Concert Review Triumvate - Jambase.com

We have assembled inside this ancient and insane theater to propagate our lust for life and flee the swarmy wisdom of the streets.
- Jim Morrison, "Ghost Song"

Here is a threesome of concert reviews of mine that have been posted on Jambase in the past month or so. They all were fantastic shows, all for different reasons:

Karl Denson's Tiny Universe - 3/21/09

Steve Kimock Crazy Engine w/ Melvin Seals - 3/28/09

Derek Trucks Band feat. Carlos Santana - 4/15/09

And always remember what Frank Zappa said once:

Information is not knowledge
Knowledge is not wisdom
Wisdom is not Truth
Truth is not Beauty
Beauty is not Love
Love is not Music
Music is THE BEST

John Hartford - Mark Twang

I recently wrote a loving tribute to one of the great albums by one of the all-time great bluegrass artists, John Hartford. The write-up of Mark Twang can be found here, on jambase.com. If you are not familiar with John Hartford and like bluegrass music, then you are doing yourself a large disservice by not checking this master out.

Hartford always had a flair for the irreverent. We leave with a reefer-inspired blessing of Hartford's, known as the track "The Lowest Pair" on Mark Twang:

Much further out than inevitable
Halloween is thy game.
Sky king has come and Wilma's done,
Uncertain as it is uneven.
Give us today hours devours in bed
As we forgive those that have dressed up against us
And need us not enter inflation,
But her liver, onions and potatoes.
For wine is a shingle
And a more, and a story for your father.
All right!

Top Five Party Startin' Funk Albums

As Facebook has officially gone off the deep end, what with the twitting and insanely tedious applications (including top five lists), I will contribute another top five list of my own in this forum, and continue to ignore the junkyard of minutiae that Facebook has become.

Having been inspired by a funk-tastic Karl Denson's Tiny Universe show that brought the dance party heat last weekend, I humbly present to you my Top Five Party Startin' Funk Albums. These are the albums you throw on at a party and play beginning to end once your crowd is socially lubricated enough with drink that dancing is a possibility. The infectious grooves present on these albums will get people moving, and get the party really started. They have been tested in the field over the years, and are the ones I come back to time and time again. Now let us begin the Funk Lesson Countdown:

Honorable Mention: Any Fela Kuti album. Nothin' like some good Afrobeat to lock everyone into the pocket. Most Fela Kuti songs are at least 15-20 minutes long, and are relentless with the hypnotic African funk. I recommend the Confusion/Gentleman album as a start. Also, anything by Antibalas will also do.

5. Maceo Parker - Life on Planet Groove
This live album from 1992 brings the heat. With Fred Wesley on trombone, this is the James Brown horn section funkin' it up and bringin' the house down. The first two tracks, "Shake Everything You Got" and "Pass the Peas," clock in at 28 minutes combined, and provide enough syncopated sax to make your granny shake it.

4. The Greyboy Allstars - Live
Greyboy is one of the great modern funk bands, playing patented West-Coast Boogaloo old-school style. This live album from 1998 is tight as hell, with Karl Denson on sax and jazz flute, and Robert Walter on the crunchy Hammond B3. The band chugs along tight as a drum, and it is very hard not to shake your shit in the process.

3. Lettuce - Rage
A modern classic. Funk supergroup Lettuce just released this album last year, and i have since given it more party play than Rod Stewart in the 70s. With members of Soulive and virtuoso Adam Deitch on drums, this band punches the funk in like it's their business. In my opinion, Lettuce is the tightest and best funk band playing today.

2. The Jacksons - Triumph
I know what you're thinking. Where's Thriller? Well, though it is the #1 all-time party-starting album in the history of mankind, Thriller isn't a funk album. But this criminally underrated album is. It is a wonder no one has heard of it. It was released in 1980, directly in between Off the Wall and Thriller and I see it as equally awesome as Off the Wall. MJ and his brothers have left Motown at this point, which means they changed their name to The Jacksons, and have complete creative control over their music. The result is a fucking awesome album of bass-popping pick-me-up disco-funk tunes that you probably have never heard. Plenty of patented MJ-snapping and clean L.A. production throughout, making for an awesome MJ dance party to songs that you haven't already heard a million times.

