The Ozzmatron of Rock

I'm reading Ozzy Osbourne's autobiography right now. Only thirty-three pages in and I've already laughed out loud several times (apparently one British term for masturbation is "milking the maggot"). The ghostwriter captures Ozzy's wacky, addled voice perfectly. (Of course, one must keep in mind Ozzy's addlepation comes from his prodigious decades of drinking and drugging, which would have killed anyone else.) It's in diametric opposition to Keith Richards' autobiography, which was so plodding, long-winded, ponderous and pretentious that I eventually gave up on it. I toyed with buying that book for a while; I'm glad I didn't.

In honor of this, here's one of my favorite Ozzy Osbourne videos: "Shot In the Dark," which also features a very young Dweezil Zappa.

I know Ozzy's had quite the life. After the bad string of young adult books I've struggled through lately, I need something light and funny. This seems to fit the bill.

The Rolling Stoned Pirate's One Hit

In my ongoing quest to determine which of my DVD's I like and will keep (and eventually switch to Blu-ray), and which I am going to get rid of, tonight's On the Fence offering is Pirates of the Caribbean III: At World's End.




This is a pretty shlocky series to begin with, to be sure, although in the first movie, The Curse of the Black Pearl, Johnny Depp's pirate-slash-rock-star performance, channeling (in the actor's words) Keith Richards, was pretty riveting. Johnny's still cute, still slurring his words beguilingly, but the shtick is wearing a little thin.

The plot itself is frantic and needlessly twisty, and the final battle goes on way too long. It's Not a Keeper, in other words. Honestly, the best part of the whole thing, for me, is Keith Richards' cameo as Captain Jack Sparrow's father. I wondered what happened when people saw it in theatres and the camera lingered on Keith's famous Rolling Stones silver skull ring (which is eerily apropos for a pirate as well) and audiences realized just who they were seeing....

And hey! YouTube rides to the rescue!

After watching that, I was reminded of perhaps the last great Rolling Stones video, "One Hit (To the Body)." Made at a time when Mick and Keith were not getting along AT ALL, there's a great deal of scowling, murderous looks, posturing, and guitar-swinging (at Mick, not into the air), which actually made for a good watch. You expected Keith to pounce on Mick any minute, except of course they would have edited that out.

So, in watching and thinking about this, I decided to merge it all together into one humongous post.

Happy New Year, y'all.

"We Are Radiation Romeos"

For those who liked the curious mixture of punk, dance, bleached hair, postapocalyptic duds, and sneering upper lip that was 80's Billy Idol, I must point out that he had a secret weapon: guitarist Steve Stevens.

Eventually Stevens struck out on his own, delivering a solo album, Atomic Playboys.

Of course, this was still the 80's (if the tail end), and so Stevens' (and his singer's) hair extensions are among the most extreme known to man. His solo here also includes a fair bit of masturbatory speaker-writhing. Still, if you check out the lyrics to said album, they're quite interesting, more literary than most rock songwriters. The album cover, shown at the beginning of the video, was done by H.R. Giger, of Alien fame.

In later years Stevens has apparently put out some fine instrumental music. I ran across this video of him performing flamenco, and was quite impressed.

(Also, that looks a little more like his real hair.)

Just goes to show the 80's were not all sleaze and greed, folks.

The Bluest Eye

While listening to one of my home-burned CDs in the car (I know, I know, that's passe--I swear, I will get an iPod one of these days) it occurred to me that I had the perfect theme song for Paul Ryan.

The Who--"Behind Blue Eyes"

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what it's like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams, they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you


No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

But my dreams, they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

From the album Who's Next. The best Who album ever, and one of the best rock n'roll albums ever made.

This is rather fun. I think I'll hunt around for a suitable theme song for Mitt Romney next.

"And the union people crawled away"

I didn't know Billy Joel was a prophet, but this thirty-year-old song, and video, is as relevant today as ever.

(As an aside, let's have a moment of silence for the salad days of MTV, when the channel actually showed videos, and they were a big enough deal for some fairly prominent directors to make little three- and four-minute movies. This video supposedly cost more than $100,000.)

If you had a three-day weekend, like me, then don't forget to think about what made that all possible. It didn't come about via the sprinkling of magical 1% fairy dust.

