Wayne's Words

Wayne's 12 and 12 Best Albums of 2011

2011-12-31T15:07:00.002-05:00

by Wayne Robins

Every day for the last month as I sipped my coffee, I have thought, today is the day. The day that I will collect, write and post my 10 best albums of 2011. I had done this just about every year since the early 1970s. First, as an early contributor to Robert Christgau's Village Voice Pazz and Jop (a typically witty Christgavian solution to the unreliability of categorization) Critic's Poll, and probably to Creem end of year lists as well. Then, beginning in 1976 or 1977, and for the next 18 or 19 years at Newsday and New York Newsday, I ran my own 10 best albums list and solicited responses for a readers' poll. Compiling the readers' poll was a favorite activity, as it bonded me with those who were engaged with my enthusiasms and (average) three day a week critiques of pop, or jop, music.
Many listeners still identify, as I do, with the album or CD or full-length MP3 as the eminent measure of artistic achievement in pop music. Many don't, as near universal access to an expanding universe of free or almost free music streams has made each person their own DJ and A&R executive, able to listen to songs of their own choosing on demand. This limits the element of accidental discovery. It also makes it evident that in 2011, the three dominant elements required for breathing on this planet are nitrogen, oxygen, and Adele's "Rolling in the Deep."
Anyway, enough prelude.

Number one: The Janks: "Hands of Time."
So who are the Janks, and why is "Hands of Time" number one? A trio from Los Angeles consisting of siblings Dylan Zmed and Zach Zmed, and Garth Herberg. (All play guitars and keyboards and sing; check out the acoustic version of "Dead Man" on Jam in the Van.com.)
"Dead Man" is the most arresting song on "Hands of Time": It has some of the soul-piercing wail of Rick Danko and Richard Manuel. Kate Mossman of the must-read U.K. magazine The Word may have been thinking of "Dead Man" when she wrote that the Janks sound as if "The Band were singing at you from the pages of a John Updike novel." (Actually, that is my life Mossman is describing, but that's OK: I'm not unique in that regard.)
The Janks can also power it up, as on "Rat Racers," which updates Rush and Queen with just enough bombast to make the point. There are also of hints of "Countdown to Ecstasy"-era Steely Dan in "Separation From Your Body," and echo whispers of Fleet Foxes CSN revivialism in "Echo Whispers." Songwriting, musicianship, singing, and spirit: It's all here.

2. Dave Alvin: Eleven Eleven. Progressive working man's blues ("Gary, Indiana 1959"; "Harlan County Line"); California history ("Murrietta's Head"); great moments in rock history ("Johnny Ace is Dead"); and even a reconciliation ("What's Up With Your Brother?") with Blasters' co-founder Phil Alvin, all show Alvin's continually evolving mastery of musical storytelling. The guitar playing is pretty good, too.

3. Caitlin Rose: "Own Side Now." She grew up in a musical Nashville family (mom Liz Rose writes with Taylor Swift; dad Johnny Rose is an accomplished road warrior and music biz veteran). But 23-year-old Caitlin Rose defies easy categorization, as if she absorbed every piece of music she ever heard at home, and using only the best ingredients, figured out how to roll her own. A recording a few years ago of the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers" offered a developmental glimpse. On "Own Side Now," she smokes, she drinks, she gets her heart broken, she gets even. As a result, she has been the toast of not just bohemian East Nashville, where she lives, but similar enclaves from Portland to London. "Shanghai Cigarettes" is the killer app, but all the songs are so smartly crafted that she reminds me of a still-developing Guy Clark.

4. The Decemberists: "The King is Dead." Colin Meloy has gotten significant acclaim for "Wildwood," his first book of young adult fantasy fiction. His songwriting is blossoming too on "The King is Dead," perhaps the Portland band's most consistent, mainstream album. Peter Buck of R.E.M. appears on three tracks, and it doesn't seem to be accidental that "Down By the Water" and "This is Why We Fight" could have been great lost R.E.M. songs from the 1980s, and pretty much surpassed anything on R.E.M.'s 2011 farewell album "Collapse Into Now."

5. Paul Simon: "So Beautiful or So What?" Good news for the sexagenarians among us worried about diminishing capabilities: 70-year-old Paul Simon's 2011 album is his best since "Graceland." The wit is mordant, especially when the songs deal with mortality and belief: "The Afterlife," in which the hereafter is drawn as a bureaucracy akin to the motor vehicle bureau, is a Louisiana shuffle that had me wondering, "Is that a Randy Newman song?"

6. Danger Mouse and Danielle Luppi: "Rome." Spaghetti western instrumentals share space with off-center but delightfully dark cameo appearances by Norah Jones ("Black") and Jack White ("Two Against One").

7. Wilco: "The Whole Love." Creatively restless yet sounding at peace with itself, Wilco's variety on "The Whole Love" requires time to absorb. The opening seven minute art-rock ramble "Art of Almost" gives way to tightly focused pop songs ("Dawned On Me"); the closer is a 12-minute spiritual folk-rock excursion, "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)." Fans of pure pop will appreciate the version of Nick Lowe's "I Love My Label" on the deluxe edition; fans of anthemic rock will love the kinetic energy of "Standing O," a song about not living up to expectations that wildly exceeds expectations.

8. Jay-Z and Kanye West: "Watch the Throne." Speaking of expectations, this could have been a mess, a Kobe Bryant meets LeBron James battle of ball hogs with bodyguards. Though it rarely reaches the level of their best solo work, the high-level of consistency and occasional moment of transcendence ("Otis," sampling "Try A Little Tenderness") must be applauded.

9. Miguel Zenon: "Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook." Zenon's third album exploring the artful, melodic side of his Puerto Rican musical heritage is at turns spirited, meditative, lush and forceful. The alto saxophonist's quartet is augmented by a 10-piece wood and brass ensemble—flutes, clarinets, French and English horns, oboe and bassoon—conducted with elegance and restraint by Guillermo Klein.

10. Tony Bennett: "Duets II." There's something miraculous about the chemistry between Bennett and Lady Gaga on the swinging opener "The Lady is a Tramp." But it's quite real, as Gay Talese's New Yorker portrait of that recording session attests. Nothing else quite hits that mark—I would love an entire album of Bennett and Gaga—but very little falls short, thanks to the blue-chip song selection and deft arrangements. You don't need to have an opinion about John Mayer, Michael Buble, Josh Groban, Queen Latifah or Sheryl Crow to know that whatever the track, the 85 year old Bennett remains the master of classic American songs.

11. Poncho Sanchez and Terence Blanchard: "Chano Y Dizzy." The birth of Latin jazz in mid-1940s New York is celebrated by conga player Sanchez and trumpeter Blanchard in a tribute to the music of Chano Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie; it looks forward as enthusiastically as it looks back.

12. P.J. Harvey: "Let England Shake." And shake it she does, in her best album in the nearly 20 years since her 1992 debut, "Dry."

Here are 12 more records that I enjoyed quite a bit in 2011: The War on Drugs: "Slave Ambient"; Ryan Adams: "Ashes and Shake"; Fleet Foxes, "Helplessness Blues"; Gregg Allman, "Low Country Blues"; Alison Krauss and Union Station, "Paper Airplane"; Lady Gaga, "Born This Way"; Acrylics, "Lives and Treasure"; My Morning Jacket, "Circuital"; Radiohead: "King of Limbs"; Timber Timbre, "Creep On Creepin' On"; Red Hot Chili Peppers: "I'm With You"; Vijay Iyer with Prasanna and Nitin Mitta: "Tirtha."

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College Football Bowl Preview No. 1

2011-12-17T13:29:00.003-05:00

by Wayne Robins

College football games used to be a great New Year's Day tradition. There would be four of them: the Rose, Cotton, Orange and Fiesta bowls, with a lesser game, the Gator Bowl, floating around in the days before. The games rarely settled arguments about which team was best in the country, but they did give one something to live for in case New Year's Eve did not turn out well. Now there are 35 games spread over three weeks, culminating in the January 9 Bowl Championship Series final between the No. 1 and No. 2-ranked teams, LSU and Alabama.

Imagine 35 games! When I was 10 years old, that would have been better than a whole series of books about Harry Potter that hadn't been written yet. Now, it's mostly inanity. Insanity, too, when you consider that some of the teams "honored" with bowl games have .500 records. Some have even had losing seasons. As I write this, the first game of the season, the Gildan New Mexico Bowl, between the Temple Owls and the Wyoming Cowboys, is about to begin. Temple, once noted for its basketball team, is from Philadelphia. The University of Wyoming is from Wyoming, a state whose friendliness to drilling of any kind has been tempered by poisoned water systems in communities near hydrofracking sites. Gildan, a sportswear brand "is a marketer and globally low-cost vertically-integrated manufacturer of quality branded basic apparel." It has just started to develop a manufacturing hub in Bangladesh, in case you wonder where its jobs, now located in Central America and the Caribbean basin, according to the company website, are going.
The pick: Temple. Baby, do the Philly dog.

Next: The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. I didn't make that up, although it sounds like something Gail Collins might invent to tie in with her ubiquitous reference to Mitt Romney having once tied the family dog to the top of the car on vacation. Who's playing? None other than the famous Utah State Aggies against the famous Ohio Bobcats. No relation to the midwestern state's famous football power, the Ohio State Buckeyes. My pick? Who in the world cares? My pick is an "NCIS" marathon.

Tonight, it's the New Orleans Bowl, between the San Diego State Aztecs and the Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin' Cajuns. That's the truth. Let's see: surfing and Mexican food against zydeco, gumbo and jambalaya. Being part Cajun (my taste buds and abdomen being the specific parts), I've got to fais-go-go with the fais-do-do and expect a crawfish fiesta at the Superdome, a virtual home game for the Ragin's.

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The 2012 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominees

2011-10-02T20:55:00.003-04:00

Who Gets In, Who Gets Left Out?
by Wayne Robins

Last week, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced the 15 nominees for 2012, of whom five will be inducted. Reactions ranged from casual single shoulder shrugs to full double shoulder shrugs. I got an email from an outraged media person wondering why neither Delaney & Bonnie nor Johnny nor Edgar Winter gets serious consideration. That required a brief explanation of our opinion that the hall is not a meritocracy that responds much to public opinion, but a cabal that operates something like a kindler, gentler version of Assad's Syria. Of course, in the real world, Syria matters, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame does not, except to the unnamed despots who otherwise would never willfully set foot in Cleveland. No one asked my opinion—the cabal has never asked for it, and after this, they certainly never will. Anyway, here are the final 15, and my reasons for or against their induction.

The Cure. They've got the longevity. But the overall level of the body of work is good rather than great. Longtime guitarist Porl Thompson doesn't get enough recognition, at least in the U.S.: He's the Johnny Marr to Robert Smith's Morrissey. Though I reluctantly learned to enjoy them in small doses, this band has certainly never been much of a cure for anything.

Heart. Popular in their time, but the notion that they were in some way groundbreaking is ridiculous. The first three hits from 1976-1977— "Crazy On You," "Magic Man," "Barracuda"—were mild entertainments of great appeal to those who could not relate to the sounds that were changing the world those years. Later hits tended towards the "adult contemporary" category. Neil Diamond (2011 inductee) spent most of his career in that walled garden as well. But if Heart had written "Solitary Man," "Kentucky Woman" or "I'm a Believer," we'd reconsider. No.

Freddie King. Outstanding blues guitarist. Even though King/Federal records tried to cross him over by titling one of his instrumentals "The Bossa Nova Watusi Twist," Freddie King's place is the Blues Hall of Fame.

The Small Faces/Faces. A conundrum. Most observers consider this the cabal's poorly thought-through attempt to ameliorate some of the disdain with which the rock hall is held in England. I mean, in terms of both their art and their commerce, the Small Faces (with Steve Marriott), and the Faces (with Rod Stewart) are two different bands, when you get right down to it.

The Spinners. Wonderful vocal group, unappreciated at Motown, that became stars at Atlantic. Also, they are wonderful, generous guys. I once panned, one of their shows at Westbury Music Fair...too much show biz, not enough soul, maybe good for a Vegas crowd, but a Louis Armstrong tribute centered around "Hello Dolly!" was off the mark. They wrote me a letter to tell me I was right, and that they would revamp the show after the next break. But I was probably wrong, just too cranky and depressed to give the show a fair shot. They taught me something about humility. I love the Spinners, but the rock and roll hall of fame is not the venue for this soul/R&B vocal group.

Donovan. On the plus side is "Sunshine Superman," "The Trip" and "Mellow Yellow." On the downside is "A Gift from A Flower to a Garden." The doors of the Hall of Fame do not beckon this year.

Beastie Boys. I took one piece of contraband with me to Russia in 1987: a homemade cassette of the Beastie Boys' "Licensed to Ill," which I gave to a teenager whose family invited a few of us over for a long evening of zakuskas and vodka. I wanted to impart the Beasties' message that you've got to fight for your right to party. Two years later, the Berlin Wall fell, and the U.S.S.R. imploded. I'm not saying the Beastie Boys tape had anything to do with it. But I'm not saying it didn't. As for the Hall of Fame? I don't think so. Not this year, anyway.

Eric B. & Rakim. Pretty good rap group 25 years ago, but just because they are first-time eligibles, what in the world are they doing on this ballot? No.

Rufus with Chaka Khan. Most overrated act on the list. No.

Donna Summer. She is the one great singer to emerge from and define the disco era. But in case you haven't heard, disco is not rock 'n' roll. Let her in and the next thing you know the Village People will be knocking on the door.

And so who do I like for the R&RHOF for 2012?

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. As a one-time literary consigliere to the Laguna family, I am biased. My fellow Long Islander Kenny Laguna, a former bubblegum writer/producer/musician had been patching together work for Berserkley Records on the West Coast and for Bill Curbishley, leader of the Who organization in London. While in England, he had done some sessions in London with a former Runaways guitarist, Joan Jett. He came home and told me he was thinking of putting all his chips on Jett. He played some rough tracks, including "I Love Rock & Roll." Between coughing spasms—we were both smokers in those days—I just said, "do it." He became manager and producer, and Laguna and Jett built a partnership, including Blackheart Records, that has now lasted 30 years. I don't agree with Kenny's insistence that the three most important bands in rock history are the Who, the Rolling Stones and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, but that's wht made him successful as a manager: He believes. And so does Joan. During those 30 years, no one has worked harder than Joan Jett to make the point that if you're talking about rock and roll, she's part of the conversation. And if you're talking iconic rock and roll women, she is the conversation. And now that she's eligible, she's got a little tune that should be the hall's anthem.

Laura Nyro. My heart says, yes, of course: Her music meant as much as anyone's did to me in 1967-1969, softening the blows of personal history, commingling hope and sadness in intimate ways. She was an outstanding songwriter, responsible for three of the Fifth Dimension's great pop hits (including "Stoned Soul Picnic" and "Wedding Bell Blues,"), and was a remarkable singer (with Labelle on the great 1971 album of R&B covers, "Gonna Take A Miracle." My head says that starting with "Eli and the Thirteenth Confession," Laura Nyro, the artist, made three brilliant albums in the late 1960s, magical realism as seen not through the prism of Monterey or Laurel Canyon, but from the fire escape of a tenement in the Bronx. And she died way too young, age 49, in 1997. So actually, my heart and my head are in agreement: Laura Nyro should be admitted.

Red Hot Chili Peppers. Longevity, consistency, pride and attitude. Not many bands can make their best album ("Stadium Arcadium," 2006) nearly a quarter century after they started. Yes.

War. A very interesting band due for a revival. From being Eric Burdon's backup band on "Spill the Wine" (and a whole bunch of much odder songs), they developed one of the most attractive hybrid sounds of the seventies: L.A. rock and soul with Latino touches, a street smart edge that was generally happy, joyous and free. Yes.

Guns 'N Roses. I listened to "Chinese Democracy" last week, and it was much worse than I remembered it, anachronistic the second it was released and an embarrassment now, without a single outstanding or memorable song. But that was really an Axl Rose solo album. Guns 'N friggin' Roses should be entered into the Hall of Fame immediately by unanimous consent.

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Pynchon. Take 2?

2011-09-07T12:27:00.002-04:00

by Wayne Robins

I just found in my basement a copy of Thomas Pynchon's 2006 novel, "Against the Day." It is nearly 1,100 pages. I do not remember if I read it. Sometimes, with Pynchon, it is hard to tell. With Pynchon, I sometimes cruise for 50 or 100 pages, but then if my attention drifts for a page or two, I completely lose the thread. Totally. And I have to start over. It does not appear as if the spine of the hardcover has been cracked at all, meaning if I read any of it, I did not get very far. Of more than 100 characters, surely I would remember one named Fleetwood Vibe. Or perhaps not. I definitely remember the character Scarsdale Vibe, as well as a plot strand with Pinkertons and dynamite and labor strife in Colorado. I am afraid that I will read 900 pages and then say, "oh yeah, I remember, I didn't like the ending." Or maybe not. I don't remember Ellmore Disco, who "was Mexican, some said he'd come from even farther away, Finland or someplace like that." Or was that something I read in a Bob Dylan interview, or heard in a Captain Beefheart song? Here I go, flying off with the Chums of Chance aeronautics club, trudging the road of happy destiny.

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Amy Winehouse: A Rock Star Dead Again at 27

2011-07-23T18:15:00.001-04:00

by Wayne Robins

The other day I was listening to Amy Winehouse sing "You Know I'm No Good" on WFUV, and thought about how authentic she sounded. Not authentic in the way that, say, white people have learned to sing the blues and R&B, but authentic in the way that she was explaining herself. Being herself. Knowing herself. "I cheated myself like I knew I would/I told you I was trouble/You know that I'm no good," Winehouse sang.

Pondering her disastrous dysfunctional demeanor displayed on a quickly curtailed concert tour in Eastern Europe recently, I had the same thought any empathetic person who liked her music must have had about her: Hope she doesn't die too soon.
Too late. A few hours ago, each of my daughter's interrupted their own social networking simultaneously to run into the living room to tell me Winehouse was found dead, likely of an overdose, in her London apartment. I yowled with a long dormant but familiar pain: That ache and anger that happens when you find out another gifted person—Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain—has discovered that their fame and talent did not make them bigger than life after all.

I'm not sure I mean to equate Winehouse's talent with theirs: her body of work is too small to measure against the rock of ages. Nor was her death a blow to a culture—or, as we used to call it, a counter-culture—whose unity and identity was in a large way based on the shared belief in the totemic meaning of their music.

But Winehouse was 27, like Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison and Cobain, and it might be discussing if there is some biological danger connected with that age. Stages of western life, it has been said, change every seven years: 14 the beginning of adolescence, 21 the near-universal official legal marker for adulthood. Some separation that occurs around the age of 28 that indicates the end of youth and the imminence of some deeper and darker phase, the moment when what you were is no excuse, no explanation, and no defense, against what one is becoming.
Bill James, the baseball statistician and writer, has noted that baseball players peak at 27. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/weekinreview/08silver.html. Another statistician, Tom M. Tango, crunched a lot of numbers about the aging curve of the fielding ability of baseball shortstops, and "tried different regession values, and it always maxes out at age 28." Professional soccer players peak in their late 20s.
In fact, 27 is the magic number for almost every major professional sport: "It's no wonder, since male ballplayers in almost all sports peak somewhere between 26 and 29," Simon Kuper, a sports correspondent for AskMen.com and a columnist with the Financial Times wrote. "For instance, the average age of an NBA player going into the current season was 26.77. Every team in the MLB last year had an average age somewhere between 25.9 (for the Cleveland Indians) and 28.7 (the Philadelphia Phillies). The average age of the top 10 men's tennis players is 26.2. And ice hockey players peak at 27, according to statistics." That is the physical and mental effects of peak level athletic competition begin to wear down muscle, stamina, and ability in almost every sport.

Rock stars with a routine regimen of hard drug and alcohol use might be considered the musical equivalent of elite athletes that others have quantified. The ability to rebound after a drug and/or alcohol binge may be comparable with the ability of the hockey player to sustain nightly body checks, the football player to respond to the constant brutal physical contact and training, and exhausting travel schedules of the baseball and basketball player and exertions on the field and court may have an effect similar to a hard drinker's daily hangover, or the drug user's resilience in surviving the intake of toxic chemicals. The body and spirit are beginning to break down. A ballplayer may lose just a step, their statistical achivements begin an almost insignificant but measurable decline. But the kind of drugging and drinking that always went with "sex, drugs and rock and roll" leaves no such margin for error. The once indestructible become unexpectedly and fatally vulnerable. That is why we marvel at Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, because he is constitutionally so much the exception. His long ago former band mate, Brian Jones, is much more the rule. Jones' drug and alcohol-related drowning occurred 42 years ago, when Jones was 27. In the case of Amy Winehouse, a history of manic-depression and desrtuctive self-medication made her death less accidental than predictable.

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Band Names? Welcome to the Jungle

2011-06-28T14:25:00.002-04:00

by Wayne Robins

Talking about rock bands these days sometimes resembles a walk through a mammoth petting zoo. Talk about your Animal Collective: You need an Alessi's Ark bigger than Noah & the Whale to contain all the Super Furry Animals. It has never been easy for the casual listener try to discern the difference between Deerhoof, Deerhunter and Deer Tick. Or their related Wild Beasts such as Caribou, the Reindeer Section, and the Antlers. (Tell them all apart and you win a February vacation in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.)

This is not a new development. Long before Dinosaur Jr., Dinosaur Feathers, and the fondest T-Rex, doo-wop vocal groups in the 1950s played gotcha with bird names, inspired by the success of such progenitors as the Ravens and the Swallows. Soon the skies, or at least the airwaves, were filled with the sounds of the Cardinals, the Larks, the Crows, Sonny Til and the Orioles, the Robins, the Wrens, the Penguins, the Sparrows, the Flamingos, Don Julian and the Meadowlarks, the Bluejays and the Falcons.
We've long had the Eagles, Counting Crows, Stone the Crows, the Black Crowes and Jayhawks. Birds still fly, be they Doves or Eagles of Death Metal. Fred Eaglesmith? It's not nice to make fun of people's names, so we'll also omit Sheryl Crow. Swans count. But not Bettye Swann. The Byrds, of course. And the Birds. But not Andrew Bird, Charlie Byrd, or Tony Bird. And not Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, either.

Led us take advantage of the Bird and the Bee to make a honey of a transition to A Band of Bees, Sea of Bees and She Keeps Bees. (Let us let W*A*SP sleep lest we really get stung.) And in the spirit of Insect Trust, let's say yes to Adam and the Ants, not to mention Black Moth Super Rainbow and Papa Roach.

The late Wolfman Jack would have appreciated the lycanthropic company provided by Wolf Parade, Wolf Eyes, Wolf Gang and Wolfmother, not to mention long-lived Los Lobos or the comeback of Peter Wolf.

Stars of the moment Fleet Foxes have separated themselves from the skulk that includes Foxes in Fiction, Foxgloves and Foxymorons. It is still uncertain, however, what band will take the place of Echo & the Bunnymen ruling the rock warren: Right now White Rabbits, Black Rabbits, Pepper Rabbit, and Unbunny all have a bite of the carrot. The stables are also full with the likes of Bands of Horses, Super Wild Horses, the grammatically dubious An Horse, not to mention their offspring Ponytail, and the Ponys.
If the terrain is steep enough, you'll see High Llamas. Out on the plains is the sound of a herd of Young Buffalo, and persistent Donna the Buffalo. Roaring in out of the past, one hears the approaching hooves of Buffalo Springfield. Avi Buffalo, too? Ground control to Buffalo Tom!

Welcome to the jungle, people, but watch out for Gorillaz and Arctic Monkeys, not to mention Le Tigre, Lion Fever, or the lamented laments of Pedro the Lion. Remember to look down, try to avoid the difference between Deadly Snakes or Hot Snakes. Try not to get swallowed by Ice Age Cobra, but await rescue from Cobra Starship.
Who's barking? Is that you, Swamp Dogg? Or is it those new possibly dyslexic kids, Dog is Dead?

We know Chan Marshall has Cat Power. But you'll need extra kitty litter if Thundercat shows up. Or better yet, have them chase after Modest Mouse, Danger Mouse and Maus Haus. Heaven knows what to make of Lord Dog Bird. Or Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds. Perhaps someone on the A&R staff of Fat Possum, Asthmatic Kitty, True Panther or Jagjaguwar can fill us in.

Did you know iwrestledabearonce? The referee said the bear won, but the observers were clearly partisan, fans as they were of Grizzly Bear, Royal Bear, Bear in Heaven, Panda Bear and Gold Panda, not to mention Kid Koala. And its been a while, so let's take a moment to remember riot grrrls, Huggy Bear.
This trend does not appear to have peaked. Consider some of the other bands advertised in the Latitude 2011 lineup in Suffolk, England: Eels, Foals, the Feral Pigeons, Idiot of Ants . . . We've gone from Def Leppard to the Leopards. Is this progress? It's time for a paws.

