring to being “stoned” in the biblical sense as in being persecuted by having rocks thrown at your head and getting your song banned because its lyrics are misconstrued is a good example of that persecution. But since people present at the recording studio during the recording of Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 claim Dylan passed around joints and was himself, stoned, so it probably is a drug reference after all.

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Bill Murray, The Movie Guru

My son recently saw some kid wearing a Bill Murray T shirt and wondered why there seems to be Bill Murray cult forming.
    “Bill Murray is okay,” my son said, “but he’s not so great that people should be wearing him on their T shirts.”

True, that honor is usually reserved for rock stars or the dead but I think Bill Murray represents something deeper than just another bad boy, wise-ass comedian. This may be surprising, even somewhat shocking but I would venture to say that Bill Murray is one of, if not the most, spiritual of Hollywood stars, certainly of comedy stars.

Richard Gere may grovel at the feet of the Dalai Lama (if there’s a photographer around) but Bill’s spirituality comes out in his work. His first movie after attaining enough success to do any project he wanted was a remake of The Razor’s Edge, a story about a man’s quest for inner peace. Next came Ghostbusters which helped usher in the age of the New Age Sci Fi / Horror movie such as Poltergeist 2.

His take on A Christmas Carol, Scrooged (1988) is more a tale of Karma than it is a ghost story and what is probably the most spiritual, New Age and perhaps now even Quantum Physics of all motion pictures, Groundhog’s Day, must surely prove that there is more to Bill Murray than a lot of laughs.

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The Future Of Rock And Roll Is No Bruce Springsteen

I recently read the book Physics of the Future by quantum physicist, a founder of string field theory  and television show host, Michio Kaku. In the book he reports what he’s learned about the future of technology from the 300 scientists, researchers and inventors he interviewed. One of the things he believes the future holds is that robots and computers will become so sophisticated, complex and powerful that they will completely replace human beings as laborers. The jobs of the future, he predicts, will be creative ones as computers will not be able to think creatively.

I’m not so sure. As a professional animator who has seen many of the jobs in the industry go to computers I’m not so optimistic. One thing I’ve noticed is that when it comes to the arts and entertainment the masses will eat whatever they’re fed.

Back in the Nineties Flash animation was stealing jobs from hand drawn animators and driving down the price of animation thereby effectively putting a lot of talented people out of business. Most animators thought Flash for animations run on the Internet is one thing but the look is much too crude for any real commercial application. Then came entire Network television series animated in Flash. How could that be? It really does look cheesy, why would anyone want to watch this? It’s because it’s what’s new. It’s different and when combined with a crude, “Punk” attitude in the design and writing, the look of Flash seemed appropriate. It’s like a band that’s slightly out of tune and off time is terrible, unless they’re playing Punk Rock and then they’re “real”.

When I was a young animator in the studios and questioned the reasoning behind teaching the Japanese studios how to animate our shows since once they’ve learned they can produce their own shows and become our competition instead of our sweatshop labor, I was told that would never happen. American audiences would never accept Japanese animation. Twenty years later the top cartoon shows in America were all Japanese and our biggest, most successful animation studios were all closed.

Just as we will wear whatever monstrosity the Fashion Industry tells us is hip this season, so will we also listen to the music and watch the shows we’re given to watch. After all, what choice do we have?

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New Songs or Oldies? That Is The Question

The review of the Van Halen show at the Staples Center in the Times today pretty much gave the band a good review but complained about the four new songs the band added to their set of classic hits.

This is almost always a problem. People at concerts come to hear the songs they already know and love. This is the great thing about being in a successful band. Unlike a movie where a movie star actor has to prove him or herself practically from scratch, a rock concert is pretty much a sure thing. The people who come to a rock concert are already fans of the band, already know and love their repertoire and are easy to please. But throw in some unfamiliar new songs and it confuses and bewilders some folks.

