Music Review: CSNY 1974

They don't make rock'n'roll "supergroups" anymore. Come to think of it, they never let any musician who has anything remotely important to say anywhere near the Top 40 anymore either. In many ways the quartet of David Crosby (originally of the The Byrds), Stephen Stills (originally of Buffalo Springfield), Graham Nash (originally of The Hollies) and Neil Young (Stills's Buffalo Springfield bandmate, but a remarkably prolific solo performer alone and with his own band, Crazy Horse) personified the medium in America at the very height of its power. They first came together at Woodstock, streaked like a meteor across the rock landscape in the late 60s and early 70s, fell apart amid bickering and backbiting as the latter decade wore on--and then reunited several times as a bad caricature of their former selves (mostly without Neil Young, who despite soaring ups and downs in the ensuing decades unlike the others remains a vibrant and relevant artist to this day).

In 1974, the quartet hit the road for a string of stadium shows just as Richard Nixon (whom the band had lambasted on its most memorable song, the Kent State shooting protest scorcher, "Ohio") was preparing to resign (and in fact, after Nixon did his memorable helicopter exit from the White House lawn, Neil Young wrote a quick casual ditty called "Goodbye Dick," which is included here). CSN&Y recorded nine of the shows with the intention of producing a live album, but the tour descended into such a morass of drug-and-sex fueled hedonism (backstage anyway) that bad feelings kept the tapes of the shows under wraps for nearly 40 years.

Fortunately for us aging rock'n'rollers who haven't yet died even as we are getting old, the creme de la creme of the recordings from that tour have now been released as "CSNY 1974," which contains 39 portions of pure classic rock goodness. For whatever excess the band members may have been engaging in while producing this fine music, it never spills out onto the stage (at least on those tracks that were released).

Particular highlights for me include a soaring nine-and-a-half minute version of "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Immigration Man", a song which is still topical four decades later, a rollicking version of Still's solo hit, "Love the One You're With" and a hard driving seven minute version of Crosby's anthemic, "Almost Cut My Hair." But one truly interesting moment comes during the group version of Nash's virulent antiwar tune, "Military Madness," when the band gets the audience, who presumably were nearly all (then-young adult) baby boomers, to chant along as they repeat over and over "no more war!" It's ironic that Nixon ended the draft in 1974, and knowing they were now safe from being sent to die in Vietnam a vast majority of that same audience was about TO cut its hair and go to work for "the man," if they hadn't done so already.

There are many debates about when "the 60's" as a cultural phenomenon actually ended. Some say it was at Woodstock, some say Kent State. But an argument could be made that the forced resignation of Richard Nixon represented the real high water mark of "people power" that would not be seen again in this country. And as it so happened, just as Tricky Dick was galavanting off into the history books, four musicians who represented the political opposition to him as much as any did expended what remained of their group relevancy in one last blast of glory--the likes of which would also never be seen again in this country.


Bonus: Unfortunately, "Military Madness" is unavailable on You Tube, so here is the blistering version of "Ohio" instead



Extra Bonus: "And if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with"

Saturday Night Music Video: "Shaky Ground" by Uncle Tupelo

Okay, time to get back to some more tunes from my You Tube channel (in other words, excellent songs by great artists who are criminally underappreciated in the era of American Idol). This is a simple little acoustic number from 20 years ago by Alternative Country trailblazers Uncle Tupelo, in which singer-songwriter Jay Farrar uses his world weary voice to convey the utter despair of the working class.

The memory of the miner
Who dragged himself to work
And worked himself to death
Working for someone else

We follow each other around
On shaky ground

Indeed.

Saturday Night Music Video: "Busting Up a Starbucks" by Mike Doughty

Here's a song that seems as if it were written specifically to be posted here at TDS. Most "message" songs don't work very well because the songwriter is so intent on making a statement that they forget to accompany it with a tune worth hearing. Not so here. Not only does Mike Doughty perfectly articulate what I'd like to do to a location of one of America's most omnipresent, soul destroying retail chains, but he remembers that his first duty as an artist is to fucking ROCK.

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Music Video: "The Ballad of Bill Lee" by The Karl Hendricks Trio

All of Washington has been going nuts over the Nationals making the Major League Baseball playoffs this year...the first time any DC baseball team has been in the postseason since FDR's first year in office. So in tribute to the baseball playoffs, here is a little ditty from my You Tube channel about a real life major league baseball pitcher from back in the 1970s who, shall we say, marched to the beat of his own drummer and even earned the awesome nickname, "Spaceman," for his troubles. Lee's free spirited ways eventually got him banished from the uptight Boston Red Sox and he ended his career north of the border laboring for Montreal's "Les Expos" (who, to complete the circle, moved to Washington a few years ago and are now the Nationals).