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When In "Rome," Danger Mouse Gets It Right

2011-06-21T14:08:00.001-04:00

by Wayne Robins

The production and performance projects of Brian Burton—better known as Danger Mouse—have been so diverse it's easy to overlook how dynamic the body of work has been. His new album, "Rome," with Italian musician Daniele Luppi, at first seemed such an outlier that I was ready to write it off as conceptual overreach. But ever since he emerged in 2004 as the mad mixer who spliced, sliced and diced the Beatles' "White Album" with Jay-Z's "Black Album," released as the bootleg sensation known as "The Grey Album," Burton has thrived by being pop's most malleable collaborator. That includes both Gorillaz' "Demon Days" (with Blur's Damon Albarn) and Gnarls Barkley's "St. Elsewhere" (with Cee-lo Green).

Although he first gained acclaim with music that had hip-hop as its core ("The Mouse and the Mask" as Danger Doom, with rapper M.F. Doom), in the last few years Mouse has moved towards rock: Producing the Black Keys' "Attack & Release," and collaborating with the late Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse) on "Dark Night of the Soul," and with James Mercer of the Shins on "Broken Bells."

"Rome" defies categorization, as it should. It was inspired by the spaghetti western music of Italian composer Ennio Morricone and some of his lesser known cohorts, such as Piero Umliani and Gian Piero Piccioni. For some authenticity, it was recorded at Rome's Forum Studios, which was sort of to spaghetti western soundtracks what Sun Studios was to rockabilly. Luppi, a multifaceted composer, arranger and instrumentalist, has been working on Danger Mouse projects since "St. Elsewhere." That Italian connection helped enlist many of the veteran studio musicians who worked with Morricone and others, including such essential role players as Alessandro Alessandroni ("the whistler") and Edda Dell'Orso ("the soprano"), who hits notes beyond the capacity of any earthling not named Yma Sumac.

Better known, perhaps, are Jack White and Norah Jones. It's a nice working holiday for each of them, who get to stretch their styles and play with their personas. On "Rose With A Broken Neck," White captures not just the desolation of the desert landscapes familiar to viewers of Sergio Leone's westerns, but the inner torment of characters in Italian horror film classics by Mario Bava and Dario Argento. "Two Against One" is more in the White Stripes mode, though infused with a gothic chill. Jones seems to be enjoying the dark persona on the song "Black," as she sings lines such as "We can't afford to ignore that I'm the disease," and on the evocative dream sequence of "Problem Queen."

White and Jones help keep the concept grounded in familiarity, alternating as they do with instrumental compositions steeped in a cinematografo style that would please a purist. Not for the first time, Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton proves that an overlooked requirement for success is not showing off what you know, but knowing what you don't know and finding out how to do it.

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BARCELONA AT SOCCER'S SUMMIT

2011-05-29T21:23:00.002-04:00

by Wayne Robins

Two shots of Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager and embodiment of a quarter century of Manchester United dominance, told the story of the UEFA Champions League final Saturday at London's Wembley Stadium.

With about five minutes left in regulation, Sir Alex was wound tight as a tourniquet. With his team down 3-1 against Barcelona, the camera closed in on the manager's hands clenching, his jaws chomping chewing gum, his feet anxiously tapping. The agony of the competitor, unable to alter the outcome, each final moment an endurable burden. Manchester United, under Sir Alex, has won an enviable bounty of trophies, including just last week, that of the English Premier League that they have taken to worldwide prominence.

But they weren't winning this one.

And so when it was over minutes later, Barcelona not just victorious but undeniable in their dominance, Sir Alex gave the customary handshake to the triumphant opposition manager, Pep Guardiola. It was not the grimacing handshake of bitter defeat. Sir Alex showed a broad sincere grin, quite nearly the involuntarily laughter of one who had been through a rather spectacular experience. This loss had no pain, no Sting, no Sting singing "King of Pain." Sir Alex knew his team was good, played with effort, intelligence, and heart.

The two best teams in club soccer over the last few years, Barcelona and Manchester United, their high profile coaches, multimillionaire superstars and multiethnic, multinational casts of outstanding players, had met on British territory, London's Wembley Stadium, and each brought their best game. And when it was over, Sir Alex and the proud, the strong, Manchester United, had experienced the privilege of losing a very good soccer game to one of the greatest soccer teams of the last 100 years.

For once, the duel of these modern titans lived up to its billing. The stars of both teams were both spectacular: Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney each scored goals. So did each of Messi's partners on Barcelona's ridiculously formidable front line: Pedro (Rodriguez), who opened the scoring in minute 27 on the right flank, on a sweet pass from Xavi. Just seven minutes later, Rooney kicked through the equalizer.

Rooney, who had begun the season as a potentially fatal distraction to Man U—hurt, ineffective, and so disengaged and isolated that he was widely expected to leave the team—played his heart out. Even as the minutes ticked away from his team, Rooney ran down the ball at both ends of the field, competing fiercely, trying to turn the tide by any legal means necessary. (But one wonders: What were Rooney and Sir Alex arguing about on the sideline in the 43rd minute?)

Manchester United began the game with an aggressive full field press, hoping to keep Barcelona off balance and perhaps strike an early goal that would create a little doubt in the Spanish team. As a sign that Barcelona might have been overconfident, there were two or three times in the first 10 minutes when the Spanish goalkeeper Victor Valdes came exceedingly far out of the box to intercept the ball. A lapse in timing, touch or balance might have led to easy, early Manchester goals.

But Barcelona, known for its lightning strike counterattacks when pressed, held ground, and after withstanding the Manchester push without really allowing even a close shot, went on the attack. From then on, the statistical domination told the tale: Barcelona held the ball for about two-thirds of the playing time, much of it in Manchester territory.

Nevertheless, at the half, it was tied 1-1, and Messi, by acclamation the game's most gifted, exciting and dangerous player, had been held in check. Man U's strategy was to use a box defense: keep four men in position around Messi in the hope of keeping him out of Barcelona's pinpoint passing game. But in the 54th minute, the agile and speedy Messi got the ball, and the defenders blinked: Instead of closing in, they went back on their heels, thinking Messi too distant to strike. Messi, instead of doing one of his sensational dribbles through the defense, took a step sideways, and kicked the ball high with his left foot into the right corner of the Manchester net. "Corner" actually, is an exaggeration: The ball was about 15 yards inside the right post, but Manchester goalie Edwin van der Sar had already committed to covering the left side and had no chance.

Both teams played hard. Manchester defender Antonio Valencia seemed in constant danger of a yellow card as the team's physical enforcer, occasionally with a forearm or elbow. Barca's Dani Alves drew a yellow at 59, followed by one for Man U's Michael Carrick at 61. But they were for rule infractions rather than dirty play. The tough but fair Hungarian referee Viktor Kassai allowed this one to be settled on the field. And when David Villa put Barcelona ahead 3-1 in the 69th minute, it was settled. And a very good Manchester United team needed no excuses, no apologies, no hard feelings. "I think they're the best team we've played," Sir Alex said after the game. "(We were) well-beaten."

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On Caitlin's Rose's Own Side Now

2011-05-15T20:11:00.002-04:00

Caitlin Rose: Own Side Now
by Wayne Robins

I've been listening to Caitlin Rose for nearly two months now, and have not been quite ready to let go. The problem is a benevolent one, as far as the music writing racket goes: I am used to restraining my enthusiasms, hedging my endorsements. It's got to do with the trained skepticism that is both innate and highly developed: Can this music really be this good? Especially considering Rose's her age. She is 23; I am a baby boomer, some of whose members of my class of 1949 now have grandchildren Caitlin's age. I have daughters both slightly older and a bit younger than Rose, and when it comes to singer-songwriters and their view of life, I trust almost no one under 30.

And yet Caitlin Rose earns, and deserves that trust on "Own Side Now," her first fill album. It was released last summer in the U.K., and just in March in the United States. It follows the highly promising EP debut "Dead Flowers" two years ago, highlighted by her true and daring reading of the Rolling Stones' greatest contribution to the Gram Parsons strain of defiantly doomed country rock.

But in the first moments, I discern her brilliance as both a singer and interpreter of her own songs. One is the double tracked vocals that give luster to the opening song, "Learnin' to Ride," in the way that the early practitioners of the technique—Patti Page, Mary Ford, and the early Beatles—might have done it. In this spot and others on the album, it makes Rose sound like she's harmonizing with a sibling: she sounds like the Everly Brothers, if the Everly Brothers were a single person, and that person was a 23-year-old woman.
There is also something in the phrasing (vocal styling) and the phrasing (word choices) that reminds me of Guy Clark, my touchstone for twangy singer-songwriter greatness. She's got a similar nonchalant shrug in the voice, and she's already showing the required storytelling skill, the honesty and clarity of the lyrics, and the devotion to craft that Clark has. In fact, I'll go a step farther and say that there are times when Rose's commitment to craft is as natural and fastidious as, say Paul Simon.

Rose grew up in Nashville, music in the air and in her blood: dad is musician Johnny Rose, who has been working in the business side of the music as an executive at DreamWorks, Capitol, and now Orbison Music Productions. He was also a road warrior whose most recent band is Out of State Plates. (Johnny plays some mandolin on the album.) Caitlin's mom, Liz Rose, is one of Nashville's most esteemed songwriters whose most current and madly successful partnership is with another young lady who goes by the name Taylor Swift.

Caitlin Rose is two years older than Swift, but seems half a generation older. Swift appears to be the kind of young person who really enjoys living in the suburbs and going to the mall. Rose is the young woman who flees suburbia for Williamsburg or Greenpoint, where she can drink too much, smoke herself silly, and live the artist's life. (She has a house now in boho East Nashville.) The album was produced by Rose with Mark Nevers (Lambchop, Andrew Bird) and Skylar Wilson (Justin Townes Earle). She's shared stages with a staggering range of artists, including Earle, Deer Tick and Phosphorescent. As far as social groupings go, this seems as right a place as any to place Rose: Phosphorescent is led by Matthew Houck, who keeps his Alabama roots intact in Brooklyn and who is a musical kindred spirit pretty close to Caitlin's.

"New York City" has the Guy Clark mojo working in the phrase, "New York's a good time to let go": not a place, not a town, but a "time." There's a contrast between the too slow South and the too-fast city, underscored by play between a steel guitar riff and gritty electric guitar solo that is mediated by some rolling piano about halfway between country and rock. Rose sings about the temptations available to a worldly but reckless young woman just barely old enough to drink with an inclination to make the best—or the worst—of it. And she's wise enough to know that when she lets the flip of a coin determine whether she sleeps with a guy she just met or not, that sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart.

The song "Own Side" may be the postmodern young woman's affectionate rebuke to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now." Yeah, its love's illusions she recalls, too. But with tenderness and a pocketful of payback—Rose declares: "I'm goin' out on the town, said I'm tired of chasin' you down/It's not my right to always push you around." The mingling of defiance and melancholy creates a distinctive tone. She wears that signature emotional mix like a tattoo on the next song, "For the Rabbits," with strings arranged by Jordan Lehning (who also wrote the song "Things Change" with Rose). The tune has an edgy name but the stylistic rigor 1950s jukebox torch song. It's got one of Rose's best vocal performances, building towards a grand, if understated finish. There have been many songs about relationships that don't work, but are too comfortable to leave. But few connect as powerfully as Rose does in the piercing and precise chorus, in which the invitation to "fall back into routine disaster" is inevitable as it is irresistible.

The inability to completely let go is also the subject of Rose's most brilliant rocker, "Shanghai Cigarettes." The riff, the bounce, the energy, the fuzz guitar, the handclap rhythm, the punchy harmony from Rayland Baxter and the nimble lyrics stick in the head and is enough to keep your spirit afloat for a month. She surrenders to her inner rock imp in her in the crowing finale, as she breaks through her controlled restraint and just tears through the message of the song, "This will never be right and I will never let go!"

The final two songs are consistent with Rose's vulnerable but powerful persona. Both have elements of revenge: "Sinful Wishing Well" is a musical poison pen letter that all but places a curse on the object of her disaffection. "Comin' Up" is 1950s honky tonk in which she vows to get and stay inside the head of the one who done her wrong, to be "the echo you can never find": Retribution by the power of memory.
How good are these songs? There is a knockout cover of an excellent Stevie Nicks song, "Things Change," first done by Fleetwood Mac on their "Mirage" album. The first few times through the album, you hardly notice it, and you don't pick it out as a cover: it's not insignificant that even a song by a writer-performer as renowned as Nicks is overshadowed by the Caitlin Rose songs that surround it.

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AMBUSH AT ANFIELD: KUYT'S FAB THREE LIFT LIVERPOOL

2011-03-06T15:19:00.005-05:00

by Wayne Robins

Two thousand years ago (give or take a year or two) Arminius forged an historic ambush as his Germanic warriors surprised and slaughtered the invading Roman army in the Teutoburg Forest. Manchester United must have felt like that Sunday afternoon in Anfield as they showed up the favorite for a match at Liverpool. Liverpool had other plans, and throttled Man U 3-1. The game wasn't as close as even that lopsided score suggests.

Liverpool's Dirk Kuyt was credited with all three goals; his new teammate, Luis Suarez, set up the ball perfectly for him on two of the goals. It could have been four nil had a late surge by Liverpool not been turned back. Man U didn't score in the 90 minutes of regulation; a header by Hernandez in stoppage time enabled the world's most famous sports franchise avoid a clean sheet, or shut out.

By that time, the Liverpool crowd was singing the loudest version of "You'll Never Walk Alone" since Megadeth performed it at a Monsters of Rock tour sound check in the 1980s.

In terms of soccer relativity, Liverpool's manhandling of Manchester essentially changed the outcome of Saturday's tie between Arsenal and Sunderland. That match ended nil-nil thanks to the heroic goalkeeping of Sunderland's 21-year-old Simon Mignolet, whose stops were often spectacular.

With Sunderland having lost four in a row, and heavily favored home team Arsenal needing to keep from falling further behind Manchester United in the Barclay's Premier League standings, yesterday the tie looked like an Arsenal loss. Instead, Arsenal gained a point on Man U; while a win would have closed the gap between Man U and Arsenal to one point (60-59) in the standings, the Gunners trail by three, (60-57) recoupable in one game. Saturday, March 12, Arsenal is at Manchester United. How big will that be? Well, not that big: It's not a Premier League match, but part of the FA Cup, yet another distraction for the two leading teams.

Yet one still wonders which Arsenal and which Man U show up. The Arsenal that lost the Carling Cup to Birmingham and tied Sunderland? Or the Arsenal that weeks ago beat Barcelona in the EUFA Champions League? Perhaps Arsenal was tired and distracted Saturday: the road to Manchester next week goes through Barcelona in the EUFA round of 16 home-and-home on Tuesday. Last year, Barcelona trampled Arsenal, 4-1 in Spain. Carling Cup, EUFA—isn't the Premier League tough enough without those distractions?

And whither suddenly vulnerable Man U? Earlier in the week, it lost a fierce battle with erratic Chelsea, and Sunday was cold-cocked by Liverpool. The ambush by Arminius stopped the spread of the Roman Empire into Central Europe; will Liverpool's turning back Manchester similarly alter the course of this Premier League season?

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LONDON CALLING: ARSENAL HAS BARCELONA'S NUMBER

2011-02-16T20:11:00.002-05:00

By Wayne Robins

Barcelona had been leading its UEFA match against Arsenal in London Wednesday evening(afternoon here in New York) 1-0 on an almost too easy goal by David Villa at 26 minutes. It was business as usual, as Arsenal hadn't beaten Barcelona in five consecutive matches.

Arsenal had been playing with energy and poise for most of that first half, with the exception of Alex Song, who barely six minutes into the match drew an uncontested yellow card for an ill-timed tackle of Messi, Barcelona's scoring machine (40 goals in 37 appearances this season) and whom with Villa is the leading man among his team's cast of stars.

Referee Nicola Rizzoli did not call many fouls, and did not want Wednesday's titanic match-up decided by an early ejection. He kept giving Song, he of the dynamic gray Afro (accompanied by matching whiskers), benefit of the doubt. But Song kept up his dangerous flirtation, seemingly bent on self-destruction and nearly demanding a second yellow card. At one point, Rizzoli pointed to Song and appeared to tell him: Do that again and you are out.

A minute after Villa's goal, a Barcelona player tried to add injury to insult, diving after a whiff of contact with Song. He hoped Song would draw the red card that would force Arsenal to play a man down. This would have been the end, since few teams on the planet could beat Barcelona even if they had an extra man—aside from Real Madrid, Barcelona's rival in Spain's La Liga. How dominant is Barcelona? This is a team that can afford to pay its sponsor, rather than be paid for sponsorship. The brand on Barcelona's shirts is UNICEF.

But Rizzoli, controlling the game brilliantly—there was no stoppage time in the first half at all— didn't fall for the dive, but did give out a yellow to Arsenal's Nasri for an unrelated infraction.

At the 37 minute mark, Messi put a header into the Arsenal goal, and that would have been too high a mountain for the Gunners to climb had it counted. But the ref immediately waved off the goal: Messi was offside.

The second half resumed with the same intensity as the first 45 minutes, with Arsenal working hard all the time, getting their share of shots, keeping the ball away from their side of the field as much as possible. Not that it matters much: Barcelona's players pass the round ball with their feet with the elegance, precision and giddy joy of the Harlem Globetrotters doing a basketball exhibition. Barcelona can break your heart with a fast break in a heartbeat.

To show how overwhelming Barcelona's passing was, Fox Soccer Channel at the 60 minute mark showed a telling statistic: After one hour of play, Barcelona had completed 412 passes to Arsenal's 203.

But passes, even pretty passes, aren't points. At 67 minutes, Messi again nearly silenced the devoted Arsenal throng, just missing a left footer that looked like it was going inside the post.

A new sense of urgency gripped Arsenal: somehow, they not only maintained their intensity, they increased it, playing with firm discipline and, despite trailing, a sense of inevitability. Then it happened: Robin Van Persie, who had been close to breaking through all afternoon, scored the equalizer with 12 minutes left in regular time.

Announcer Martin Tyler was keenly attuned to the shift in momentum. "Barcelona, the great Barcelona, is on the back foot here. Barcelona is feeling the pinch."

In New York, one wondered if Tyler—hoping for an Arsenal win, while always respecting Barcelona—was indulging in wishful thinking. But he appeared to be right. Arsenal had been playing a goal down as if they were even: Their confidence never waned. Five minutes later, in the 83rd minute, Arsenal went on a fast break, a pass half the length of the field, caught at the right place at the right time and passed to the Russian substitute Andrei Arshavin. Goal! Now Arsenal had the lead.

But this was mighty Barcelona, and they did not crumble. But neither did Arsenal get carried away with their advantage. The final seven minutes were fierce; Van Persie drew a yellow card at 85 minutes, and as regular time expired and two minutes of stoppage time had to be endured, there were two moments when Barca seemed about to nail a second goal and leave London with a tie. But the ball just would not go in for Barcelona, and when it was over, well, it was over, and those red and white scarves waving through the Arsenal stadium made it look like Christmas. For their team to finally beat Barcelona, it surely must have felt like it.

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SUPER BOWL: EMINEM AD PUTS DETROIT IN THE GAME

2011-02-07T12:48:00.006-05:00

Passing On the Peas

by Wayne Robins

The tired notion that Super Bowl commercials are more interesting than the game needs to be moved from the category of conventional wisdom to that of urban legend. Sunday night's game between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers exciting from kickoff to final whistle, ebbs and flows that alternately aroused and depleted partisans of each team.

The first pre-game ad that caught my attention, for the March release of the movie "Battle: Los Angeles," looked like the trailer for a videogame. And isn't a movie about an alien invasion of L.A. a non sequitur? If aliens haven't already taken over the capital of the coast, than what are those creatures on Melrose Avenue? Of course, none of the movies are aimed at my generation: Certainly not "Thor," nor Vin Diesel's "Fast and Furious 5," which I take it is not a biopic about Grandmaster Flash. But "Cowboys & Aliens," directed by Jon Favreau and starring a really grizzled Harrison Ford, looks brilliant, a concept so simple and enticing that it took one of those resident aliens in Los Angeles to scratch down the idea on a cocktail napkin.
Also promising: "Super 8," apparently another creatures/criminal scum movie (a la "District 51"), directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. The animated "Kung Fu Panda 2," featuring the voices of Jack Black and Angelina Jolie, may provide some gentle comic relief, especially considering clever fragment shown of a version of that Queen classic, "We Will Wok You."

There is also the matter of the latest Cameron Diaz flick, "Third Base," co-starring Alex Rodriguez. Wait...you're telling me that wasn't a movie promo, that a Fox camera caught Diaz with her hand in A-Rod's mouth, feeding popcorn to her Yankees' squeeze spontaneously, with such effortless sensuality, that football announcer Joe Buck seemed embarrassed?

At least that bit of reality TV was more authentic than anything we are likely to see on what is now euphemistically known as The History Channel, or THC: Certainly someone must have been on THC in creating the forthcoming cable program "Only in America," featuring Larry the Cable Guy touring the country. What's the chance we'll see him visiting Watts, or even hipster Brooklyn? Git-R-done!

Among the good moments: a commercial for the Motorola XOOM tablet, on which the only independent thinker on a subway full of white shrouded uber-conformists is seen reading George Orwell's "1984." It would have been too brilliant if the next commercial, which was for the BMW Advanced Diesel, used a piece of David Bowie's "1984" rather than a segment of "Changes," which after 40 years doesn't exactly signify "change" anymore. In a marketing coup, Bowie music was also featured yesterday in an auto ad debut in the U.K., on ITV, for the Renault Clio ("Va Va Voom"), with a fragment of a steamy burlesque scene by Dita Von Teese, a bit of peeping by Red Bulls soccer star, Thierry Henry, some Audrey Hepburn, some Marlon Brando, a bit of "Space Oddity" as well as Claire Magure's "Ain't Nobody" and Rihanna's "S&M." Much too mature for American TV.

A refreshingly downbeat but defiant drive through Detroit revealed Eminem at the wheel of a Chrysler 200, closing with the rapper, now the face and voice of his city's resilience and dignity (who would have imagined), closing the ad with the words: "This is the Motor City, and this is what we do." The two-minute commercial may be the most expensive in history, with the Detroit Free Press quoting Chrysler's chief putting the cost at "under $9 million."

In a cute odd couple bit, Ozzy Osbourne proved he is still the world's supreme Ozzy Osbourne imitator, in Best Buy bit with Justin Bieber. "What's a Bieber?," Oz asked, echoing precisely my sentiments.

For sheer American ugliness, nothing could undercut the bottom-feeding Pepsi Max ads. The first was violent with disturbing racial overtones. A black couple is arguing on a park bench. He tosses the Pepsi Max can, she ducks, and it hits another woman (of indeterminate, possibly mixed race) on the head. The black perpetrators flee after the accidental assault. In another low moment, a nerd who has been mocked by a jock at a party gets revenge when he discovers the ability to direct a Pepsi Max missile into the jock of his adversary. Evidently, Pepsi Max has zero'd in on its demographic: the "Jackass" crowd, both with and without quote marks.

The blowback to the live musical moments has been intense. Christina Aguilera's muffing of the "Star Spangled Banner" has been widely derided. But her performance should be faulted not because she blew the lyric, but because she blew the treacherous obstacle course of the melody: Putting her ego first, Aguilera added embellishments where none were needed—in fact, where to do so would be insane. The song, like so many national anthems, is histrionic to begin with. To add histrionic layers showed immense musical immaturity.

Speaking of which, most of my Facebook crowd detested the Black Eyed Peas performance. True, if we were going to have a hip-hop halftime show, I would have preferred Public Enemy, but you can't always get what you want. And in this case, we didn't get what we needed either, though I thought the Peas were an effective anchor for the choreographed hundreds in illuminated body suits on the field, a display reminiscent of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. I thought Fergie's singing was the best I have ever heard her, especially under the circumstances, and especially since in the past she had displayed very little vocal skill at all. She worked hard for the moment, for the unexpected mega-stardom that has fallen on her, and for that, I congratulate her. Usher's descent to the stage from the skies upstaged any musical muscle he might have provided. And the appearance (not a "surprise" to anyone, as his publicist claimed in an early morning e-mail) by Slash on guitar for a version of a Guns 'N Roses song proved only that an actual musical composition like "Sweet Child O' Mine" will always make the Black Eyed Peas' juvenile nonsense riffs sound like TV commercials.