Led Zeppelin famously introduced Stairway To Heaven during the concert tour before the release of Led Zeppelin Four and it got a lukewarm reception. This is the very same tune that was just voted the Number One Classic Rock Song OF ALL TIME on radio station KLOS’ Memorial Day Weekend Top 1000 Countdown.

As an artist you want to introduce your fans to your new material, in fact, it’s often the main reason for the tour to begin with. I always liked hearing, “Here’s a song off our new album”, at concerts. Discovering new music was always one of the great joys of being a music fan. Let’s hope that Rock & Roll is not going the way of movies in that only remakes of old songs or variations of oldies are all that becomes commercially acceptable. I already don’t have enough reasons to leave the house at night as it is.
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KLOS’ Top 1000 Classic Rock Songs Of All Time

Over this past Memorial Day weekend, local Classic Rock radio station KLOS presented their listener submitted top 1000 Classic Rock songs of all time. They are;

1. Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin

2. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

3. Hotel California - Eagles

4. Baba O'Reilly - Who

5. Kashmir - Led Zeppelin

6. Freebird - Lynyrd Skynyrd

7. Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

8. Back in Black - AC/DC

9. Layla - Derek & the Dominos

I don’t have a problem with the top four but I think I’d replace Kashmir with Light My Fire by The Doors and Back In Black with All Along The Watch Tower by Jimi Hendrix. Pink Floyd deserves their spot but I’m not sure Comfortably Numb would be my choice. Wouldn't something on Dark Side Of The Moon, arguably the all time Classic Rock Radio champ be included in the Top Ten?

What interests me the most is that there are no Beatles songs on the list. A Day In His Life or Strawberry Fields Forever doesn’t make the top ten? How about Satisfaction by the Stones?  Perhaps the “Classic Rock” era as defined by the Classic Rock Radio format officially starts after the psychedelic era  (1967).

To be fair, some of the choices I think should be in the Top Ten actually did make the Top Twenty. Really, I'm surprised I still pay attention to this kind of stuff. For my past experience with these lists see:



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The Reality Of Fantasy And The Fantasy Of Reality

A while back the artist Thomas Kincade died. Let me begin by saying I wish I could paint as well as Thomas Kincade. However, when my wife and I bought our first home which was a cute little house in a housing tract the real estate company named The Bungalows since the houses all looked like beach houses from a past era, we discovered the art of Marty Bell. Ms. Bell painted whimsical and romantic cottages, often with thatched roofs and gardens that looked right out of a fairy tale. We bought four of her pieces for our new home.

A few years later Thomas Kincade came along with basically the same trip and Marty Bell disappeared. A few years ago I was in a gallery and asked the gallery owner whatever happened to her. Then I saw a card on his next announcing a memorial service for her and got my answer.  I don’t know how many people know of Marty Bell but Thomas Kincade certainly became famous.

I vastly prefer Marty Bell’s work to Kincade's for a reason that may seem odd. Marty Bell’s paintings were soft and somewhat impressionistic while Kincade's were tight and focused yet Bell’s paintings seemed more “real” to me. Even though Kincade’s paintings had greater detail and were “accurate”, Bell’s had a dreamlike quality. Marty Bell’s paintings seem like a more realistic depiction of a dream than Kincade’s did of reality.

This is another example of the artistic tipping point that I’ve mentioned before where a punk band’s tape seems ready for release while the Prog band’s tape, even though vastly superior technically, sounds more like a demo tape. We judge different styles of art with different standards. Punk Rock is not suppose to sound slick and professional but Prog Rock does. A dreamlike impressionistic painting is not suppose to look photo realistic but Thomas Kincade’s style was. Thomas Kincade was good but he had to either be better to paint in the style he used or go with a looser style.

I always felt Thomas Kincade’s paintings looked like the commercial art you sometimes see in a real estate office of the artist’s rendition of new home models. It therefore didn’t surprise me when a home manufacturer actually build a neighborhood of houses based on Thomas Kincade’s designs from his paintings. For the brochures to that housing tract his art was perfect.

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