Anyway, you've just got to love a song in which the lyrics start out with, "They called me a commie fag...but I could strike out the side."

Enjoy!

They Should Have Died Before They Got Old

image: "Old man wasteland...it's only old man wastelaaaaaaaand!"

The Rolling Stones are seriously contemplating going out on tour again next year to celebrate their 50th anniversary as a band. I’ll pause for a moment and let the sheer horror of that last sentence sink in. Yes, you heard it right. A bunch of wrinkled up septuagenarians whose lead singer is going to squeeze his tired old bones into skin tight pants and try to prance around like he still has the sex appeal he lost back during the Reagan administration, are going to take the stage once more to bleat out “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” “Start Me Up,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Sympathy for the Devil” and a bunch of other once-risqué tunes that if the audience wasn’t freebasing on simplistic nostalgia ought to induce little more than uncontrollable giggling spasms. I mean, if your grandpa started mumbling the sexually charged lyrics to an old Stones song, you’d be sure to keep a close eye on him whenever the grandkids are around.

In fairness to Mick, Keith and Charlie, they are far from being the only rockers who have failed to recognize that they are now decades past their sell by dates and need to just go the fuck away already. Pete Townshend, for example, really should have taken his own advice and followed band mate Keith Moon’s example of dying before he could get old and become a creepy surfer of child pornography websites. Did you happen catch The Who’s pathetic Super Bowl halftime appearance a few years ago? The camera had to cut away from lead singer Roger Daltrey right before the famous scream at the end of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” so it wouldn’t be so painfully obvious that one of the greatest frontmen in rock and roll history was lip synching so he wouldn’t hurt himself from the effort.

Speaking of which, if you are a rock legend and you find yourself agreeing to play the Superbowl half time show, please do us all a favor and find someone to do to you what The Chief did to Jack Nicolson’s character at the end of One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest. There should be an automatic condition attached to induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame which stipulates a lifetime ban for any musician who plays the Superbowl. Leave that superficial spectacle celebrating America’s endless addiction to mindless consumption to talentless cretins like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.

In fact, I would be willing to go even further and impose a Logan’s Run rule for all rock stars. You can have all of the fame, fortune, booze, drugs and groupies that you can possibly consume, but on your 40th birthday you have to turn yourself into the authorities for proper disposal before you get the chance to go out and debase your talents on a money grubbing nostalgia tour or have to start playing state fairs in order to make the rent. The same rule would also apply if you ever allow your waistline to expand beyond 40 inches. Honestly, no one but the most pathetic, no life member of the fan club wants to see your fat ass waddling around on stage in black Spandex.

There are just so many ways for aging rock stars to debase their legacy. In the past year alone, Sir Paul McCartney, once half of the greatest songwriting team in rock history, apparently lost his muse to the point where he was reduced to releasing a virtually unlistenable album of old big band standards. Strawberry fields are NOT forever, apparently. On this side of the Atlantic, former Velvet Underground leader Lou Reed made a desperate pitch to remain relevant by teaming up with heavy metal troubadours Metallica—and merely managed to prove that both acts really ought to just go fishing or something. And then there was the frightening spectacle of Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler doing time in the literal sense as an American Idol judge. C’mon, Steven, did all of the many millions you earned during your long career really end up going right up your nose? Apparently so.

In a way, the sad fate of so many old rock stars kind of mirrors that of America as a country. It must be admitted that we were pretty hot shit right after World War Two, with our undamaged “arsenal of freedom,” our rapidly expanding suburbs and our exploding middle class. As a nation we were young, we were HOT and everybody wanted to BE us. Well, except for those crazy old commies, and they didn’t really count anyway. Flash forward six decades, and now we are the wheezing, overweight Ozzy Osborne, still attempting to scream into the microphone while failing to recognize that we’ve become a big, fat joke with our hollowed out economy, rapidly deteriorating infrastructure and a middle class that is being slowly impoverished by the greed of our predatory elites.

