Warren Zevon: "The Wind" (2003): 'Fending Off Death Naturally Through the Transition from Immortality'

Warren Zevon's last record was released two weeks before he died. The CD arrived in yesterday's mail.  I give this masterpiece five stars with a bullet. Nonetheless, greater minds than mine have evaluated this record. Robert Christgau has been the quintessential rock 'n' roll critict, to my mind, since I first discovered him in 1972 and way before that. Here's Christgua on Zevon's The Wind:

The Wind (Artemis, 2003) Naturally he fends off death-the-fact the way he fended off death-the-theme -- with black humor. "I'm looking for a woman with low self-esteem" is how he sums up the succor he craves, and he finishes off a painful "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" with impatient cries of "Open up, open up, open up." But "El Amor de Mi Vida," "She's Too Good for Me," "Please Stay," and "Keep Me in Your Heart" mean what their titles say. Only by hearing them can you grasp their tenderness, or understand that the absolute Spanish one seems to be for the wife he left behind, or muse that while the finale addresses his current succor provider, it also reaches out to the rest of us. Everyone who says this isn't a sentimental record is right. But it admits sentiment, hold the hygiene, and suggests that he knows more about love dying than he did when he was immortal. A-

 That's an A+ analysis, but, in my humble opinion, I disagree on Christgua's rating. This essential "facing death" record gets an A.

Disorder in the House (w/ Bruce Springsteen)

Steve Earle Covers His Mentor's Best: "Townes" : "Pancho and Lefty" (2009)

Backstage before going on at a gig with Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan explains why Townes Van Zandt's song Pancho and Lefty is a national treasure:

He's (Townes) is like a philosopher-poet. He gets to the heart of it in a quick way; gets it out. It's over, and just leaves the listener to -- think about it. 

Here Steve Earle covers this superb, truly American song.

Stephen Stills' "Manassas": "Both of Us (Bound to Lose)" (1972)

In the spring of 1972 perspective, Stephen Stills' band Manassas, Crosby and Nash, and Neil Young shared the Top Ten Billboard LP charts with three separate releases. During this record dominance by former members of the shattered supergroup, Rolling Stone found it "reassuring to know that Stills has some good music still inside him". (RS (109). Manassas stands by far as the best of what those artists released in '72. And with this record Stills expands on his original song structures.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes established Steven Stills as a composer who could take three shorts songs about his ex-girlfriend and form an exquisite suite. On Manassas, each of the double albums four sides consist of a multi-song suite. Below is the track Both of Us (Bound to Lose) that closes the side one -- Suite: The Raven. On this track Stills not only gets to show off his harmony vocal prowess with Chris Hillman, but the song also closes with a fine latin rock movement powered by Joe Lala's percussion. Stills' deft electric lead guitar is on display throughout.

Yep, it was 1972.

(Manassas percussionist and Tampa native Joe Lala passed away this month. This one's in memory of you, Joe.)

Jimi Hendrix Would Turn 71 Today

I rewatched Jimi Hendrix perform the currently definitive cover of The Star Spangled Banner in the original Woodstock (1970) documentary recently.

I wondered, would the high regard for Jimi's cover hold up over time? My money is on Jimi holding onto the lead regarding the national anthem. He shifted gears and, for those willing to take the ride, will continue to bring war back in a war poem.

Rest in peace, Jimi.

Etta James: "I'd Rather Go Blind" (1968)

Etta James in 1960

I cut my teeth on Rod Stewart's 1972 cover of the soul classic I'd Rather Go Blind from his Never a Dull Moment album. Now I realize Etta James is responsible for creating the definitive version of this song four years earlier at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Indeed, Ms. James handed off her co-writing credit for the lyrics -- a collaboration with Ellington Jordan.

