Gin Blossoms - Lost Horizons / Mrs. Rita

Gin Blossoms have always seemed to possess a dual musical identity. Though unabashed about their pop sensibilities, their lyrics are unusually literate and often layered with dry humor. While played heavily on the radio in the 90s, the distinctive irony of their hits flew under the radar of casual fans. Gin Blossoms’ songs were most notable for lyrical moments like, “If you don’t expect too much from me / You might not be let down” or “She had nothing left to say / So she said she loved me.” At their best, the band’s aesthetic represents the self-contradictions of the thinking person’s pop music.
Gin Blossoms charted when “grunge rock” still had its chokehold on American youth culture, but their association with that mostly earnest of all genres made sense only in terms of another 90s terminology. “Alternative” was a blanket term used then to generally describe any band that used distorted guitars, though Gin Blossoms obviously never aspired to the dissonant chord progressions or loud-soft-loud dynamics of most alternative recording artists. They were one of a few acts of the time offering an alternative to Alternative, at home in the perennial pop-rock peerage of bands like Teenage Fanclub and the Lemonheads.
When asked about how they should be categorized now, guitarist and primary songwriter Jesse Valenzuela seemed unsure at first. When offered the label of “power pop,” however, he was immediately dismissive: “When I hear music like, say, the Raspberries—and don’t get me wrong, they had some great songs—but I just could never make that kind of music. We’re probably softer than that. I’d say… probably pop.” Given Gin Blossoms’ penchant for wordplay, the phrasing seems apt.
The pointed glibness that characterized much of Gin Blossoms’ early music has roots in the bar culture of Tempe, Arizona where they started. The band’s early, alcohol-soaked lyrics captured the attitudes of a local youth culture striving to escape the social conservatism and cultural isolation of the region. “A lot of those early songs,” says Valenzuela, “we’d have a running gag to see how many drinking references we could get in. It was a conscious thing, which isn’t to say it was all a gag. I mean, we were really heavy drinkers back then.”
While never an overtly political songwriter, the anti-immigration legislation that has recently thrust Gin Blossoms’ home state into national headlines was forefront in Valenzuela’s mind when the band was discussing tour dates in support of their latest album, No Chocolate Cake. Arizona Senate Bill 1070, which has taken an “attrition through enforcement” stance on undocumented immigrants, leading critics to deem it legalized racial profiling, is an “an absolute horror” in Valenzuela’s mind. When asked about the “Boycott Arizona” movement, in which many touring musicians have taken Arizona cities off their touring schedules, Valenzuela mentions that the band had “seriously considered it.” He continues, saying, “We talked about it, but we’re from there, you know? Ultimately, we felt that we needed to take a much more active stance.” When asked about whether the band would mention their feeling about the new legislation on-stage, he says, “Definitely. People need to be reminded of this thing.”
The biggest criticism levied against Gin Blossoms has been a pronounced sonic homogeneity from album to album. The blame for this fault may originate in the tragic suicide of the band’s original guitarist and primary songwriter just previous to their first major label release, an inevitable topic when discussing the band’s success. The absence of Doug Hopkins, who penned the breakout hits “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You,” seems to have culminated in his bandmates’ memory through an anxiousness to reproduce his talents.
Valenzuela commented on this criticism, opining about how bands that consciously reinvent themselves are not necessarily doing so for their art but for good PR. “A lot of these older guys, always reinventing themselves, we’re not really concerned with that. Someone was saying we should make a video. I mean, is that even done any more? They wanted to film us playing with this hot chick somewhere on screen, and I was just like, ‘We’re these 45 year old guys, why would we ever do that?’” True to form, the new album, No Chocolate Cake, is imminently evocative of the high points in their back catalogue, yet with the difference of experience and more level emotions.
In the days of New Miserable Experience and Congratulations I’m Sorry, earnest sentiment was most often expressed in terms of loss and regret. Their most lyrically straightforward Billboard charter, the Valenzuela-penned “’Til I Hear it From You,” is an extended apology in song form. But songs from the new album like “I Don’t Wanna Lose You Now,” “Something Real,” and “I’m Ready” reflect a willingness to embrace the miserable experiences the band had glibly referenced in the early years.
A sense of maturity imbues the new album’s lyrics, though its funniest moment is also its best. “Dead or Alive (On the 405),” reflects on the fleetingness of Gin Blossoms’ former fame. The song name-checks rock relics like Styx, Eddie Money, and Nickelback, most effectively with the lyric, “Going in cold on a pick-up gig / And in between the classic Styx / You play your hit from ’89 / I’ll sing mine from ’95.” However, Valenzuela cited the later albums of Nick Lowe as his most profound inspiration for the new album, a comparison that sticks. The disparity between Nickelback and Nick Lowe, and Valenzuela’s readiness to compare his band to either, speaks loud and clear to Gin Blossoms’ pop contradictions.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/131945-probably-pop-an-interview-with-gin-blossoms-2496128589.html 

 