These days, America is on its very own pathetic nostalgia tour, still trying to throw our now flabby weight around the world stage as if any discerning observer can’t tell that as a nation we are desperately out of breath and merely lip synching our lines. Yet the average American still sits like the fans at a Rolling Stones show applauding every note like it is still 1969 and Mick can still bang half-a-dozen groupies in his dressing room without popping copious amounts of Viagra tablets as if they were Mother’s Little Helpers. Someday, this show is going to end and the lights of reality are going to come on, and the Americans in the audience are going to stare in bewilderment at the revelation that the once great nation of their hopes and dreams has actually become a dried out, decrepit old carcass just going through the motions.


Bonus: A classic song from the one guy who has been the exception the old rock stars suck rule

Saturday Night Music Video: "Got to Have Rock And Roll" by Heartless Bastards

I've linked to all kinds of music here at TDS, from thrash metal to alternative country to punk to Broadway show tunes. But if you were to tie me down and waterboard me until I admitted which kind of music is my favorite I would blubber for awhile and then finally acknowledge that what really stirs my loins is good old fashioned 1970s-era classic rock. And that's why I really love the recent tune linked below from the outstanding Austin, Texas, band, Heartless Bastards, featuring an ass kicking guitar lick that I swear you could get out your surfboard and ride for a good four minutes or so. It makes me want to break out some bell bottoms, fire up a doobie and go for a cruise in an old Camaro with all the windows down and the 8-track player CRANKING.

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Music Video(s) - "Some Nights" by Fun.

I haven't done this for awhile, but here is the intro and the main videos for the recent hit song "Some Nights" by the band Fun. (yes, the actual band name has a period at the end for some reason). I've never thought that the operatic style of Broadway musicals and the thunder of rock and roll make for a very good combination, but this band really hits it out the park here. Of course, it helps that lead singer Nate Reuss can sing his ass off, and is somewhat reminiscent of a young Freddie Mercury.

Enjoy!

Saturday Music Videos: Crime Music

For tonight's Saturday Night Music Video feature, I thought I'd do a theme. From Chris Knight and Stacey Dean Campbell, here are two harrowing first-person narrative folk songs about street crimes as seen through the eyes of the perpetrators.

Enjoy!

Memorial Day

I hope my American readers are out enjoying the holiday today. I don't have any grand statements to make, just a link from my You Tube channel of a very appropriate song from James McMurtry.

Short Attention Span Nation

Many thanks to reader eggdogg over at the Hubbert's Arm discussion boards for posting this as an interesting topic of conversation.

As a lifelong fan of rock and roll, I was for many years a subscriber to Rolling Stone magazine, which used to be the bible of rock music. For Rolling Stone, writing about rock and roll was about more than just the music, it was about the writing. Take for example, this original review of Jackson Browne's classic 1974 album, Late for the Sky:

Like Browne's two previous albums, Late for the Sky contains no lyric sheet. The three or four hours required to make a full transcription will, however, be well worth the effort for anyone interested in discovering lyric genius. I can't think of another writer who merges with such natural grace and fluidity his private and public personas in a voice that is morally compelling yet noncoercive.

Late for the Sky, Jackson Browne's third Asylum album, is his most mature, conceptually unified work to date. Its overriding theme: the exploration of romantic possibility in the shadow of apocalypse. No contemporary male singer/songwriter has dealt so honestly and deeply with the vulnerability of romantic idealism and the pain of adjustment from youthful narcissism to adult survival as Browne has in this album. Late for the Sky is the autobiography of his young manhood.

The album's eight loosely constructed narratives rely for much of their impact upon stunning sections of aphoristic verse, whose central images, the antinomies of water and sand, reality and dreams, sky and road, inextricably connect them. Browne's melodic style, though limited, serves his ideas brilliantly. He generally avoids the plaintive harmonies of southern California rock ballads for a starker, more eloquent musical diction derived from Protestant hymns. Likewise his open-ended poetry achieves power from the nearly religious intensity that accumulates around the central motifs; its fervor is underscored by the sparest and hardest production to be found on any Browne album yet (Late for the Sky was produced by Browne with Al Schmitt), as well as by his impassioned, oracular singing style.

On side one, Browne tells bluntly about his personal conflict between fantasy and reality in erotic relationships, struggling with his quest for idyllic bliss. The title cut explores an affair at its nadir ("Looking hard into your eyes/There was nobody I'd ever known"), concluding with an image of the sky, the album's symbol for escape, salvation and death. "Fountain Of Sorrow" develops parallel themes of sex and nothingness, fantasy and realism, as Browne, looking at the photograph of a former lover, recalls: "When you see through love's illusion, there lies the danger/And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool/So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger." In the chorus, highly romanticized sexuality becomes a "fountain of sorrow, fountain of light." Later in the album the water images are developed into a larger metaphor for death and rebirth.