Happy Labor Day.

The Battle of the Ledge

I've decided I much prefer female singers with deep voices. I love Cher's voice, for instance. It has weight and depth, and isn't some wispy little soprano that sounds like it could be blown away in a stiff breeze. Lucinda Williams' voice is cracked and twisted, but it holds so much emotion--you listen to one line of her songs and you know that woman has lived.

Mary Gauthier is another tremendous singer/songwriter along this line. I suppose technically her voice would be called an alto, although it's a bit more polished--and in better shape--than Lucinda Williams' tobacco-and-whiskey phrasing. Her Wikipedia page is interesting--apparently she's lived quite the life (and didn't write her first song till she was 35!).

My favorite song of hers is actually the roots-rocker "It Ain't the Wind, It's the Rain." However, looking over  her website, I saw this video set to a montage of images from "Battlestar Galactica," about Lee Adama of all people, and couldn't resist.

If you haven't watched "Battlestar Galactica" (the aughts version, not the 70's "Star Wars" ripoff with feathered haircuts), you should do so immediately, of course. In the meantime, enjoy this mashup, and thrill to Mary Gauthier's wonderfully evocative voice.

The Heart of Rock n'Roll

Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart have been around quite a few years. How long? According to their Wikipedia page, forty years.

Forty years is a damn long time for a rock musician, especially a woman in rock's inherently sexist culture, but Ann and Nancy are still hanging in there.

This is one of my favorite Heart songs, "Allies." It's a lesser-known song, I think, because it came out on Passionworks, the album released prior to Heart's resurgence in the mid-80's. But it's a pounding piano ballad, and the video features Ann and Nancy as instrumentalists (flute and piano respectively) instead of cute chick singers. (Ann, as a formidable-looking brunette, has thankfully never qualified as "cute.")

I'm not sure what the "B" storyline to this is, other than a vague postapocalyptic setting. Actually, to me, the lyrics sound almost Olympian.


We search our hearts
To justify the reason
And draw the line
To meet somewhere halfway
If faith is blind
Through darkness it will guide us
Cause the spirit still remains
With the keepers of the flame

Allies with our backs against the wall
I will answer when you call
And take on the odds
For what we believe is true
Allies in a world of too much choice
I only need your voice
Tell me you care
I'll be anywhere for you, allies

Ann's voice is just great on this. She's one of the best female singers in rock, anyway.

I've heard Ann and Nancy's memoir is coming out soon. That should make for some interesting reading.

Panther Purr

Of all the Jacksons, I prefer Michael and Janet. I tend to go for Michael's harder side, as in "Beat It" (with Eddie Van Halen's smokin' guitar solo) and "Dirty Diana." But Janet, for all her r&b and dance roots, had flashes of a rockergrrl persona. Never was this more in evidence than "Black Cat."

This was a supposedly "live" performance from the 1990 Video Music Awards (although I have grave doubts, especially since her vocal performance is exactly the same as on the record). Oh well. That was sort of the Milli Vanilli lipsync era anyway. Even if it is lipsynced, it's still a kickass song, and interestingly, it's one she wrote herself.

Don't understand why you insist
On ways of living such a dangerous life
Time after time, you stay away
And I just know that you're telling me lies

Black cat, nine lives, short days, long nights
Living on the edge, not afraid to die
Heartbeat, real strong but not for long
Better watch your step or you're gonna die

Yeah, it's not overly deep or profound, but matched with that awesome guitar riff, it made your ears bleed.

"Today is a Day of Reckoning"

(Yes, I'm one day late again. I was wrestling with the computer again last night.)

If you listen to country music, you know the songs are not about beer, blondes and big trucks, not anymore. I think some of the best songwriters in the world work in Nashville, and they're tackling numerous important topics--including domestic violence, as Gretchen Peters does in Martina McBride's "Independence Day." This is a harrowing "Burning Bed"-style tale of an abused wife who burns down the house--with her husband and herself inside--rather than take any more beatings. Martina McBride does a great job with the song. (Some background on the song and writer here.)


Apparently the video caused something of a stir when it was released. I couldn't find an embeddable "official" version on YouTube, so here's a link to CMT.


