“The Sky is Filled…with Good & Bad,
Mortals Never Know…” Robert Plant
Even though I am starting my Sunday with the drowsy beauty of Mr. Plant and Alison Krause harmonizing on “Raising Sand” — his voice still brings to mind his yodeling youth in the Zeppelin days, and that line above, though I’ve used it as an prologue before, still comes to mind, a lot of the time.
Today there seems nothing but good in the sky. It is as vivid a blue as can be seen, in contrast with the stunning green hills to our north. May is my favorite month even when the moon is waning, and today is the start of the new…I am thinking of Rock Gods today who have not just survived but evolved in a healthy way, well into their 60’s and beyond, despite the hedonistic habits of several decades prior. Not just Robert Plant, but I’m also giving telepathic kudos to Mick Jagger for his performance on SNL last night. That show continues to amaze and amuse me– the host is usually roasted, to illustrate heightened self-awareness while watching the regulars parody your style– de rigeur for any host, but Jagger was classic in the monologue, and all the subsequent roles they wrote for him. In between, he sang an AM radio hit from about 46 years ago with Arcade Fire as the backing band. Then he crooned and growled an original blues he wrote “for the election season” with another amazing 60-something, blues god Jeff Beck. And then Mick rocked with the Foo Fighters like he was auditioning for a brash new band, just too cool. I was watching the show with my son and a college buddy of his, back and forth between timeouts and halftime of the OKC/Lakers NBA game. They were cracking up at Jagger’s antics and I thought– this is the only way to stay relevant and age gracefully: humor! Talent and ego alone can prove arrogant, but self-deprecating deadpan spoofs can win over a new generation of fans. It also helps to stay ridiculously thin and fit, and to still have all your hair– I can’t compete in those regards. Jagger & Plant are freaks in that regard.
Age has been on my mind as I just crossed another birthday marker this past week myself. At 57, Henry Miller hadn’t been published yet except in bootleg editions, and
Picasso was just starting to hit his peak. There is still hope, if you are healthy, even robust, and involved with the world around you, not just your own solipsism and woes. On the other hand, the musical world and my own psychic landscape is littered with early deaths, from Otis Redding to Jim Morrison, Hendrix to Kurt Cobain,
Layne Staley to Brad Nowell, Joplin to Amy Winehouse. So it’s comforting to know there is a counterbalance– Santana and Greg Allman are still touring this summer,
(and will appear at SPAC in Saratoga) playing real, biting, music, I’m sure, and not
just drab nostalgia of the past (which is why I would likely skip The Beach Boys). When I was less-than-27 I didn’t expect to last this long, certainly, but now that I am three decades past that mark– survival with style is key!
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When I started this gig for Saratoga.com, I didn’t know much about the site, and I asked if anyone else was writing about MUSIC among the 18 bloggers they already had. The lovely voice of the marketing manager Maria said, “No, not at this point…”
I told her that would be my intended niche– I could write about real estate and basketball in other places…but I rarely got to rap rhapsodically about MUSIC, and
especially how it intersected with Saratoga. So here we go.
OPEN LETTER TO ROLLING STONE EDITORS:
YOU OWE DAVE MATTHEWS AN APOLOGY!
This has been on my mind since Easter, on which weekend I picked up a copy of the Special Collector’s Issue– Rolling Stone’s The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. With eager anticipation I sat down and began to devour it– of course noting the obvious and predictable choices from The Beatles and Stones, Bob Dylan and The Doors, The Who, and Bruce Springsteen. More deep roots were shown by the inclusion of the early Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Walter, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf.
Plenty of samples of funk and black music were featured, from Jackie Wilson to Parliament, Marvin Gaye to Jay-Z, De La Soul to Bo Diddly, Sly & The Family Stone up to three different discs by Kanye West, and two albums by OutKast, especially Stankonia, one of my all time favorite driving CDs, all on the list. Women were sufficiently mentioned: from Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn to Lucinda Williams, from Joni Mitchell to Sinead O’Connor, Tina Turner to M.I.A., from Etta James to Mary J. Blige. There was Cindy Lauper and Madonna and even Dolly Parton, plus Diana Ross and The Supremes.
There was the intrigue of the obscure: Captain Beefheart, Television, Big Star, and The Pogues making the cut; balanced by my barfable distaste for Cheap Trick, Jackson Brown, Meatloaf, Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, Alice Cooper, and Devo. I was glad to see old faves like Steely Dan, Cream, Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, and Talking Heads on the list; and the hipster in me was happy that my jazz-based chestnuts from Miles Davis, Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman were not ignored. Rap was represented by Nas, Notorious B.I.G., early L.L.Cool J, Eminen, Eric B. & Rakim, Lil Wayne, and Dr. Dre. Unlike the nascent days of MTV, no one could accuse Rolling Stone of having a segregated view of music.
I was fine with the most recent decade being represented by Kanye, Arcade Fire, My Morning Jacket, MGMT, LCD Soundsystem, Radiohead, Coldplay, Vampire Weekend, and Beck.
I loved the cross-cultural inclusion of Manu Chao, Massive Attack, A Tribe Called Quest, Portishead, Raekwon, The Meters, and of course Bob Marley & The Wailers. Stevie Wonder had to be there, and was– as was Smokey Robinson, James Brown, and other stellar voices of my youth, even The Supremes.
There were between 5 and 10 bands I had to admit I did not know at all, despite my attempts to be eclectic over the years and stay in touch with musical trends: who the hell were the Arctic Monkeys? Or a group called EPMD?? And how about this cheesy white group called The Eagles? (I had never sanctioned them. I would’ve voted for The James Gang’s Rides Again album, though, if they had wanted the true, unadulterated version of Joe Walsh.