For anybody wondering why Stewart is a "white boy lost in the blues" compared to Etta James, here's my evidence:

Delta Blues Rock for the Angels -- Specifically, Mephistopheles

Epoch-marking, breakthrough Mississippi Delta blues that would become the definition of what-we-do for the late 1960s and early '70s rock guitarists from Keith to Eric by way of Muddy Waters. Johnson played "live to the mic" with only one acoustic guitar, on 1930s recording equipment. And his one guitar filled the aural space of an army of guitars, in the cut below anticipating the solid body electrics such as Fender Stratocaster. Riveting.

There's nothing based in legend about Johnson's musical legacy.

"Heaven done called another blues singer back Home."

On this date in 1970, Heaven done called Janis Joplin back Home. Rest in Peace, Janis. 

And thanks.

50 years ago .... "A Change is Gonna Come"

Fifty years ago today, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it his way. At that same event on the Mall in DC, Bob Dylan said it his way. But if Dylan isn't your cup of tea, how about this 1963 track from Sam Cooke.

Rory Block, "Twelve Gates to the City" (2012)

This tune opened up more avenues of exploration than I can count. I know right now is I've got brush up on my Rev. Gary Davis, learn some more about Jerusalem and definitely keep an eye on this country blues guitar master.
As the AllMusic.com guide put it, "[S]he does a remarkable job of channeling the basics of her subject's technique and grafting it onto her own inimitable style."

Remembering Bobby Bland

Bobby "Blue" Bland, one of the most influential blues, soul and R&B singers of our time, passed away this past Sunday at the age of 83.

I first heard the song Stormy Monday performed by The Allman Brothers Band, only discovering Bland's definitive version years later. I thought this track would make a fitting remembrance of this legend in his own time.

"Payin' the Cost to Be the Boss"

B. B. King's 1997 all-star duet album Deuces Wild released a plethora of genre-stretching collaborations showing blues roots everywhere. The track below lists not only Mick Jagger but The Rolling Stones as well. And yes, it is the whole ’97 line-up of the Stones with Darryl Jones on bass.

Enjoy (that is, dig it.)

Sister Monica Parker, "Never Say Never" (2012)

This is one of those tracks that, the first time I heard it, I fell in love with it. Sista Monica can wrap her soulful voice around a song like nobody I've heard since Sam Cooke -- comin' from me that high praise.

From her Soul, Blues and Ballads album, here's a taste of Sista Monica Parker:

'Believe It or Not, He Remembers It All': "Life": A Memoir by Keith Richards

Keith Richards

Keith, Mick and Brian and Co. in 

Achmed's Hash Shop, Tangier, Morocco

"I think I can talk for the Stones most of the time, and we didn't care 

what they wanted out there. That was on of the charms of the Stones. 

And the rock-and-roll that we did come out with on Beggars Banquet was enough. 

You can't say apart from "Sympathy" and "Street Fighting Man" that there's 

rock and roll on Beggars Banquet at all .... This is music." 

-- pp. 238- 239, Life (paperback, 2010) by Keith Richards

_____________________________________________________
....

Well his world is torn and frayed

It's seen much better days

Just as long as the guitar plays

He'll steal your hear away

Steal your heart away 
....

- chorus of Torn and Frayed (Jagger / Richards),
Exile on Main St (1972), The Rolling Stones

There is clearly no ghost writer here. Keith Richards, principal guitarist and co-songwriter for The Rolling Stones, let's his personality come shining through on every page of his memoir, Life. (Keith did, by his own admission, need an editor, his trusted colleage journalist James Fox.)

Livin' as hard as Kieth has, it's incredible all that he remembers. We read an unvarnished tale of this working class kid from the London projects (aka Estates) making good with the Stones, the band that fueled with his enormous talent. This memoir also gives us a window into how his music reflected his hard livin', on and off the road. Keith shares tales of sometimes dubious adventures, family lives, loves, and heartbreaks. We also hear of the battles Keith had with his partner and friend, Mick Jagger, with press distortions wiped away.