Rickie Lee Jones - Juke Box Fury / Runaround / The Real End

There are many ways to approach the story of Rickie Lee Jones. But let’s start with an anecdote from studio drummer Jeff Porcaro, who was called in as session player on RLJ’s second album Pirates—allegedly because Jones had admired his brush work at a previous encounter.
Porcaro, a legend in the world of studio musicians, later recounted the story: “What a great thing. I go to the session, it's Chuck Rainey on bass, Dean Parks on guitar, Russell Ferrante on piano, Lenny Castro on percussion, and Rickie Lee Jones playing piano and singing. The drums are in an isolation booth with a big glass going across so I can see everybody in the main studio. I have my headphones on, and we start going over the first song. After the first pass of the tune, Rickie Lee in the phones goes, ‘Mr. Porcaro, I know you're known for keeping good time, but on these sessions, I can't have you do that. With my music, when I'm telling my story, I like things to speed up and slow down, and I like people to follow me.’”
Porcaro, a consummate professional, asks the engineer to give him more of Jones’s vocal in his headphones so he can follow her rhythmic shifts. The band starts the song again—but Jones stops it halfway through and tells the drummer: “The time is too straight. You gotta loosen up a bit.” Porcaro apologizes, and asks for still more of the vocal track in his headphone mix. On the next take, he focuses closely on Jones’s singing, speeding up and slowing down in response to every twist and turn. But RLJ is still displeased. She halts the take and starts complaining again about the beat. Now every musician on the date—a group of all-star studio players—is tense and anxious. The next take is so unsettled that the producer calls a break. After the break, the band switches to another song—to try to get their mojo back. Pocaro describes what happened next:
“So we start laying the track down, and I come up to this simple fill: triplets over one bar. It's written out on my music, and I play the fill. She stops. She says, You have to play harder. . . . Everybody looks at me. I look at everybody. I go, ‘Okay, let's do it again.’ We start again. One bar before the fill, I hear, louder than hell in my phones, We're coming up to the fill. Remember to play hard, while we're grooving. I whack the mess out of my drums, as hard as I've ever hit anything in my life. While I'm hitting them, she's screaming, Harder! I stop. She stops. I'm looking at my drums. My heads have dents in them; if I hit the drum lightly, it will buzz, and I'm pissed. I'm steaming inside. I'm thinking, ‘Nobody talks to me that way.’ [Producer] Lenny Waronker says, ‘Let's do it again.’ We start again, and everybody is looking at me while they are playing. We're coming up to the fill, and she goes, Play hard! and I take my sticks like daggers and I do the fill, except I stab holes through my tom-tom heads. I land on my snare drum, both sticks are shaking, vibrating, bouncing on the snare drum.
“I get up and pick up my gig bag. There's complete silence. I slide open the sliding glass door, walk past her, down the hallway, get in my car, and I drive home.” In the aftermath, Porcaro heard from another musician that Jones might sue him—but she let the incident pass. Pirates was eventually released, to critical acclaim, with Steve Gadd, another studio legend, handling much of the drum work.
But here’s the best part of the story. Three years later, Porcaro gets a call from a producer asking him to play on a Rickie Lee Jones session for the album The Magazine. This can’t be true, he thinks—has she forgotten their previous encounter? Maybe she was going through a bad spell back then, and doesn’t even remember the details? So Porcaro, taking pride in his professionalism and unwilling to hold grudges, decides to do the date, and see what happens.
When he shows up, Rickie Lee Jones greets him like an old friend: “Hi, Jeff, good to see you again. You seem to have lost weight.” The session takes place effortlessly and with excellent results. At the conclusion of the second song, Jones walks up to his drum kit, and in front of all the musicians—some who had been in attendance at the Pirates debacle—told Porcaro: "Jeff, I really have to tell you this. No drummer has ever played so great for me, listened to my music so closely, understood what I'm saying with lyrics, and has followed me as well as you. I just want to thank you for the good tracks." Porcaro’s reaction: “I almost broke up laughing because I had played no differently for her the year before.”
But by the time of this second session with Porcaro in 1984, Rickie Lee Jones—the rising star whose creativity and artistry had, just a short while before, seemed to promise (or even demand) a long career at the top of the music business—had already seen her moment come and go, at least from the point of view of the industry. She wasn’t even thirty years old, but the critics were no longer charmed by her capriciousness. When The Magazine was released, the New York Times responded: “Miss Jones is still looking for direction.” But even casual fans could tell something was wrong. In the five years after the release of her million-selling debut album Rickie Lee Jones, this hot new songwriter only released one album and an EP —a total of 67 minutes and 11 seconds of music. Do the math: that works out to 13 minutes of new music per year.
Clearly Jones was focused on something besides composing and recording. But, whatever her reasons, most of her audience had left, never to return. You can measure the impact on the Billboard chart Rickie Lee Jones (1979) peaked at number 3 on the US album chart. Her follow-up Pirates reached as high as number 5. The Magazine topped out at number 44.  The follow-up Flying Cowboys did somewhat better, reaching number 39. But with Pop Pop, recorded in 1989, Jones got no higher than number 121. The days of hit albums and large audiences were over, and they wouldn’t be coming back coming back. In retrospect, her commercial high point as a pop star was her first album, which produced her only genuine radio hit, “Chuck E.’s in Love.”
This is a familiar story in the music business—a promising debut followed by disappointment. So why am I so troubled by the fall of Rickie Lee Jones? There’s a simple answer: her talent was extraordinary. She seemed poised not only to have hit songs—which, after all, aren’t a rarity in the entertainment world—but do something even more remarkable, namely redefine the parameters of pop singing.
Her studio battle with Porcaro is all too revealing on this front, and it’s why I started my account by relating it. Rickie Lee Jones had a different concept of time than the other singers. She could make it seem as if her voice was floating over the ground beat with the freshness and changeability of the shifting colors of a sunset. This is something you occasionally find in jazz, but even there it’s a rarity: few improvisers can force the beat into such total submission to their artistic vision. But Jones seemed to do it effortlessly—at least for a time.
I’ve heard some express the opinion that Rickie Lee Jones might have had more staying power if she had ditched all those fancy LA studio musicians and brought in seasoned jazz stylists for her record dates—something akin to the kind of sessions Norman Granz produced for Billie Holiday in the 1950s. I’m not sure that would have worked over the long term, if only because Rickie Lee Jones’s biggest obstacles came away from the piano and the microphone. But it would have been extraordinary to hear her working with, say, Jimmy Rowles or Paul Motian or Fred Hersch or Geri Allen as producers. Maybe that’s just dreaming, but what a lovely dream.  From: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-engima-of-rickie-lee-jones

 

Gary Wright - Power of Love / Blind Feeling / Much Higher

Rock Cellar Magazine: When did you realize you had first made it in America?

