Posted April 7, 2002
COUNTING THE DAYS
This column is subtitled "ruminations on rock'n'roll,"
and I guess that's what this is.
Counting the days now until I head up to Cleveland to hook up with Geoff Ginsberg
and catch Deniz Tek with Scott Morgan's Powertrane, then on to Ann Arbor to
catch the same lineup with Ron Asheton at the Blind Pig, Scott's regular stomping
grounds.
It's
been a rock'n'roll last coupla months for me. Last month I got to see the
Yayhoos, whose "Fear Not the Obvious" has become my Album of the
Year so far, even though it came out in 2001 (I'm as slow on the pickup today
as I was back in '74 when punk was just around the corner but we were still
playing stupid Cream and Allman Brothers songs when we weren't sitting in
front of the deli having spitting and farting contests and wondering why the
Really Neat Girls wouldn't go out with us). Since that show, I've been investigating
some of the participants' earlier works, particularly Dan Baird's "Love
Songs for the Hearing Impaired" and Terry Anderson's "You Don't
Like Me" and "I'll Drink to That" (when I get the second one,
"What Else Can Go Right," I'll probably have to devote a whole column
to Terry - you just don't find songwriters this good anymore, and the Yayhoos
have got THREE of 'em). Call it rootsy or Southern rock, or, uh, "Americana,"
which is the term that my once-and-maybe-future guitar partner (who I think
actually reads No Depression) has been using of late, it's just great rock'n'roll,
with the focus on great SONGS (something I've been thinking about a lot lately).
I actually brainwashed myself by listening to a tape of "Fear Not the
Obvious" in the car for a month to the point where the other night, I
was actually able to sit down with the CD and play all the songs from memory
(I had a couple of the keys wrong, but what the hell). Hadn't done that in
years with ANYONE.
I'll tell you a secret, too - I fuckin' LOVE the Allman Brothers, still. I
was talking about 'em the other day with a young woman of my acquaintance
who's far more into stuff like the Allmans and Neil Young than most people
her age (late twenties) - she also told me she bought the Hoodoo Gurus' "Magnum
Cum Louder" when she was in high school, as a result of which I've spent
the last couple of days at work listening to "Come Anytime" and
"All the Way," and my days were much better for it, thinking what
an EPIC sound the Gurus had, and how well it worked on record. But I digress.
Anyway, I was telling her about how "At Fillmore East" was one of
the touchstones of my misguided youth (as much as "Live at Leeds,"
"Funhouse," and "Truth," even) - I spent many I lysergic
evening studying Brother Duane's extended solo workouts on "You Don't
Love Me," "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed," and "Whipping
Post" as ARCHITECTURE. I was too young to see 'em live when he was still
among 'em, but I listened to them play the closing of the Fillmore East live
on the radio, and then in the summer of '73 (post-"Brothers and Sisters"
album and "Jessica") I was SUPPOSED to go to the big festival at
Watkins Glen speedway upstate, where they played with the Grateful Dead and
the Band, but wound up spending the entire weekend out of my skull on PCP,
jamming "Savoy Brown Boogie" and "Smoke On the Water"
at some kid's house on a borrowed Vox Super Beatle.
I actually DID get to see 'em a couple of summers ago when they played the
Starplex Amphiteater in Dallas. I took my oldest (then) guitar-playing daughter
and her guitar teacher, and was mightily impressed when young Derek Trucks,
then just barely 20, made the hair stand up on my neck in the first 10 seconds
of his first solo, playing Indian-sounding microtones with a SLIDE. You had
to feel sorry for poor Dickey Betts (even though he appeared to be calling
the shots onstage that night, and even had a few new tricks in his bag, playing
a Strat and using a wah), having progressed from soloing behind Duane to soloing
behind this phenomenal kid. I didn't even get bored during the 15-minute percussion
jam. "That's the way to do it," I told my future guitar partner,
"don't worry about playing long or counting bars, just let the grooves
BREATHE." We gave it a shot, too, as the Occasionals, although the proclivities
of different people in the band led us more in the direction of an anal-retentive
little jazz band than the free-flowing jam outfit I'd envisioned (although
we DID play "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" the way the Allmans had
at Starplex, extending the slow opening section before the head so everyone
could solo). Maybe next time.
So anyway, I was out hitting used CD stores with my daughter the other night
when I ran across a copy of Gov't Mule's new "The Deep End, Volume 1"
for four bucks, so of course I had to grab it. I'll admit to having passed
on two opportunities to see the Mule at SXSW, and having traded their double
"Live With a Little Help from Our Friends" in for some Hoodoo Gurus
albums or something. As great (and epic, and Allman-like) as that album was,
I just found myself not listening to it that often. Blinding instrumental
virtuosity tends to affect me that way - same reason I gave both Derek Trucks
CDs to my (then) guitar-playing daughter, and gave Col. Bruce Hampton and
the Aquarium Rescue Unit to the guy I used to office with on my last Air Force
assignment. But I was curious about this new one because of the talent involved.