Given the recent death of Adam Yauch (which occurred after this issue came out), it was good to see The Beastie Boys featured in a sidebar. Ironically, his name was also on the list of voters that was assembled in 2009. I don’t include him in the diatribe below, wherein I chide an oversight (or three) among their ranks.
THE UPSHOT AND THE DOWNSIDE
Overall, I was ecstatic about the magazine… for awhile. I was reading interesting tidbits about Frank Sinatra, Funkadelic, Neil Young, and The Allman Brothers Live at The Fillmore, reliving my own musical history in the process, when I finally got off the couch and tossed the magazine to my son Miles.
Miles, with the astute and focused acuity of a 20 year old who knows what he’s interested in, flipped through a few pages and then went to the index in the back.
He scanned under “D”, he scanned under “M”, and he scanned under “The.” Then he handed the glossy mag back to me, and simply said:
“They forgot DAVE.”
I grabbed the issue back, wondering how that could be?! OMG as the texters say way too often– WTF??
In my first random rhapsody of reading I had not realized WHAT was missing here! I had the nagging sense that something WAS, but could not identify it, or quantify it, until Miles gave me a clue. Like many a sonic acolyte, my son is monotheistic in his devotion to DAVE, and all Dave-related, DMB-related matters. Even though he went through his rap and hip-hop phase with 50 Cent and Nelly and OutKast and Marshall Mathers blasting while we were heading to basketball games– his or others– for 10-12 years together, and even though he is now versed in the classics of rock and blues nostalgia– he still favors, by far, the music of his hero, Dave Matthews. He was weened on it– we had bootleg tapes of the then-obscure party/bar band from
Charlottesville, VA. when Miles was still in his bouncy seat, and bought Under The Table and Dreaming when it first came out. Then came the supernal Crash, and then the classic Before These Crowded Streets. These CDs were in heavy rotation in our humble first home on Locust Grove Road during my son’s early years, and he was probably humming along to “Satellite” and “Tripping Billies” before he could speak. His mother and I had attended our first (or maybe second) DMB show in 1997 when she was pregnant with out daughter, and if 5 yr old Milo had known at the time, he would’ve wanted to go himself.
The more I thought about this issue the Rolling Stone editors had sanctioned, the more indignant I became, on my son’s behalf, and on behalf of the devoted legion of millions like him. Why would a major national magazine want to alienate or ignore a major portion of its potential new and current generation of readers? I understand that the List was intended to showcase only “albums,” not live acts, but still, how could they diss and disavow a man whose eponymous band had likely been the largest grossing act in rock tour revenue for the past 20 years? Who had written at least 50 tunes that his fans sang as anthems at concerts all over the country, remembering every word? It blew my mind, and it disgusted my son.
If not the tremendous debut, then how about his breakthrough CD Before These Crowded Streets?? Those songs still resonate, as unvarnished gems. His tune
“Don’t Drink The Water” remains one of the original lyrical epics of modern rock, on a par with Neil Young’s “Cortez The Killer,” or “Montezuma.” Why include the doom-and-gloom of Joy Division–or a band named Suicide?– in Rock’s pantheon, but not the upbeat optimism of Dave’s staple crowd-singalong “STAY”–? It seems unbalanced. DMB functions as a beacon of hope in a complicated, daunting world.
Mssr. Matthews is renowned as a prolific and unique composer who constantly adds to his legacy, and packs one of the hippest, most dynamically sophisticated bands of our time. From American blues and jazz to hillbilly fiddle, from down-home gumbo to world music influences, he has never rested on his laurels or become stale.
DAVE, if you are reading this before you come to Saratoga Springs to dazzle the assembled crowd in the amphitheater once more, my family and I want you to know that your devotees in this area count you among the top 10 recorded bands of all time, even if you are not among THEIR Top 500. My son’s generation knows better. And for people my age or older who don’t understand, or the younger hardcore fanatics who think the spawn of Metallica and that ilk is god-like, that Dave’s tunes are too soft or cerebral, I tell you that no performer I’ve seen has ever raised the hairs on my arms at least once every time I have seen him. I look forward to seeing you and the band on the night of June 9th…though I swore I’d never sit through another night on the lawn again. Here’s hoping for a clear, moonlit night.
Amen to the renewed and continued tour of The Dave Matthews Band…
Till next time,
Wayne, in Saratoga
P.S.– Once I reviewed the list, I also knew there were some other fans who would be miffed, if not pissed, such as those who champion PHISH (also coming to Saratoga’s famed SPAC this summer, for three dates!), and might rightfully feel that recent jam bands got a bad showing in Rolling Stone’s recent volume. And then there is the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, whose records I played constantly in the mid-late 80’s: Texas Flood; Live Alive; The Sky Is Crying . I could rave about the times I’d seen him play live in the Capital District before his untimely death, but we’ll save that for another blog/occasion.
I also miss seeing names on this list like: Big Head Todd & The Monsters, King Crimson, Weather Report, Blues Traveller, The Black Crowes, Nelly, David Gray,
Chris Isaak, Jaco Pastorius, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Roy Orbison, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Finley Quaye, Beth Orton—etc etc etc…all of whom made records I was nuts about at one time or another.
Some of the albums I think they missed by those who otherwise made the list:
Eat A Peach, by The Allman Brothers; Avalon, Roxy Music, 8 Mile Road, Eminem,
Wake of the Flood, The Grateful Dead (the only album of theirs I admitted to liking),
and I’m sure I’ll think of others.
To tell you the truth, overall, it was still a great issue of Rolling Stone, and if they like to create a forum for arguing such topics, I guess they accomplished their aim.