Here's a bonus treat--Martina singing "Independence Day" with one of her idols, Pat Benatar.

This is not an easy song to listen to, but it's certainly better than any Justin Bieber fluff. 
 

Awesome Bravo Badass Amplification

Yes, I like Abba, even with their silly backwards B.

I know some people think they embodied everything that was wrong about the 70's: slick and overproduced, with two female singers who didn't even know the English language and were singing everything by rote, leaving no depth or emotion to their music at all. Hell, there might even be something to that.

Then I listen to a song like "Chiquitita" and I don't give a crap.

 

It's far and away my favorite Abba song. I know everybody thinks about "Dancing Queen" when they think of Abba (even Newt Gingrich, with his incongruous ringtone) but "Chiquitita" has that infectious Spanish rhythm that worms its way inside your skull and won't come out. I'll admit this is a particularly bad video, with poor editing, lousy direction and not even a cursory attempt to match the guitar-strumming and piano-picking to the actual music (it doesn't look like the so-called "keyboardist" has touched a key in his life), but then again, them's certainly the piss-poor 70's video breaks. (The only exception to that, as far as I can see, is the iconic video for Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody.")

It really doesn't matter. Just close your eyes and listen to the actual song. That's what I do. I defy your toes not to start tapping and your arms to start swinging.

"You know they've got a helluva band"

There are many musicians who have left us way too soon. Most of us talk about the "Big J's"--Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, John Lennon. In recent months, Whitney Houston. There are others, in musical genres I don't pay much attention to. Tupac Shakur, for instance. Biggie Smalls.

Then there are those who nobody hears about, but when you look at what they did in their short time on earth you know a wonderful light has left us. 


Such a person was Dave Carter, folk singer. I had never heard of him before he came up on one of my Pandora stations--I believe it was my Emmylou Harris station. At any rate, I didn't know he or his partner, Tracy Grammer, from Adam's off ox. But his lyrics instantly captivated me. When you're in the presence of a master wordsmith, you know it. 


This is one of my favorite Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer tunes. It's not a real video as such; it's merely the CD cover art as background to the song, "41 Thunderer." But oh, what a song. You have to listen to it several times for the depth of the lyrics to really sink in, and I'm still finding delightful little asides and nuances, even after hearing this song dozens of times.


    


Here are samples of the verses: 


In fair silver city on the blind side of fate 
I grew up to manhood on the narrow and straight 
But prideful I stumbled, and foolish I fell 
In the silken fine trammels of a cruel Yankee belle 


 Slender and wicked, flame in her eyes 
Pearl white and nickel round the curve of her thighs 
Smooth as dry whiskey, but cold to caress 
She slid like a viper from her tooled leather dress
 
Oh forty-one thunderer, colt repeater 
She's a silver-tongued wonder and a mean mistreater 
Six-eyed delilah, brazen and bold 
Now it's stand and deliver, fire in the hole 
Forty-one thunderer turn loose of my soul


These gorgeous lyrics ("silken fine trammels," "smooth as dry whiskey"--poetry. Absolute poetry) are matched with Tracy Grammer's wonderful violin work. She produces a fiery, gritty solo that for my money is almost as good as David Gilmour's spectacular lead guitar in "Comfortably Numb." I wasn't sure if I liked this song at first, but after repeated listenings I wouldn't trade it for anything. 

Dave Carter died ten years ago. What a loss. If there's any justice, he's with the Helluva Band, teaching Jimi Hendrix a thing or two about subtlety.

"One quarter flash and three parts foolish"

There's something to be said for one-hit wonders. Singers or bands that produce one or two well-known songs and quietly fade away. More than anything else, I think, they're a product of their time; a flash in the pan inextricably linked to an event, an emotion, or a person, that varies for each of us who remembers them.

Such a band is Quarterflash.

I remember them appearing on American Bandstand in the early 80's, and lead singer/saxophonist Rindy Ross describing how they got their name: from the old saying that is the title of this entry. I loved their name; it was clever, and since the only other "Q" artists I knew of were the incomparable Queen (and, later on, Queensryche), they were in pretty rarefied air. Not to mention that Rindy played a frakking instrument instead of standing there with cutesy blond 80's hair wielding a microphone.