Gary Wright: When did I feel like I first made it? I guess when “Dream Weaver” went to number one. I was on tour with Peter Frampton at the time I heard the news; it was in January of 1976. That song wasn’t released as the first single from my album, instead the record company released “Love Is Alive” and it didn’t happen. It stiffed but “Dream Weaver” kept getting a huge amount of FM radio airplay so Warner Brothers at the time decided they might as well release this song as a single. It went up the charts to number one and then the label re-released “Love Is Alive” and that went to number two.

So you had no sense that “Dream Weaver” was a potential hit single?

Gary Wright: No, not at all. I never thought that song would have been a single. It was kind of an experimental track where I was using all kind of electronic sounds which I was very much into at that time in my life.

Ring of Changes is being released 44 years after it was recorded, why was it scrapped?

Gary Wright: I’d done two albums for my label already. They were kind of like radio hits but they didn’t sell huge quantities of records. They had suggested I do something more with a band rather than a solo album, which I had done on my first two albums, Extraction and Footprint. So I agreed and that’s when I got Mick Jones into the band; he was working with Johnny Hallyday in France and I asked if he wanted to join up and form this band called Wonderwheel and he agreed and I got two other guys, Bryson Graham on drums and Tom Duffey from Lindisfarne on bass. So we did the album; I wrote most of it but Mick and I collaborated on a couple of songs and I turned it in. I got a letter from the label saying, “Sorry but we’re not going to accept this album; we’re gonna shelve it.”

What was the reasoning behind it?

Gary Wright: Well, they thought it wasn’t the way they had seen my career going. So they made that decision and I got the famous letter from their lawyer telling me they weren’t picking up my option and so I was set free from the label.

Listening with fresh ears, how do you rank that album in the arc of your career?

Gary Wright: I think I would put this album in the top five. It’s hard for me to be objective because I’m close to it but the interesting thing is I hadn’t heard it in 40 years. I only had a 15 IPS tape copy, which was the safety copy for the album; that’s all I had. I didn’t even have a cassette of it. Then when I mastered it and I got the first CD and played it I couldn’t believe it. I thought, “Wow, this is really a good piece of my art” and I really liked it.

It’s a diverse album navigating a myriad of styles; “Set On You” brings to mind the sonics and songwriting of The Band.

Gary Wright: Yeah, that’s right. That was a copy of The Band because I really loved The Band. I was living in England at the time and when they came out with Music From Big Pink, everybody went crazy. They just loved it and then the second album was even better. So that song is kind of like my tribute to The Band.

You produced the album and cut it at Apple Studios. George Harrison played slide guitar on one track, “Goodbye Sunday.”

Gary Wright: My sister actually wrote the lyrics so she started writing the song and I had a little but of the music composed already and then we combined forces. I like the lyrical idea of “Goodbye Sunday,” I like the way she did it. We were in Apple Studios; I think all the tracks of this album were cut at Apple Studios. Given that this was on the Beatles’ real estate, they didn’t use it much. The only track that I can remember having recorded there was a song by Ringo called “Back Off Boogaloo.” I played piano on it. It was a great sounding studio and I was really impressed with it. We started just playing this groove and it wasn’t even gonna be incorporated in the song. We were just in the studio and George picked up his guitar and started playing slide guitar on the track and then I arranged it while everybody was there and put “Goodbye Sunday” to that kind of a groove. I like that track a lot.

“Lovetaker,” the lead off track, should have been a standard on Classic Rock radio.

Gary Wright: “Lovetaker,” yeah, I actually came up with the riff which starts the song and I showed it to Mick and he learned and embellished it. I got the words together: I thought it would be a cool idea with the words lovetaker, love maker, heartbreaker so I structured it that way. I loved the way it turned out and that’s why I put it first on the album.

How does spirituality find its way into your music?

Gary Wright: I try to structure my lyrics experientially, how I go through things in life and weigh that against the spiritual side of my nature and try to bring it into my music — but not hit people over the head with a hammer lyrically … but rather subtly introduce it when it makes sense. So to the degree that I can help people or uplift them, then I feel really good about that. I often say this to people; it’s not really the big awards you get at the Grammys or the recognition of selling multi-platinum records and all that, to me it’s the person that comes up to me maybe after I’ve done a show and will say, “I played your music when I was going through a hard time and I almost ended my life and I played your music and I didn’t do it and I just wanted to thank you for it.” I thought, wow! That’s the connection, that’s the real purpose of why I did my songs. I really believe that it’s an artist’s role to do that. A lot of artists push that away and don’t want to do all their hits and just want to do their new stuff. But I don’t feel that way. I feel if people come to a show and want to hear your hits you should do them. People have paid good money to see you.

Speaking of hits, “Dream Weaver,” which we touched on earlier, is not only a timeless song, its production sets it apart from anything else as well.

Gary Wright: It was the last song that was included on the album. I was in the studio with Jim Keltner and David Foster. That’s how I recorded the album, with a keyboard player, myself and a drummer and then I redid all my keyboard bass parts.  When I did the album I wanted the bass to be really featured ‘cause nobody up to that point has used synthesized bass; Stevie Wonder did a little bit but I did the whole thing that way. I wanted the album to have a certain texture that would really make it stand out so I made the drums small-sounding and not big big huge sounding so that the bass would really come through. The two keyboardists that I used were David Foster and a guy named Bobby Lyle who was a great keyboard player and of course I played keyboards too but mainly the piano and the clavinet parts came from David and Bobby. I played the keyboard bass and did all the electronic sounds.

The production on “Dream Weaver” is really impressive.