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ARSENAL GIVES MUBARAK SHIRTS OFF THEIR BACKS

2011-02-04T11:30:00.001-05:00

Arsenal of the Barclay's English Premier League have sent embattled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak a message in the form of a box of their uniforms. The front of their jerseys carry the advertisement "Fly Emirates." The message was clear: Mubarak should choose Emirates Airlines when he flees his country. The flight from Cairo to Emirates' home base of Dubai is under four hours. An ABC (U.S.) News report said that the Mubarak family owns properties not only in Dubai but in London, Paris, Madrid, Washington, New York and Frankfurt, and that it's wealth was estimated to be between $40 billion and $70 billion. That's quite enough to buy a majority interest in one of the mid-level Premier League teams, Bolton, or Blackburn or Stoke City. Whose got game?

—Wayne Robins

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"THE PROMISE": BRUCE BEFORE THE BEATLES

2011-01-05T16:05:00.002-05:00

by Wayne Robins

It was early New Year's Eve, and I played Bruce Springsteen's "The Promise" for the friends with whom we spend that night—and sometimes only that night—each year. They recognized the familiar prelude to "Thunder Road" that opens the album, and marveled how well it worked instead as the introduction to the version of "Racing in the Street ('78)" that opens "The Promise."

Soon they were filled in on the back story of "The Promise": That these 21 completed songs (not demos), over two discs, are part of the bounty of about 40 recordings Springsteen made in 1977 and 1978 for the album that would become "Darkness at the Edge of Town." That essential transitional album, finally released in 1978, was his first since "Born to Run" in 1975 made good on Springsteen's claim to greatness. The delay was caused by lawsuits over management contracts, music publishing and other intellectual property.

Springsteen writes a most eloquent essay about the time and circumstances, why some tracks were selected for the "Darkness" album and these left behind. "I'd been out of the recording scene for three years, I was in my mid-twenties and already trying to prove I wasn't a flash in the pan," he writes. "I knew who I was...and who I wanted to be. I knew the stakes I wanted to play for."
The tracks selected for "Darkness At the Edge of Town" had a specific purpose, musical, cultural and personal. Aware of punk, aware of treacherous economic times, he was acutely aware of his desire to "leave no room to be misunderstood about what I felt was at risk and what might be attained over the American airwaves of popular radio in 1978."

From the first listen to these other songs from the "Darkness," you realize that "The Promise" was from an earlier time. But it would have been incomprehensible in 1968; in 1965, they would have sounded like a maudlin anachronism. No. This Bruce Springsteen music, in source and style, in the heart of his imagination, precedes the Beatles, although it anticipates their gift: To unify the disparate streams of early 1960s American pop and rock. Specifically, the music of "The Promise" is steeped in the sounds of 1961, 1962 and 1963. For those of us who were born in 1949 (Springsteen is about three months older than I), these were the years of sixth, seventh and eighth grade. "The Promise" is for me a vessel for time travel: I have been listening to it for quite a few weeks, in carefully administered doses with long spaces between listens, as if I know that if I spend too much concentrated time hearing it I might never come back.

Sixth through eighth grade: It is in these years that most young people begin buying records, when the music moves us in ways we can't quite explain, as our hormonal gravity pulls us in ways we definitely can't explain. The best music in the rock era has helped us understand some of these inexplicable events.

Springsteen's essay inside "The Promise" CD acknowledges this. "Post 'Born to Run,' I was still held in thrall by the towering pop records that had shaped my youth and early musical education." He cites the great songwriting teams of this era: Goffin and King, Leiber and Stoller, Barry and Greenwich, and Mann and Weil. He also mentions, of course, Phil Spector, the musical architect of mini-cities of the heart that could be heard and felt in "Born to Run."

I hear more. I hear Ernie Maresca (Dion), Frank Guida (Gary U.S. Bonds), Kal Mann and Dave Appel's madly prolific writing and producing at Philadelphia's Cameo-Parkway Records (Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, the Dovells, the Orlons, Dee Dee Sharp). I hear Beach Music, the rhythm and blues music that entertained, and in some cases woke up, the Atlantic coast, from Florida to South Jersey. In my native Long Island, New York, with its own suburban beach culture, we mirrored Southern California in the early 1960s; no one called it "beach music" and we heard little except the few national hits from regional acts like Bill Deal & the Rondells, the Tams, Willie Tee, and Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs.

It is no accident that the most lasting and memorable musical moment from the 1979 "No Nukes" concert was Springsteen and Jackson Browne leading the way on Maurice Williams' "Stay": On "The Promise," you can hear this an inch beneath the surface, like those mini-crabs you find scraping the damp sand away from retreating waves at the beach.
On "Gotta Get That Feeling," the second song of "The Promise," one hears Ben E. King and the Drifters; it instills a hunger to hear Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform the Drifters' "I Count the Tears." The Drifters' could have done "Wrong Side of the Street," though they may have wrestled with the lyric: "You and your poetry and your cool, cool world/You've been working on that face of a martyr girl." Patti Smith — already in high school in 1961—may not have been as much of an outsider if she had heard lyrics like that on the radio then. "The Promise" contains Springsteen's own version of "Because the Night," his gift to South Jersey's St. Patricia of Pitman.

Even some of the titles echo other songs from the early 1960s. "Outside Looking In" taps into the romantic vein of Little Anthony and the Imperials' "I'm On the Outside (Looking In)." The next song, "Someday (We'll Be Together)" is less related to the 1969 Supremes song than it is to the Four Seasons' 1964 "Rag Doll," from which it quotes explicitly. Ditto, "The Brokenhearted": One doesn't think about Jimmy Ruffin's 1966 "What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted" as much as one wonders how the late Roy Orbison missed recording it, either during his 1980s comeback, or the embryonic version that perhaps appeared to the 12-year-old Bruce Springsteen in a dream in 1962.

"Talk To Me" doesn't resemble the 1958 Little Willie John song of the same title; but "Fire" (the Springsteen written hit for the Pointer Sisters, here in its minimal, sensual glory) resembles the 1957 Little Willie John hit, "Fever." Springsteen's "Talk To Me" contains the central riff from Little Peggy March's 1963 hit, "I Will Follow Him." If Little Peggy March married Little Willie John...well, in 1963, in most states, it would have been illegal, as mixed race marriages were most everywhere until a 1967 Supreme Court (Loving v. state of Virginia) ended such discrimination.

"Rendezvous" has been heard before, and not just on Springsteen's 1999 compilation "18 Tracks": It's one of Springsteen's rockers most evocative of 1961-1963: The exotic Frenchness of the title, when "French" meant french kissing. It also connects with our pre-Beatles expectations of romance: "Haven't I told you girl, how much I like you? I get a feeling that you like me too," Springsteen sings. The emphasis was on "like," because we were too young to understand anything as deep and complex as love. No "Love Me Do," no "She Loves You." It's more like the unnamed, untamed desire of Dion's swaggering 1961 hits after he left the Belmonts, "The Wanderer" and "Runaround Sue." At the very least, it's Del Shannon after "Runaway" and "Hats Off to Larry."

"Candy's Boy" went through a complete evolution when it emerged on "Darkness at the Edge of Town" as "Candy's Room." The "Candy" of the well-known public version has pictures of "her heroes" on the wall: You think of it as a throwaway line—a self-editing for radio—after hearing Springsteen sing, in "Candy's Boy": "There are pictures of her savior on the wall." I had no sense, for the last 32 years, what "Candy's Room" looked like; in "Candy's Boy," the "pictures of her savior" bring us deep inside the room, into Candy's struggles of spirit and soul, her conflicts, her moods, her abandon and regret. That "picture of her savior" is the reason they have to go to a "cheap motel" to go all the way; There is no motel, in "Candy's Room": The drive "deep into the night" becomes metaphorical, where in "The Promise," it is literally a highway—Route 9—that must be traveled to reach a climax. A little rough for radio in 1978, "Candy's Boy" might have led to outright banishment from radio in 1962.

The comical "Ain't Good Enough for You" is a slice of topical humor that Leiber and Stoller might have written for the Coasters, though my ear hears the Dovells singing this. The Dovells, featuring Len Barry as lead singer, were of heroic importance in the greater Philadelphia/New Jersey/New York area thanks to their hit "Bristol Stomp," a Mann-Appel composition. The dance never became popular much beyond the confines of Bristol, Pa., where it was born in the nearby shadow of Philadelphia-based "American Bandstand."

But you can draw a straight line from "Bristol Stomp" to the E Street Band. "We pony and twisted, and we rocked with Daddy G," the Dovells sang in the song that welcomed us to seventh grade in September 1961. Who was Daddy G? The saxophone player for Gary U.S. Bonds of Norfolk, Va., whose 1960 hit, "New Orleans," established the party-in-the-studio sensibility of the live E Street Band, and whose "A Quarter to Three" (No. 1, June 1961) was a cornerstone of the Springsteen/E Street Band encore set for decades. Springsteen and Miami Steve Van Zant produced Bonds' comeback in the early 1980s, and Clarence Clemons sax style is such a direct descendant of Daddy G's that the Big Man himself played the horn on Bonds' 1982 Bruce-produced "Out of Work."

The set ends with three songs that stand apart because of the emotional maturity, the dark realism, the pessimism of their lyrics. "Breakaway" is about people who take too much risk trying to change their (mis)fortunes with a dishonest roll of the dice and leave only mourning, disappointed survivors. It utilizes the "ronday-ronday-sha-la-la" singing syllables of the Shirelles, but it recognizes evil in the world the way the music of the early 1960s never could, the saddest "sha-la-la" ever sung. "The Promise," something of a prequel to "Thunder Road," captures the battered spirit of those stuck with no way out: "All my life I fought this fight/The fight that no man can ever win," Springsteen sings. Now that's mashed potatoes, no gravy, no steak, no fork. Just a knife.

"City of Night," the closer, is only incrementally brighter, a guy in a taxicab picking his girl late at night: "I don't believe what I see in this street/I don't know how people can take the heat/Well baby, I'm a liar, I'm a cheat, and I don't care," the protagonist sings, as he anticipates going out and painting the darkness at the edge of his town a few more dull shades of brown.

It is a reverie interrupted. We have been transported to that eighth grade dance: We've twisted and ponied and waddled and slopped with the band everyone's been talking about, Bruce and the Spring-Teens. And suddenly, they're singing this really serious stuff. We stand, scowling, disoriented. Some of the girls are sobbing. The muscle guys with the Lucky Strikes rolled up in their shirt sleeves have their arms folded across their chests, sullen, bewildered and angry. It is like the dark side of that scene in "Back to the Future," where Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) joins the band playing at his parents' prom and brings things to a halt with yet to be invented Hendrix/Van Halen guitar feedback. "Don't worry," the singer is saying at my dance. "You might not like this now, but if you trust the music, it will still be yours, and will sound even better, 50 years from now." I start to clap, alone, but soon everyone is clapping and cheering, and I'm home, not sure how I got here, but still loving it.

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Arlo Guthrie On Macy's Parade

2010-11-25T11:40:00.006-05:00

by Wayne Robins

Arlo Guthrie and his daughter, Sarah Lee Guthrie, were on NBC just after 10 a.m. at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, singing Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." Riding on the Ocean Spray float, they got their minute before being preempted by Kermit the Frog, but that minute would have never happened back in 1967, when Arlo first released his 19 minute Groucho Marxist comedy manifesto, "Alice's Restaurant."

A counter-culture Thanksgiving tradition in its day, "Alice's Restaurant" is a wily folk humor narrative backed by his guitar strumming about the protagonist,
Arlo, going to jail for littering in a Berkshire mountain village. The absurdities pile on: the police take his belt, because they don't want a suicide in the cell, in case he decides to kill himself for littering. Later, at a New York draft center (this is the peak of the Vietnam War), attempts to portray himself as an insane G.I. Joe ("I wanna kill. Kill!) does nothing to discourage an army psychiatrist from finding our protagonist fit for military service. I guess I should toss in a spoiler alert, if you can't see it coming, but the narrator is found unsuitable to serve in Vietnam or even be in the army because he is a moral hazard, as the result of his criminal record: his arrest and incarceration, for littering.

As TV entertainment, Arlo and Sarah Lee's minute was a cleansing karmic balance to the season of Bristol Palin nearly winning "Dancing With the Stars." Bristol, apparently, had what used to be known as two left feet compared to many more clearly talented contestants. But the judges disdain for Bristol's dancing was overwhelmed, until the final week, by the Internet popular vote, which was so overwhelmingly pro-Bristol that it is now clear that her success on the show was the result of what could be considered an arm of her mother's political action committee and can be seen as part of a soft launch of the 2012 Sarah Palin for president campaign.

This all makes me miss the absurdity of Arlo's plight even more. I miss the relevant sanity of the 60s war years. Say you what you will about our decade of assassination, war, riot, protest, 55,000 dead young Americans dead in Vietnam, and the endless collateral damage—we were one nation. Divisible, for certain—not since the 1860s had we been more divided. But at least we were one country.

Not even Richard M. Nixon at his most toxic would identify with the venomous Republican party today, whose strategy for America is similar to the one our military pursued in Vietnam: To destroy the country in order to save it.

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DAD, DAUGHTER AND DYLAN

2010-11-19T16:00:00.004-05:00

BOB DYLAN AND HIS BAND IN CONCERT AT THE EVENTS CENTER AT BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY, BINGHAMTON, N.Y. Nov. 17, 2010

By Wayne Robins

I don't remember the last time I saw Bob Dylan in concert, but I do remember the first: February 1966, it was Bob Dylan and the Hawks (soon to be known as The Band), at the Island Garden, a dank, long defunct minor league hockey arena in West Hempstead, Long Island. Since then, I've seen many, including the Rolling Thunder revue, the Last Waltz, the Columbia Records 30th anniversary tribute, and a number of shows in the early "let's stump the audience" period of extreme, spontaneous rearrangement of the classics.

But I hadn't seen him since his songwriting and recording renaissance that began with " 'Love and Theft' " in 2001. So when my daughter Liz, a junior at Binghamton University in upstate New York, called about six weeks ago to say that Dylan was performing on her campus Nov. 17, I jumped at her invitation to drive up and see the show with her in the not-quite-full student section. She paid $25 for reserved seats.

Liz is not a Dylan fan, but she is an admirer: she certainly has had more exposure to his music than most of her peer group. She does have a curatorial ear, however, which she displayed last year on her radio show on the campus radio station. She would mix in a Dylan standard with her alternative rock and classic rock faves. But her DJ fingerprint was playing a cut each show by Ella Fitzgerald. Call her on her cell phone, though, and her ringback tone was "All Along the Watchtower," the unmistakable voice of Bob, pleading, "There must be some way out of here."

My daughter understood from the get-go that no one has ever gone to a Dylan concert or bought a Dylan record for the singing, and that at age 69 he was not being considered for the next "Three Tenors" tour. Still, the new arrangements that bewilder some and excite others are partly the results of compressing the melodies so that Dylan can deliver the lyrics without having to hit notes that were barely in his range 30 or 40 years ago. Compared to Dylan's rasp, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Durante and Joey Ramone could be the Three Tenors, but they wouldn't have his material.

Dylan, wearing a Cordoba hat and looking like the undisputed don of the hacienda, took the stage with his band at the Binghamton Events Center at 8:10 p.m., and finished their efficient performance just before 10 p.m.

The band is skillful and versatile: Charlie Sexton and Stu Kimball on guitars, Tony Garnier on bass guitar and standup bass, Donnie Herron on pedal and lap steel and an assortment of other string instruments, and George Recelli on drums. Dylan spent much of the time playing electric organ, but also piano, guitar and, of course, harmonica. The combo sounded like a particularly gifted 1950s or early 1960s roadhouse band. Call them Bobby Dee and the Starliters, tag their music Iron Range Rock, the kind of big beat perfection Dylan might have imagined before leaving Hibbing, Minn. The show was a steady rolling collection of savory riffs from "Rock Around the Clock" and "Blue Suede Shoes."

It is not a band of show-off soloists, nor have Dylan performances ever been constructed that way. But the playing was magnificent, performed with purpose. Receli's fully funky backbeat provided the acceleration on songs as unlikely as "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Met)," the oldest one of the night. It was first released on Dylan's last unaccompanied acoustic album, "Another Side of Bob Dylan" in 1964; hearing it with full band and jazzy harmonica put the song in a new light. "The Man in Me," from "New Morning" (1970), dropped its familiar pastoral mode with Dylan's harmonica phrasing packing the fat urban wallop of soul legend King Curtis' tenor saxophone.

From what I've seen, Dylan and company never play the same set twice, and with a repertory of so many hundreds of songs to choose from, why should they? This is anything but a greatest hits or "best of" tour; it's a celebration of a lifetime of writing, recording and performing. There were three songs from "Highway 61 Revisited," and three from "Modern Times." 1965, say hello to 2006. And there were songs before, later, and of course, in-between.

But it's the mix that makes the magic, and the selection and sequencing Nov. 17 in Binghamton was a Dylan fan's 116th dream.

Every song was a surprise, starting from the opener "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking," a Jesus blues from his best "Christian" album, 1979's "Slow Train Coming." After "The Man in Me" came a dip into the primo stuff, "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" from the historic pinnacle "Blonde on Blonde," the 1966 album that rephrased the conversation about the boundaries of rock and roll music and lyrics. Dylan played electric guitar; the jagged singing did not diminish the thrill of the lyrics, which have such lived in beauty that one felt oneself levitating.

After "I Don't Believe You" were the only songs back to back from the same album: "The Levee's Gonna Break," featuring Herron on electric mandolin, and "Spirit on the Water," which weren't sequenced together but certainly could have been on 2004's "Modern Times." Dylan took charge on both organ and harmonica while guitar lines rippled through "Honest With Me," a tune from " 'Love and Theft' " (2001).
Then it was back to the shrine of "Desolation Row," from 1965's "Highway 61 Revisited." Instead of the surreal despair of the recording, Dylan's phrasing was playful, as if to acknowledge that Desolation Row too has become gentrified. The undercurrent of the arrangement flirted with the pop/R&B colors of Ben E. King's 1961 hit "Spanish Harlem."

Back to " 'Love and Theft' " for "Tweedledee & Tweedledum," which had Dylan back on guitar on a five-alarm arrangement that sounded like the versions of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" recorded by two Dylan affiliated bands in the 1960s: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, and the Blues Project.

"Blind Willie McTell" was another treat for loyalists, a cult favorite that was one of Dylan's most widely beloved bootlegs until his version was finally released on "The Bootleg Series 1-3." This rendition, though, was something else: a kind of spook house blues, as if it wasn't a once obscure Dylan song, but a still obscure Screamin' Jay Hawkins tune.

The title song from "Highway 61 Revisited" gave way to "Love Sick" from "Time Out of Mind" (1997) and "Thunder on the Mountain," his triumph from "Modern Times," with Dylan's funniest blues line in decades: "I was thinkin' 'bout Alicia Keys, couldn't keep from crying..."

It was back to the canon with "Ballad of A Thin Man," a young man's furious indictment of the clueless mainstream media in 1965, a song that launched 500 underground newspapers and alternative weeklies. Listening to this after the election of 2010, I couldn't help but wonder who the shallow and fatuous "Mr. Jones" of the title would be today, and who might have usurped the voice of his angry antagonist: Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, god help us?

That was the finale. The reaction of the audience was mixed: There was no consensus on applause that would demand an encore. Some people clapped, some sat on their hands; some people left, some held up their cell phones, some checked messages on the cell phones. Dylan and band came back, did a spirited Bill Haley-style "Jolene" (from 2009's "Together Through Life"). And then the conclusion, with OUR national anthem: "Like A Rolling Stone." Band introduction, band bowing together, good night, Binghamton, and good night Bob, we'll see you down the road.

The next day, over coffee in the Vestal, N.Y., Barnes & Noble, Liz told me that the reactions to the concert on campus Facebook pages were divided: About half didn't know what to make of the songs and couldn't bear the singing; the other half felt fortunate to be able to absorb a part of history.

Some people just want to breathe the same air as a living legend, and if you're a college student, and all it costs is $25, why not? It's part of your education. If Dylan confounds their expectations, that is partly because of his determination not to live as a legend. He got the reclusive hermit act out of his system back in the late 1960s, when he nearly folded from the expectations placed upon him. Dylan spends his life do the most honorable thing he can think of doing: going to work every day as a musician and practicing his craft, as long as there's gas in the tank. Some days on the job are better than others. Nov. 17 was a good night's work.

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MAN U LOSES TIE TO WEST BROM

2010-10-17T00:05:00.005-04:00

By Wayne Robins

Or, to put it another way, West Bromwich Albion defeated Manchester United Saturday afternoon, 2-2.

This is one of those results that makes some Americans soccer phobic: Americans find unbearable: How can you play for 90 minutes and enjoy a tie? Manchester United, the mighty mights of the English Premier League and on some level the world's premier sports franchise, was well favored playing at home in front of more than 75,000 of its loyalists against the surprising West Bromwich Albion (WBA). And game adhered to the script almost from the beginning: After five minutes, WBA goalkeeper Carson blocked a Man U shot, but made the mistake of deflecting the ball, which bounced in front of the waiting foot of Man U's Hernandez for an easy goal and a 1-0 lead.

WBA's defense was porous, Man U poured on the pressure, and when Nari scored a too easy goal as the 24th minute ticked to 25, the 2-0 lead for Manchester seemed so insurmountable that I switched from ESPN2 to Fox Sports Channel, where Birmingham City's Nikola Zigic, a 6' 8" Serbian, popped a header past the Arsenal keeper for a goal that seemed inevitable: As the announcer put it, "From the moment it left his head, that ball was destined for the far corner" of the net.

Arsenal has been underachieving so far this season: the Birm City goal ended any chance of Arsenal achieving a "clean sheet" or shut out, as we Americans call it. One nil Birm City.

But some reprehensible refereeing changed the course of the match. The ref, Martin Atkinson, called a penalty on Birmingham defender Scott Dann near the goal as Arsenal's Chamakh fell to the ground despite what the replays showed was no contact. "I have to say Martin Atkinson made a mistake; he (Chamakh) simulated the situation," was the polite way the Fox announcer described it. But the damage had been done: Arsenal's Nasri easily beat the goalie on a free penalty kick, and it was 1-1. A few minutes later, Chamakh, the Moroccan striker, hit the ground again, and the announcers began to mock him outright. "Let's call it a low pain threshold," they said. At this point, their accusation was literal: "Birmingham is disgusted. Every player to a man knows Chamakh was guilty of diving." It ended 2-1 Arsenal.
At halftime, I went upstairs to play Snood.

This always takes longer than planned, and so when I came downstairs, it was around the 60 minute mark, and Arsenal had scored another goal. Birmingham did not seem able to overcome the sense of futility Atkinson's call had instilled in them, so I switched back to the Manchester United - West Bromwich Albion match. And it was 2-2!

Late in that game, around the 80th minute, another extremely dubious call favoring Man U, the home team, gave them a penalty kick. The kick was taken by one-time Mr. English football Wayne Rooney, who reportedly will be sold by Man U in January. He's not getting along with team manager Sir Alex Ferguson. Something about Rooney cavorting with two prostitutes while his wife was five months pregnant. And not playing well at all. Rooney's kick was way wide and his effort, like much of his play this season, seemed subpar. Ian Darke, the soccer announcer whose articulation and knowledge is to Man U matches what the great Vin Scully is to Dodgers baseball games, described the home team mood in one word: "Consternation."

Hardly any visiting team ever comes back from 2-nil down at Manchester United's turf. But uncharacteristic bad bounces and misplays around the goal had allowed WBA to tie it up, freaking out Man U and its supporters, who feel quite the sense of entitlement when they have a lead at home.

When it was over, the Man U fans throatily booed, while West Bromwich Albion rooters were overjoyed. In Premier League football, a team gets three points for a win, no points for a loss, and one point for a tie: League standings are based on such point accumulations. So West Bromwich got a point it did not expect to receive; Man U did not get the three points it expected, settling for the one point tie.

Psychologically, Man U felt like it lost two points, WBA felt like it gained one. As Ian Darke said post-match: "A great point for Bromwich, a worry for Manchester United."

Which is why it is easy to see that in the game ending 2-2, West Bromwich won—and Manchester lost. Just do the math.

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Elton John Leon Russell feature on and in Billboard

2010-10-07T16:20:00.003-04:00

We take a brief rest from soccer commentary to return to the reason we're here in the first place: music.

The story I've been working on about new album, "The Union," a collaboration between
Elton John and Leon Russell is in Billboard this week and on Billboard.com.

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CHELSEA GROUNDS THE FLY EMIRATES

2010-10-03T15:59:00.004-04:00

by Wayne Robins

You know that a visitor from another planet, or an American watching in New York, could find the team uniforms for Barclay's Premier League (aka the English Premier League) a bit confusing. Team names are rarely visible to the TV eye, even the HD version. It seems odd and a little unsporting for an American to complain about excessive commercialization of sport—I thought we were the world champions—but we've got nothing on English, or in fact, any nation's, professional soccer.

