Time Is Tight

 

Who’s on your list of tightest bands of all time?  Led Zeppelin?  U2?  The Allman Brothers?  Jethro Tull?  Yes?  AC/DC?  Steely Dan?

 

Have a listen to Melting Pot by Booker T. & the MG’s and tell me they don’t belong.

We’ve Got To Find A Way

It’s only taken 49 years, but I finally figured out that What’s Going On is a pretty good song.

Time Is On My Side

So you’re a bar band.  You start out playing Chicago Blues and 50’s R&B.  Rock and Roll takes over.  Then things move on to Motown, Psychedelic, Hard Rock, Disco, and Alternative.  How the devil do keep getting gigs through all these changes? 

Answer: you become the Rolling Stones.

Trance and Dance

I’m convinced that all the good grooves haven’t been found yet.

Like the Trembling Heart of a Captive Bird?

In case you needed more proof that computers should not be running our lives, check out this article, in which it is revealed that the saddest song of all time – as deftly calculated by clever computer algorithms – is Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I saw Your Face.

It Ain’t Nothin’ New

Killer songs, rock solid performance, great production, and – for my money – the best slide guitar going.

But what really sets Bonnie Raitt’s music apart is that it’s sexy.  Have a listen to Love Sneakin’ Up On You.  Bonnie’s music is overflowing with slow-grinding, hip-swaying, trance-inducing grooves.

Your whole world is shakin’.

Say It Again Y’all

If you’re going to be remembered for only one song, Edwin Starr’s War is a pretty good one.

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing

The Time That Was So Hard To Find

They never got a mention in Standing In The Shadows Of Motown, but I’m pretty sure John, Paul, George and Ringo were all Funk Brothers.

Just have a listen to You Won’t See Me.

Getting Better

Part II of my rebuttal to Professor Armand Leroi’s preposterous assertion that The Beatles had virtually no influence on pop music.

Chuck Berry, Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, the Everlys - played by punks, punks who grew up listening to show tunes, folk songs, sing-alongs, music hall numbers, cowboy movies, and Granny’s weekly performance at the pub.

By the time they had emerged from Hamburg and those 6 hour sets, The Beatles had developed their own unique sound, a sound which incorporated that early rockabilly, 50’s R&B, and yes, their childhood influences.  They had become adept at absorbing other styles and transforming them into their own brand of rock and roll.

Then there was soul music, and the pixie dust of Motown, which had, in its own way, done the same thing.

Dylan, folk-rock, classical, Eastern, psychedelic, singer/songwriter, hard rock, each one studied, re-imagined and grafted on to that ever-expanding base.  Each new experiment set someone else off on another new idea, which looped right back to The Beatles for them to start all over again.  Getting so much better all the time.

There is no scientific way to explain the influence of The Beatles, because it magic.

Scared To Run Out Of Time

Have a listen to Bonnie Raitt’s Nick Of Time.

Now that’s a Grammy performance.

Rubber Soul

Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins …  Yes.  Got it.  But without Motown, would we even have the Beatles?

I Can Turn The Gray Sky Blue

With all due repsect to The Temptations, I just love Savoy Brown’s version of I Can’t Get Next To You.  Kim Simmonds’ guitar work is fantastic.

Two Hearts

It's a pity that Paul McCartney and Phil Collins didn't become close friends.  The music would have been fantastic.

Relax and Float Downstream

Here’s some Socratic reasoning:  Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles is an R&B tune because it has a hypnotic, driving beat.  It is also a folk song because it’s carried by simple strumming on an acoustic guitar.  But it’s pretty heavy, so you could argue it’s a rock song.  Or compromise and call it folk rock. 

Then again it’s very trippy, so really it’s psychedelic rock – or maybe even early prog rock, since it lifts from other genres and quotes strange modalities.

Or you could say it’s all of those things, which happens to nicely sum up The Beatles.  Now, if you can say a single song can represent the diverse canon of the best group of all time, then obviously that song is the best song of all time.

I Stick Around For More

There’s no way you could argue Bonnie Raitt’s Spit of Love, recorded in 1998, is an R&B tune.  It’s got a classic hook, a hypnotic groove, and a solid, driving beat.

So how come I’ve got it on my Psychedelic playlist?

I Feel As Though You Ought To Know

Rubber Soul.  The best Motown album not released by Motown Records.

Sad Songs, Part 25

OK, the saddest song in the world is actually Adele’s Hello.  No wait!  Maybe it’s When We Were Young.

Ah, heck.  Make it the whole damn album.

In His Blood And In His Bones

How many genres can you pack into one song?  I dunno, but Mark Knopfler managed to jam quite a few into In The Gallery.

Blues, rock, country, R&B, a bit of psychedelic maybe?  What do you hear?

A good song should sound like an old friend on first hearing.  The more genres the songwriting – and arranger -  can draw on, the deeper the listener can mine for familiar sounds.  It can’t be a sloppy pastiche, of course.  Everything has to fit together.  And when it does, as with In The Gallery, what you get is one rich song.

Pretty tasty guitar work by Knopfler, too.

Move It To The Left

A lot of folks think The Rolling Stones became silly and pathetically commercial in the 80’s when they did stuff like, oh, say The Harlem Shuffle.

To which I say: The Stones were an R&B band.  Remember?

Higher Than The Moon

Have a listen to St. Teresa by Joan Osborne.  Cool, eh?  Trippy video too.

Every time I play it, I think to myself, “Why did she never make another album after Relish?”  One great record, one overwhelming performance in Standing In The Shadows of Motown, then oblivion.

Starting a few months after Relish came out in 1995, I always looked in the Joan Osborne bin whenever I went browsing for CD’s – something I did often.  Always only the one album.

Eventually I gave up, and accepted that I was fated to repeat this sad question to myself every time I heard Joan Osborne.

Then a few weeks ago I remembered that after the album was released, this thing called the Internet exploded into our world, along with this really cool resource called Wikipedia.

So I finally looked up Joan Osborne in Wikipedia and discovered that she hadn’t disappeared at all.  In fact, she’s been very busy.

Damn!  Guess I got a bucketful of lost time to make up for.