Gary Wright: I met a guy once at some kind of function and he was talking about “Dream Weaver” and he said, “You know something?  When ‘Dream Weaver’ came out that wasn’t just a hit song. It was like a weather front had moved in.” (laughs)

From: https://rockcellarmagazine.com/gary-wright-ring-of-changes-interview-george-harrison/

Pretenders - Talk Of The Town / Waste Not Want Not / Day After Day

Some songs have a chord that is so striking and beautiful that you listen to the tune over and over, just so that you can hear it. “Talk of the Town,” the first single that the Pretenders released after the phenomenal success of their 1979 self-titled debut album, has a chord like that. Chrissie Hynde knew it, too. She was playing around with a chord that she really liked, and so she played it for her bandmate, lead guitarist James Honeyman-Scott. He told Hynde it was a “Beatles chord.” Hynde then wrote “Talk of the Town,” building the whole song around it. Let’s dig deeper and figure out the meaning behind Pretenders’ “Talk of the Town.”
The melancholy chord, which is actually B7, begins each verse in “Talk of the Town,” and it sets the tone for Hynde’s song about pining for someone who she only knew from a distance. Hynde’s lyrics don’t give us many clues as to whom she is singing to, but 19 years after writing the song, she identified the person who inspired her to write this gorgeous hit.
Many presumed that Hynde wrote “Talk of the Town” about Kinks frontman Ray Davies. It was a reasonable assumption, especially since Hynde and Davies later became a couple and had a daughter. Though it was an educated guess, it was also wrong. On a 1999 episode of BBC’s Songwriters’ Circle, Hynde divulged that she wrote the song about “this kid who used to stand outside the soundchecks on our first tour.” She said that she never spoke to him, because she “never had anything to say to him.” Hynde added, “In the unlikely event that you’re watching this, I did think about you after that.”
What Hynde didn’t explain was how much of “Talk of the Town” was about the “kid.” Was the entire song about her feelings for someone she saw from afar but never talked to, or was that person merely the initial inspiration for lyrics that ultimately were fictional or about someone else? If the song is literally about the fan at the soundchecks, then its opening lines suggest that Hynde’s thoughts about him weren’t just passing.

It’s such a drag to want something sometime
One thing leads to another, I know
Was a time I wanted you for mine
Nobody knew

With the knowledge of who inspired the song, we can now understand the next line: You arrived like a day, passed like a cloud. It’s about someone who popped in and out of Hynde’s life—namely, at soundchecks.
The first lines of the second verse also make more sense once you know about the song’s inspiration. While we can speculate as to whether Hynde actually had romantic feelings for her soundcheck visitor, it’s highly plausible she was curious about his feelings and life circumstances. It’s also believable that she chided herself for wondering.

It’s not my place to know what you feel
I’d like to know but why should I?
Who were you then? Who are you now?
Common laborer by night, by day, highbrow 

In the bridge, Hynde reiterates her longing, singing Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday. However, the section ends with a mysterious line: You’ve changed your place in this world. Has he changed his place in Hynde’s world by being someone she thinks about? Or has he changed his place in the larger world for reasons that Hynde chooses not to explain? The final verse hints that Hynde may have extrapolated the story beyond the circumstances of the actual lives of the song’s two characters.

Oh, but it’s hard to live by the rules
I never could and still never do
The rules and such never bothered you
You call the shots and they follow

If Hynde never talked to him, then how would she know how he felt about rules, or which “shots” he called? The verse ends as enigmatically as it begins, as Hynde leaves us with a question that feels more like a riddle.

I watch you still from a distance, then go
Back to my room, you’ll never know
I want you, I want you, but now
Who’s the talk of the town?

The song, or at least the title, has a second inspiration. Talk of the Town was the name of a London nightclub that Hynde was paying homage to.

From: https://americansongwriter.com/the-meaning-behind-pretenders-talk-of-the-town/

Leon Russell - Homewood Session 1970

 Leon Russell - Homewood Session 1970 - Part 1

 

Leon Russell - Homewood Session 1970 - Part 2

 

Leon Russell was a singular talent. He possessed a unique voice and although he often covered other artists — putting his own spin on now classic tunes — his songwriting was profound and in high demand. Russell was also one of the funkiest piano players around as well as a multi-instrumentalist. Additionally, he was a gifted bandleader and producer.
Leon’s distinctive musical style caught the attention of many of his peers, recording and playing with artists such as Geroge Harrison, Eric Clapton, The Beach Boys, Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and many more. Leon also enlisted New Grass Revival to back him up in the early 1980s. Elton John counted Russell as a mentor and the two pianists recorded an album together in 2010, The Union.
Russell released his self-titled debut solo album in Spring 1970. At the end of that year, Leon Russell And Friends appeared on a public television program filmed from the Homewood studios at the Los Angeles PBS affiliate KCET. Russell’s band for The Homewood Sessions included Chuck Blackwell, Joey Cooper, John Gallie, Claudia Lennear, Kathi McDonald, Don Preston and Furry Lewis.
Leon Russell And Friends proceeded to deliver an intimate — Russell’s traveling secretary Emily baked a cake throughout the performance — funky throwdown that kicked off with the gospel “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.” The set included covers from Van Morrison (a mostly instrumental version of “Caravan”), Bob Dylan (“It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry)” and The Rolling Stones (“Honky Tonk Women”). The set also contained stellar Russell originals like “A Song For You,” “Sweet Emily,” “Crystal Closet Queen” and to close things out, a rowdy “Of Thee I Sing.”  From: https://www.jambase.com/article/leon-russell-the-homewood-sessions

 

 

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Beat, Beat, Beat 1967 / Live at the BBC 1969

 The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Beat, Beat, Beat 1967

 

 The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Live at the BBC 1969

 