So if I were tuning in for the first time to the Premier League match of the weekend, it would have been easy to think of the teams as the Samsung vs. Fly Emirate—or, as I prefer to call them, The Fly Emirates. (Possible band name, North Londoners?) But I've been watching long enough—since the season began some seven weeks ago—to know that the team in Samsung blue is Chelsea, and the Fly Emirates, in red, can only belong to their London rivals, Arsenal.

Both teams played wide open, attack/counterattack: There was very little stalling around playing footsie, 90 minutes of high energy back and forth. Chelsea won 2-0, on two highlight-reel goals: Around the 39th minute, Didier Drogba made a perfect kick from an improbable angle just inside the near post, off the bar and into the net. It's been quite a week for Drogba, born in the Ivory Coast, who had a stadium named for him in Levallois-Perret, France, near Paris. The French fourth division team Levallois is where Drogba started as a youth league player at age 15.

Trailing one-nil after the first 45 minutes, the Fly Emirates looked ready to rally in the second half, putting Chelsea on its heels in defensive mode for 10 or 15 minutes. Reversing the American football cliche, Chelsea realized the best defense was a good offense, and eventually returned the pressure. A yellow card around the 84th minute handed to Arsenal defender Laurent Koscielny led to a free kick for Chelsea. At first it appeared that Drogba would take it, but it was Alex (Alex Rodrigo Dias da Costa, who like many Brazilian stars goes by just his first name) who stepped to the ball and wailed it, a fast, quick rising missile that soared and twisted into an unreachable far corner of the net. (Alex is not to be confused with Arsenal's Alex Song, from Cameroon, who is immediately identifiable for the apparently dyed gray hair that makes him look like, oh, a keyboardist for Parliament-Funkadelic.)

The other great haircut I saw on TV soccer Sunday morning was in the Italy Serie A match between Roma and Napoli. Napoli's Marek Hamsik, who also sports some nasty tattoos, has really let his Mohawk grow out, higher and stiffer than it was in South Africa, where he played in the World Cup for his native Slovakia. Goal.com also named Hamsik "top of the match" player: I only watched the scoreless first half, so missed Hamsik scoring the first and decisive goal in the 72nd minute as Napoli won, 2-0.

Marshaling the energy I knew I'd need to watch Arsenal-Chelsea, before the American football day started, I stepped away from the TV, drank coffee, and pondered the meaning of part of a dream last night, in which Lyle Lovett asked my advice on how to improve ticket sales on his concert tour. Wondering if it was some kind of zen riddle, it was a question to which I had no answer.

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MEEK INHERIT EARTH: CHELSEA, TOTTENHAM, AND ARSENAL ALL LOSE

2010-09-25T21:03:00.001-04:00

by Wayne Robins

This was a super Saturday for the English (Barclay's) Premier League on U.S. television, with three consecutive live games featuring the haves against the not have so much. From 7:30 Saturday morning eastern time, three giants fell, three struggling teams gained hope.
First up was Manchester City vs. Chelsea. Man City is not a mediocre team: It's just that Chelsea is off to a fantastic start, was undefeated and in first place in the Premier League. It was a matchup between two billionaire-owned clubs, the ultra-rich who have changed English football the way that money has both enhanced and distorted American team sports.
Sheikh Mansour, the Abu Dhabi businessman who is Man City owner, is said to be worth upwards of $5 billion, though estimates go much higher. With the stroke of a pen last January, the Sheikh erased Man City's 305 million pound debt (that's nearly $500 million U.S.) and turned it into equity, and then added perhaps the highest payroll in professional sports in the world.
Not quite to be outdone, Chelsea owner since 2003 has been Roman Abramovich, a Russian businessman estimated by Forbes to be the 50th richest person in the world, with a worth of a mere $11.2 billion.
Both men have followed the strategy George Steinbrenner used to restore the New York Yankees to prominence: Buy the best players. Chelsea's Ya Ya Touré of the Ivory Coast is, according to goal.com,is said to be the highest paid player in the history of the Premier League, earning tens of millions of dollars in salary and incentive and licensing deals. Ian Darke, the World Cup announcing MVP, who was making his debut for ESPN's U.S. Premier League coverage, noted Ya Ya earns 300,00 a week, but I wasn't sure whether that was pounds, or, if in dollars, would be about $450,000. His size and explosiveness was at times a fierce force on the field. But at the end, it was the goal by Man City's Carlos Tevez that was the only score. With minutes to go and Man City clinging to that one-nil score, Chelsea seemed to become unglued and overaggressive. Said Darke: "Man City is nearly there...it would be a very famous win." When it was over, Man City's fans sang a full-throated version of its theme song, "Blue Moon" (not the Marcels' version, I'm afraid) and Tevez lifted his jersey to reveal happy birthday wishes to his mother scribbled on his undershirt.
I didn't catch any of the games in their entirety, but the TV stayed on during errands and some deadline efforts at the computer. So when I went downstairs, I wasn't surprised to see the score after 60 minutes that score in the Arsenal-West Bromwich Albion match, played in front of 60,025 fans at Arsenal's home Emirates Stadium, was 2-nil. I blinked three times at score, and was able to verify with my eyes that it was a shocking 2-nil in favor of heavy underdog West Bromwich.
Then Jerome Thomas scored, and it was 3-nil West Bromwich Albion in the 73rd minute. Arsenal mounted a ferocious counterattack, and it quickly paid off: two minutes later, Arsenal's Samir Nasri scored. The heat was on. At the end of regulation, the referees allowed five minutes of extra time—an eternity with Arsenal attacking, and it paid off immediately: Just a few seconds into the overtime, Nasri scored again. Arsenal could salvage a point yet, and momentum was swinging their way. But WBA never lost its poise, or its aggressiveness, and goalkeeper Scott Carson was stalwart. How big was this win for West Bromwich? It was the first time it had beaten Arsenal on Arsenal turf in 27 years.
I think the consensus going into the arch rivalry between London teams West Ham and Tottenham match was that West Ham was not all as bad as its winless, last place showing has been. West Ham striker Frederic Piquionne's goal in the 29th minute accounted for all the scoring; though teammate Victor Obinna didn't score, he led the maroon-and-white with courageous play in what the Fox Soccer Channel announcer called an "heroic performance."

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WAYNE'S WORLD CUP ENDS A CURIOUS YELLOW

2010-07-12T12:40:00.002-04:00

by Wayne Robins

The most serious injury in Sunday's World Cup final won by Spain 1-0 over the Netherlands (or los Países Bajos, as a Spanish language network called it) was the writer's cramp sustained by those covering the game trying to keep up with the blizzard of yellow cards and a crucial red handed out by English referee Howard Webb. Near the end of a dull and scoreless first half, ESPN announcer Martin Tyler noted that the game had more yellow cards than shots on goal—and Webb was just getting started.

I am not arrogant or informed enough to criticize Webb, who is said to be one of soccer's best-trained and hardest working referees. But 14 yellow cards, when the previous record for a World Cup final was 6?

Even if almost all of the calls were technically legitimate, one hates to see any game, especially a championship final, so dominated by the officiating. Barring overt fouls intended to cause injury or prevent scores, the philosophy of the overseers should be: "Let them play."

The incredibly boring match was tied 0-0 at the end of 90 minutes of regulation time. It wasn't until the 116th minute, during the 30-minute extra-time that Spain's Andres Iniesta scored the final's only goal. (Iniesta immediately received a yellow card for taking off his shirt in celebration). This was not long after Spain took a one-man advantage with the ejection of Holland's John Heitinger, who picked up his second yellow and automatic ejection around the 109th minute. A few minutes later, it was the Spanish goalie and team captain, Casillas, overcome with weeping and sobbing, as much release from the severe tension of his superb job as it was joy at his team's victory.

By contrast, Saturday's third place battle about which I had snickered, between Germany and Uruguay, was a loose and lively affair won by Germany 3-2, with Uruguay fighting for the equalizer until the last whistle. (Spain had defeated Germany 1-0 in the Durban semifinal July 7, as it had by the same score in their 2008 Euro final in Vienna.)

Against Spain, Germany was uncharacteristically lackluster, relying too much on defense—and a passive defense at that—and unable to counterattack, consistently passing the ball backwards to regroup but never managing to sustain forward physical or emotional momentum. Die Mannschaft had to play without its 20 year-old wunderkind Thomas Müller, serving a one-game suspension because of consecutive yellow cards in previous matches. How much did they miss his strong, fast young legs against Spain? Deeply and profoundly: With his goal against Uruguay, Müller's five goals and three assists won him the Golden Boot award as the tournament's top scorer as well as the best young player. Uruguay's tall, long haired and exciting Diego Forlan, who also scored five goals in the tourney, won and deserved the best player award.

The strangest result of this tournament for this American is that I am as much looking forward to the start of (Barclay's) English Premier League season, which begins in mid-August, as I am the kickoff of American football season a few weeks later. I thank my U.K. friends at RocksBackPages.com for carrying Wayne's World Cup dispatches. I am eager to hear their suggestions as to which teams to root for in the Premier League, as well as insights from those passionate about the professional leagues throughout Europe and Latin America, where we will be able to see many of these World Cup players in the coming months.

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Wayne's World Cup: Consolation or Death Match?

2010-07-10T13:07:00.005-04:00

by Wayne Robins

I wasn't sure I saw the point of a World Cup match between the semifinals losers: Saturday's contest between Uruguay and Germany. Who would be motivated to play? Wouldn't the sting of vying for third place in the tournament be just more disappointment for the players?

Perhaps I was wrong. The BBC website has an interesting
article today about Uruguay's intense desire to win: To uphold the pride of South America. To remind the world that this nation of about 3.5 million, (and winners of the very first World Cup in 1930 and again in 1950) belongs once again in elite soccer nations on the planet.

World Cup soccer is attractive not just because of the four year gap between competition, but because it represents so much more than sport. It is about history, politics, social and class conflict, colonialism, imperialism and independence, played by a species (that would be us) whose dominant sport has been war. The clichés (including my own) that accompanied coverage of England vs. Germany were as inevitable as they were irresistible. In a later round, when Germany played Argentina, I pondered the notion that had the game been played 50 years earlier, half the stadium would have been occupied by Mossad agents tracking Nazi war criminals who had escaped judgment at Nuremberg. Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the "final solution" He was
captured
in Buenos Aires, where he had been living under the name Ricardo Klement, in 1960.

In Don DeLillo's 1972 novel "End Zone," which deals in the overlapping jargon between [American] football and nuclear extermination, a professor named Alan Zapalac says: "I reject the notion of football as warfare. Warfare is warfare. We don't need substitutes because we've got the real thing."

World Cup soccer is the real thing, too. According to the BBC, Uruguay coach Oscar Tabarez has warned Germany that his team will "fight to the death" Saturday. For third place.

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WAYNE'S WORLD CUP: Holland Closer To Its "Goooool!"

2010-07-06T22:48:00.003-04:00

by Wayne Robins

The semifinal World Cup match between the Netherlands and Uruguay was so interesting that I watched the first 20 minutes for a second time tonight in Spanish on Telefutura's WFUT, channel 68 in New York, which has been repeating key games of the day. (The Spanish network Univision carries the games live, simultaneously with ESPN and, on weekends, ABC.) Actually, I watched because I knew in the 17th minute Giovanni Van Bronckhorst would score an extraordinary goal, a long left foot strike that bounced off the post and in. "An absolute firecracker," ESPN announcer Ian Darke aptly called it. But I wanted to hear the great Argentine-born soccer announcer Andres Cantor call his now famous "gooooooooool!," stretching the single syllable word for about 15 seconds, one more time. (You can hear it often as your cellphone rings: Cantor's trademark call is available online as a ringtone.)

Ian Darke was in fine fettle as always. Both he and American sidekick John Harkes (a former U.S. team captain) took the Dutch to task for their sometimes lame "histrionics and amateur dramatics" in trying to induce the referee to call a foul on their opponents. The comment was piercing, because Holland is otherwise one of the class acts of world soccer, and certainly earned its place in the final, having run Brazil out of the tournament and finally beating the brave and resourceful Uruguay 3-2.

I don't know if a player on a team that loses in the semifinals can be World Cup MVP, but Uruguay's charismatic Diego Forlan, who evened the score in the 40th minute with his fourth goal of the tournament, certainly deserves consideration. Forlan was taken out in the 85th minute, his thigh hurting, with Uruguay trailing 3-1. A Uruguay goal in extra time made it 3-2, and the South Americans mounted a desperate attack only to be finally turned back.

So the domino theory, so discredited as the political and military concept behind the futile United States war effort in Southeast Asia in the 1960s, seemed to be accurate in this World Cup. All the South American dominos with the potential to dominate have fallen: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay. The Netherlands will play either Spain or Germany on Sunday for the championship. In the saddest contest in all of sports, 90 agonizing minutes of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," the loser of Spain vs. Germany plays Uruguay in the third place game Saturday afternoon.

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WAYNE'S WORLD CUP: SO YOU WANT TO BE A COACH?

2010-07-06T12:27:00.004-04:00

by Wayne Robins

Those who think soccer is just a game and a line here last week about the French team facing execution just a joke should read some of the stories hitting the wires today, aggregated by ESPN. France has a new national team coach, Laurent Blanc, who said he was "outraged" by the team's behavior—mutiny, dismissals, missed practices, selfish and horrible play—that led to its early exit from the World Cup in South Africa. The pressure on him, Blanc acknowledged, is enormous: "I get the impression I'm heading toward suicide, or the guillotine," Blanc said. "I hope this climate will change with results."

After once-mighty Argentina's total 4-0 destruction by Germany on Sunday, the country's great soccer legend and team coach Diego Maradona looked stricken; one photo showed that he appeared to need help leaving the field. And the defeat was considered so humiliating that Argentine police, according to the Associated Press, went on "high alert" as the team returned home. A two-mile security perimeter around Buenos Aires airport was created, presumably to keep angry fans from attacking the team.

But Argentina and its football fans deserve congratulations for showing responsibility, respect, and maturity in accepting the defeat. The thousands of fans who greeted the team at their headquarters were mostly positive, and both players and fans indicated they wanted Maradona to return as coach. True, Maradona was outcoached July 4 by Joachim Low: Germany had a defense strategy, Argentina had none. Maradona has the prestige and sensitivity to learn from the experience, if he can handle the brutal pressure. (While many American football head coaches call their team's offensive plays, they hire assistants known as "defensive coordinators"—defense is too essential not to be delegated.)

After watching so many games, it seems that national soccer team coach is probably one of the most stressful jobs in the world: Dunga, Brazil's flamboyant coach, has also been fired for his team's underachievement. As we get ready for the final four: Uruguay-Netherlands later Tuesday, Germany-Spain on Wednesday, none of those coaches should be on the hot seat. To have gotten this far is a triumph for all—Ghana, though eliminated, are the heroes of Africa—and the largely peaceful acceptance of the tournament results so far a triumph for soccer. Of course, the fate of the North Korean players and coaches has not been made public.

Though I'm very fond of the Netherlands, I'm hoping for a Uruguay win Tuesday, and a German win against Spain, and a German win in the final. "Impossible Germany," as Wilco put it in one of their most enchanting songs? We'll have to wait and see.

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WAYNE'S WORLD CUP: DUTCH TREAT

2010-07-02T14:20:00.002-04:00

by Wayne Robins

When I woke up this morning, I was convinced that Brazil was unbeatable and would cruise through the remaining games, including the battle against the Netherlands, and win the 2010 World Cup. And their apparent dominance was confirmed in the first half when Brazil, the No. 1 ranked team in the world, scored a seemingly effortless goal against an uncharacteristically baffled Dutch defense: a straightaway breakout that, to once again use an American football simile, was like a quarterback handing off the ball to a running back, who runs right up the middle and without as much as a zigzag is astonished to find himself untouched in the end zone 80 yards later: The vaunted Dutch "D" left the entire middle of the field open. Dutch players were pointing fingers at each other: I think it was the great Robben himself seen pointing at himself with agitation and shouting at the sideline something like: "Me? It wasn't my fault!"

Brazil led 1-nil at the half, and the Netherlands, No. 4 in the world, and as the second period began seemed to be using its usual defense/counterattack strategy. That's not often the most advantageous style when trailing a team like Brazil, which the Netherlands hadn't beaten in international team play since 1974.

But Brazil was stunned and Holland elated by a double-header goal early in the second half. The Orangemen seemed aflame, and now it was agile, beautiful Brazil looking befuddled. When Melo of Brazil got a red card and was ejected in the 73rd minute, leaving Brazil to play with 10 men for the rest of the match, the now-flying Dutchmen took advantage, scored a second goal for the lead, and nearly nailed a third. Brazil didn't quit, but they certainly lacked their usual footloose flair. Before the inevitable, unexpected denouement, TV announcer Martin Tyler reflected on the stunning momentum change. "In sport, as in life, it's all about seizing the moment." The Netherlands did just that and is going to the quarterfinals, and Brazil, mighty, stylish and lovable Brazil, is going home: Not embarrassed, but nevertheless humbled and gone, gone, gone.

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Nothing Much Happens in Spain-Portugal Match

2010-06-29T22:37:00.003-04:00

by Wayne Robins

Nothing much happened in the much anticipated battle for Iberia as the two European soccer powers that share the peninsula pretty much played patty cakes for 90 minutes in a 2010 World Cup matchup. Some guy from Spain scored a goal, so Spain won, 1-0 and advanced to the quarterfinals in South Africa. Portugal looked flat, and Spain didn't exactly strike fear into the hearts and legs of its next opponent, Paraguay. At one point, the announcer spoke of a match in which a team scored nil (zero), and was lucky to score nil at that, so lacking was its offensive effort. Portugal played like that at times today, looking nothing like the squad that scored seven goals, count 'em, seven, goals against North Korea last week. In fact, North Korea was the only team Portugal scored against this World Cup, with previous contests against Brazil and Ivory Coast ending as nil-nil ties. Despite Spain's mediocre performance, it has a good chance of advancing as its next opponent is middling Paraguay, which managed to edge feisty Japan after 120 scoreless minutes in a penalty kick shootout.

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GERMAN BLITZ FLATTENS ENGLAND AGAIN

2010-06-28T22:28:00.001-04:00

by Wayne Robins

It's taken a little time to digest Germany's stunning 4-1 defeat of England Sunday. After all, Sunday's game was the was the metaphysical match-up of the World Cup so far, weird old Europe's answer to the Cold War drama of the 1980 U.S./Russia Olympics hockey game. England vs. Germany! Making headlines together as hard-hitting rivals since 1914, at least. Never mind World Cups (like the 1966 final game, won by England and the likely source of British entitlement ever since): These sides fought World Wars, and played nationalism-fueled soccer games between and after the wars, and anyone with a sense of history knew this soccer game offered at least a reminder of what is now, thank god, long finished business between them. The droll play-by-play annoucer Martin Tyler referred to the history of "skirmishes" between the nations, a typical bit of understatement that has made the main mic men from the U.K. such a pleasure this World Cup.

The game itself lived up to its billing. For people who think soccer is too slow and cramped, Germany was so loose it might have been playing American football, with a West Coast offense at that. Germany's goalie Neuer acted as (American football) quarterback with a long goal kick from his end, which bounced twice near the English goal before Miroslav Klose kicked it in: The equivalent of a 90-yard touchdown pass. Germany's third goal, in the 67th minute, was a kind of fast-break through British defenders nailed perfectly by Thomas Muller: the equivalent of an 80-yard TD run from scrimmage. The 20-year-old Muller put an exclamation point on the game with another goal two minutes later.

Of course, much of the talk is about the English goal that would have tied the score at 2-2 before the half had the referee spotted Lampard's kick bouncing well behind German lines. Everyone in the world saw it except the refs. No goal. All the more important, then, that Germany completely dominated the second half. To their credit, the announcers in the stadium and the British commentator in the studio, Liverpool legend and English World Cup veteran Steve McNamanan, did not blame the botched goal call on Britiain's loss. "We're not as good as we think we are." "Terrible" "An awful performance." The Germans were "quicker, stronger, more intelligent." And that was the truth.

Oh yes: On Saturday, Ghana beat the United States 2-1, ending the U.S. run at the tournament. The score reflected reality: Ghana was just a little bit better, faster, more aggressive, more skillful, more energized, than the U.S. team. Can't wait for Germany-Argentina, with plenty more psychohistorical subtext in the quarterfinals Saturday.

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WAYNE'S WORLD CUP: A VIEW FROM QUEENS' LITTLE SEOUL

2010-06-26T13:07:00.000-04:00

by Wayne Robins

I wanted to watched the end of Uruguay vs. South Korea in one of the densely Korean sections of my neighborhood in Queens, N.Y. So I headed to the H-Mart (formerly Han Ah Reum) supermarket on Union Street in Flushing, where I go a few times a week and do most of my family's grocery shopping. It was startling to walk in and find the store almost completely empty: It is usually packed elbow to elbow on Saturday mornings, but I knew there had to be a crowd around a TV somewhere. I looked in the home electronics shop that can only be accessed within the supermarket, and sure enough there were plenty of TV sets on, but the teenage girls behind the cosmetics counters were watching some K-Pop contest show, a variation of "Busan Idol." I darted into the cafeteria-style Korean home cooking restaurant also within the H-Mart, and near the front there was a tiny TV surrounded by a dozen anxious soccer fans: I'd found my viewing zone.

After trailing 1-0 at the half, South Korea had evened the score before I arrived, and the crowd was anxious and hopeful, exhorting their underdog team with every unpredictable bounce and roll. (It should be noted that almost all were H-Mart employees, who are mostly either Korean or Latin American. The Latin Americans appeared non-commital. It was impossible to tell whether were rooting for their employers team, or whether common language had them pulling for heavily favored Uruguay. (There is a notable Uruguayan presence in frantically polyethnic Jackson Heights a few miles southwest). The game was being watched on Spanish language Univision with the sound down; the play by play came from a Korean-language radio station.

A few of the Korean employees went back to work after Uruguay scored a goal, making it 2-1. But South Korea continued playing with great skill and undeniable heart, and as time was running out, nearly tied the score with a dribbler that got away from the Uruguayan goalie and in what appeared to be heart-breakingly slow motion, nearly rolled into the net. Close, but no cigar. When the final whistle blew, everyone dispersed back to work, fatalistically accepting the result. I bought fluke fillets for dinner at the H-Mart fish counter, possibly still thinking of the fluke it would have been if South Korea advanced.

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Italy Coach: "They Had Terror In Their Legs"

2010-06-24T14:17:00.003-04:00

by Wayne Robins

The most candid, intuitive apology we've ever heard offered by a coach came this afternoon from Italy's soccer coach Marcello Lippi after his team, the defending World Cup champions, was eliminated by Slovakia, 3-2. More important, through three previous matches, including an infamous opening game 1-1 tie with supposed tournament patsies New Zealand, the Azzurri (or the blues, after the color of their uniforms) played without heart, passion or confidence.

English-language Italian soccer site Football Italia reported Lippi's postgame comments that were as astounding as the results of the play. Speaking of his experienced team (eight of the 11 starters were over age 30, according to brilliant ESPN announcer Ian Darke), Lippi said:

"They had terror in their legs, heads and hearts," Lippi said. Trailing Slovakia 2-0, Italy went on a furious run in the last 15 minutes of the match, scoring a goal and having a tying goal waved off because of an offside call that replays showed to be justified. Slovakia made it 3-1, and then Italy showed championship resilience by scoring yet another goal in extra time before time ran out.

"I don't know why they changed in the last 15 minutes. I clearly couldn't prepare them for such an important game, if they played for 75 minutes unable to make any mark - in my view exclusively due to a psychological problem - then it is only the fault of the Coach."

There's a dollar here for any U.S. sportswriter who asks a losing Super Bowl coach (just think of a Bill Belichick or a Bill Parcells) if his team lost the big game because they were insufficiently up to treating their players' emotional insecurities. Meanwhile, Italian football authorities are considering replacing Lippi with film director Dario Argento, the horror cult impresario.

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ENTIRE FRENCH SOCCER TEAM GIVES ITSELF RED CARDS

2010-06-23T19:27:00.003-04:00

by Wayne Robins

In one of the most selfless displays of sportsmanship ever seen in international competition on any level, the French soccer team awarded every player on its World Cup team and all the coaches and trainers red cards at the end of a valiant loss to host South Africa 2-1 Tuesday night. The unprecedented display of courage led the players to expect to be greeted as heroes on its return. However, after noticing that the team bus was being trailed by a motorized convoy of guillotines, the driver was said to have last been seen speeding for the border with Belgium.