1. James Brown - In The Jungle Groove
This is pretty much the holy grail of funk music. It is a compilation of studio jams from 1969 to 1971, which is the period in which James Brown essentially invented funk as we know it. An 18 year old Bootsy Collins plays bass on these tracks, which are the most in-the-pocket grooves to ever punch you in the gut. "Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothin'" is my favorite track, with a bouncing lead bass line and a relentless groove that pounds you into the ground, its so deep. "Funky Drummer" is the most sampled track in the history of hip-hop music, if that says anything about the grooves on this album. If this album doesn't get the dance on at your party, then your party sucks. Period.


Thank you, goodnight! And always remember to Pass the Peas.

Archive IV - Jambase.com

Most recently, I reviewed a Big Sam's Funky Nation show for Jambase. You can read it HERE.

Of Phish, Public Speaking, and Transcendence

At this point down the line, it is established that I am a huge believer in the collective consciousness experience that a good live concert can provide an audience. If the band is on, and the audience is receptive and attentive, and everything is lined up just so, then a live show can turn into something much greater than the sum of its parts. During such a gathering, the interaction between performer and audience has the ability to change perceptions, and achieve a profound collective experience that can't be found anywhere else in today's day and age. It is a sort of transcendental contact between performer and audience, a synergy of communion that connects together all who are present and participating in the event.

With the recent Phish reunion shows at the Hampton Coliseum, this phenomenon has naturally been on my mind. The band's epic, marathon sets have reminded us all of their absence, and how much the cathartic celebrations that are Phish shows have been missed. To get an audience of 15 to 25,000 people to all groove on the same wavelength and in the same headspace is no easy feat, and there is no band today that is able to achieve this feat as effortlessly as Phish can. Phish chose Hampton for these shows, as the venue is particularly conducive to the collective band/audience experience.

But then I got thinking: considering the live electric concert experience has really only existed for about 50 years now, we are extremely lucky to be able to experience such phenomena. Before rock and roll, before electricity and amplification, where did people turn for a good rousing dose of collective mindmeld? In America's past, say 150-250 years ago, what events had the ability to bring large groups of people together in this way?

The answer seems to be public oratory. Public speakers of the 18^th and 19^th centuries had the ability to gather massive crowds, and the best ones had the ability to profoundly move their audience to a point of transformation. It seems that in those olden days, these events were the closest thing the public had to a live concert. There is an excellent essay by Granville Ganter, entitled “'Tuning In': Daniel Webster, Alfred Schultz, and the Grateful Dead,” in which the author compares the speeches of Daniel Webster with Grateful Dead concerts. Back in the day, people gathered in massive numbers to hear Webster deliver passionate oratory, and were greatly moved by his words. Ganter mentions that in 1840, more than 15,000 people climbed up Mt. Stratton in Vermont to hear Webster speak. This reminds me all too well of Phish's final days in 2004, when thousands of Phishheads stranded in traffic walked up to 25 miles to reach the mud-filled festival site of the band's last shows in Coventry, Vermont. In both cases, we see an audience's intense willingness to go through great lengths to be a part of a special communal event.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the modern grandaddy of western transcendent thought, was a huge fan of Webster. (He had a huge collection of bootleg Webster shows on tape. “Webster at Plymouth Plantation, 12/22/20? Heady, brah! Set two is killer!”) Emerson defined good oratory as “collective ecstasy,” where audience participation made the event by fusing the speaker with the audience. And in an age before amplification, this meant even more during such events. Emerson wrote that oratory is “an organ of sublime power...But only then is the orator successful when he... is as much a hearer as any in the assembly.” What's that? Breaking down the barriers between audience and performer? Provoking a mystical experience of collective union? Hey, that sounds familiar...