"Farther On" and "The Late Show" complete the first part of the song cycle. Locating the sources of Browne's exacerbated romanticism "in books and films and song," "a world of illusion and fantasy," "Farther On" defines Browne's quest as a "citadel" in "a vision of paradise." Its desolate conclusion finds Browne alone and older, "with my maps and my faith in the distance, moving farther on." By "The Late Show," Browne is so absorbed in despair that if he "stumbled on someone real" he'd "never know." Midway in the song, however, he meets a lover and in an impulsive gesture they drive away from the past in the "early model Chevrolet" pictured on the album cover.

The second side of the album describes the precariousness of the journey, as Browne's sense of personal tragedy metamorphoses into a larger social apprehension. "The Road and the Sky," a jaunty rock song, reintroduces the water motif: "Can you see those dark clouds gathering up ahead/They're gonna wash this planet clean like the Bible said." "For A Dancer," which follows, is one of the album's two master-pieces, a meditation on death that harks back to "Song For Adam" on Browne's first album: "I don't know what happens when people die/Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try/It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear but I can't sing/I can't help listening." But "For A Dancer" is not a lament; it calls for joyful procreation to combat metaphysical terror. Browne's graceful lyric, as fine as any he's written, finds its counterpart in the music, an ethereal tango in which David Lindley's fiddle dances against Browne's vocal. A crisp little rock song, "Walking Slow," celebrates Browne's new-found domestic stability. "Before The Deluge," the album's summary cut, brings together in a comprehensive social context the themes of the rest of the album. A march for three voices — Browne, Lindley's fiddle and backup chorus — the song evokes the spiritual malaise following Woodstock:

And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in a moment they were swept
Before the deluge

The verses are linked by a moving secular prayer for music, shelter and spiritual sustenance: "Let creation reveal its secrets by and by/When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky." This chorus's final statement follows a verse so imagistically potent as to suggest literal prophecy:

And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live
After the deluge

Reading that review again, I could actually hear those bittersweet sounds and words in my mind, so evocative are the descriptions. Obviously, Rolling Stone is not written for intellectuals, and yet publisher Jann Wenner was able to build a media empire by regularly providing this kind of thoughtful, well written content.

So how is it going now, less than four decades after that review appeared? Let's check a recent Rolling Stone review for the album, Neck of the Woods, by the Silversun Pickups:

On their two previous discs, this L.A. band tapped into the shoegaze majesty of peak Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine. There's a little more digital burble coursing underneath the guitar haze this time out. Dance beats undergird the Pumpkins power-pop of "Gun-Shy Sunshine" and "Busy Bees," while songs like "The Pit" recall the sheer, synthed-up alt-rock Garbage made big in the Nineties. It could be a blurry Xerox of old sounds, but singer-guitarist Brian Aubert infuses his songs with wispy drama, balancing moppy-haired brooding and bright, bracing fuzz-drunk melodies. On "Dots and Dashes (Enough Already)," he invites us to look into his "scrapbook of fantasies." They're all borrowed, but he makes each nicked noise his own.

Clearly, Rolling Stone no longer believes that it's readership has the attention span or the desire to read engaging reviews like they did back in 1974. And lest you think this is a trivial example, it very much parallels what has been happening in the news media during this time. No wonder so few people seem capable of engaging in any sort of nuanced thinking about any particular issue these days. If you can't summarize it in a paragraph, or God forbid a Tweet, they simply aren't interested.


Bonus: This song might be more relevant today than it was back in 1974

Saturday Night Music Video: "The Weekenders" by The Hold Steady

For my money, one of the best American indie rock outfits of this past decade is Minneapolis's own, The Hold Steady. The band's specialty is the kind of heartfelt, bombastic, poetic rock and roll Bruce Springsteen used to make before he he got old and started taking himself too seriously. "The Weekenders" is a gorgeous track off of their most recent album that always puts me in a happy mood whenever I hear it. The perfect song for a holiday weekend.

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Music Video: "Waiting For Kirsten" by Jens Lekman

Jens Lekman is a Sweedish singer-songwriter who sings in English and whose specialty is guitar-based pop with heavy use of samples and strings and lyrics that are often witty, romantic, and melancholic. "Waiting for Kirsten" is a bittersweet little ditty that imagines a young man pining for actress Kirsten Dunst, who happens to be visiting his hometown while shooting a movie. It's the kind of song that can put a bounce back in your step if you are feeling down.