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World Cup: Germany, Italy Wobble, Saudi Ref Bobbles

2010-06-22T20:08:00.002-04:00

WORLD CUP 2010: THE QUEST SO FAR
By Wayne Robins

Finally, teams other than Germany, which dismantled Australia 4-0 last week, have begun scoring goals. Regrettably and possibly tragically for Germany , one of those other teams was Serbia. In a variation on the reenactment to the roll up of World War I, Serbia fired the shot heard around the football world, beating “archrival” Germany 1-0 June 18. My German friend, on whose behalf I actively root for the Nationalmannschaft, texted me that sad morning about calling his therapist to discuss this psychic and spiritual emergency. It is one of the wonders of the World Cup competition is that his current emotional equilibrium and perhaps future happiness depend in some part on Germany’s match Wednesday, June 23, against a Ghana squad that itself was shockingly tied by underdog Australia.

North Korea’s reason to be cheerful on the world stage is over, after being annihilated 7-0 by a pitiless and perhaps manic Portugal, an especially stunning result since the score was nil-nil after 28 minutes. In a similarly overwhelming defeat possible only by the relativist measure of international soccer, one of the weaker teams in the tournament, New Zealand, crushed defending world champions Italy by a final score of 1-1. The result was celebrated with exuberance by the Kiwis faithful and mourned with heartbroken severity by Italian faithful.
Chile and Switzerland was 0-0 after the first half of a match that may have been decided by the clueless Saudi Arabian referee. I will leave to the Ross Douthat’s of the planet the opportunity to frame this debacle in terms of repressive radical Islam vs. the West. But it must be said that the referee’s judgments did seem somewhat…fundamentalist? The man was handing out yellow cards (nine of them) like an overworked blackjack dealer, but his game changing and stomach turning decision was a red card against Switzerland’s Valon Behrami, your quintessential modern footballer: an Albanian raised in Switzerland who plays for West Ham United in the English Premier League and who sports both a multiyear, multimillion pound contract and an Italian model girlfriend.

His red card expulsion gave the advantage to a good Chile team, and forced Switzerland to rely more than usual on its dominating defense. A header by Chile’s Gonzales in the 74th minute was all the scoring needed.

The Saudi referee did call one penalty that deserves applause: He smacked Chile’s Valdivia with a yellow card in extra time for “play-acting”: making believe he was fouled hard, rolling around on the ground and holding his head, trying to get the ref to call a foul on an opposing player. This kind of mediocre acting has been on display in every game of the World Cup: It’s a tough judgment call and it’s not often called, but in this case, Valdivia definitely hammed it up too much, and we’re not talking West Ham. Perhaps the Saudi ref has seen Valdivia pull this before: the Chilean, according to an often accurate (but not always) Web site, plays for Al-Ain, a popular and successful club team from the United Arab Emirates.

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World Cup: First Half Fit To Be Tied

2010-06-16T11:19:00.002-04:00

by Wayne Robins

Another World Cup match, another first half, 45 minutes of mostly inaction, with the score tied at 0-0. That's the Wednesday morning score of Spain vs Switzerland. And that's been the halftime score of 9 of the 16 matches played in South Africa so far in the FIFA World Cup 2010.

Though knowledgeable soccer fans can appreciate the often tense attrition of a hard fought nil-nil match, there has been little this year to persuade skeptical Americans that low scoring soccer is worth their time or attention. The problem is that too many teams in the first round are playing to avoid defeat rather than to win. That is a sound strategy for a heavy underdog to linger in the competition: While there may be no crying (or ties) in baseball, or moral victories in American football, tying a superior team is often as good as a win in World Cup soccer. (A team gets three points for a win, one point for a tie, so it is possible to move forward in the tournament without actually winning, as long as one doesn't lose too much.)

But some 0-0 first halves can be dramatic: Witness Tuesday's intense battle between Brazil (ranked No. 1 in the world) and North Korea (ranked 105). The 0-0 halftime score stunned Brazil and most onlookers, and up-ended the predictable emotional/geopolitical equilibrium, for those of us who identify with Brazilian culture, and North Korea, not so much: As the second half began, one who enjoys epic upsets might have instinctively cheered on the North Koreans. As soon as Brazil scored one goal, the pendulum swung back, and the hedonistic party boys from South America began sweeping their fans, and the North Koreans, off their feet. When Brazil scored a second goal, the lead seemed insurmountable. But in the 88th minute, Ji Yun Nam of North Korea broke through the overconfident Brazilian defense and nailed the ball past some-say-best-in-the-world goalkeeper Julio Cesar. It was 2-1, and with about four minutes left, it was hard to deny rooting for North Korea to do it again and leave the festival favorites with a tie: It would have been ashes for Brazil, champagne for North Korea.

As this is being posted, Switzerland has taken a 1-0 lead over Spain: Watch for Switzerland to go into a defensive crouch and Spain to finally, play for keeps the last 28 minutes. If Spain scores, expect Switzerland to play for the tie.

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"Metal Machine Music" Is Official Theme of 2010 World Cup

2010-06-13T15:27:00.002-04:00

by Wayne Robins

Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" has been named the official theme of the 2010 World Cup. The intentionally monotonous, droning, two-LP loop of electronic feedback has been played consistently throughout each televised game of the cup. Sunday, its volume drowned out the voices of the ESPN/ABC announcers during the Germany-Australia match, which is why this fan turned the game off with Germany comfortably ahead two-nil in the first half.

Noted Reed scholar and sparring partner, the late Lester Bangs, had many descriptions for "MMM," but he nailed it in a Creem article in September, 1975, writing: "You know when you get so tense and anxiety-ridden that all the nerves at the back of your neck snarl up into one burning ball? Well, if that gland could make music, it would sound like this album."

And that's what it sounds like listening to the games. According to sources ranging from the Guardian in the U.K. to the Tehran Times in Iran, international soccer governing board FIFA is considering a ban on the vuvuzela, the iconic but terminally irritating plastic South African air horn, on which World Cup spectators have been doing unprecedented live performances of "Metal Machine Music" from first kick to final whistle.

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World Cup Miracle: U.S. Trounces England, 1-1

2010-06-12T21:37:00.002-04:00

by Wayne Robins

In the most stunning upset of FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa, heavy underdogs the United States demolished heavily favored England, with each team scoring one goal.

After the Brits took a quick 1-0 lead on a goal by Steven Garrard the United States tried to crawl back. But it wasn't until English goalie Robert Green was removed for a few seconds and replaced by British TV contest winner, 4-year-old Amy Yeardley of Blackburn, Lancashire, that the Yanks scored what turned out to be the winnning equalizer. A gentle bouncing left-footed touch by American player Clint Dempsey was initially stopped by Amy. But distracted by the Posh Spice Barbie doll she clutched throughout the brief photo op, the ball rolled away from Amy and into the net for the only U.S. score of the match.

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Eagles Essay on eMusic

2010-04-23T12:21:00.003-04:00

Wayne's article about "Hotel California" and the culture wars of the 70s is an
eMusic spotlight.

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“T.A.M.I. SHOW” BATTLE OF THE BANDS: JAMES BROWN VS. THE ROLLING STONES

2010-03-20T16:08:00.005-04:00

by Wayne Robins

On “The T.A.M.I. Show,” released on DVD March 23 by
Shout Factory, the Motown acts were exquisite as expected, not yet overchoreographed into entertaining but limiting cliché. Marvin Gaye exuded “Pride and Joy,” the Supremes’ hit all their spots perfectly. Yet it was Smokey Robinson’s uncharacteristically wild performance that led the Detroit contingent.
The whole ensemble was revealed behind a balloon barricade while Lesley Gore sang “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” leading some to conclude that it was the song itself that produced such uproarious applause. It looks to me like Lesley was being upstaged by the ensemble cast of hand-clappers behind her—the Beach Boys in their matching stripes, the suave Gaye, an irrepressibly grinning duckwalking Chuck Berry, and even a slightly befuddled looking Smokey Robinson. Clap? Yeah, OK.
Nevertheless, the primly dressed Lesley Gore signifies like a sleeper cell for a future feminist insurrection. Her songs and stoic character presented independence, disdain (“It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to”), and defiance (“you don’t own me”) that saved tens of millions of suburban teenage girls—in 1964 still on the path to subservience in most sectors of American life—from a Stepford Wives future. The Gore Effect was a delayed one: anywhere from 3 to 5 years after initial viewing, girls engaged or going steady with presumptuous, entitled young guys named Chip, Skip, Larry and Barry woke up one morning, burned their bras, tossed back their going steady baubles and engagement rings and declared that from now on, Chip, Skip, Larry and Barry could go play with themselves.
And to think James Brown had to follow that! But Brown, like everyone else in the house, was unaware that the gods had already thrown a monkey into the future—partly delivered by Smokey and the Miracles’ ridiculously awesome extended, spontaneous cultural ju-jitsu of “Mickey’s Monkey.”
Symptom of “Mickey’s Monkey” syndrome: tens of thousands of young men—white, black, Latino, suburban, urban, even farmboys and farmhands—heard the song on the radio, and the next day walked around goofy singing “lum-dee-lum-dee-li-eye! Lum-dee-lum-dee-li-eye!,” not realizing they had invoked an ancient African incantation that would also detonate three to five years later. It was then variously defined as the following: You know dad, I really think I’m gonna pass on the grad school thing, but I really think it’s more important to investigate some Native American peyote rituals out west, Arizona or Big Sur somewhere. “Lum-dee-lum-dee-li-eye! Lum-dee-lum-dee-li-eye!” Others thought these syllables meant: “Hell no, we won’t go?,” while others subconsciously knew—they just knew— they were meant to sit quietly in dark rooms lit by black light and fluorescent posters burning sandalwood and smoking a once-obscure plant called cannabis sativa and listening to something called The Doors.
Back to 1964: Now comes James Brown on to the stage of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, looking like dancing black granite sculpted by Michaelangelo, his spectacular square jaw and stunning cheekbones studied carefully by at least two dozen future Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeons in the audience. Future neurologists and gastroenterologists also paid close attention: A collection of seizures, wails and grunts emanated from Brown, the only singer in the bunch who carried his own band with him, the Famous Flames, sounding like the sacking of Troy conducted with militant efficiency and discipline. Brown wiggled and wriggled through “Out of Sight,” and then moaned that he was a “Pris-oner…pris-oner of love.” To prove it, he falls to his knees and begs: “Please. Please. Please.” Not “Please Please Me,” as those happy young Beatles were singing somewhere, but an excruciating, agonizing, pitiless, please, please, please…please don’t go.
And so he didn’t. The kids didn’t know the routine yet: This was not the Apollo Theater. The band vamps, James Brown falls to his knees, an aide puts a cape over his shoulders, the more sensitive in the audience wonder if an ambulance should be called…then Brown throws down the cape, spins back to the microphone and continues. The scene repeats, and repeats, the tension rising and subsiding and increasing with each cycle. It goes on for…a long time. The minutes don’t matter—there were a lot of them. But no, the conjurers trick here is that while he is on the stage at the crest of “Please Please Please,” time stops. It just stops. Seconds, hours, days later, whenever the spell is over and he’s really left the stage, it is the viewer that is almost too drained to continue anything resembling a normal routine.
You think Mick Jagger was nervous backstage? Mick Jagger and the rest of the Stones were terrified. Those at the tapings—or at least processors of the legend, you can’t trust anyone these days—say there was a rather long delay before they took the stage. Let the electrons stop pinballing.
When they finally arrive, they look like boys. But the pieces fit. If you ever wondered what the Rolling Stones were like with Brian Jones on guitar, along with Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, this is the place to see it. Of course, the Stones were never soloists, and especially not with this material: At the time, they were still largely a R&B club band: Their set contained Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around,” Irma Thomas’ “Time is On My Side” and Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now.” And yet it was a watershed moment for the Stones: they found they had enough skill to address adversity, and enough guts to raise their stagecraft to the level it needed to follow James Brown. The way they did it was to also plead with the audience. But while James Brown put on a show, a performance, Jagger found he had the ability to reach individuals, staring into the eyes of those in the crowd and establishing intimacy in the moment.
A different dampness pervaded: Not James Brown’s sweat, but something emanating from the young ladies startled and thrilled by Jagger’s leer, which wasn’t as confident as it would become. As the triumph is savored to the jam of “I’m Alright” (permutating into the Isley Brothers “Shout”), Brian Jones looks delighted. After all, the Stones were his band as much as Jagger’s. Jones would be dead in five years, drowned in his own swimming pool, kicked out of the band, having taken too many drugs for even the Rolling Stones to tolerate. (Imagine that.) On this day in 1964, the future looked unlimited.
And why wouldn’t it? Because what really sinks in about these performances is that neither the Rolling Stones, nor James Brown (nor the Beach Boys, nor Marvin Gaye, nor the Supremes for that matter) had peaked. The Stones hadn’t even really gotten beyond nursery school as songwriters: “Off the Hook,” the only real original of their “T.A.M.I.” set showed promise. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “The Last Time,” “Get Off of My Cloud,” the 1965 hits that would make them superstars, were not yet in their repertory because Jagger and Richards hadn’t written them yet. Soon they would rival Leiber and Stoller as the second greatest songwriting team of the rock era (after Lennon and McCartney), but at “The T.A.M.I. Show,” they were prodigious students.
Likewise, savvy, studious professional that he was, James Brown probably watched the Rolling Stones come close to matching him after one of the great performances of his career, and said, I’m never letting That happen again.
So the next year he invented funk.
He picked up the tempo, tricked up the rhythm, punched up and pulled in the horns. That next year, 1965, James Brown had “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” and “I Got You” and kept rolling on a winning streak that changed the future of music: funk. Rap. Brown until the day he died he was merely unstoppable.
Who knows what secrets were traded backstage at “The T.A.M.I. Show”? But there had to be a reason that the next year, 1965 was the arguably the greatest year in pop music history. That year Bob Dylan was prepared to plug in to the rock’n’roll priesthood, Otis Redding and southern soul would join Motown on America’s radios and dance floors, that the Beach Boys, or at least Brian Wilson, would lock up his surf board and explore more intimate oceans. All of which would make the Beatles say: "We've got to top them all again," which they more or less did with "Rubber Soul." “The T.A.M.I. Show,” so seemingly innocuous at the time, was both the end of the world as we knew it, and the dawning of a new era. It's really something to see: Lum-dee-lum-dee-li-eye!

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Notes from "The T.A.M.I. Show" Part 1

2010-03-17T14:40:00.002-04:00

by Wayne Robins

My posse of pop culture thrill-seekers is still buzzing over the recent unearthing of “The T.A.M.I. Show” on PBS (WLIW/Channel 21 in the New York area). On a recent Saturday at 8 p.m., I called a friend as the program started. No hello from him, just: “I’ve got it on. You? OK. Bye.”
Shown briefly as a special event in movie theaters in 1964, the year it was made, “The T.A.M.I. Show” spent decades as a P.O.W. of performance rights dickering and was M.I.A. from video or DVD shelves. My understanding is that the show is culled from three performances over two nights at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The acronym stands for Teenage Music Awards International, and the idea behind it was to start an organization that would benefit music education. That didn’t happen. A conspiracy theorist might think that the real purpose was to block the British Invasion by showing that American talent: some Motown stars, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Lesley Gore and the Beach Boys—could outsing, outdance, and outplay the new breed from England, which included Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and the Rolling Stones. Just to make sure the U.S. came home with the gold, the still callow Rolling Stones had to close the show, following the already battle-trained James Brown and his Famous Flames.
But there were other fascinating subtexts. Imagine Chuck Berry, who had been released from prison months or possibly weeks before. Berry opens the show with “Maybellene,” which is then echoed right on stage by Gerry & the Pacemakers. My surprised conclusion: Gerry & the Pacemakers should have done more uptempo material: They acquitted themselves in this mini battle of the bands with beat club ease.
Berry also performs “Sweet Little Sixteen”; not too many minutes later, he probably thought one of those white groups was doing another one of his songs, when the Beach Boys performed “Surfin’ U.S.A.” Berry may never even heard the 1963 hit, based note-for-note on “Sixteen”: He was in the middle of his two year sentence for violation of the Mann Act, which were among the charges former New York governor Elliot Spitzer could have faced stemming from his out-of-state dalliance with a prostitute. Berry eventually sued and got co-writer credit for “Surfin’ U.S.A.”; it’s nice to think that “The T.A.M.I. Show” got that ball rolling.
We’ll return to “The T.A.M.I. Show” next posting.

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Reelin' In the Years

2010-03-12T13:00:00.004-05:00

by Wayne Robins

I stumbled upon a valuable blog for connoisseurs of rock criticism,
Beat Patrol. What led me there was its posting of a long-forgotten review I did for Creem in 1974 of Todd Rundgren's
"Todd" album. The review was quite favorable, yet peppered with the back-handed compliments that were part of the irreverent Creem treatment. I think in this review I'm starting to create a little distance from my monthly effort to pay homage to my editor at Creem, a fellow of whom you may have heard named Lester Bangs. I'm kind of finding my own voice, though you might hear the attempted imitation of Lester's voice at times resonating. Of course, some Creem writers during my era (1971-1975) wanted to be Lester. What was important to me about Lester's writing and editing was the liberation he represented: Just start typing and let yourself go, see where the muse, and the music, takes you. In that way, he was one of the best editors I ever had, possibly second only to Robert Christgau. In 1974 I was living in New York and also writing for Christgau at the Village Voice; his due diligence and intellectual rigor inhabited a different place on the spectrum entirely from Bangs'. Instinctively forming a synthesis between those two "mentors" gave me the knowledge and the confidence that maybe I could write for a living.

The back pages of "Beat Patrol" also have audio links to the two sides of Steely Dan's obscure first single: "Dallas"/"Still the Waterway" (1972), a release that apparently preceded "Do It Again." It was Christgau who turned me on to Steely Dan back then: He was the rock critic at Newsday (a mantle I would inherit in 1975 for a nearly 20 year run.) Soon after meeting Christgau in the fall of 1972, he took me to see Steely Dan play at Westbury Music Fair on Long Island. "Do It Again" had just broken; I'd heard the songs on the radio, but hadn't connected with who the artist was. When I saw them, I really connected, since just a few years earlier, I had gone to Bard College for a year, where Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were also students. We didn't hang out—they already kept largely to themselves—but it was hard not to run into them, since in those days there were only about 600 students at Bard.
One more thing about this Steely Dan concert, one of the last they would perform for many years: They were the opening act for Cheech & Chong.

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MICHAELS SEES STADIUM, MISSES FOOTBALL GAME

2009-09-21T11:49:00.001-04:00

NBC’s lengthy Sunday night advertorial for the new Dallas Cowboys’ stadium was intermittently interrupted by a football game. Al Michaels’ narration became increasingly maddening as the dramatic game between the Cowboys and New York Giants headed towards the decisive final second. (And yes, announcer emeritus John Madden was there, but sadly, as a spectator and halftime interview guest of Bob Costas.) The constant reversals of fortune between the Giants and Cowboys, one of the NFL great rivalries, was lost in Michaels’ relentless shilling for the the $1.15 billion “Jerryland.” Michaels could not have been more obsequious if he had announced before the game that he was leaving the network to seek a job as Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones’ personal publicist. Michaels’ announcing booth partner Cris Collinsworth struggled honorably but perhaps too passively to direct the focus towards the game, which was won by the Giants, 33-31, on two consecutive field goals by Lawrence Tynes. (The first was voided when the Cowboys’ were granted a time out as the first final kick seemed to be in progress). —Wayne Robins

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Switched On by Emma Peel

2009-09-12T18:29:00.003-04:00

by Wayne Robins

Last night I was cruising the Reciva Internet radio aggregator looking for some exotica to take my mind off Colorado being crushed by…Toledo! The possibility of a 0-11 football season for my former school exists; so by “exotica,” I don’t just mean music, I was looking for the distraction that many years ago could only be provided by specially cultivated mushrooms.

In my teens I was briefly a ham radio operator, but became more permanently fixed on SWL-ing: short wave listening. The ease and accessibility of audio streams from every corner of the globe has made SWL-ing nearly obsolete, and after 40 years, the tubes on my Hallicrafters S-108 receiver have finally burned out.

Whenever I go to Reciva, I start by looking for the hard stuff: Iran, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands. I wasn’t getting any such streams, so I reduced the level of challenge, and got some decent Middle Eastern music, on Radio Salam Lyon, France, 91.1 FM if you’re in the neighborhood having lunch, say at Restaurant Paul Bocuse.

I clicked around some more and nailed some palatable if tame jazz streamed from Russia, 101.ru: Jazz, checking out Ray Brown and Herb Ellis’ “Blues for Junior” and Oscar Peterson’s “Satin Doll.” After a few more minutes I entered “The Cave,” a fairly cool program on funk-flavored www.4ST Radio.com. The host, whose name I didn’t catch (nor did I readily find on the Web site), was focusing on bass players, and nailed some decent tracks from Stanley Clarke (“Justice’s Groove” from the 1993 movie, “Poetic Justice”) and Bootsy Collins’ “Munchies for Your Love.”

And then I had my eureka moment. After clicking through some ordinary pop stations in Australia, I found the program “Switched On” hosted by DJ Emma Peel on
PBS 106.7 in Melbourne. PBS 106.7 has a positioner most stations would flee from: It calls itself “Home of Little Heard Music.” Not home of the hits, not “your alternative nation” not “thunder down under,” but “home of little heard music.” And my magnet for little heard music late Friday night was Emma Peel—in her own time zone, the program is heard from 1 to 3 p.m. each Friday, reason enough to start the weekend early. Peel’s a Go-Go dancer, club DJ, promoter-with-the-mostess—but mostly she has impeccable feel for the rarities of fascinating nooks and crannies of 1960s and 1970s music, specializing in latin soul and jazz, boogaloo, cinematic European jazz, blaxploitation and stuff that just sounds good. She turned me on to a character from the 60s named Charles Wilps and his track “Beautiful Bald Woman”; a selection from Italian composer Piero Piciconi’s soundtrack to the 1969 film “Colpo Rovente”; and some excursions into Serge Gainsbourg’s cult concept album, “Histoire de Melody Nelson.” Peel’s thick accent—along with my daft hearing and the need to keep the speakers low so not to disturb those sleeping in the house—to me was part of the charm. At every music break, I turned the speakers up, trying to penetrate the pronunciation, as if fighting static on the old Hallicrafters S-108.

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Traveling Back to Pine Bush

2009-08-30T21:24:00.002-04:00

TRAVELING BACK TO PINE BUSH

By Wayne Robins

I was listening to Christina Vitale hosting “The Group Harmony Alley” on WFDU (89.1 FM, Sundays 6-9 p.m.), which seemed like a sensible way to end a week dedicated to retracing footsteps from my past. Wednesday night and Thursday we were in Pine Bush, N.Y., up hard and once utterly remote against the Orange County/Ulster County border.

Pine Bush has a claim to interest above and beyond the fact that my grandparents had a summer house there in the 1950s. As far as I know, no East Coast locale has as strong a reputation as a UFO “hot spot.” While it’s not quite Roswell (New Mexico) East, there have been enough sightings to put it on the close encounters map.

I expected that driving into Pine Bush (pop. 1,539 in the 2000 U.S. census), everything would turn black and white, Martin Block and the Make Believe Ballroom would have Dinah Shore singing through static on an AM-only radio. When we got to our motel on Boniface Road—a commercial area on one side of Rte. 52 which at this point is known as Maple Avenue—we saw that this part of Pine Bush had evolved into a suburb, with townhomes, garden apartments, even a few ill-placed McMansions, not to mention strip malls. Our motel, the nicely refurbished Harvest Inn, was directly across the street from the Cup and Saucer Diner, one of the few places in town with both good food and the sense to take full advantage of Pine Bush’s claim to intergalactic iconography: We had both of our meals (dinner and breakfast) there, the other choices being mostly pizza, and pizza, and pizza, with a Chinese and a vegetarian thrown in for variation. One of the pizza joints was noted by the motel. “Joey Tomato’s: I think that’s Italian,” one of the motel employees said with a wry smile.

Looking at a map, I believe I had found my grandparents summer home, which they had sold quite nearly 50 years ago. This was on a relatively undisturbed tiny street dead-ending on the then, to us, unnamed stream which is now listed on maps as the Shawangunk Kill. Somewhat protected from development, Shawangunk Kill has been the subject of considerable study by ecologists from Bard College (one of the many schools I proudly attended) mater); it remains relatively unspoiled and is home to some rare species of both fish and vegetation.

It was purely coincidental that I had rediscovered this childhood idyll on August 27, the second anniversary of the death of my brother David. The airwaves, meanwhile, were full of tributes to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who had just died of brain cancer—as had my brother.