To take it even further back, we can go to one Mr. Ben Franklin's word on the subject. Back in his day, most public speaking was still done by preachers, and religious in nature. Regardless, the best speakers of the time still had the ability to profoundly move massive groups of people. Franklin had a particular love for the sermons of one Reverend George Whitefield, as he preached of morals, and not religious dogma. The following recollection of Franklin's took place around 1740:

His eloquence had a wonderful power over the hearts and purses of his hearers, of which I myself was an instance...He had a loud and clear voice, and articulated his words and sentences so perfectly, that he might be heard and understood at a great distance, especially as his auditories, however numerous, observ'd the most exact silence. He preach'd one evening from the top of the Court-house steps...Both streets were fill'd with his hearers to a considerable distance...I computed that he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand...Every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turn'd and well plac'd, that, without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleas'd with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that receiv'd from an excellent piece of music.

Right from Franklin's mouth, folks. The Court-house steps must have had a rowdy lot scene.

So be it the year 1740, 1840, or 2009, the public's desire to experience a profound moment of transcendental contact has always existed. Except back in the day, the heavyweights were orators like Daniel Webster and George Whitefield. So I suppose that makes live bands like the Dead and Phish our modern-day preachers, serving up hefty doses of collective transcendence on a regular basis. Try to remember this the next time you're blissing out to a sick “Slave” or “Hood,” as it is good to recall how lucky we are to have these bands in our lives.

Archive III - Jambase.com

Check out my published review of the new Jimmy Herring solo album Lifeboat.

JB, MJ and the Purple One Share A Stage!!!

If you were to rate the top five most influential artists in the history of Funk/R&B, the high priests would undoubtedly include James Brown, Michael Jackson, and Prince. Combined, what they have done more for dance music is absolutely staggering, and they all are considered the masters of their own genres. They are the untouchables of Funky Dance Music, and here they are, together on one stage. We are lucky enough to have footage of this incredible event, though it is crappy. The planets must have been aligned perfectly for an event of this magnitude to have ever occurred!



MJ appears shy, but brings the house down with his pure talent. He then insists to JB that Prince be introduced as well. Prince knows full well he can't top MJ, and doesn't even try. Instead, he opts for a spectacle. Riding in on the back of a hairy white guy, he appears very fucked up on something. He doesn't even bother singing, and instead rapes the shit out of a guitar for a while before pulling some random sexy stage antics. He then stumbles off stage, taking a piece of the set with him. The JB is all like, "Hey Prince, you forgot your shirt! Don't forget it on your way out."

If I had witnessed this event live, my head would have exploded. Simply and utterly EPIC.

Love Songs

Not that I ever do this, but considering the Grammies were last night, today I suddenly got an inkling to poke my head into the bizarre world that we call "popular music." I haven't paid any attention to the "chart-toppers" and "hit singles" in many, many years. Probably since the late 90s, when that horrible swarm of boy-bands descended upon and destroyed what was left of MTV, which was already on its death-bed by then.

So today I checked out the Billboard Hot 100 list, and with mild surprise, discovered that it is Kelly Clarkson who currently tops out the charts at #1 with her touching love song, beautifully titled, "My Life Would Suck Without You." Imagine Casey Kasem introducing that. Jesus fucking Christ.

But I suppose that there always has been and always will be musical drivel to feed to the masses. And if there has been one constant in the history of rock and roll over the past fifty years that has never gone out of style, it has been the universal appeal of the love song. (This does go back much further, to Tin Pan Alley and Sinatra and the crooners, but Rock is our main lexicon here.) From Elvis' "I Love You Because" in 1955 to "My Life Would Suck Without You," there has always been room for another pop nugget love song to give the world, regardless if it's a lovely gem, or a polished turd.

Given that most popular love songs are disposable fluff, there is no denying that it is not easy to write a love song that's simultaneously loved by millions and respected as actually having substance, as a form of art. Phil Spector was very good at this in the early 60's, and don't even get me started with soul music and Motown. But there is no denying that there really only has been one band to succeed in making high art out of love songs so often, and at such a consistently high level – obviously, The Beatles.

They were so good for so many reasons, and good love songs were really at the core of it all, especially at the beginning. One after another, they kept pumping these vital tracks out, and out of all those amazing love songs, only the occasional McCartney song came across as sappy in any way ("Michelle").