Their bassplayer Allen Woody having passed away a couple of years back, the
surviving Mule guys (guitarist/Paul Rodgers-like vocalist Warran Haynes, who
served a tour of duty with Woody in the revived Allman Bros. during the nineties,
and alliteratively-named drummer Matt Abts) invited a buncha famous bassplayers
to be on their record, including John McPharlin's boy Jack Bruce; funkmeisters
Larry Graham and Bootsy Collins (not to mention P-Funk keyboard wiz Bernie
Worrell); the Who's "Thunderfingers," John Entwistle; Red Hot Chili
Pepper Flea; ex-"classic" Deep Purple member Roger Glover; ex-Minuteman
and all-around decent fella Mike Watt, plus other musicians as varied as Gregg
Allman, Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell (on vocals), Black Crowes'
pianist Eddie Harsch, ex-Allmans keyboardist Chuck Leavell, blues singer Little
Milton Campbell, jazz guitar great John Scofield, and various members of,
uh, Phish, a band whom I'll admit to never having Got, as much as I love the
jam band concept. Point being, this isn't just a power trio record. We like
our supersessions! But part of the beauty of this record is that it sounds
like much more than the product of a list of names - which just goes to show
how judiciously the Mule guys picked their guest artistes. All of these guys
are musos enough to know that the real function of bass (besides establishing
the harmonic underpinnings) is to MAKE THE GROOVE, and they do, and they DO;
no bass-solo pyrotechnics here. No matter who else they add to the mix, Gov't
Mule sounds pretty much like Gov't Mule. How you respond to that depends a
lot on how you feel about blues-based, guitar-focused rock with lots of improvisation
(although I think this album succeeds where "Live With a Little Help..."
really didn't because it's more about SONGS than JAMS; no 17-minute cuts here).
There's as much Free and Neil Young and R&B and jazz and funk in Gov't
Mule's sound as there is "Southern rock" (whatever that means; these
guys currently make their homes in Noo Yawk City, bless 'em) - a Martha Stewart
good thing, I think. It'll do.
Not that 17-minute cuts are inherently BAD, mind you...after reading what
looked like a musicological treatise on the Velvet Underground's "Sister
Ray" that came to me courtesy of Mike Watt, I'm gonna have to set aside
a Sunday afternoon sometime to listen to that jam, Ornette Coleman's "Free
Jazz," and Coltrane's "Ascension" back-to-back. And maybe follow
it up with the Allmans' "At Fillmore East." Nothing exceeds like
excess!
But in the end, I think, it's all really about SONGS. I finally got a chance
to see ex-Dream Syndicate leader Steve Wynn, whose solo albums from "Kerosene
Man" to "My Midnight" I've been investigating (if I run across
a copy of his new "Here Come the Miracles," which has been inviting
a lot of critical comparisons to "Exile on Main St.," another touchstone
of the misguided youth and seemingly half of the rock'n'roll world, I'm gonna
have to cop it). I was particularly looking forward to the event since Ginsberg
had assured me that Wynn was "more of a LIVE guy than a RECORD guy"
and Wynn's live band (including his squeeze/drummer/girl-next-door Linda Pittmon)
is reputedly shit-hot. Little did I suspect that Wynn's Dallas gig, opening
for Concrete Blonde, was a solo acoustic performance.
He didn't disappoint, though; the only other performer I've seen take the
stage equipped with nothing but an acoustic guitar and so easily win over
an audience was Keb Mo' at Caravan of Dreams a few years back. Unfortunately,
unlike Keb, who was the headliner and played for two and a half hours until
he was physically removed from the stage (his manager had been worrying about
his voice when he did an in-store earlier that day); Wynn was the opening
act and got exactly an hour. Still, it was songs and singing that I'd been
wanting, and that's exactly what he gave us, in spades. You got the impression
he could have played for a lot longer, but it was not to be. Concrete Blonde
took the stage and as much as I like the IDEA of 'em (Johnette Napolitano's
got great pipes and I like the fact that she plays an instrument and doesn't
do any typical "chick singer" posturing), some of the Big Rock stage
business at Deep Ellum Live just seemed corny and after awhile (EPIC in the
same way as the Gurus, filled with grand Big Rock gestures, but somehow not
as effective - or maybe I've just been to too many punk shows to appreciate
that kind of performance anymore), I decided I'd had enough of being entertained
for one night.
Only a week till Cleveland now... - Ken
Shimamoto