I was beginning to remember the appeal of Pine Bush to both earthlings and aliens, though frankly, I would have liked to have seen more of the latter and fewer of the former. You find the right piece of land and you’re as isolated as you can be from the uproar of daily life. Drive a few blocks, and you find they’ve paved paradise and put up 16 kinds of take out, dry cleaners, dollar stores and exiles who couldn’t afford suburbia anymore but wanted the replicant lifestyle. Among that population, there is always a percentage, small though it may be, that knows there has to be meaningful life elsewhere, and we do what we can to find it.

Meanwhile, in my own backyard while I’m grilling the swordfish bought today in Astoria—where I was born, and where my grandparents lived year round—I stumbled upon Christina Vitale’s doo-wop show. Christina was talking about the Five Royales. (The group which did the original version of “Dedicated to the One I Love” about five years before the Shirelles hit.)

Christina said something about the Five Royales finally getting some respect.
The Five Royales had their peak in 1954-1955, a summer I most likely spent in Pine Bush.

Perhaps something happened there last week after all.

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Is Motown Becoming A Generic Term?

2009-08-23T15:27:00.003-04:00

by Wayne Robins

That's one conclusion to draw from the recent incorrect references to the label founded in Detroit by Berry Gordy and dubbed "The Sound of Young America." Motown produced some of the greatest pop music of the 20th century by the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson and a dozen others. But neither Freda Payne nor the Shirelles were ever Motown acts—in their time, they were almost defiantly not Motown artists, which is why recent references by the New Yorker (to Payne) and the New York Times (the Shirelles) are so disappointing in their cavalier incorrectness. The errors infer a new generation of editors considers Motown to be generic rather than a distinctive brand, the tissue rather than the Kleenex.

In the New Yorker issue dated Aug. 10 & 17, the Goings On About Town Jazz & Standards section took note of an Iridium date by Freda Payne, whom, the item declared, was "best known for the 1970 Motown hit 'Band of Gold.' " Actually, Payne's "Band of Gold" was the breakthrough hit for Invictus Records, the label founded by the production and writing team Holland Dozier Holland, who had fled Motown for a bigger share of their own creative pie.

Meanwhile, the Sunday, Aug. 23 column in the New York Times' Week in Review by the Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, delivers a well-deserved paddle to freelancer Cintra Wilson, whose Critical Shopper column recently mocked J.C. Penney and its customers. The offending column called Penney's goods cheap and its customers fat. "Hateful," "genuinely cruel" and "smug" were some reader comments. Times editor in chief Bill Keller told Hoyt it was "not just bad manners, but bad journalism." Wilson's direct editors missed the disastrous impact the column would have, possibly due to their own smug distance from JC Penney's America, and partly, according to fashion editor Anita LeClerc, because they are used to Wilson's barb-filled style. One example cited by by Hoyt: Wilson's zinger that "a size 14 caftan 'looked like a shower curtain Berry Gordy would have bought for the Shirelles.' "

But there are two factual errors in this brief sentence. One is that the Shirelles, elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, were not large women: check any photo from the early 1960s and you'll see none of them begin to approach a size 14, much less require a shower curtain. The other is that the Shirelles weren't a Motown group either: They recorded all of their dozen hits from 1960-1963 for Scepter Records. And why is Scepter important? Because it's founder and president, Florence Greenberg, was the first woman to run a successful record label in what was then entirely a man's world. Such sloppy work all around. You would think Motown's current owners would defend its trademark with a little more vitality. And that both the New Yorker and the New York Times would stop the condescending assumption that if it came out between 1960 and 1970 by a black woman, it had to be Motown.

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Seeing Blur Clearly Now

2009-08-02T13:31:00.002-04:00

Woke up this morning to more of New York's summer of storms.
Came across free stream of "Midlife: A Beginner's Guide to Blur" on AOL's
Spinner
We used to make fun of Britpop bands like Blur in the 1990s: They sounded like weak English tea to the black coffee of American grunge. But Blur stands up well: the Kinks of their generation, perhaps, unlucky enough to come along at a time when musical Anglophilia in the U.S. was at an all-time low. Time to take another listen.

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hello again

2009-06-09T15:05:00.001-04:00

We are about to restart the blog with upgraded technology: pictures, sounds, perhaps even video. keep watching.
--Wayne

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My Top 10 albums of 2008

2008-12-21T19:29:00.002-05:00

Here is how my 10 best albums list of 2008 played out, as now viewable on Billboard.com.

Wayne Robins Top 10 albums of 2008

1. Malcolm Holcombe, "Gamblin' House" (Echo Mountain). Crafty and handsomely
crafted songs from a wise and wizened North Carolina singer/songwriter.

2. Alejando Escovedo, "Real Animal" (Back Porch/Manhattan). Brilliant and
relentlessly rocking autobiographical survival tales.

3.Waco Brothers, "Waco Express Live & Kickin' at Schuba's Tavern"
(Bloodshot). Bar band bash as progressive political rally.

4. Human Highway, "Moody Motorcycle" (Suicide Squeeze). From doo-wop to
folk-pop, songs of self-discovery from a Canadian duo.

5. John Mellencamp, "Life Death Love and Freedom" (Hear Music). Eloquent
ruminations on all of the above.

6. Randy Newman, "Harps and Angels" (Nonesuch). Mordant and occasionally
hilarious songs about mortality and modern life.

7. Loved Ones, "Build and Burn" (Fat Wreck Chords). Blue-collar Philly rock
band moves from punk to Springsteen, rage to hope.

8."The Ugly Suit" (Quarterstick). Psych meets prog, rendered with not quite
naive wonderment by young Oklahoma band.

9. "Vampire Weekend" (XL). Winsome suburban collegiate rock/Afro-pop buoyed
by its blend of sincerity and irony.

10. Lucinda Williams, "Little Honey" (Lost Highway). No drama, just
low-maintenance, high-quality rocking.

Today's Worst Press Release

2008-09-10T23:23:00.001-04:00

"If you are in South America this month, be sure to see Vic Chesnutt and Elf Power performing together live on their nine-day tour of Spain."

Ah, Spain: Isn't that somewhere between Bolivia and Tilapia?

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Wayne on WFUV's Mixed Bag June 7, 6 PM

2008-06-04T20:42:00.001-04:00

Wayne Robins will be the guest of the legendary Pete Fornatale this Saturday, June 7 on Pete's forever-young Mixed Bag show on 90.7FM/WFUV. We'll be discussing "A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record," and of course playing music from the early days of rock from about 6 PM. (The show starts at 4 PM). Lend an ear!
--Wayne

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2008-04-16T15:15:00.002-04:00

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette> endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president.

So did
Bruce Springsteen

My MySpace Hobby

2008-04-16T14:07:00.004-04:00

I got distracted by a MySpace page that my friends in the band Renmibi helped me set up for my book,
"A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record." It's been an interesting distraction—a little mini-hobby—that has allowed me to connect or reconnect with some real friends and acquaintances and give some "friend" space to acts I like. Just before the Rolling Stones concert movie "Shine A Light" opened, the MySpace home page flashed an offer hard to resist: Martin Scorsese wants to be your friend. So I sent one of my favorite directors an invitation, and of course, Marty has been one of my top friends ever since!

I was so distracted that I neglected to even post a happy anniversary to this blog, which was 6-years-old at the end of March.

While I adjust the protocols to link to the book's page, you can visit it at:
http://www.myspace.com/briefhistoryofrock

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IBS Convention special edition

2008-03-09T13:29:00.000-04:00

We had a great time at the "Audience With...Wayne Robins" at the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System's convention March 8 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan. My friend Norm Prusslin, IBS president and convention chair, hosted the one-hour informal conversation. Among those who attended were people from Goucher Student Radio at Goucher College in Towson, Md., WTHS/Hope College in Holland, Mich., WCPR/Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., and WUSB/State University of New York at Stony Brook. Before and after the presentation, we were also delighted to meet some radio personalities we've long admired and enjoyed, such as Claudia Marshall of WFUV, "Broadway" Bill Lee of WCBS-FM and Jerry Schaefer, who hosts the "Graveyard Blues" show Sundays from 8 p.m.-10 p.m., beaming and streaming on Long Island's 103.9 WRCN. We also met one of the guys from the band Holler, Wild Rose, who came up at the end of the session to give me a copy of their album, "Our Little Hymnal," a record I've had and enjoyed for a number of weeks.—Wayne Robins

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Waco review on eMusic

2008-03-06T21:31:00.003-05:00

My review of the Waco Brothers' "Waco Express: Live and Kickin' at Schubas Tavern, Chicago" is the review of the day (March 6) on
eMusic.

I also got a note from Dave of the Loved Ones. He thought the post here about "Build and Burn" was "rad."

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We are the World Japan imitation

2008-03-05T20:57:00.003-05:00

We usually don't do referrals to YouTube weirdness, but this one sent to me by longtime sidekick TV Tom is too astounding to pass by.

We Are the Worldimitators on Japanese TV. Check out the "Norbit"-like Stevie Wonder, the bogus but credible Cyndi Lauper, the incredibly facetious Lionel Richie clone, the strange Michael Jackson wannabe (how would one know?)...A Tina Turner right out of MAD TV, grotesque Billy Joel and Ray Charles caricatures...What's not to like?

By the way, we now have a MySpace page for the book "A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record."
http://www.myspace.com/briefhistoryofrock

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Loving The Loved Ones

2008-03-03T21:55:00.003-05:00

by Wayne Robins

Bristling, exciting, and passionate, the new CD by the Loved Ones (Fat Wreck Chords) has been the fast, loud, proud choice on my music players the last few weeks. "Build and Burn," the Philadelphia band's new album, jumped into my hands when I saw a song on it called "The Inquirer." Once one of the great newspapers in the world, the Philadelphia Inquirer, like many other papers I've loved, has had its struggles, spiritual as well as economic. The excellence in its institutional soul has been victimized by declining circulation, loss of advertising to the Internet, bad-to-worse ownership and bottom-line budget slashes that would shame Jack the Ripper.

"Is the writing on the wall? It's getting harder to read it these days," singer/guitarist Dave Hause sings in the opening lines of "The Inquirer." One of the themes of "Build and Burn," has to do with this country's decaying infrastructure, the collapse of community in working class, and the loss of faith in institutions. Newspapers have always been an essential element of that societal infrastructure and were once the most reliable of institutions.

In an interview with Crawdaddy
at the Wolfgang's Vault Web site, Hause doesn't mention the newspaper. He says
“The Inquirer” is one of the more explictly political songs on the album, as it "calls into question the climate of fear in America that is cultivated in order to control folks and keep them in line." (In the same article, he talks about finding inspiration in the Barack Obama campaign.)

But the questions keep coming in "The Inquirer": "Is their truth not adding up? Is it getting harder ot not criticize what we justify? Are you terrified?" That last word fades into a great punk rock primal scream: Terrified? "Yesssss!"

"Build & Burn" is full of questions. "If I say 'it's alright...' do you believe it, or know that I'm lying?," the singer asks in the midtempo "Selfish Masquerade." In "3rd Shift," a lament about the needle and the damage done, "he could clean up but why start now?" And in "Dear Laura," a letter to the President Bush's wife, he wonders what she thinks about during these last 7 years. "I wonder if she prays for every family torn apart...will you eat our bleeding hearts?"

Even the band's freshened musical approach begets a question. Apparently, the Loved Ones were once an orthodox punk band. This expansive, rich, driving, melodic and uplifting music might not be what core fans were expecting. "Will this overture seem dull to all my friends?" they wonder in the opening song, "Pretty Good Year."

What makes the Loved Ones special is that they let the music provide whatever answers are in their grasp. The core of the group consists of Hause, guitarist Dave Walsh, bassist Christopher Gonzalez and drummer Mike Sneeringer, with lots of extra guitars, keyboard instruments and vocals added in, providing depth and richness of texture.

Familiar touchstones range from Husker Du and Green Day to Bruce Springsteen. Reflecting the latter, "Louisiana" stands apart, a hard rock theme for Habitat for Humanity: a punk anthem about rebuilding and hope, around the image of "pounding nails," filtered through the Guthrie/Springsteen prism. This is a band not afraid to look at its world and its own creative purpose in new and courageous ways. Sincerity and excitement are not mutually exclusive concepts, though it is tough to find them so comfortably carried by any young band. The Loved Ones could be one of the great ones.

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Wayne at IBS Convention March 8

2008-03-02T19:50:00.001-05:00

Intercollegiate Broadcasting System annual convention
Saturday, March 8, Hotel Pennsylvania, New York

1:30-2:30 PM

An Audience with…Wayne Robins, Author of “A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record” (Zurich)

Wayne Robins is the author of “A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record,” tracing the history of rock from its beginnings in the 50s, through the disco and punk revolutions, to the rise of hip-hop culture. Wayne has written for the likes of Rolling Stone and The Village Voice, has taught journalism at NYU, and is now a copy editor for Billboard and Radio & Records. We welcome Wayne Robins to Convention ’08.

Wayne Robins

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Hannah and Miley: Best of Both Worlds in 3-D

2008-02-20T18:01:00.003-05:00

by Wayne Robins

Last weekend J and I went to see "Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds"
concert in the local multiplex. It was my idea. As she was getting dressed, J, who is
13, asked if anything else was playing. I told her it didn't matter: I wasn't interested in any other movie. I wanted to see Hannah/Miley.

And I wasn't disappointed. The movie represents the pinnacle of
digital 3-D in movies. There really hadn't been much progress in the field between William Castle's "13 Ghosts," (1960) one of my childhood favorite horror movies, and the disappointing "Spy Kids 3: Game Over" (2003). The "Hannah" concert movie takes 3-D to a new level (I haven't seen the U2 concert film yet). It brings you to the foot of the stage and to the faces of the musicians, yet offers a relaxed perspective. A guitarist tosses a pick and you instinctively reach out to grab it; a drummer twirls his sticks in the air and you think you might get poked
in the eye before you watch the stick's smooth descent back into his hands.

I found the music first-rate, or at least well-played and well-rehearsed and preferred the first half of the concert ("Hannah's" music) to the slightly more rote Miley teen-rock.
J. said later she could have gone for
more backstage or documentary presentation, and I agreed with her. The rehearsals featuring master choreographer Kenny Ortega are especially
rich and rewarding: I could watch a whole movie of Ortega bringing the star,
band and dancers up to speed. (Kicking and catching a guitar stand while counting
time is not as easy as it looks).

Is this the future of live musical entertainment? I sort of hope so. After 30 years of attending rock concerts as my business, I am much more comfortable with 3D and state of the art sound in the local mall theater rather than actually having to deal
with the crowds, noise, parking, lousy seats and drop dead insane prices of arena concert tickets.

As a sidelight, I identified with Miley's dad Billy Ray Cyrus, who had a huge country and pop hit in 1992 with "Achy Breaky Heart" before disappearing from the charts. Ten years ago I was in Nashville in the office of Luke Lewis, then president of Mercury Records Nashville, interviewing him for a book-length history of Mercury Records that Danny Goldberg commissioned me to write. Towards the end of the interview, I offered Lewis my sure thing to the return Cyrus to the top of the charts.

"I've got three words for Billy Ray's next hit," I told Lewis. "Polk. Salad. Annie." The 1969 Tony Joe White hit that had become a staple of
Elvis Presley's live show seemed to me to be low-hanging fruit, a tune Cyrus could cover that even brain dead country radio would embrace. It didn't happen, but it is nice to know that failure to dent the charts again was not the end of Billy Ray Cyrus' story. In some ways, it was just the beginning.

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Depressing News: No Depression To Cease Publication

2008-02-19T12:46:00.005-05:00

by Wayne Robins

It is a sad day for music and for magazines, and a terrible day for those who love well-written music magazines: After 13 years, No Depression is going out of business. What should have been a celebratory gala 75th issue, the May-June 2008 issue, will be its last.

No Depression, for the uninitiated, originally used the slogan "alt-country . . . whatever that is." (It took its name from the title of Uncle Tupelo's debut album.) It cast its net wider than that, but it remained essential for anyone interested in the American indies roots music scene.

The news is already up on the
No Depression Web site.

In a letter on the page 2 "Hello Stranger" column of the March-April 2008, which will hit mailboxes and stores any day now, publishers Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock (the mag's co-founders) and Kyla Fairchild write, in part:

"The circumstances are both complicated and painfully simple. The simple answer is that advertising revenue in this issue is 64% of what it was for our March-April issue just two years ago. We expect that number to continue to decline...

"Because we’re a niche title we are dependent upon advertisers who have a specific reason to reach our audience. That is: record labels. We, like many of our friends and competitors, are dependent upon advertising from the community we serve...

"That community is, as they say, in transition. In this evolving downloadable world, what a record label is and does is all up to question. What is irrefutable is that their advertising budgets are drastically reduced, for reasons we well understand...

"The decline of brick and mortar music retail means we have fewer newsstands on which to sell our magazine, and small labels have fewer venues that might embrace and hand-sell their music. Ditto for independent bookstores. Paper manufacturers have consolidated and begun closing mills to cut production; we’ve been told to expect three price increases in 2008. Last year there was a shift in postal regulations, written by and for big publishers, which shifted costs down to smaller publishers whose economies of scale are unable to take advantage of advanced sorting techniques.

"Then there’s the economy…"

I reviewed CDs with some regularity for No Depression circa 2001-2003. In fact, when I took a hiatus from contributing, I really missed it, so I dropped Grant Alden a note. I wrote about it
four years ago (see archives: Jan. 4, 2004), describing it as "the only music magazine I know done with spunk, spirit, and style..."

These are hard times. Living without No Depression in this new depression will be that much harder.

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Return engagement on North Carolina's WNCW

2008-02-08T11:36:00.000-05:00

You can listen to Wayne talking Grammy Award history with senior producer Kim Clark in segments throughout the day today on noncommercial WNCW heard on the radio throughout western North Carolina (88.7 FM) and nearby states, or via live stream on the Internet.

The Jan. 17 program I did with Kim discussing "A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record" and the POPAsheville music festival is now online as a podcast using this link.
http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/525/510039/18797772/WNCW_18797772.mp3

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2008-02-04T14:19:00.000-05:00

I'm always amused by critic's polls and the commentary they generate; they make for distracting water cooler conversation in a world bereft of water cooler conversation. (In my own slice of corporate America, I have been marching through the aisles of cubicles hoping for any post-Super Bowl chatter so I can raise my arms in a "touchdown" gesture and say, "Go Giants!"

Though the Village Voice music section ain't what it used to when Robert Christgau and Chuck Eddy ruled those pages with bravado, wit and a rigorous analytical depth, there were a few good articles in the wrap up of the
Village Voice 2007 Pazz & Jop critic's poll. Christopher R. Weingarten's main piece gave a better understanding of the unexpected (to me) album victory of LCD Soundsystem's "Sound of Silver." Weingarten's piece noted an unsatiated craving for authentic rock stars in the "Guitar Heroes III" era. It's not rock stars I crave, of course, just a couple of artists who can shred a Chuck Berry riff without embarassment or irony. Two think pieces featuring M.I.A.—one of which referred to her single "Paper Planes" as "dissertation-ready"—made me glad I don't have to grade said disserations.

The hit essay was Amy Linden's lament for Amy Winehouse, which represented the best tradition of Village Voice music writing: Linden has been an up close and personal eyewitness to drunken soul sister's artistic accomplishment and obsessive self-menace, and manages the difficult trick of striking the right tone between passionate engagement and critical detachment.

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Going to PopAsheville

2008-01-16T13:50:00.000-05:00

This weekend I will be at POPAsheville
in Asheville, N.C., appearing on a music business panel Sunday from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. As the "pop" part of the name suggests, this isn't a country, bluegrass or old-timey mountain music fest, but a two-night (Jan. 19-20), three-club showcase for more than 30 of western North Carolina's accomplished alt-rock acts, many of which can be heard streamed on the POPAsheville MySpace page. In advance of the fest, I taped an interview to discuss my book, "A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record" with the very sharp Kim Clark of regional public radio station 88.7/WNCW, with frequencies in Boone (92.3), Greenville (97.3) and Charlotte (97.3). The interview should air locally Thursday, Kim says. I should have podcast info then, as well.

FINDS: Holger Czukay's "Good Morning Story" (Tone Casualties, 1999). This is the Can man's eighth of 13 solo CD's, recorded in his home studio between 1991-1999. Some tracks feature guest appearances by other members of Can, the most original and entertaining "krautrock" band ever. The album moves from relatively cohesive songs with spoken word to the 22:30 sound collage, "Mirage," at the end. I've been listening to this on my extended commuter bus rides. What I like about "Good Morning Story" so far is that it draws in everything audible outside the headphones—road bumps, highway noises, bus engine grind, nearby cell phone conversations—and gives it a musical, or at least compositional context. It makes order, even creates sweetness, out of otherwise annoying sounds: Found music to the max.

--Wayne Robins

If the blog link is down, try http://www.myspace.com/popasheville

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For the Defense: LSU's Bandits

2008-01-05T15:36:00.000-05:00

by Wayne Robins

On Monday night at the Superdome, when the LSU defense stops the Ohio State offense on a fourth and goal, the Tigers' band is likely to play a song—little more than a riff, actually—known as the "Chinese Bandit" theme. The tune is named after the second string but deadly effective defensive unit of the 1958 national championship LSU team, one of three platoons (the others were the White team, the starting unit that played both offense and defense, and the Go, or Gold team, the second string offense) deployed by visionary coach Paul Dietzel, who had the idea of using different squads in the same game to keep the players fresh. It was Dietzel who dubbed the defensive specialists the Chinese Bandits, after some exceptionally tough desperadoes in the "Terry & the Pirates" comic strip.

Chinese Bandits' lore is one of the spiritual foundations of those of us who are LSU football fans. But few are probably aware of a regional rock'n'roll song called "Chinese Bandits," by the Cheer Leaders, a tune brought to my attention by a Memphis law professor who, ironically, attended the University of Arkansas, one of the teams that handed LSU one of its two triple overtime defeats this year.

"At the time the song came out, I was a high school senior in Hot Springs, Arkansas and WKNO [New Orleans] was our favorite late night radio station," my correspondent e-mailed me last month. "After writing you, I spent a good bit of time on web sites with song lyrics trying to find the 'Chinese Bandits' song but with no success."

Even with my deep collection of 1950s-1960s New Orleans and Louisiana music, I had never heard of the song. But it just happens that my compadre Steven Ward of Baton Rouge knew the tune we were talking about. You can find it and buy a digital single for 89 cents on Amazon.com; I was also able to download a copy from eMusic, as "Chinese Bandits," by the Cheer Leaders, appears on an anthology called the Best of Spinnett Records. Hard copies of the Spinnett CD are available from Night Train International, a division of R&B specialists Tuff City Records.

The song was released in 1960; It's 2 minutes and 3 seconds of rolling New Orleans rock'n'roll piano with lyrics that concisely pays tribute to the aggressive defenders: "Chinese bandits they can knock/Gonna stop a touchdown/chop chop." According to the Rockabilly Europe Web bio of New Orleans rocker Jerry Byrne (said to be a cousin of Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack), he was one of the Cheer Leaders, as was Rebennack, Huey Piano Smith and Frankie Ford—an all-star effort worthy of the similarly talent-rich LSU Tigers of 1958-1959.

Ford, of "Sea Cruise" fame, is most likely the featured vocalist. The B-side, "True Love," is also available, but before purchasing and downloading either Cheer Leaders' track, I recommend playing the free audio sample: on both Amazon and eMusic, there is a second file also identified as "Chinese Bandits" that is mislabeled; the second song sounds like an early Aaron Neville ballad, title uncertain. Not bad, but if you're an LSU fan, it ain't the Cheer Leaders. Geaux Tigers.

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2007-12-26T17:48:00.000-05:00

In which I am interviewed by Italy's Bob Marley magazine

Last week I received an e-mail from Marco Virgona, proprietor of a comprehensive Bob Marley magazine based in Italy. Marco said he had heard I was at the deservedly legendary weekend at Max's Kansas City in New York in 1973, a weekend that featured the double-bill of two almost unknown acts: Bob Marley & the Wailers, and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. He also asked me if I ever met Marley, and if I had any anecdotes to share. Yes, I was at the Marley/Springsteen shows, and yes, I had interviewed Marley and had an anecdote to share, one in which Marley lights a spliff and offers his interrogator a toke. What happens next? You can read all about it on Marco's site, along with the fairly recent photo of me culled from my Rock's Back Pages bio and a nice plug for my book, "A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record." Just scroll down and look to the left side of the homepage.
—Wayne Robins

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Donald Fagen, the Devil and Ike Turner

2007-12-21T14:49:00.000-05:00

by Wayne Robins

Donald Fagen of Steely Dan wrote a savvy tribute to the late Ike Turner for
Slate Dec. 17. Fagen's appreciation draws parallels between Turner's music and life and the legend of Robert Johnson's deal with the devil at the crossroads of Highway 61 and Highway 49 at Clarksdale, Miss., which happens to be the native territory of Turner (as well as that of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Sam Cooke). It is good to see that Fagen continues to make use of the literary education he received at Bard College: It's not every musician who can conclude a Faustian tale with a long quote from Goethe.