It’s early Saturday evening on January 4, 1969. This is traditionally the time for variety programs on British television, time for family viewing ’round the idiot box and this week, for the nation’s pleasure, The Jimi Hendrix Experience are to play a couple of numbers on a show called Happening For Lulu. 
The Lulu shows, which were billed in the BBC Radio Times as a “series of programs of music and laughter,” were broadcast entirely live and as such the schedule was sacred. Each guest was allotted their precious time, giving just enough at the end to allow Lulu to close each show with that week’s contribution for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest.
So here we go with something to rattle the teacups and get the kids sent to bed. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, ladies and gentlemen, live on your TV screen. Sent to you with love from Auntie at the BBC Television Centre and first up for your entertainment is a concise rendition of that quiet little ditty, “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” ending with that most Hendrix of trademarks, the oral guitar technique.
As the applause dies away Lulu begins her introduction of the band’s next number but she’s hardly into it before some guitar feedback barks in the background, making her pause. She glances toward the source of the intrusion. Eyes flashing wide in theatrical consternation, eyebrows arching upwards as she carries on, “Ha, ha … they’re gonna sing for you now the song that absolutely made them in this country and I love to hear them sing it. ‘Hey Joe.'” 
Now some sources suggest that Lulu was to do a duet with the band on “Hey Joe.” Mitch Mitchell recalled, “As soon as we arrived, they said, as they had done with The Dusty Springfield Show, ‘what about a duet, gotta do a duet with Lulu.’ At the rehearsal Hendrix said, ‘No problem, we’ll do the duet on the show and we’ll deal with it then.’ I think she was supposed to do ‘Hey Joe’ or something.” Whatever the case, by this point a duet is off the menu. Mr. Hendrix has other ideas. 
“Plug your ears. Plug your ears,” he warns as he launches a dazzling fanfare of whammy bar, Wah Wah-driven feedback, before finally chugging in with “Hey Joe,” but the bottom E string is out of tune and a bum note wades in. Undaunted and grinning cheekily, he de-tunes as the band continues with the song. “An’ I forgot the words.” 
He throws the solo away and, with a smiling glance to Redding and Mitchell, Hendrix brings the song to an abrupt ending. Is this pre-planned anarchy or just confusion for the show’s production team?
“We’d like to stop playin’ this rubbish and dedicate a song to The Cream, regardless of what kind of group they might be in. We’d like to dedicate it to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce,” says Hendrix, and the band rockets into an instrumental version of The Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love.” Never mind that The Cream had decided to call it a day at least six months before; Hendrix has a dedication to make to his friends. 
Changing tune in mid flow may be one thing, a small indiscretion easily forgiven, but as the precious seconds of airtime tick rapidly away, the show’s production team is increasingly nonplused. There’s more than a bit of consternation as they attempt to halt the band, which by now is spinning along conscious of the time restriction of the broadcast. Hendrix shouts, “We’re bein’ put off the air,” and slowly staggers the tune to a thumping halt. 
Afterwards, the band retired for a bit of BBC hospitality. As Mitchell recalls, “I remember going up to the BBC club in White City and being told, ‘You’ll never work for the BBC again,’ and I don’t think we ever did! Fun and games, isn’t it? A man’s got to have a hobby!”  From: https://www.jimihendrix.com/editorial/a-happening-for-lulu-the-jimi-hendrix-experiences-last-bbc-appearance/ 

In 1967, I was still in school and played guitar in a band called Spirits of Sound in Düsseldorf. George Harrison, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton were my idols. Then Jimi Hendrix came- and everything changed. In March 1967, he and his band- with Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass, performed for the first time in German TV for the ‘Beat Club‘ show. They played ‘Hey Joe‘, which was their first single. I was confused and euphoric: this virtuosity on the guitar, the new, burning sounds and surprising melodies, Jimi’s absolutely individual style- so much new!
When in May 1967 the first album, Are You Experienced, was released, he showed his entire spectre of expression: whether raw, pounding and driving, psychedelic-experimental, or touchingly melodic- all songs were convincing and intense. How Hendrix created sounds that had never been heard before using the wah-wah, distortion, and studio technology at that time was unique. He set new standards and has influenced generations of musicians ever since. Hendrix became my greatest idol on the guitar. As a 16-year-old I didn’t know the abysses on which songs like “Manic Depression” and “Purple Haze” were based, but the music took hold of me. I still get goosebumps when I hear the guitar solo of “May This Be Love“. I was lucky enough to see the Jimi Hendrix Experience live in 1969. Many other guitarists and musician friends envy me for this experience today.  From: https://vinylwriters.com/michael-rother-on-the-jimi-hendrix-experience-are-you-experienced-1967/

 

Earth, Wind & Fire - Let Me Talk

Earth, Wind & Fire were one of the most musically accomplished, critically acclaimed, and commercially popular funk bands of the '70s. Conceived by drummer, bandleader, songwriter, kalimba player, and occasional vocalist Maurice White, EWF's all-encompassing musical vision used funk as its foundation, but also incorporated jazz, smooth soul, gospel, pop, rock & roll, psychedelia, blues, folk, African music, and, later on, disco. Lead singer Philip Bailey gave EWF an extra dimension with his talent for crooning sentimental ballads in addition to funk workouts; behind him, the band could harmonize like a smooth Motown group, work a simmering groove like the J.B.'s, and improvise like a jazz fusion outfit. Their stage shows were often as elaborate and dynamic as George Clinton's P-Funk empire. More than just versatility for its own sake, EWF's eclecticism was part of a broader concept informed by a cosmic, mystical spirituality and an uplifting positivity the likes of which hadn't been seen since the early days of Sly & the Family Stone. Tying it all together was the accomplished songwriting of Maurice White, whose intricate, unpredictable arrangements and firm grasp of hooks and structure made EWF one of the tightest bands in funk. Not everything they tried worked, but at their best, Earth, Wind & Fire seemingly took all that came before them and wrapped it up into one dizzying, spectacular package.
White founded Earth, Wind & Fire in Chicago in 1969. He had previously honed his chops as a session drummer for Chess Records, where he played on songs by the likes of Fontella Bass, Billy Stewart, and Etta James, among others. In 1967, he'd replaced Redd Holt in the popular jazz group the Ramsey Lewis Trio, where he was introduced to the kalimba, an African thumb piano he would use extensively in future projects. In 1969, he left Lewis' group to form a songwriting partnership with keyboardist Don Whitehead and singer Wade Flemons. This quickly evolved into a band dubbed the Salty Peppers, which signed with Capitol and scored a regional hit with "La La Time." When a follow-up flopped, White decided to move to Los Angeles, and took most of the band with him; he also renamed them Earth, Wind & Fire, after the three elements in his astrological charts. By the time White convinced his brother, bassist Verdine White, to join him on the West Coast in 1970, the lineup consisted of Whitehead, Flemons, female singer Sherry Scott, guitarist Michael Beal, tenor saxophonist Chet Washington, trombonist Alex Thomas, and percussionist Yackov Ben Israel. This aggregate signed a new deal with Warner Bros. and issued its self-titled debut album in late 1970. Many critics found it intriguing and ambitious, much like its 1971 follow-up, The Need of Love, but neither attracted much commercial attention despite a growing following on college campuses and a high-profile gig performing the soundtrack to Melvin Van Peebles' groundbreaking Black independent film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.
Dissatisfied with the results, White dismantled the first version of EWF in 1972, retaining only brother Verdine. He built a new lineup with female vocalist Jessica Cleaves, flute/sax player Ronnie Laws, guitarist Roland Bautista, keyboardist Larry Dunn, and percussionist Ralph Johnson; the most important new addition, however, was singer Philip Bailey, recruited from a Denver R&B band called Friends & Love. After seeing the group open for John Sebastian in New York, Clive Davis signed them to CBS, where they debuted in 1972 with Last Days and Time. Further personnel changes ensued; Laws and Bautista were gone by year's end, replaced by reedman Andrew Woolfolk and guitarists Al McKay and Johnny Graham. It was then that EWF truly began to hit their stride. 1973's Head to the Sky (Cleaves' last album with the group) significantly broadened their cult following, and the 1974 follow-up, Open Our Eyes, was their first genuine hit. It marked their first collaboration with producer, arranger, and sometime-songwriting collaborator Charles Stepney, who helped streamline their sound for wider acceptance; it also featured another White brother, Fred, brought in as a second drummer.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/earth-wind-fire-mn0000135273 