In a recent interview, actor Malcolm McDowell said he thought everybody should read this book. My goal here is less ambitious; I just want to share some pleasant surprises I founding reading the book. Wanna know how bands work: why some stick together and some blow apart? Interested in the evolution during the 1960s of the modern LP? And for hard core fans, there are details more specific to the Stones. I was fascinated reading that the original studio version of Jumpin' Jack Flash was done all on acoustic guitars, played through over-loaded 1st generation cassette players. Stones album back stories come alive with Richards' pen, just as his guitar brought brought a wealth of popular music to life. If you want to know more about why the music of late '60s and early '70s  is so important to a lot of folks like me, read this book.

Keith, a surprisingly charming man, tells his story with unexpected candor. He traces the path of a great British blues rock band making musical history over the last 50 years as well as his life inside and out of that band. I cherish what I learned from this detailed account of Keith on Keith.

Here's a little taste of Keith slowing things down, fronting his other great band, The X-Pensive Winos.

Keith Richards and The X-pensive Winos

"Money's Tight, Nothin's Free, Won't Somebody Come and Rescue Me; I am Stranded, Out in the Crossfire"

"Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to fuckin' live."

-- Calamity Jane

Stevie Ray Vaughn
(sings the title quote like he understands what it means)

Sullivan's Travels (1941; dir. Preston Sturges)

(film the Coen Bros. tipped their hat to with O Brother Where Art Thou)

[Written May 2012 through November 2012]

In the place where you are born and grow up, you begin to learn the things all men must know. Although they are the simplest things, it take a man's life to really know them. And if you are to be a writer, the stories you [tell] will be true in proportion to this knowledge of life that you have ... [of] the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, the people, the places, and how the weather was. (Except from narrative introduction in the 1963 film Ernest Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (dir., Martin Ritt) (Introduction by E. A. Hotchner -- 1968).

 When, despite your best efforts to keep things in balance, the money runs out and your Seven Spanish Angels are away for an audience with the Man with the thunder, changes simply must come.

My offline financial exile shattered my attempt to keep things fresh over the past five years of writing and editing Gold Coast Bluenote.

Here are of few of the treasures I've enjoyed during my break from the online life:

- Steve Earle Live From Austin TX (DVD of an Austin City Limits gig from 1986, New West Records, 2004) .... [with The Dukes]. Steve and his band turn in a crack performance that made one friend of mine wonder why he "didn't make it big." Whatever the answer to that question, the full Austin City Limits concert is first class -- what Gram Parsons would call "cosmic American music."

- The Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way (CD, 2006). I've written about this album here before, so I'm going to reprint part of one of two GCB posts on the record:

A friend of mine put on an album the other night, one I hadn't written about since it took home five Grammys and tore up the charts in 2006. The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way still sounds great these five years later.

As an aging hippie, the idea that a band would stir up so much controversy by exercising an artist's right to criticize American foreign policy from overseas is more than a little disconcerting. I grew up at the height of the era where protest music and musicians speaking their minds were badges of honor. But judging on the first decade of this century, a band now puts its future on the line by stepping out of line. As I think about it, I guess its always been risky to oppose those in authority.

The Dixie Chicks are still thriving with a smaller fan base, having lost many of their more conservative, mainstream country fans. But they are still going strong, and their cathartic album Taking the Long Way stands as one of the decade's most important protest records.

- Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie and George C. Scott in The Hustler (DVD, 1961; dir. Robert Rossen). You will find a full post on this film here.

- Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in Sullivan's Travels (1941; dir. Preston Sturges)

- White Shadow by Ace Atkins (historical novel, 2006). It's a vast over-simplification to say that White Shadow is Tampa, Florida's The Godfather. This noir novel is drenched in local color and the Mafia-drenched world of Tampa and Havana, Cuba in the mid-1950s. 