(Of course, Joan Jett was soon to come along and smash that stereotype anyway.)



This song is interesting to me because of the guitar solo. It almost has a keyboardish-edge to it, as if the guitar was being channeled through one of those "guitar synthesizers" Judas Priest would use on Turbo. I know they got slammed for that, but I personally think "Turbo Lover" is an awesome song (and I will tap it for a Musical Monday one of these days). The interplay between the "Find Another Fool" guitar and saxophone was pretty good, and this song just flat out rocked.

I never hear it on the radio nowadays, and the band has faded into obscurity. Probably most of my readers won't know who the hell I'm talking about. Such is the fate of growing older. Just remember, kidlets, it happens to everybody.

All the World's a Stage

I'm sure some of you will say Rush is just a pretentious prog-rock dinosaur whose time has passed.

There may be a (small) grain of truth to that. Certainly their heyday is over and done with; their biggest hits were in the '80's, and hey, that's thirty frakking years ago, people. And Neal Peart (drummer/lyricist) can certainly be twee and pretentious when it suits him. Just take a gander at "The Trees" or "The Temples of Syrinx," for example, or the horrid middle rap section of "Roll the Bones," which almost ruined the entire album, at least for me.

But when you really listen to a perfect gem of an album like "Moving Pictures," you think Neal Peart is the best damn drummer and songwriter on the planet. He's a storyteller and a poet, and he has a command of the language that puts just about every other songwriter except Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to shame. Take this verse from "Witch Hunt," my favorite Rush song:

Features distorted in the flickering light
Faces are twisted and grotesque
Silent and stern in the sweltering night
The mob moves like demons possessed
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right
Confident their ways are best

Then, with Geddy Lee's long-drawn-out "Ooooohhhhh" and the kickass keyboard riff, the song takes flight.

Show me another songwriter who can use the word "grotesque" in a line, let alone make it rhyme.

This video is from Rush's '84 "Grace Under Pressure" tour. They use the extended intro from the album in this, accompanied by some (occasionally cheesy) demon-witch-hunt film clips. Nevertheless, the clips illustrate the dark paranoid tone of the song very well. Also note that, as far as I can tell, there are no extra musicians hiding off to the side--Geddy Lee plays both bass and keyboards (and his voice is eerily reminiscent of Steve Perry). Neal Peart is, of course, nearly buried underneath his monstrous drum kit.



Forty years and they're still going strong.

For a much more indepth discussion of Rush's albums and songs, including Neal Peart's penchant for sci-fi/fantasy lyrics, go here and here. Quite long and very much Rush-wonky, but highly recommended.

Love Among the Herbs

(Sorry for being late with this. If you follow my Twitter feed, you know that last night I was contemplating the best way to throttle my computer.)

"Scarborough Fair" is an English folk ballad, dating back several hundred years in its earliest versions. The version sung today contains the mysterious lyric "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme," which may refer to different virtues or possibly a love charm.

The lyrics are about a man trying to attain his true love. In Medieval times, the herbs mentioned in the song represented virtues that were important to the lyrics. Parsley was comfort, sage was strength, rosemary was love, and thyme was courage.

According to Wikipedia, "folksong scholar Märta Ramsten states that folksong refrains containing enumerations of herbs — spices and medical herbs — occur in many languages, including Swedish, Danish, German, and English," with the Italian equivalent being "ravanei, remulass, barbabietul e spinass." Imagine trying to sing a refrain about radish, horseradish, beet and spinach.

Several artists have covered the song over the years, including Sarah Brightman, Celtic Woman and (most famously) Simon and Garfunkel. I first heard the song from (of all people) the 80's/90's heavy-metal band Queensryche. It's found on the remastered version of their album "Empire."



The version here is an acoustic one from MTV circa 1993, back when, you know, they actually had music on their channel instead of Snooki. (I hate that nickname; it sounds like she and Snoopy were twins separated at birth.) This version is relatively restrained; to get the full impact of lead singer Geoff Tate's air-raid siren of a voice, you have to listen to the CD.

Yes, I'm something of a metalhead, although I certainly don't appreciate most metal bands' extreme sexism. Thankfully, Queensryche doesn't go in for too much of that. Their hour-long concept album, "Operation: Mindcrime," tells a complete futuristic story from start to finish, with sound effects and snippets of dialogue between songs. Highly recommended.