Earth Tongue - Out Of This Hell

In the middle of a mammoth 50-plus EU and UK tour, Earth Tongue have stopped to share their blistering new single, “Out of This Hell”.
The thunderous and theatrical single, the third taste of the fuzz-rock duo’s forthcoming album, Great Haunting, is loosely based on the bubonic plague, capturing the imagery of plucky physicians who tended to plague victims in the 16th and 17th centuries. You know the haunting sight: ominous figures wearing truly terrifying beak-like masks, all-black capes billowing at their back.
Gussie Larkin and Ezra Simons recruited The Beths’ Jonathan Pearce on synthesiser for the track, and the addition of a spooky synth intro felt apt given “Out of This Hell” had already been chosen as the album’s opener.
The accompanying music video, directed by Levi Cranston, was filmed against the stunning backdrop of Anawhata and Whites Beach on the west coast of Auckland. A gothic horror fantasy soon emerged, and Larkin couldn’t wait to “unleash some screams like a wannabe scream queen.”
“I even cried real tears for this! There’s something a little spooky about the west coast, particularly at night when you’re standing in the cold wielding a knife for the camera. It’s such a wild, remote coastline and there weren’t any houses or people around for miles. I think that helped me with channelling that sense of isolation and turmoil,” she adds.
“Out of This Hell” follows previous album singles “Bodies Dissolve Tonight!” and “Grave Pressure”, the latter of which also came accompanied by another cinematic music video, shot on 16mm film by Tom Mannion and inspired by classic B-horror films of the ’70s and ’80s.  From: https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/earth-tongue-out-of-this-hell-song-you-need-to-know-60068/

Daisy House - The Defender

Western Man is the new album from Daisy House, the California-based duo of vocalist Tatiana Hammond and her multi-instrumentalist father, Doug, and is, in their own words, “an attempt at making the ‘classic pop album'”.
‘Lilac Man’ opens the proceedings, its lyric referencing ancient ideas about the movement of the stars and the planets while its musical setting, arranged around a descending chord sequence evokes the golden years of late 1960s West Coast USA folk-rock.
The theme of supernatural, Faustian bargains epitomised in Robert Johnson’s ‘Cross Road Blues’ provide the springboard for ‘Yellow Moon Road’, although the rocky arrangement calls to mind The Doors with almost murmured vocals, Hammond organ and some blistering fuzz guitar breaks.
Over rolling snares and with a cryptic lyric, which may be about spirit guides, ‘The Defender’ leans towards the folkier end of the spectrum; jangling guitars and tinkling piano underpin this dreamy little number. Lifted by the harmonies of the duo, this is one of the record’s highlights.  From: https://klofmag.com/2016/03/daisy-house-western-man-album-review/

 

Eurythmics - The Walk

"The Walk" is a 1982 song by the British new wave duo Eurythmics. It was the band's fourth single, and was included on their second album Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (1983). Produced by band member David A. Stewart and Adam Williams (ex-bassist of The Selecter), the track was recorded at Eurythmics' own 8-track home studio. As with their previous three singles, it was commercially unsuccessful, though it was included on the band's platinum-selling second album Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This.
For many years, most fans were unaware that a music video had been produced for The Walk until it was released online in the early 2000s. The video, directed by Marek Budzynski, largely consists of shots of Annie Lennox (wearing a long black wig) performing to camera whilst Dave Stewart sits in the corner of a darkened room reading a newspaper. The video was produced by Julian Cole and edited by Sophie Muller, later to become a successful music video director herself. All were, at the time, first year students at the London College of Art where they met Dave and Annie via a mutual friend. The total budget for the video was £1000. The original negative and print copy quickly went missing after the single failed to achieve chart success whilst the BBC did not retain a telecine copy. The only surviving print was kept by Marek Budzynski himself, later remastered by a YouTube channel called Sterovideosubscriber and re-released online in 2017.
The website Eurythmics Video Visionaries interviewed Marek Budzynski in 2007 who revealed that the video was shot "at a carpenter friend of Dave and Annie's who had a courtyard outside" and that the duo and their manager were largely responsible for the concept of the video.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walk_(Eurythmics_song)

Closure in Moscow - Primal Sinister

What aspects of Closure in Moscow do you consider to be DIY or independent? How has this changed over the course of your career, and what do you find to be especially important or rewarding about the way you all operate the band?