I was born in '57. Nobody talks anymore about the history this book is filled with, from the Latin and Sicilian mobsters who ran the city's underworld to the task faced by honest Tampa cops of trying to chip away at a granite mountain of corruption and decadence. Atkins takes the Pulitzer Prize nominated research on an unsolved mob murder in the fifties and spins an accurate, engaging tale of the darker side of life in my hometown. It's one of the finest historical novels I've found since discovering Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Deadwood: The Complete Series (DVD set, copyright 2004, 2006, 2007; created by David Milch)

 As reader's of Gold Coast Bluenote would expect, there was a good deal of rock 'n' roll that matters on the home jukebox while I was offline. Let me mention a few of these classics that were in heavy rotation:

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Derek and the Dominoes (1970; produced by Tom Dowd)

Exile on Main St, The Rolling Stones (1972, produced by Jimmy Miller)

The Chess Box: Chuck Berry, (3 DVD compilation, 1988)

The Bootleg Series, Vol. IV, The Royal Albert Hall Concert, Bob Dylan (the acoustic side, 1966). Especially Dylan's live version of, arguably, one of the greatest songs ever written, Visions of Johanna.

 If these albums, DVDs, or books are gathering dust in your collection or you haven't acquired the more recently released archival material, well, double clutch your mojo back into gear and let the good times roll. A little time offline did me a world of good. To quote Chuck Berry:

"C'est la vie, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell."

Girls with Guitars: "Leaving Chicago", Cassie Taylor / Dani Wilde / Samantha Fish

Girls with Guitars, Live

From the traditional to the contemporary blues scene, here's a track that would would have every toe tappin' in the blues club, fill the dance floor and get all the men glared at by their ole ladies.

Son House: "Death Letter Blues"

Son House

After I quite drinking, after I lost my truck, I still used to go to bars, usually in the afternoon when I could get control of a good jukebox. One of my favorite haunts was a notorious dive in downtown Tampa called The Hub. I'd drink club soda at the bar, pouring the few bucks I had to spare into the jukebox and over-tipping the bartender.

In all my years of jukebox explorations, the greatest discovery I ever made was Son House, one of the the gifted Mississippi delta bluesmen who influenced Robert Johnson. Here's a little taste of Son House. I hope it sparks your interest in this little known acoustic blues master.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

Yesterday America's greatest living poet, Bob Dylan, turned 71. For all he's given me, for all he's helped our generation give the world, here's a little birthday wish: from The Band's Last Waltz (Concert, 1976; Scorsese's film, 1978), here Bob, Robbie & Co. performing Forever Young.

Guitar Slide Right in Your Pocket: Mance Lipscomb - "Jack of Spades"

Son of an ex-slave born in 1898 in Navasota, Texas and relatively little known outside serious blues circles, Mance Lipscomb is the blues pioneers' pioneer.

I've seen a lot of make-shift slides over the years, but a folding knife used as a guitar slide is a new one on me.

Enjoy this "transition" blues -- from the music of the 19th century to that of the churning 20th.

Dion, Live and in the Groove: "Nadine" (2007)

"We sang on the beaches, or on the rooftops, or in hallways of tenement buildings. We must have been sensitive artists. Even back then, because we always looked for the hallway that had the best sound." -- Dion DiMucci

Dion covering Chuck Berry's Nadine, live

Dion, a signature voice of early 1960's rock n' roll (Runaround Sue, The Wanderer), is still making the scene and sharing his magic. I heard his 2007 studio version of Nadine recently and it grabbed my attention. He tore it up. This live clip, featuring Jools Holland, isn't quite as hot, but it's clear evidence that he is not residing in the dustbin of rock history. He's out there doing first rate rock n' roll.

I missed him the first go round 'cause I was just a youngin', but I know quality when I hear it. So, my friends, dig this.

The Birth of Blues/Rock: Robert Johnson, "Terraplane Blues"

Don't get wrapped up in the lyrics just yet; that will take some time. Just dig Johnson's guitar and vocal art. It doesn't get any more important, or any better, than this obscure masterpiece.

This is embryonic acoustic blues/rock from 1936, my friends. Rock wasn't even invented until the 50s -- the 40s if you count Louis Jordan. It's no wonder Robert Johnson's legend and musical legacy have lasted.