Passion Plays

The Rolling Stone readers’ poll on the 10 Best Prog Rock Albums of the 70’s has it all: songs of symphonic length, self-indulgent morality plays, virtuosity, technical wizardry – and absolutely no dancing.

And yes, I had most of these albums.

Prog rock was big in 70’s; probably too big.  So it’s curious that only 5 bands scooped up all 10 spots (2 each for Rush and Genesis, with the grand prize going to Pink Floyd with 4).  Or maybe not, because the albums listed were huge.

Definitely not:  ELP, Focus and Mike Oldfield didn’t age as well.

I might have swapped out Floyd’s Animals for Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play, though.  Tull’s sense of humour with the “Story of the hare that lost his spectacles” bit was kinda funny.  And let’s face it, Animals was hard work.

Reconsider Baby

Another album missing from Gibson’s best covers album list is From the Cradle by Eric Clapton, a terrific collection of blues standards performed flawlessly – and sung passionately – by the greatest blues guitarist of all time.

No use standin’ around crying, but I’m tore down that this masterpiece was omitted.

BTW, his tribute to Robert Johnson is also amazing.  Red hot renditions of 14 of the most influential blues tunes ever written.

Shake It Up, Baby

By the way, the best cover band of all time?  The Beatles.  No, they never did an entire album because they had too much fabulous material of their own.  But those early records had a lot of great covers.  Covers that paid homage.  Covers that revealed the band’s influences.  Covers that were true to the original, but sounded brand new.

Message to Paul:  do you know what would have been a better idea for Let It Be?  Instead of a film showing The Beatles rehearsing a recording new material, you should have done a covers album.

Bet they would have had more fun.

Got It Covered

Gibson’s 10 All-Time Greatest Covers Albums makes the point that great songwriters can also do very well covering material by other artists, thank you very much.  It contains the likes of Lennon, GNR, Bowie, Def Leppard, Patti Smith and Metallica.

The article points out that sometimes these recordings are just throw-aways; contractual obligations and so on, and I can think of a few examples where you can tell either the effort wasn’t there or heart wasn’t in the job.

But the list illustrates the passion and respect the artists felt for those that had come before.  After all, you don’t write songs before you’ve learned how to play, so you start by learning someone else’s songs.  And so these albums are also insightful in terms of influence.

One I would have added, by the way, is Run Devil Run by Paul McCartney, a great covers album that rivals Lennon’s – and that’s saying something.

I’m On My Knees

I may not hold him up quite as high as I do some other blues guitar legends, but I’ll tell you this much:  Buddy Guy’s Baby Please Don’t Leave is the best blues recording so far this millennium.

It’s got a hypnotic groove, a trippy atmosphere, raw, emotional vocals, and near perfect guitar.  Buddy somehow pulls together a sound that blends the best of Hendrix, Clapton, Page and himself, and erects it on the rock of the Delta.

It’s a long, painful, wailing triumph.  Respect.

Baby Please Don’t Go

Here’s a list that reminds us there is a lot of wonderful music outside the ridiculously short playlists of commercial radio:  Gibson’s 10 Great Bands That Ended Too Soon.

Predictably (and correctly) the list includes the likes of Nirvana, The Doors and The Clash, but it also includes bands that are all but forgotten, such as Alice Cooper, New York Dolls, J. Geils and The Faces.  These bands don’t get near enough airplay.

My only complaint is: what about Cream?  Talk about a great band that didn’t last long enough!  If Clapton had died in a plane crash the night before their final U.S.  concert in 1968, we’d still be weeping.

Nice to see The Beatles on the list, though.  Even though their body of work dwarfs everyone else mentioned, nothing wrong with some self-indulgent, “ya, but they could have given us so much more” thinking.  It’s only love.

The Road I’m On

Music Harmony 101:  harmonize your melody by using the chords based on the 1^st, 4^th and 5^th notes of the scale, commonly notated using the Roman Numerals I, IV and V.  If you want a bit of spice, add the chord based on the 6^th note (VI).

That’s enough for most western music: rock, pop, country, punk, hymns, national anthems, you name it.

You can just repeat a sequence endlessly, like I-VI-IV-V, as used in Stand By Me and a million other songs.

You can follow a rigid formula, like I-IV-I-V-IV-I, the 12 bar blues pattern used for a healthy majority of blues songs, also sped up with a backbeat for early rock ’n’ roll.

Or you can mix ‘em up endlessly like Jackson Browne does in Running On Empty.

The basis of the song is a jumped up groove on the church cadence (“amen”): IV-I.  Once you’ve got that approaching the hypnotic, let’s take it somewhere by adding the 6th: IV-I-VI.

Now let’s go crazy for the bridge.  VI-IV-V-I, then switched up to VI-V-IV-I. Back to VI-IV-V-I, then IV-V-I (this last sequence being something used by everyone from Bach to The Ramones).

Just four chords, mixed up and stirred around in a way that makes it both familiar and fresh at the same time.

Just what you’re hoping to find.

Giving the Finger

Now here’s a list that’s close to my heart: Gibson’s 10 All Time Great Finger Pickers.  Why?  Cause that’s mostly how I play.  I may have been weaned on rock ‘n’ roll, but my wanderings into classical and folk made me drop the pick.

Here’s the list: Merle Travis, Davy Graham, John Fahey, Martin Carthy, Jerry Reed, Reverend Gary Davis, Tommy Emmanuel, Jorma Kaukonen, Leo Kottke, Chet Atkins.

I can’t pretend to know all of these guys, but I would have added Mark Knopfler, probably the most successful finger picker in rock.  And Bruce Cockburn, for my money, one of the best acoustic guitarists of all time.  And where is Robert Johnson, the guy with titanic influence over most genres, the guy whose licks we’re still trying to figure out, the cat that made one guitar sound like three?

Anyway, hats off to the finger pickers.  They might not get as much energy into the strings as the plectrum crowd, but they can pull off some tasty licks.

The Hypnotized Never Lie

Was any song ever more prescient than The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again?

The change it had to come.  We knew it all along.  But the parting on the left is now the parting on the right.

Are the morals that we worship all gone?  How long before we’ll be fighting in the street with our children at our feet?  Will our families be left even half alive?  Did the shotgun always sing the song?

Townshend always made it clear he would never be drawn into choosing sides between “us” and “them,” and, although a lot of stuff has gone down in the last forty years, he proved himself right.  History ain’t changed.

Nothing in the street looks any different to me either.

Meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss.  No wonder Daltrey blew out his vocal chords with that scream.

Hoochie Coochie Man

Q: What do Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Cream, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Steppenwolf, the Allman Brothers, Otis Rush, Gary Moore, Koko Taylor, Canned Heat, the Stones, Steve Miller, the Animals, Tom Petty, Sam Cooke, Little Walter, Bo Diddley, Elvis, and the Everly Brothers all have in common?

A: Willie Dixon.  They all recorded Willie Dixon songs, per Gibson’s 10 Great Willie Dixon Songs.

Oh, and Paul Butterfield, Savoy Brown, Ten Years After, Etta James, the Pointer Sisters, Jeff Beck, James Cotton, Hendrix, Megadeth and the White Stripes.

That’s quite a list.  A hall of fame, who’s-who, Desert Island, best-ever-playlist kind of list.

You can make your case for Robert Johnson, or Muddy or B.B. as the most influential blues musician of all time, but when it comes to blues songwriting, no one else comes close.  It’s Willie Dixon that make the world wanna know what this all about.