Two Little Singers

For tonight's Musical Mondays selection, I would like to offer a twofer--a song done by two different people, one Awesome and one Stupendously Awesome.

For the Stupendous, let me present the original: the incomparable Freddie Mercury and Queen, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."

(Well, crap. I was going to embed it, but apparently someone's gone all copyright-paranoid at YouTube and the various iterations of the video are unavailable. However, here's a link to a Queen performance on Saturday Night Live in 1982. This is a terrific performance, and Freddie...sigh. Miss you, man.)

Now, for the Awesomeness, here's country warbler Dwight Yoakam with his version of the song. For those country-western haters among you, don't automatically turn screaming and run--Dwight has a wide streak of 50's rockabilly, and this song fits him like a glove. (Except that he can't exploit the "Ready Freddie" quip in the original.)



This is a live version shot at Orlando, Florida's Hard Rock Cafe, which I settled on because frankly, the CMT video sucked. Sorry, Dwight. I usually don't get embarrassed at videos, but this one is half-assed to say the least; the sight of blue-jeaned and hatted country line dancers gyrating behind a lip-syncing Dwight didn't do it for me at all. Also, this live video has a great slap bass.

This isn't to say that Dwight does the song better than Freddie, although he does it pretty darned good...the arrangement is almost identical to Queen's, but Dwight makes the song thoroughly his own, just as Freddie did. In this case, the greatness is very much in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.

The Lost Highway

Before I became a pharmacy technician eight years ago, I was a delivery driver for a local pharmacy who had contracted with my hometown's nursing homes. They ran their operation out of a cramped back room, and when I came down every afternoon to pick up my load, the pharmacist would have music blasting out the back door. Being that he was an old hippie, I heard a lot of classic rock (cranked up to 11). I also kept hearing, in stark contrast, this female singer who was a bit folkie, a bit Celtic, and a bit Middle Eastern all rolled into one.

Her name was Loreena McKennitt, and the CD was The Book of Secrets.

I have all her CDs now, but I think Book is definitely her masterpiece. The crown jewel of the collection is a ten-minute-plus tour de force called "The Highwayman," which is Loreena setting the old Alfred Noyes poem to music. (The poem can be found here.) Her voice is picture-perfect throughout, as is the song's pacing. The instrumentation is heavy with acoustic guitars, violins and cellos, but when she reaches the climax, this song rocks.



Never mind the length. Give it a listen. I think you'll be as mesmerized as I am.

A Brief Programming Note

All of the links on my sidebar are drawn from my Google Reader account. Time-tested and viewer-approved, if you will. I won't recommend anything I don't personally read every day. Also, I hate links that aren't up-to-date, so every so often I purge the sidebar of those who haven't posted in a while (say, a month or more). I realize that life sometimes gets in the way, so if you start posting regularly again, you'll probably make a reappearance.

I thought I would introduce a new weekly feature: Musical Mondays. As someone who remembers, and listens to, everything from classic rock to disco to hair metal to Europop to grunge to folk (exception: rap; if I wanted to hear people talk instead of sing, I'd switch to NPR), I like a pretty extensive range of music and intend to share some of it here.

First up: Unless you're a fan of glam rock, David Bowie and/or Def Leppard, you probably don't remember Mott the Hoople and its lead singer, Ian Hunter. Mott's greatest hit was the Bowie-written and produced "All the Young Dudes," but Ian Hunter wrote a number of rock classics, including "Once Bitten Twice Shy" (covered by Great White), "All the Way To Memphis," "Cleveland Rocks" and "Ships" (covered by Barry Manilow [!]--not a half-bad cover either). He also wrote a book (referenced in previous post):  Diary of a Rock n' Roll Star. Dude is over seventy now, and he's still making good music.

This clip is taken from the old, forgotten ABC variety show "Fridays" (definitely SNL-lite). The song, "We Gotta Get Out of Here," is from Ian's double-live album "Welcome to the Club." The lyrics comment on the disco fad, with a sly swipe at the then red-hot Studio 54, which Ian unsurprisingly found empty and pathetic. At any rate, it's just a great rock song. Enjoy.