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Music Video: "Balloon Man" by Richard Shindell

Richard Shindell is one of the legions of criminally under appreciated singer-songwriters who, despite producing tons of great songs, labor in obscurity in the stupid age of American Idol. This melancholy tune about loneliness and empathy wasn't even available on You Tube until I uploaded it to my new channel.

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Music Video: "Rumor" by The Employees

The Employees are a Chicago-based progressive rock outfit. Their just-released second album, the cover image of which is featured above, carries the very apt title, Unemployed. The song "Rumor" is now featured on my new You Tube channel.

Enjoy!

Special Music Post: "Wallace '48" by The Hangdogs

Several weeks ago, I posted the song "Anacostia" by the late, great alternative country band, The Hangdogs. At the time, I lamented that the band's outstanding musical tribute to former Vice President Henry Wallace's doomed 1948 progressive presidential campaign was not available on You Tube. Well, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and am now proud to present my first ever You Tube upload: "Wallace '48" by The Hangdogs. "No more hunger fear or A-bombs," indeed.

I actually have a cache of great indie rock and alternative country tunes from the 1990s and early 2000s that were previously too obscure for You Tube that I'll be uploading to my new channel in the coming weeks.

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Music Video: "Twilight Creeps" by Crooked Fingers

Every once in awhile you run across an unexpected piece of pure indie-pop bliss. Such as with this sweet little ditty from the Denver-by-way-of-North Carolina troubadours, Crooked Fingers. I defy you not to feel a least a little lift of your spirits after listening to this one.

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Music Video: "Kill The Poor" By Matthew Grimm & The Red Smear

Matthew Grimm is the former lead singer of The Hangdogs, whose Bonus Army anthem, "Anacostia," I featured here a few weeks ago. Grimm has since moved on with a new outfit whose name I absolutely love. The Red Smear's best song is this little ditty, "Kill the Poor," from the album, Dawn's Early Apocalypse (really!), which rather wears its sentiment on it's sleeve--but is still a catchy tune (and is NOT a cover of the Dead Kennedys song of the same name). The song sounds like it was recorded just for the Occupy Movement, but was actually released in 2005, right at the height of the bubble years.

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Music Video: "Gather" by Jay Farrar

Singer-songwriter Jay Farrar is best known for his work with Jeff Tweedy in the groundbreaking Alternative Country band, Uncle Tupelo, and in his own long running band, Son Volt. For a brief period early in the past decade, Farrar was out on his own as a solo artist, and recorded "Gather" for the soundtrack of the indie film, The Slaughter Rules. As it turned out, it was one of the most haunting songs of his long and storied carrier, as evidenced by these lyrics:

Rhetoric of fire
The common bonds unfurl
Never must we learn, Never must we learn
'Til we gather

May the common past
Free the common will
Never must we learn, Never must we learn
Until we gather

Day of damage is carried
Still they survey the cost
Never must we learn, Never must we learn
Until we gather

Enjoy!

Saturday Night Music Video: "The Honest Truth" by Typhoon

A while back, I wrote here that I was surprised that the Great State of Oregon was not known for having a lot of great indie rock bands. That was before I discovered Typhoon, a Portland based outfit that has become recent fave. The title of their latest single, "The Honest Truth," could be a theme song for TDS.

Enjoy!



Bonus: If you liked that, here is the band performing another one of their great songs. Just an "in your face" to any old fogey who says that rock and roll died back in 1984 or something.

Saturday Night Music Video: "Anacostia" by The Hangdogs

The Hangdogs were an alt-country band from New York City that was active during the height of the No Depression music scene in the late 1990s. Unlike other artists in the movement like Wilco and Old 97s, they were never able to even sniff mainstream success, probably because they insisted upon recording serious songs like "Wallace '48" (lamentably unavailable on You Tube), which sang the praises of former Vice President Henry Wallace's doomed 1948 progressive, antiwar presidential campaign.

One of the few Hangdogs songs that is available online is the harrowing "Anacostia," which is about the Bonus Army of World War One veterans. The Bonus Army rallied in Washington D.C. in 1932 as the Great Depression was reaching its nadir to demand that the U.S. Government uphold its financial promises to them for their sacrifices in the Great War, only to be forcibly ousted by their own former comrades led by egomaniacal General Douglas MacArthur who, as the song says, "turned the bayonets around on his own."