Saturday, January 22, 2011: Diana Ross & The Supremes - Reflections

1967.

A year before I was born.

The Doors released their debut album, Jefferson Airplane released Surrealistic Pillow, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Are You Experienced and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn are also some of the albums released during that year.

And, of course, the newly re-titled group Diana Ross & The Supremes (after founding member Florence Ballard was booted from the group) release Reflections, one of the most amazing songs ever released by Motown.

And that's saying something.

I mean, just look over any overview of The Year In Music for 1967 and try not to be awestruck.

Ecclesiastes 7:10 says, "Do not say, "Why were the old days better than these?" For it is not wise to ask such questions."

And, usually, I preach this verse. For the most part I do believe things were not "better" in the past. I believe that, on the whole, these days are much better than whatever era people talk about as "the good old days".

But then I come to 1967. And, damn.

I mean, just listen to "Reflections" and try to compare it to anything made in the last year. The last ten years. It's all bollocks, I tell you, bollocks.

Here's to timelessness. Here's to magic.

Here's to the Supremes.

Friday, January 21, 2011: Mötley Crüe - Kickstart My Heart

Music is like food.

There is some music that you need to listen to in order to grow as a person, music with depth and insight and meaning.

Music can speak into unspeakable situations, can articulate emotions and experiences we struggle to come to grips with, it can raise us soring into the heights or bring us low to keep us grounded.

In other words, sometimes music is vegetables. We need to eat our vegetables in order to grow up big and strong.

I don't know about you but there are times I just don't want to eat my vegetables. Those are the times I love the Crüe.

Mötley Crüe is like an all-you-can-eat buffet of cheeseburgers and chili cheese fries, washed down with a 64 oz mug of Cherry Coke. You know you love it, too.

Here's one of the best Friday songs ever recorded.

Crank it up, cupcake, push the pedal down and drive screaming into the weekend.

Thursday, January 20, 2011: The Fresh & Onlys - Waterfall

Waterfall (Haiku)

by Karen Michelle

Tumbling cascades,

Crashing upon moss-strewn rocks,

Glinting in the sun.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011: The Tallest Man On Earth - A Lion's Heart

The Tallest Man On Earth is not Robert Pershing Wallow, but Kristian Matsson, who hails from Sweden and picks a mean tune.

There was a time when one person with a guitar and some great songs could rock the world. When listing to TTMOE, don't think of Dylan, think of Woodie Guthrie.

Now bear with me, obviously TTMOE isn't as overtly political, or even remotely political, but that's not my point. My point is there was a time when a guy with a guitar could matter.  A guy with a guitar and a vision and some poetry could mean something.

Now, all we have are lazy critics and even lazier audiences who hear someone with a nasal tone to their voice finger-picking on a dreadnaught guitar and immediately switch off, muttering something about Dylan under their breath.

So, what, NOBODY can play alone anymore just because someone like Dylan, or James Taylor have done it?  It's like hearing someone play saxophone and instantly dismissing it because Charlie Parker played the sax.  Or, better, it's like never going to a play because nobody can follow Shakespeare, so why try.

It's nonsense.  I love TTMOE not for who he sounds like, but for the songs he writes, HIS songs, HIS music and HIS voice.

And you should too.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011: TWOfer Tuesday - The "Music Is A Time Machine" Edition

It is with a heavy heart that I blog the first selection of todays TWOfer Tuesday.
I had planned on blogging Gerry Rafferty's super hit "Baker Street" many weeks ago, well before his death on Jan 4th. I won't do any sort of retrospective tribute here, there are href="http://www.spinner.com/2011/01/04/gerry-rafferty-baker-street-stealers-wheel-dies/">many to be found on the web, written by people far more insightful and knowledgeable than myself.

I will stay with my original idea for this blog, which focuses on the evocative power of music in our lives, as that is as fitting a tribute any artist of his caliber deserves.

My original idea was an exploration of the idea of music being a time machine.

I don't mean that in any literal sense, not in the sense of cavorting around time and space in a TARDIS. No, I'm talking about that feeling of being instantly transported to another time and place in your mind when you hear a certain song, or smell a certain food being cooked. My first girlfriend wore a very specific perfume and for many years after we broke up, I would get a scent of it from someone in a mall, or grocery store, and immediately flash back to our times together. Not just fleeting glimpses, either, but full fledged visions with depth and texture and meaning to those experiences.

There are two songs that, for me, take me back to my childhood. Suddenly, unwillingly and without hesitation. Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street and Gary Wright's Dream Weaver.

Dream Weaver was a hit in 1976, and Baker Street climbed the charts in 1978. I would have been 8 and 10, respectively.

I have a friend the same age as myself, and we have this ongoing discussion: being born in 1968. are we children of the 1970's or 1980's? I contend that, while my younger years were spent in the 70's, my truly formative years are firmly grounded in the 1980's. He disagrees, noting that most of the nostalgia we covet, tv shows especially, come from the 1970's. It's an ongoing debate, but I will concede this: there is no song from the 1980's that effects me as viscerally as these two selections.

There are contenders, sure. Rod Stewards Young Turks comes to mind as a song, for reasons I cannot wholly understand, takes me back. Gypsy by Fleetwood Mac as well, again for unknown reasons.

But even those songs have nowhere near the power to evoke memory like my two chosen selections. When the saxophone kicks in on Baker Street, I am 10 years old, I have on my Husky jeans and am riding my banana seat Schwinn bike through the streets of my suburbs. When the opening dream-like synths start Dream Weaver, I'm transported to a holiday our family took to Mt Whitney in the summer of 1976, and the camping lodge had a jukebox and this song was playing constantly. Suddenly I have that awkward tuft of bright orange hair I had as a kid, I'm wearing a t-shirt with an iron-of of a very cool Dodge Van and my sister still had her dark green VW Bug with the NORML bumper sticker and her post hippy clothes. Gerald Ford was still president, CD's hadn't been invented yet and the world was sure to end in Mutually Assured Destruction.

No other songs take me to those places. No other tunes are so effective in bringing out details of sights and sounds and feelings of my youth.

These songs, these mini-masterpieces of pop songcraft, these are my time machines.

What are yours?

Monday, January 17, 2011: Utah Saints - Something Good

What do you say we start off the week with something good.

I usually try to avoid placing a lot of emphasis on a songs video, but I just love this video so much, it's total genius.

It's a new week. Let's get running, people!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

No blogging on a Sunday.

See you Monday!