The only thing in our band that is completely independent and DIY is the music we make. We have a booking agent, 24 hour chef, manager and a small crew of street toughs to help us out with other aspects of the band, but the buck stops with us. It has been a great experience being in control and seeing a vision through whole heartedly.

How has recording, marketing, and releasing Pink Lemonade been different than the process for First Temple?

We essentially controlled every aspect of Pink Lemonade, rather than having to abide by contractual obligations with Equal Vision about artwork and how we were marketed. On one hand it's very liberating and puts the power back where it belongs, but on the other hand it opens up a doorway to a different kettle of fish in regards to backend administration tasks you didn't think about when you picked up an instrument. One of the greatest aspects of making an independent release is walking away with a completed album and being debt free, broke but debt free. We all like cat biscuits much more now.

What is your own local scene like? Did Closure in Moscow start in a small scene, or did you guys start in a big city - and how have your earliest experiences in bands affected the way that you handle the band nowadays?

We had assumptions about how things would work and some assumptions rang true while others were way off the mark. Once we had enough experiences of both, we learnt to roll into every new situation as its own independent set of decisions and make them accordingly but with extreme prejudice.

Do you consider Closure in Moscow to be a political band in any sense of the word? And if so, what are some of the political environments or political events that have shaped your lyrics and/or your music?

Politics Schmolitics.

What's the experience of being an international band like? Is it difficult to market your music to fans who live on different continents than where the band is based? What's the process like of finding a record label or a distributor for your music in a country that you don't live in?

It's like being a local band with aeroplanes and people speaking funny languages you don't know. Obviously the internet makes things infinitely easier to get your music out there, but nothing can replace playing in front of people and engaging with them on that level, for a deeper, lasting impression. In this regard, being so geographically isolated in Australia, it's monetarily quite difficult to get over to places like Europe and America regularly enough to really market the music the best way it can be marketed, melting people's faces off with it abroad.

How was the writing and recording process different with some new band members in the mix? What kind of stylistic influences did the new members contribute to the sound of the album?

Both Sal and Duncan brought in a fresh perspective and 4 new ears. Duncan also fingerpicks his bass and can do the hallowed 2 finger pushup. We didn't do any drum quantising on this one and recorded the drums and bass live. We were playing all together in a room and it brought out a fresh vibe, I think you can hear the love. Along with their Shaolin-like physical abilities and love for cat biscuits, Dunc and Sal also brought in a little bit of that oooold soul stew.

What kinds of issues or themes most influenced the lyrics of the new album? There seems to be a lot of religious imagery - what led to this, or what is it about religion that proved to be a productive subject to write about?

I actually steered pretty clear of religion as a theme this time around, other than drawing parallels between it and the regard certain people hold for the supposedly imminent technological singularity on The Church of the Technochrist. That shit is just the Christian rapture for "atheists", I used to be one of those people but thankfully I pulled my head out of my ass enough to know I need to add a grain of salt to any theories or ideas I scarf down, even if people talk a good game about them with a lot of impressive charts and numbers. Hey! It might happen, I just think there are a few too many people hedging their bets like it's a shoe-in…

Some themes that get pontificated about on Pink Lemonade are whether or not we can listen to a god's kind of music as well, an armada of surfing cyborgs on a dinosaur safari and how the luddite dinosociety is affected, refusing to use the cyborgs' own tech against them, Byzantine empresses time travelling to obtain radical wet suit augmentations and chasing those happy days while you're walking on heaven.

Closure is one of those bands that people constantly argue about what genre they fit into. What are your thoughts on being defined by genres and labels in today's music scene?

We don't fit into genres, genres fit into us… The word genre was invented in 1946 by esteemed music critic Clancy W Shrub, who was in cahoots with the CIA at the time, and in an effort to greatly reduce the popularity of 'swing' music, which was referred to as 'Uber Jazz', and being that the CIA harboured heavy anti-German sentiment, they decided more words beginning with a soft 'G' needed to be invented and simultaneously, crush the whirlwind that was 'Uber Jazz' (now referred to as swing). Their plan worked. 

From: https://www.reddit.com/r/PostHardcore/comments/2cddb6/unpublished_interview_from_closure_in_moscows/ 

 

Fever Ray - Shiver

 

 

Karin Dreijer is at their most horny and desperate on this Radical Romantics highlight. Reverberating through Fever Ray’s “Shiver” are four pleading words: “Just a little touch.” An urgent dispatch from the center of our touch-deprivation crisis—not a minor predicament, but an “epidemic of skin hunger,” experts say—the Radical Romantics cut is Karin Dreijer at their horniest and most desperate. Desires materialize out of their mouth formant-shifted, hyena-like, as they beckon for “needle highs” and “thick thighs” over jiggling synths. This is not a benign romance, but an encounter so voltaic, so destabilizing, it’s like a million filaments flaming up. The track’s mutant production embodies the familiar yet foreign experience of exploring someone else’s body for the first time. But “Shiver” isn’t solely animalistic and sense-driven: Amidst co-producer Olof Dreijer’s jagged drums and alarming synth bassline, Dreijer wonders, cautiously, “Can I trust you?” It’s a moment of subtlety that alludes to how contact helps us fact-check what’s real: first a graze of flesh, then a body to hold.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/fever-ray-shiver/ 

 