By '67 or so, once they had accepted their positions on the high throne of youth culture, The Beatles had assumed and embraced their roles as troubadours of Love. Their love songs had progressively gotten more and more complex through the Rubber Soul and Revolver albums, saying smart things about ambiguity, pleasure and guilt that had never been done in pop music at the time. They had mastered the craft of writing meaningful love songs, and were at the top of their game. Then Lennon went ahead and took it to a whole other level, summing it ALL up with the universal "All You Need is Love," which was premiered to the world in the first-ever global satellite television broadcast. Soon after, he realized he couldn't really take it any further than that. It seems to me that that song was essentially the climax of the Lennon-McCartney love song era, and they mostly dropped off the love theme after that. The best Beatles love songs post-Revolver were George songs, as he seems to have taken the torch from John and Paul while they explored other aspects of songwriting. Case in point: "Something." This is perhaps the best love song EVER, in the history of all songs. Frank Sinatra himself is known to have said that “Something” is his favorite Lennon-McCartney song.

Then The Beatles broke up. But the love songs continued, and at a pretty consistent quality. John, Paul and George have all contributed their fair share of lovely little ditties of love post-Beatles, though Paul has been guilty the most often of slipping into saccharine, sickly-sweet ballads that suck. Of note is his garish ballad "My Love," a Wings song that has to be the weakest, sappiest, poutiest puppy-dog-eyed McCartney ballad ever (way too many wubba wubs). This song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during June 1973. Fittingly enough, it was knocked out of the #1 spot at the end of June by George Harrison's far superior new single, "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)," which is a great forgotten track.

Perhaps in response to the bashing he got for the sucky "My Love," Paul came out a few years later with "Silly Love Songs," with lyrics which pretty much sum it all up:

You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs.
But I look around me and I see it isn't so.
Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs.
And what's wrong with that?
I'd like to know, 'cause here I go again
I love you, I love you,
I love you, I love you...

Well spoken, Sir Paul. A good love song is a song for all people, everywhere. So I suppose that songs like "My Love," or "My Life Would Suck Without You" do bring lots of pleasure to many people, regardless of the fact that they really, really suck. They are evidence that there will always be another silly love song to add to the long list.

And now, a list of all the Beatles Love Songs, meaning, the best love songs ever written:

• All My Loving

• All You Need Is Love

• And I Love Her

• Can't Buy Me Love

• From Me To You

• Hold Me Tight

• I Feel Fine

• I Wanna Be Your Man

• I Wanna Hold Your Hand

• I Want You (She's So Heavy) (love turned raunchy)

• I'll Get You

• It's Only Love

• Love Me Do

• Love You To (Harrison)

• Lovely Rita

• Michelle (my belle, mi amore...)

• Please Please Me

• PS I Love You

• Real Love (actually a Lennon song before being overdubbed in the 90s)

• She Loves You

• Something (Harrison)

• You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Lennon's anti-love breakup song)

Post-Beatles Solo Career songs about Love:

Lennon:

• Love (Plastic Ono Band)

• Oh My Love

• Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out) (written during his breakup with Yoko, when he became a depressed party-animal)

• Woman

• Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him

• Dear Yoko

• Grow Old With Me

Harrison:

• I Dig Love

• Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)

• The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord)

• Māya Love

• Ooh Baby (You Know That I Love You)

• Can't Stop Thinking About You

• Learning How to Love You

• Love Comes to Everyone

• Your Love Is Forever

• Wake Up My Love

• This is Love

And McCartney, the hopeless romantic. Sometimes pouty and too soft, but always catchy and melodic:

• Lovely Linda

• Maybe I'm Amazed (at the way you Love me all the time)

• Love is Strange

• My Love
  

• One More Kiss

• Love in Song

• Silly Love Songs
  

• Girlfriend (originally written with Michael Jackson in mind as the singer, MJ later covered it on Off the Wall)

• Through Our Love

• Only Love Remains

• Don't Be Careless Love

• Motor of Love

• The Lovers That Never Were

• Heather (Written for Heather Mills, the one-legged gold-digger)

• Your Loving Flame