Ike Turner figured in my brief Bard education as well. (Had I paid more attention to Goethe than Ike Turner, or to Proust rather than Kerouac, perhaps I would have lingered longer at Bard). My friends and I made good use of the thrift shops and department store record sales in Kingston across the river from Annandale-on-Hudson. I probably paid a nickel apiece for a spindlefull of Ike and Tina Turner singles on Sue, the label for which they made their most immortal recordings, affectionately and astutely described by Fagen: "I love all those early records Ike worked up for Tina and the Ikettes: "A Fool in Love," "I Idolize You," "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine," and so on. Ike's concept (really a more raw and countrified version of Ray Charles' act) was simple: The band plays tight; Tina goes berserk."

In addition to the singles, I recall a sale at a department store which was divesting its record department; I brought back to Potter Hall treasured, already out-of-print Sue albums on which these hits (most from 1960-1962) were featured. Because Ike was producer/arranger/composer/bandleader/guitarist and general all-around genius control freak, these Sue albums—unlike every R&B album of the era, except for those made in New Orleans—were noteworthy for their absence of filler.

Of course, those records were a highly condensed, remarkably dynamic approximations of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, which I can remember seeing twice. The first time was October 1969, when they opened the Rolling Stones show at Oakland (Calif.) Coliseum, along with B.B. King and Terry Reid. That concert was the subject of my first paid gig as a rock critic: My gonzo review of the event was published in the Berkeley Barb, for which I was paid 50 cents a column inch. At 28 inches, I made $14, on which I could eat for a week in the Mission District of San Francisco, where I was laying low on my academically enforced sabbatical from Bard. The next time I saw them was at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, where that $14 may have purchased an appetizer. I reviewed the show early in my Newsday career (circa 1977), and experienced a modicum of writer's block trying to phone in a review by midnight for a show that ended after 11 PM. Near panic, I felt as lost as if I'd been looking for the Waldorf in Astoria, Queens...which is what I wrote, which broke down the wall, which led to a serviceable, if hardly memorable, review phoned in hardly an hour past deadline.

A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record
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2007-12-20T12:39:00.000-05:00

My ten best albums of the year along with pithy commentary is now posted at
"Billboard.com

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Metacritic Surprise

2007-12-17T16:26:00.000-05:00

Some controversy over at Metacritic as "Untrue," by Burial, tops the list of the 30 Best Reviewed Albums of the Year. The album, by what Metacritic describes as a "London-based anonymous dubstep artist," is No. 1 with its average score of 91 (out of 100). Readers note that the statistical sample (13 reviews) may have been a little too small for a reliable measure. Also tilting the result: scores of 100 given by The Guardian, Tiny Mix Tapes and musicOMH.com, with the next highest scores rating "only" 90, as bestowed by five critics, including the Observer Music Monthly, Drowned in Sound and PopMatters. My take is that scores of 100 are suspect: My highest numerical grade for any album, book or movie would peak at around 98; a score of 100, to me, should be a place holder for unattainable perfection.
Metacritic users rank the album as only a 7.8 out of ten...in other words, they give it a 78, based on 110 user votes. Over at eMusic, the listener comments are completely polarized, with one member writing, "This is by far the worst thing I've ever bought on emusic that was also receiving rave reviews from its advocates," while another declared it "just fantastic...album of the year." I'm intrigued enough to use some of my December emusic credits to buy a few tracks; if I do, I will report back.

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2007-12-14T15:20:00.000-05:00

My new book A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record
got a nice mention in the Nov. 21, 2007 issue of East Bay Express, the alt-weekly that covers Berkeley, Oakland and other parts of Alameda and Contra Costa counties in Northern California. "Why dance to music when you can read about it in Wayne Robins' A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record (Routledge, $24.95)," writes Anneli Rufus in her witty gift-guide that doubles as an impassioned defense of the viability of reading and books. (Title of the column: "Hark, the Superheroes Sing
Give and get books this year — before it's too late.) Thanks, Anneli!

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2007-12-09T20:49:00.000-05:00

A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record

The Fader At 50

2007-12-09T20:36:00.000-05:00

by Wayne Robins

That's 50 issues, being celebrated this month by the culture magazine with 360-degree vision and unwavering dedication to pursuing interesting music/arts/photography to the most distant reaches of the globe and the most impenetrable niches of the closest cities. Few magazines have such a thin filter between the passions of the editors and what appears in the magazine. Avant-garde theater people in the '60s spoke of breaking down the fourth wall between performer and audience. The Fader (started in 1998 as a quarterly, it now publishes eight issues a year in the U.S. and six in Japan) routinely erases the wall between editor/writer/photographer/designer and reader. Put another way, they are what they cover, or at least create that damn strong impression. It is the mission, editor in chief Alex Wagner said in a statement, "to cover emerging artists and communities that are changing and redirecting culture." And they do. Wagner is a regular on my annual list of the 50 Most Fascinating People; if Wayne's Words had a stash of discretionary cash, and there was a charity auction in which the prize was dinner with Wagner, I'd bid pretty high.

Though fashion, the visual arts and the sand trap called lifestyle imbue every issue, music is the medium that gives Fader its rootedness. They got in early on Atlanta hip-hop, New York rock 2000, the explosive M.I.A. and related (however distant) forms of subcontinental subculture. The A to Z retrospective in issue 50 begins with Afrobeat, Akon and Animal Collective and ends, wittily, with Zzzzz: "Artists we love that the world has been sleeping on," including Yummy Bingham, the Skygreen Leopards, White Magic, David Vandervelde, Ugly Casanova and Trae, about the latter of whom I will have to defer to the Fader's judgment.

But that's OK. I find Fader's hipper-than-thou quotient liberatingly low. Thumbing through an issue of the Fader is like having a conversation with some culturally adventurous, enthusiastic acquaintances who can't wait to turn you on to whatever it is that gets their motor running. The attitude is, hey, this DJ/band/scene is pretty cool, and you might want to check it out.

Despite the focus on what's going to be heard on next month's mixtapes, the magazine is wise enough—hip enough, in my eyes—to embrace the historical predecessors of today's musical trends. In the 50th issue's Vinyl Archaeology section, props are given not just to 1981 post-punk South Bronx rhythm savants ESG, but to Can's "Ege Bamyasi" and Caetano Veloso's "Transa" (both 1972), the underrated and eternally swinging Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band (1976), and two classics from the never-to-be-matched again Warner/Reprise catalog: Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" and Paul Simon's "Graceland." In other words, they make this boomer feel welcome at their party, and a lively party it is. So I wish the Fader happy 50th with a quote from my man Chuck Prophet, who in 2004's album "Age of Miracles" reposed the eternal question and then answered it: "Who put the bomp in the bomp shoobee doobie bomp, who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong? You did."

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Paul Wasserman, Press Agent and Friend

2007-11-24T16:24:00.000-05:00

by Wayne Robins

Paul Wasserman, the erudite press representative to a long roster of rock and movie stars, died in Los Angeles at age 73, according to an obituary in the New York Times. Wasso, as he was universally known, was an anomaly among PR people, in that he not only used writers to garner ink for his clients: He nurtured writers, and I was one of them.

I met Wasso in the early 1970s while I was living in New York and freelancing mostly for Creem and the Village Voice. The L.A.-based Wasso came to town to bring a handful of writers up to West Point to see James Taylor perform at the United States Military Academy. The Vietnam War was still on, and longhairs like Taylor were in short supply at West Point. The event had a built-in human interest angle, and I wrote a short piece for Creem about it.

It was well after midnight when the limo returned us to Manhattan, and neither Wasso nor I had eaten. We went to Broadway's Carnegie Deli. At one point, we heard a man near the cash register shouting "Robber! Thief!" It was comedian Henny Youngman, gesturing at his bill.

Not long after, in late 1975, I became the pop music writer for Newsday. While other press agents placed a Manhattan premium on exposure for their artists (New York Newsday did not emerge until 1985), Wasso knew that Newsday's then substantial circulation (circa 550,000), affluent Long Island readership and ownership by Times Mirror (then publisher of the Los Angeles Times) was beneficial to his clients. Until I gave up the music beat in 1994, Wasso and I had a mutual appreciation society, and without him, it is unlikely that I or my paper would have gotten priority access to the Rolling Stones, U2, Linda Ronstadt, Jack Nicholson, the Who, Tom Petty and many other stars at the pinnacle of show business.

I never had to pitch him: He would just call me up. Did I want to come to Toronto to interview Ronstadt? To Los Angeles, when Keith Richard was launching a solo album, or U2 was finishing the editing on the film "Rattle & Hum"? To Birmingham, Ala., to see the Stones' "Steel Wheels" tour before it got to New York? (Newsday, of course, paid for all the travels.)

Being friendly with Wasso occasionally allowed me to mystify my editors with a celebrity interview coup. Jack Nicholson was spending some time in Boston, attending the NBA finals between the Celtics and the Lakers. There was a gap between games, Wasso told me on the phone, and Nicholson had some free time. Did I want to get together with Nicholson in New York in a day or so? The film company rushed a screening of "Prizzi's Honor" for me. Since movies weren't ordinarily my beat, I called my editor and asked if we were interested in a Nicholson feature. There was a brief silence on the line. One of our movie writers had already requested a Nicholson interview and been rebuffed by the film company's PR people. When asked where I got the clout to land Nicholson on my own, I just smiled.

"Prizzi's Honor" remains my favorite mob farce, but at the time, Nicholson was anxious about its appeal. In the interview, he recounted for me a conversation he had on the set with director John Huston. Nicholson was not yet comfortable in his role as the dim mobster Charley Partana. "People are going to laugh at this scene," Nicholson complained to Huston. The director put his bearish arm around Nicholson and said, "that's alright Jack. It's a comedy."

Unfortunately, Wasso's private life wasn't always that humorous, and in 2000, according to the Times, he was arrested and later sentenced to 6 months in jail and $87,000 in restitution for defrauding investors—using the names of some of his celebrated clients—in a phony financial scheme. A recovering alcoholic for many years, I am told that Wasso helped a number of fellow inmates get sober during his incarceration. That he would do his time in a constructive and positive manner was no surprise to me at all: Without his friendship and generosity, my career would not have been as successful as it has been. For that relationship with Paul Wasserman, I will always have gratitude.

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Movies Rock, the Magazine

2007-11-22T11:02:00.000-05:00

by Wayne Robins

This month 14 Condé Nast magazine's are going out to subscribers bundled with a supplement called Movies Rock, a stand-alone publication with a great cover shot of Bill Murray posing as Elvis, complete with "mutton-chopped equipped wig." The editor of the supplement is Mitch Glazer, who couldn't be a better fit for such a task. Mitch was an editor at Crawdaddy in the late 1970s and a regular writer for that magazine and Rolling Stone before Hollywood beckoned; he has been a screenwriter and producer for many years. One of the more fascinating vignettes in Movies Rock is a description of a meeting between Glazer, Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger at New York's Carlyle Hotel to discuss a Rolling Stones concert movie. Jagger sauntered into the room and sat down opposite Scorsese, Glazer and producer Steve Bing, who were in preassigned seats. Glazer writes, "I can't help but notice that Scorsese and I are staring into a blinding sunset...(Jagger's) face is completely in shadow, a total eclipse of the Mick." In the elevator just moments later, the three seem stunned, not the least Scorsese. This Oscar-winning filmmaker, after all, is a man of no small rank in the realms of movies and music, auteur of gangster epics from "Mean Streets" to "Goodfellas" and "Casino," all expertly punctuated by rock'n'roll, not to mention director of masterful music films from "The Last Waltz" to "Bob Dylan: No Direction Home." Jagger's Godfather-like control left Scorsese wondering aloud to Glazer and Bing: "Could you see his face? I couldn't see his face. Was he happy? Sad? Did he hate us? Could you tell? I don't know. I couldn't tell. I have no idea." It must have gone OK: The Scorsese-directed "Shine A Light," which was filmed at New York's Beacon Theater in fall 2006, will be released in 2008.

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Wayne in the LI Press

2007-11-06T12:11:00.000-05:00

A story about me and my new book, "A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record" is in the current issue of Long Island Press, the alt-weekly. Scroll down to the A&E section and click on the story.

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Order, Order

2007-11-03T11:07:00.000-04:00

by Wayne Robins

I recently reinstated my eMusic membership: 30 tracks for $9.99, (plus a generous re-signing bonus). Legal, playable in all formats and burnable for those of us who still find our comfort zone in compact discs, what eMusic lacks in major label offerings is less a drawback than it is its purpose: It's a specialty online record store on which one can pleasurably spend hours browsing more than 2 million or so indie tracks. My first new purchase was "Soap and Water" (Yep Roc) by my longtime favorite
Chuck Prophet.

Right here I would write about "Soap and Water," and I will later. But a glitch occurred in transferring the songs from the eMusic player to my iTunes library to the blank disc on which I burned the album: Some songs got out of sequence. So the disc I burned and to which I have been listening for the last few days starts with songs 10-12: "Naked Ray," "Downtime" and "Happy Ending." Then the album's intended opening track, "Freckle Song," is up fourth, and the rest of the sequence continues uninterrupted.

This may not be a big deal to those raised or satisfied with the randomness of the iPod shuffle. But those of us who still believe in the sanctity of the album—that is, the album as the primary construction of a recording artist's art—it is a real faux pas. The sequencing of an album is as crucial as the order of chapters in a book. It is unlikely that Prophet randomly chose to begin with "Freckle Song" instead of "Naked Ray," and implausible that concluding "Soap and Water" with a song called "Happy Ending" was not a conscious artistic choice. So now I will go back and re-burn my purchased tracks in the order the artist intended. Otherwise, he could have called the album "Water and Soap."

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Nuggets of Goldfrapp

2007-10-31T15:30:00.000-04:00

"THE MOVE MUSIC FESTIVAL"

by Wayne Robins

I was channel surfing through the cable TV afternoon dead zone, figuring I would find an offbeat horror film suitable for one who still has his Zacherley-issued Transylvania passport. Instead I found myself amused by a concert film on Showtime's Family Zone, "The Move Music Festival," featuring performances gleaned from a four-day event in Manchester, England in summer 2004.

Each band in the film did a maximum two songs, including the headliner and hometown hero Morrissey ("Irish Blood, English Heart" and "Every Day is Like Sunday"). The attendance seemed sparse for many of the performers (Beta Band, Ordinary Boys, Tim Booth), but for Morrissey, it was people packed to the horizon of a flat earth, a mass of humanity similar to that of photographs I've seen of Shakira performing before zillions in Mexico City's main zocalo.

The concert had some historic resonant moments, as both the reunited Pixies and the reconstituted New York Dolls performed. The Pixies didn't seem sharp at first: During "Here Comes Your Man," they seemed to be having trouble hearing each other, and what they might have heard was Frank Black's guitar sounding way out of tune. "Where is My Mind?" was tighter, augmented by a fog machine that had the effect of putting Manchester into its more familiar frame as dusk approached on an unusually sunny afternoon. The Dolls' ("Jet Boy," "Personality Crisis") ramshackle sons-of-the-Stones sound seemed to the blasé audience a curious museum exhibit. One wondered if they had followed the flatlining shoegazers Elbow in real time, or whether the juxtaposition of the two bands was shock therapy film editing.

The Cure seemed disoriented in the sunlight as well, and though they played "End of the World" and "In Between Days" competently, neither the band nor the cheerful-looking, clean-cut audience seemed to have any great stake in the performance. One did feel some sympathy for Cure leader Robert Smith, after all these decades most likely still requiring hours before the show to render every strand of his assiduously messy mop into the right wrong place.

But the biggest surprise for me was the band that provided the bait for me to keep watching the movie when I first turned it on. The group seemed to have about eight different keyboards of various shapes and design, a bass player with a porkpie hat who looked like a young John Doe of X and two females, one of whom reminded me of a young version of Exene Cervenka of X, L.A.'s greatest band between the Doors and Guns 'N Roses. The main singer was glamorous in that obvious, show-bizzy way, yet showed substance beneath, or rather over, the bloomers she wore. The band also employed an electronic theremin, and maintained a steady groove, combining Sonny & Cher's "The Beat Goes On" and Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky." By the time the band's second song ("Strict Machine") and name flashed on the screen, I was feeling a little bewildered: This is was Goldfrapp but they were much too good to be Goldfrapp. Or had I been misinformed?

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Summer 2007: Death in Boca, Sounds of Spoon

2007-10-28T12:08:00.000-04:00

A Death in Boca, Adventures with Spoon and Other Tales from Summer 2007

by Wayne Robins

It was not the most felicitious of summers in the world of Wayne's Words. But let's start with the good stuff. My book, "A Brief History of Rock, Off the Record," finally came out, published by Routledge. So far, the only review I've seen has been from the influential book industry resource Kirkus Reviews, and it was a rave. You can read the review (and buy the book) at Amazon.com. Despite a few glitches caused by our decision to change the title and the cover fairly late in the production process, the modest first print run sold out, and as of the week of Oct. 15, which I am calling the "relaunch," books should be back in the pipeline. Visiting the company's facilities in Boca Raton, Fla., a week or so ago, I had a nice lunch with sales poobah Dennis Weiss and marketing whiz Evelyn Elias. They provided a welcome contrast to the daunting and depressing family issues that have placed this New Yorker for so many weeks in South Florida this year.

My brother David Robins died August 25 at his home in Boca after a long valiant fight against brain cancer. He was 54, my baby brother and only sibling. As recently as May he was chipper and functioning well enough to pick me up when I landed at West Palm Beach airport. By the time of my mid-July visit, however, he had lost his mobility and balance. Around August 12, his wife Marni called and said to come down for what was to be a final visit. I immediately ordered my brother a few collections of Three Stooges DVD boxed sets, which arrived when I did a few days later.

I found myself staying in a nearby hotel for the next 9 days, the toughest part of which was, no music. So I went to a Best Buy and bought a $30 boom box and a copy of Spoon's then-new "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" (with a second Best Buy-online bonus disc.) Spoon was my psyche-up music for the week and a half before my brother died. "Don't Make Me A Target" kept the adrenaline flowing...of course, since then, it's been difficult to listen to, as does so much music that has powerful associations with my brother. I was also spending time with Spoon's outstanding 2005 album, "Gimme Fiction," with a title song that to me sounds like a refracted mirror image of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth." My favorite song from "Gimme Fiction"—in fact, my favorite Spoon song—is "The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine," an exciting, enigmatic track that I really wanted to play for my brother as he lay in the hospice bed in his bedroom at home in the days before he died. He was already pretty much comatose, and I wondered if it would elicit any kind of response—eye blinks, lip movement, whatever. I never got around to doing it, which actually is a very small regret indeed. And if I had, I would probably have never been able to listen to the song again. As it is, it has been months, and will be many more months, until I even try.

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Neon Bible: The Tribute Album

2007-08-02T10:42:00.000-04:00

by Wayne Robins

In this endless summer of tributes, it was recently announced that
Cheap Trick will be taking the stage of the Hollywood Bowl to perform “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band” in its entirety—a tribute to the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' revered yet nostalgia-riven album.

Not that many months ago, the Smithereens ("Meet the Smithereens") did a loyal rerecording of the 1964 album “Meet the Beatles.” Whether full album tributes are the last financial windfall for lazy hacks or a legitimate way to continue to refine rock's canon depends on the project. (I respect both Cheap Trick and the Smithereens but find it easy to live without either of their emulative efforts.)

But Arcade Fire, the band that put the “ear” back in “fear,” deserves a tribute of its own. Consider this a fantasy baseball lineup for a “Neon Bible” tribute, a fantasy since some of those selected are dead.

In the interest of avoiding the obvious, I have intentionally left out Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Talking Heads and others whose names have been dropped much too often in association with the music of this most original band.

Track 1. “Black Mirror.” Sonic Youth would take the songs rumbling undertow and turn it into an irresistible surge.

2. “Keep The Car Running.” As it glancingly invokes and firmly evokes “River Deep, Mountain High,” this is a natural for Ike & Tina Turner.

3. “Neon Bible.” Johnny Cash.

4. “Intervention.” The Band. The organ prelude is itself a tribute to Garth Hudson’s famed introduction to “Chest Fever”; Rick Danko and Richard Manuel would trade the anxious verses, with Levon Helm adding a harmony override.

5. “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations.” Brian Wilson sings and plays piano. Van Dyke Parks arranges and conducts the orchestra.

6. “Ocean Of Noise.” Marianne Faithfull could really nail the song’s desolation.

7. “The Well & the Lighthouse.” I keep wavering from Belle & Sebastian to Spoon, Simon & Garfunkel to Lily Allen.

8. “Antichrist Television Blues.” First I thought John Fogerty, who could play up the hint of zydeco. But a revision would be best with the caffeinated hard rock jolt of Pearl Jam.

9. “Windowsill.” I waver, but I think I like Amy Winehouse, backed by Oasis.

10. “No Cars Go.” This synth-pop beauty is a natural for Depeche Mode. But let Duran Duran star in the video.

11. “My Body Is A Cage.” The most atypical song on the album led to a frenzy of free association. Iggy Pop. Vic Chessnut. Mavis Staples. Prince. Daniel Johnston. Blind Willie McTell. Taj Mahal. But then it became clear: The song would be enshrined by the voice and spirit of Jeff Buckley.

Google News

2007-06-13T12:52:00.000-04:00

LATE-BREAKING NEWS FROM THE 1980S

Three items arrived in my in-box a few hours apart this morning. Coincidence or trend? Let's go to the videotape.

1. RATT. Rhino Records is releasing both a DVD collection and a best of CD on July 31. The DVD collection is so momentous that it requires two, yes, two, colons in the title. "Ratt: Videos from the Cellar: the Atlantic Years." The audio CD, "Tell the World: the Very Best of Ratt," features one, yes, one, unreleased track.

2. JOURNEY. Jeff Scott Soto has left the band after 11 months as lead singer.

3. EDDIE MONEY. The breakthrough the recording industry has been seeking in its battle against piracy may have finally occurred. Eddie Money—or, as the press release states, "rock legend Eddie Money"—has come out against illegal downloading and file-sharing. "If you truly like music, don't steal it," Money was quoted as saying. No word whether Money is planning to do public service announcements with that other 1980s star, McGruff the Crime Dog.

Google News

2007-05-17T20:57:00.000-04:00

Notebook spring cleaning: Here are Some records I've listened to a little bit that I plan to listen to more, and tracks that have caught my ear:

Ed Pettersen, "The Real Punk Blues." When he's sharp, he's very sharp, in the vein of John Prine, Robert Earl Keen and Elvis Costello. ("Gather the Family 'Round," "Jimmy Parker," "Chelsea."

Southern Culture On the Skids: "Countrypolitan Favorites." Bringing ragged glory to classics ranging from "Wolverton Mountain" to "Muswell Hillbillies."

Lee Hazlewood: "Cake or Death." If Leonard Cohen had been a hustler (but a very adept musical one) in the sleazy early days of the L.A. music biz. "Fred Freud," "Baghdad Knights."

Ry Cooder: "My Name is Buddy." Not nearly the trip that was "Chavez Ravine." Still, folklorically adept and politically direct. "J. Edgar," "Sundown Town."

Google News

Arcade Fire Karaoke?

2007-04-20T14:03:00.000-04:00

You know what I want to do this weekend? I want to find a karaoke bar where I can sing Arcade Fire songs. "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" from "Funeral" would be an easy choice. "Intervention," from "Neon Bible" might be more of a challenge, really working those diaphragm muscles to really bellow, "Working for the church while your life falls apart/Singing Hallelujah with the fear in your heart..." Or maybe "Black Waves, Bad Vibrations," on which, if I get psyched enough, I'll sing through the French lines ("Je nage, mais les sons me suivent") without falling behind the beat.

So if anyone knows a karaoke bar where I can sing Arcade Fire songs, let me know.

Google News

Who's Generation

2007-04-19T11:58:00.000-04:00

In the last few days two different former college roomates have e-mailed a You Tube video of a recent performance of the Who's "My Generation." The version by the Zimmers It is quite different in tone and mood from the first time I saw the Who do this generational anthem, at a Murray the K show in 1967 at the RKO Theater in Manhattan. Like previous Murray the K shows at the Brooklyn Fox earlier in the decade, this one ran for consecutive days (in this case, it was 9 days), with a potpourri of acts doing perhaps two songs each, six times each day. Besides the Who (Who did "Can't Explain" as well as "My Generation,") the acts at the show I caught included Wilson Pickett, Cream, and the Mitch Ryder Show, an ill-conceived attempt to make Ryder a pop-soul star backed by an orchestra and without the Detroit Wheels. Longtime U.K. music business insider Keith Altham wrote a cute profile called The Who in New York that appeared in the September, 1967 issue of Hit Parader.