Michelle Shocked - On the Greener Side

Alternative folk singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked (Karen Michelle Johnston) borrows her stage name from the term shell shocked. Her mother was Mormon and she was raised in that faith. A wild child, her mother had her committed to a psychiatric hospital for a time during years of drug abuse. She went through a punk rock phase, wearing a Mohawk hairdo and squatting in abandoned buildings in San Francisco, California.
Shocked received her first international exposure after Pete Lawrence recorded her performance on a portable tape recorder at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas. Lawrence released the tape in Europe as The Texas Campfire Tapes (1986) (later released as The Texas Campfire Takes). The album's success brought major labels asking her to sign a contract. Shocked was resistant to what she saw as the machinations of the music industry, and worked to retain a degree of creative control. Her first US success came with the release of her 1988 debut album, Short Sharp Shocked, on college radio rotations around the country, which was met with strong acclaim from listeners. The debut single, "Anchorage", broke into the Billboard Hot 100. Shocked put forward an ambiguous sexuality from the beginning of her career. Her music appealed to many people, including lesbians.
The second album in the trilogy, Captain Swing, was released in 1989. Described by reviewer Chris Woodstra as an album of "swing and big-band music" that "no one expected," the album was promoted with the release of "On the Greener Side", a gender-reversed parody of Robert Palmer's 1986 single "Addicted to Love", in which topless male models performed the motions made famous by the female models in Palmer's video. Her 1992 album, Arkansas Traveler. Her desire to have the cover portray her in blackface in tribute to the roots of the music featured on the album drew criticism and a change in the cover art.  From: https://www.facebook.com/groups/johneinarsonremembers/posts/2148616782139798/

Lorn - Acid Rain

You ever stumble across something magical on the internet and wonder with a mixture of shock and embarrassment how you hadn’t seen it earlier? That’s totally us with “Acid Rain,” the truly remarkable video from EDM producer Lorn. We saw it, instantly fell in love, and had to share it. Who cares if it’s nearly a year old? This planet has been around for 4.5 billion years, a single one of those isn’t a very long time, so the “new” adjective still works from that perspective.
Anyways, “Acid Rain” is everything we’d ever want from a music video: Great Song? Check. A lengthy single cut? Check. Car crash, thus featuring the possibility of an allusion to J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers’ “Last Kiss”? Check. A highly-choreographed dance number featuring multi-ethnic zombie cheerleaders? Check.
This is the sort of thing you have to invent reasons for not liking. Director by Pavel Brenner, Julian Flores, and Sherif Alabede, “Acid Rain” plays like an insane mix of American Beauty, Zombieland and Bring It On. And yes I just dated the shit out of myself with those references. But kindly ignore that and proceed to watching this jaw-droopingly awesome video.  From: https://www.wearetheguard.com/music/best-music-videos-lorn-acid-rain

Maria Muldaur - Ain't Gonna Marry

What do you miss most nowadays from the music and the feeling of the past?

Well I grew up listening to early country music and I always liked when I got to be a teenager I started listening to, there was a folk musical vibe going on in New York City, I grew up in Greenwich, New York City there was a lot of music going on then, I also listened to a lot of jazz, I would lie about my age and sneak in to jazz clubs, but I became exposed to music, what I like to call American roots music, it was like early blues, early jazz, bluegrass something called old timey music, which was like the music of the people that lived in the mountains and so I fell in love with that music, early on and although I listen to contemporary music, I feel like that music has something more soulful about it, I always enjoy going back to that time of music.

You were born and grew up in Greenwich Village in New York. How important was Greenwich Village in your life and in your career?

Well, I just happened to be born and raised in a little neighborhood in New York City that was always the epicenter for artists, for the painters and sculptors and poets and writers and musicians as well it’s very bohemian to grow up, we’re not conformists there, you know? And a lot of free spirits, people from all over the world gravitated to go there, because that was a place you could express yourself freely. And so, I was so lucky to be exposed to that even as a little girl and in the late 50s there started to be, there was a park there, called Washington Square Park and there was a big round circle, like a fountain. And every Sunday musicians would come from the place and would just be jamming together in little groups it was like a little mini folk festival, some people playing some early delta blues, maybe some people were playing bluegrass music and other people were playing protest songs, you know, songs with a political subject that maybe were about issues of social justice, so I got exposed to all of it and I started learning to play old time fiddle and learning old songs like blues, bluegrass and all kinds of songs I was really lucky to be there, right on my doorstep.

What are the lines that connect the legacy of American roots music from jazz, blues, gospel, folk to beat generation to folk, blues revival and beyond?

There’s something that’s so elemental about it. Look at jazz and blues; This the kind of music that’s on this record, a lot of the kind of music that I’ve spent decades paying tribute to. Different early blues artists, they created this music almost a hundred years ago and without any promo, commercial promotion form above ground media, you know, like say for a pop star now had an album come out it’s gonna have articles about the songs and, promo on the social media and stuff like that, but this music, that we’re talking about, with no help from media has managed to peripherate generation after generation. Right now, there’s way more blues festivals all over the world, not just in the States, not just in Canada, but across Europe and the world. The same could be said for blue-grass and old-timey music, I can’t believe how many young kids, they found out about it, they have to kind of dig deep to even find it, but once they’re exposed, they’re immediately attracted to it, just like I was when I was a young girl in the 60s. Do you know why? Because it’s kind of like if you’re eating fast food your whole life, then someone invites you over and they set a fabulous home-cooked meal. You’ll just gobble it right up and you’ll never gonna look at McDonald's again. That’s the same on a musical level, that’s what’s going on. People of the younger generation are the most discouraged about the whole climate, environmental crisis, karma crisis the whole human mess that’s going on, that’s way worse now than it even was then and so to hear this pure music, it just naturally attracts them and that’s why, in the summer usually where there’s no Covid, I find it very hard to put a really good band together sometimes, because all the best players, they’re playing festivals in Europe and all over the place. That means that people from all over the world, even people that can’t understand a word of English, really wanna hear this music. I had played a blues festival in Czech Republic a few years ago, I’ve played in Bolivia, all over the place, because it’s a really different energy and people just naturally respond to it. Tuba Skinny’s music, you can’t sit there, you have to get up and dance. That’s something timeless, it’s not about some trendy little moment in a commercial. It just means the music is real, so people are always gonna respond to it.

From: https://blues.gr/profiles/blogs/q-a-with-gifted-singer-maria-muldaur-the-first-lady-of-roots-musi