The Zimmers

Altham's article:
Altham

Google News

2007-04-05T12:22:00.000-04:00

Drinkin' and Smokin' with Keith

by Wayne Robins

The opinion here is that Keith Richards probably did not snort his father’s ashes. It’s more likely
he rolled the cremated remains of the pater familias into a joint and smoked him. But of course, he probably did not do that, either. What’s even crazier than the alleged act is that the probable joke at the expense of a reporter from NME became front page news around the tabloid world.
Google News offers 1,040 links about the Keith story. Among the most interesting—and much more colorful than the standard wire service reports—is from
Xinhuanet, the online arm of Beijing-based Chinese news agency, whose dispatch read in part:
“Richards may be recognized by some as the greatest rhythm guitarist in rock'n'roll, but he is even more well-known for his ability to survive the most debauched excesses of the rock lifestyle... His relentless consumption of drugs and alcohol has been well documented, and the world has watched in awe as he has survived episodes that would have brought death to lesser mortals.”

I’ll drink to that. Or at least I drank to that, when I played dueling air guitars with Keith at the end of a lengthy, bourbon-infused interview in his manager’s New York office. Keith was promoting his role as music producer of Taylor Hackford’s 1987 Chuck Berry film bio, “Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll.” I was doing a story for Newsday, which was my employer for almost 19 years. If you’ve seen the movie, and Richards' tense face-offs with the irascible Berry, you know that Keith is entirely capable of being the responsible adult in the room, especially where music is involved.

But this was an interview.

I don’t recall whether I supplied the Rebel Yell (I did once carry a bottle of the Dixie-based brand to Richards in Los Angeles when he was promoting his second solo album, "Main Offender" in 1992). Keith took his with ginger ale; me, with ice and water. After a few hours of animated conversation, the bottle was almost empty, it was getting dark, and regarding the still-unfinished “Hail Hail Rock and Roll” soundtrack, Keith said: “Would you like to hear some rough mixes?”

Well, yeah. And when Keith got up to jam air guitar-style with his recent Chuck Berry sessions blasting from the speakers, well, Lord, I was moved to do the same. And so we were, reelin’ and a rockin’, me mostly reelin’, one reason my beverage of choice these days is ginger ale, without the whiskey.

2007-03-20T22:44:00.000-04:00

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's The...Artichokes

by Wayne Robins

Recently I picked up a CD. It's by a group from Los Angeles called the Artichokes. Some people hate that name, but I think it suits them. Arti chokes. art chokes. art jokes. Their previous records have contained songs about science. This one is a song-by-song cover of the Sex Pistols' still relevant 1977 album, "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols."

It's a much more interesting record than I expected. It is almost entirely acoustic and sparely acoustic at that: acoustic guitar, hand claps, the occasional theremin and harmonies so twee that it makes early Belle & Sebastian sound like the Four Tops singing "Seven Rooms of Gloom."

Yet it's not a "Kidz Bop" Sex Pistols' session, either. In fact, the Artichokes album, perhaps unintentionally, exemplifies the reason that the best punk—the Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones—has been so lasting. It is because the songs are standing the test of time. Do you remember the first time you heard Annie Lennox sing "Train in Vain"? It was like a bucket of ice over the head on a steaming hot day, and yet it took the brain at least a few extra synapse jumps to make the connection: That this was an agonizingly beautiful and soulful rendition of a Clash tune.

In recent years the richness of many Ramones songs has been recognized by the likes of Tom Waits, who included two of their songs on his powerhouse 2006 three-disc release. Then there is Thea Gilmore, the U.K.'s best-kept musical secret and one of her generations (she must be 27 by now) great singer-songwriters with attitude. Gilmore's covers are a gift: She's done the Clash's "I'm Not Down" on "Songs from the Gutter" (2005). On the all covers "Loft Music," (2004) she opens with the Buzzcocks' "Ever Fallen In Love" and the Ramones' "Don't Come Close" armed only with guts and a guitar. Yes, there are Jimmy Cliff, John Fogerty and Van Morrison songs on the album as well, but it is the melody and magnetism of the Buzzcocks and Ramones' songs that I keep coming back to.

The Artichokes right now consist of Timothy Sellers, vocals and guitar, Craig Polding plays guitar, Ema Tuennerman sings and plays ukulele and accordion.

With their acoustic approach, the sinewy structure of the songs stands out. I like the lowest-fi guitar on "Liar," the simple handclap percussion on "Problems." "Anarchy in the U.K." is like a late 1950s beatnik party anthem, with fingersnaps, handclaps, and an almost-walking bass line. It's all very neat. Then anarchy arrives, with a fat horn solo and bleating sounds, like a zombie uprising—or an ordinary day among the sheep. And I love the way Ema delivers "Bodies," finding the humanity that the Pistols scorned: "I'm not an ani-mal," she sings with childlike delight.

"Holidays in the Sun" is like a hall of mirrors. I once thought of the Pistols' version as an attack on that bourgeois notion of "vacations"—a superficial interpretation. The Artichokes version explores the Pistols attraction to and rejection of totalitarianism. The holiday has taken them to the most palpable tragic construction of the Cold War: "I had no reason to be here at all/But now I got a reason, it's no real reason and I'm waiting—at the Berlin Wall." It is sung as a lament, like a Leonard Cohen song that should have been on his greatest album, by far, "The Future." On the title song, Cohen sings, "bring back the Berlin Wall" because, like the Sex Pistols, he sees no future, no future for you.

Google News

2007-01-18T12:58:00.000-05:00

I have been listening to one of the songs from the Who album "Endless Wire." It is called "God Speaks of Marty Robbins." Marty Robbins, of course, one of the great dramatic, romantic country singers of the 1950s and early 1960s: He is best known for the No. 1 hit, "El Paso" released in 1959.

My father's name happens to be Marty Robins.
The only time my father was ever confused with the country singer whom God speaks of in Pete Townshend's song, was many years ago when he became frustrated by the "no reservations" (except for VIPs) policy at Joe's Stone Crab in Miami Beach.

He called and asked: "Can I get a table for Marty Robins?" And they said, of course, it will be their pleasure. At what time would Mr. Robbins' party like to dine?

There are a surprising (to me) number of Marty Robbins videos on
You Tube. Here's one of them. Apologies to earlier viewers who found the link to the Townshend video faulty.
--Wayne Robins

10 Memorable Moments with James Brown

2006-12-28T13:03:00.000-05:00

by Wayne Robins

1. New Haven Arena, 1968 or 1969. About 7 of us cram into a subcompact for the 200-mile roundtrip drive from Bard College to the New Haven Arena to see James Brown, not to mention our other favorites: Bobby Byrd, Vicki Anderson and Miss Marva Whitney. The show closer— "Please, Please, Please," with James Brown escorted from the stage, then shedding his cape and returning to the microphone— seems to go on forever, and even after the lights go up, we remain, silent, astonished, hoping that he will come back one more time. The difference between James Brown and Elvis Presley is that no announcer would ever say: "James Brown has left the building." And he never did.

2. A phone conversation with James Brown while he was in jail in 1989 for his misbehavior a year earlier. Patched from the jail through his Augusta, Ga., office, to my phone at home, James Brown says he feels good and insists on speaking only about "the positive."

3. "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" on top 40 radio, summer, 1965. Remember: This is the the season of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," "Like A Rolling Stone," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Eve of Destruction," "I Can't Help Myself" and "The Same Old Song," "Ticket To Ride" and "Help!" "Back in My Arms Again," "Help Me Rhonda" and "California Girls." It may be the greatest, most competitive battle-of-the-bands, ever. James Brown wins it with a song that invokes the great, near-great and forgotten dance manias of the previous 5 years: the Jerk, the Fly, the Mashed Potatoes, the Twist, the Boomerang...The Boomerang?

4. Fall, 1968. A trip to a thrift shop in Kingston, N.Y. yields mint condition singles "Ain't That A Groove," "Money Won't Change You," and "Bring It Up" which immediately go into heavy rotation on the afternoon dance parties emanating from the first floor Stone Row dorm room I share with T.V. Tom Vickers and the drunken guru known as "the Night Owl." 20 years before Prozac revolutionizes psychotherapy, "Bring It Up" is shown to provide temporary relief from clinical depression.

5. The only other job I ever wanted: Bobby Byrd—I'm pretty sure it's Bobby Byrd—chanting "get on up" on "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine."

6. James Brown's conversational vocal riff on "Ain't That A Groove": "Looka here. I gotta tell ya. Haha, dig this. This'll kill ya." He sings a few words, much less memorable. Then he delivers the real killer: "Hit me band." The band hits him.

7. The fade on "It's A Man's Man's Man's World." Without love, a man is "lost in the wilderness. He's lost, in bitterness."

8. The horn section, leading with the downstroke, on "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose."

9. More than 25 years into the hip-hop era, I'm still waiting to hear a message as clear, direct and useful as "Don't Be A Drop-Out" and "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)." Not to mention as functionally funky.

10. Scientific evidence of a supreme being; or, proof that this planet has been visited by superior beings, from another planet. No human being, not to mention group of human beings, could have possibly recorded "I Got You (I Feel Good)." The human race simply has not evolved that far.

Wayne's Top Ten CDs of 2006

2006-12-22T15:33:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, my colleagues at
Billboard began accumulating our ten best lists. They are now posted on the Web site: Just click on the highlight on the homepage. Maybe over this holiday weekend I'll elaborate, or mention some near-misses for the top ten.

WAYNE ROBINS

1. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Stadium Arcadium" (Warner Bros.). Broad, deep and often thrilling.
2. Arctic Monkeys, "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" (Domino). Snapshots of urban post-adolescent Brit youth culture, delivered in a fresh, street-wise, club-smart vernacular.
3. Bruce Springsteen, "We Shall Overcome -- The Seeger Sessions" (Columbia). A celebration of American roots music, emphasizing the spirit of resistance and renewal.
4. Bob Dylan, "Modern Times" (Columbia). His funniest album since half of "Bringing It All Back Home."
5. Johnny Dowd, "Cruel Words" (Bongo Beat). Deep-fried fatalism and progressive Pentecostalism from the backwoods.
6. Gnarls Barkley, "St. Elsewhere" (Downtown/Atlantic). Exultant singing, fungible sounds; how can shallow be so deep?
7. Thea Gilmore, "Harpo's Ghost" (Sanctuary). A stealth release? No, it's just Sanctuary hiding the best under-30 singer/songwriter of Britain and the world.
8. New York Dolls, "One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This" (Roadrunner). Proving rock'n'roll never forgets.
9. Exene Cervenka and the Original Sinners, "Sev7en" (Nitro). At 50, still raising fine-tuned punkabilly heck.
10. Brazil, "The Philosophy of Velocity" (Immortal). Smart prog for a new century.

Comments welcome.

Long Island's Music Hall of Fame

2006-11-19T18:43:00.000-05:00

Wayne has an opinion article in the Sunday, Nov. 19 issue of
Newsday about
some of the peculiar aspects of the new the Long Island Music Hall of Fame.
I always get a little nervous going back to visit the old Newsday neighborhood, and
I rewrote this one about 8 times. Amazing that after all that, I could still
leave out Lou Reed. Stuff happens, I guess.

Remembering Ellen Willis

2006-11-12T22:24:00.000-05:00

The weekend of mourning Ellen Willis began with the e-mail I received from my friend Donna Gaines, who wrote:

"The Original Riot Grrrl: Ellen Willis (1941-2006)

On November 9, Ellen Willis, died following a sudden relapse of lung cancer. I remember the first time I saw her byline--the policeman's daughter from Queens didn't hide her sex as "E.Willis" or stick to "women's issues." In New Journalism, writers like Ellen Willis, Tom Wolfe and gonzo Hunter Thompson dove right in, they read the social world like a Zap comic, like the Ramones. Willis wrote about the family, Lou Reed, Janis Joplin, Israel, Elvis, about everything. After leaving the Village Voice, she became a professor in the journalism department of New York University and the head of its Center for Cultural Reporting and Criticism.

My longtime Village Voice editor and friend, Ellen Willis taught me how to write, beating the academese out of me, she put my suburbia on the cover of the Village Voice and sent me to Bergenfield."

Donna is referring to Bergenfield, N.J., where an epidemic of teenage suicide had broken out. Donna, with her PhD in sociology and black belt in heavy metal, went to find out what was up with all that. The result was an overpowering Voice cover story and ultimately a book called "Teenage Wasteland."

Donna continued: "I can still hear her screaming, "You're over-explaining!! Just say it!!"

My transformative experience with Ellen was yang to Donna's yin. Ellen brought me into academia, getting me a fellowship to study in the NYU Graduate School of Journalism's then new Cultural Reporting and Criticism program, which she created, for the 1997-1998 academic year. Not only did I spend a year working towards my Master's degree, tuition-free: Ellen found $10,000 for me as the Elizabeth Arden-Chen Sam fellow. (Readers of Liz Smith's gossip column in those days were familiar with the name Chen Sam; Chen was Elizabeth Taylor's spokeswoman, and had recently died of cancer.)

I had met Ellen a few times many years earlier, near the start of my rock critic career. If memory serves me well, I met her at a get-together for Greil Marcus, visiting from the West Coast, at John Rockwell's downtown loft. Robert Christgau was there; so was Dave Marsh. Ellen had been the New Yorker's first rock critic. This was the early '70s, and I was the shy and star-struck speechless, trying to figure out what I could possibly say, in the midst of what was, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy's reference to Thomas Jefferson, the greatest gathering of rock and roll genius since Little Richard dined alone. On strictly rock critic terms, Ellen is the author of the definitive intellectual fan essay on the Velvet Underground, that appeared in both "Stranded," the Greil Marcus-edited collection of desert island disc essays, and in her own collection of essays, "Beginning to See the Light" (Knopf, 1981).

Ellen's Cultural Reporting and Criticism program helped me kick my thinking up several notches. I'd already spent 25 years as a rock critic; I had my template, I trusted my taste and ability to write. But the CRC program gave me the opportunity to frame my arguments with more focus and discipline. It also afforded me the opportunity to teach critical writing for two subsequent semesters to undergraduate journalism students at NYU. Ellen's guidance, and that of some other key teachers (Susie Linfield of the CRC, and Jay Rosen, to name a few) helped me renew myself as, Rosen and I once joked, a recovering anti-intellectual.
It wasn't until the last day of class party for the Cultural Reporting and Criticism students (there were about 20 of us) at the Apple bar and restaurant in the Village , that Ellen and I realized that the two of us, as well as Lester Bangs, shared the same birthday. December 14 won't be the same without her.

2006-09-24T22:42:00.000-04:00

"CACTUS V": GUILTY PLEASURE MAXIMUS

by Wayne Robins

The rock scribe life is full of guilty pleasures, and this season mine is "Cactus V." That is, Cactus, roman numeral 5, the first new album by this hard rock band since 1972. Cactus, whose self-titled debut album peaked at No. 54 in 1970, was an unintentional parody of a super group. Perhaps their lack of modesty caused a bit of a backlash. Even now, the
Cactus Web site declares that the band was called "the American Led Zeppelin," but the source of the claim isn't clear. They were more like Bloodrock with a better logo.

Drummer Carmine Appice, a talented percussionist with no small ego, and bassist Tim Bogert had been in Vanilla Fudge; guitarist Jim McCarty, one of America's first, modest guitar heroes, had a most honorable career with Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. The original singer was the late Rusty Day, and the whole project seemed pointlessly over the top. After a few more albums and numerous personnel changes, Bogert and Appice teamed up with Jeff Beck, and I remember Epic Records throwing a huge gala at the Rainbow Room for the Beck, Bogert, Appice band after its hyped but hopeless debut at Radio City Music Hall.

Anyway, I thought I would play "Cactus V," released in July on a label called Escapi Music, for some comic relief. I got more than I bargained for: it kind of became my pet rock, my go-to album, as enjoyable and addicting as Tetris used to be on Game Boy. The singer is now Jimmy Kunes, who at one point sang with Savoy Brown. Smartly, Appice, who guides this project, has kept the sound and spirit of the band frozen in time. Appice, Bogert and McCarty had always been great players—it was taste that had always been a concern when running their own show. (One virtue you could never accuse Vanilla Fudge of having was restraint.) Their chops are indisputable, though, and Appice and Bogert were the dynamic rhythm section for Rod Stewart's band during an important piece of the 1970s.

They still play with drill team precision. Time has obviously not only made them more tasteful players; it's placed Cactus in a whole new frame. These songs have a solid foundation. "High in the City" could have been Foghat or Foreigner, and "Doin' Time" is as streetwise as Ludacris, in a completely different environment. Compared to the faceless, screaming, undisciplined metal bands of today, these guys sound like wizened delta bluesmen. So what if the lyrics are are as in-bred as ever. "Muscle and Soul" sounds like a tribute to an extremely fit Bada-Bing club dancer; "The Groover" is "no ordinary woman, she's no ordinary dame." And "Cactus Music" is about, well, Cactus music: "We supply the feeling, you supply the need...We are built for comfort, we are built for speed."

Original they ain't, but they make good on every boast. Guest harmonica player Randy Pratt keeps the blues snaking throughout, and the good time feeling of this old time rock'n'roll is so contagious, I'd call it the comeback of the year.

Google News

2006-08-30T23:02:00.000-04:00

Like A Ringing Phone

I was snoozing on the bus after a long work day. I became alert when I heard Bob Dylan sing, "How does it feel? Ah, how does it feel?"

The call was for me.

I've got a "Like A Rolling Stone" ringtone. It's the first ringtone I've purchased. I bought it a few weeks ago, needing something that would stand out at the Vans Warped tour event at the Nassau Coliseum parking lot. I figured Dylan's plaintive cry was as agonized and certainly more authentic than most of the emo bands that day. Funny thing about emo: I first thought it was a subgenre inspired by the mopey expressions of comedian Emo Phillips. And maybe I'm right.

Anyway, what did you think I was going to get for a ringtone, "Hips Don't Lie"?
But I do yearn for another latin-themed ringtone. I'd download Joe Cuba's "El Pito (I'll Never Go Back to Georgia)" in a nanosecond. Let me know if it's available somewhere.

—Wayne Robins

2006-08-02T12:43:00.000-04:00

Like thousands, perhaps millions, I've been getting spam with intriguingly phrased subject lines: It's as if the robots had a nervous breakdown at an automated fortune cookie factory.

The patterned language lends itself to rearrangement to more purely appreciate the artistry of the message. So here is a spam poem, cut-and-pasted for your illumination, and wishes of better future for all whip purchasers.

FORM LETTER FLUSH STANDS ABSTRACT

infuriatingly Tuesday
today. We jampacked allstar
Better success, world premiere
Better success, yarn washer.

difficult solve, tougher tennis
Better success, well agreeing
Better success, wing bolt
better future, wing rail

endlessly mama
better future, whip purchase
Better Success, wren warbler
Better Life, yeast bee

the fashion of newest creation
better future, willow beauty
Better success, winter pink
Better life, wide-skirted

—Wayne Robins

2006-07-24T16:56:00.000-04:00

It's bad enough when our favorite songs become deployed as TV commercials: In my mind, "Happy Jack" by the Who as the theme for the Hummer, the most antisocial automobile ever manufactured, stands among the most unacceptable.

But it's really bad when we hear a song and immediately start thinking about how it can be used in an advertisement. I was listening to "White Room" by Cream the other day.

When Jack Bruce (who wrote the song with Peter Brown) sings: "You said no strings could secure you at the station. Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows," I quickly wrote a mental memo to myself.

"Get in touch with Apple. Would be great for use in a campaign to get people to switch from PC's to Mac: "Goodbye Windows."

By the way, there is no better summer song for 2006 than the "It's like one billion degrees" commercial for Dunkin' Donuts' frozen drink, the "Coolatta." It's the best song They Might Be Giants have done in years. I guess there are still a few weeks left for them to stretch it out and have a smash.
--Wayne Robins

2006-06-30T10:55:00.000-04:00

Wayne's review of the Neil Young concert DVD, "Heart of Gold," directed by Jonathan Demme, is now up on the PopMatters Web site. Click to read.

By the way, one unofficial but very reliable Neil Young site I like to visit is Thrasher's Wheat

Storefront Demme is also unofficial but worth a look.

--Wayne

2006-06-19T16:30:00.000-04:00

EXACTLY. EXACTLY.

I'm surprised we haven't seen a band yet called Exactly. Exactly. The name would be on everyone's lips. In fact, it's been on people's lips, for at least two years, don't you think? Exactly...Exactly. It's such an oddly ubiquitous phrase, uttered when there is any opportunity to express even the mildest agreement with something another person says.

"It sure is hot today."
"Exactly. Exactly."
"The Mets are something this year."
"Exactly. Exactly."
"We'd be renting a villa in Tuscany this summer if we could afford it."
"Exactly. Exactly."

I've been fooling around with the punctuation. There has to be a pause between the two "exactly's." No one says "exactly exactly" unless they are out of breath from running away from an alligator. "Hey, did you almost get eaten by a gator?" "Exactly exactly." A semicolon is possible; then, I thought, it has got to have an ellipsis...Exactly...Exactly. But the ellipsis turns out to be too long a pause. Of course, I ran it through the colonoscoper, but a colon didn't exactly look right:
Exactly: Exactly.
Since the repetition of each "exactly" is always so distinct and rhythmic, I think the logo for the band, the brand, as it were, would look best with the two periods. Exactly. Exactly.

Don't you agree?

—Wayne Robins

2006-05-25T12:06:00.000-04:00

THE ANDROGYNOUS BOB DYLAN?

by Wayne Robins

According to a Yahoo entertainment news report from the Agence France-Presse (AFP), actress Cate Blanchett will be portraying Bob Dylan in a movie based on Dylan's life.

Director Todd Haynes, ("Velvet Goldmine"), is "recruiting an all-star cast for his Dylan film 'I'm Not There', in which six or seven actors will play the star to show different facets of his life and personality. Dylan has agreed to let Haynes film his biography."

The report says Blanchett will play Dylan in his "androgenous" phase. Hello? Could someone please tell me when Dylan HAD an androgynous phase? Of course, Haynes could probably find androgyny in the careers of Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen or Yogi Berra. So who is to say Dylan didn't have such a period, though one suspects it would be news to Bob. I don't think "Renaldo and Clara" qualifies as an "androgenous" phase. I wonder what Ron Rosenbaum makes of this.

In more bad news for Dylan's mystique, modern dance choreographer Twyla Tharp is bringing a musical called "The Times They Are A-Changin'" Broadway. "It is about a drunk named Captain Arab—a character from a Dylan song—whose traveling troupe sings out some of Dylan's greatest hits," according to the same news story.

The Internet Movie Database says production of the Haynes film, which has a working title "I'm Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan," will begin this summer in Romania. The concept sounds a lot like Haynes' long-unavailable Karen Carpenter biopic, in which Barbie dolls portray the characters. Instead of dolls, other actors besides Blanchett who are to represent Dylan at different ages are Richard Gere,Colin Farrell and Christian Bale. It's unclear whether Julianne Moore is to play Dylan or one of the women in his life. In keeping with Haynes' somewhat loose rules of gender, perhaps Gere will play Joan Baez, and Moore will be Kinky Friedman on the "Rolling Thunder Revue."

Faster, Michele, Faster, Faster

2006-05-24T17:11:00.000-04:00

Good news from our friend Michele Catalano, one of the true blogging pioneers who recently discontinued her inspirational site known as a small victory. Michele has come back with a new blog dedicated to but two of her many passions and enthusiasms: Fast cars and punk rock. Or is that Punk rock and fast cars? Anyway, the site is called Faster Than The World. Because she is a technologically superior being, Michele already has all sorts of awesome stuff up, from mp3 links to scores of punk songs to photos of great muscle cars of the 1960s. I still tremble at the sight of a 1965 Pontiac GTO, which conveyed my high school's Future Jailbirds of America club around the neighborhood after school, often looking to beat up me and my friends because we had "long hair." But I should thank them, since they inspired me to compose my first protest song, "You Gotta Be Kidding," which I wrote with J.C. of the Mongs. Later, Artie of the Future Jailbirds of America and I made up over a peace pipe at the Planting Fields Arboretum. I am told that not too many years ago, Artie turned up dead. A gun was involved. That's all I know.
--Wayne Robins

2006-05-19T13:40:00.000-04:00

JOEY RAMONE'S BIRTHDAY AND "PAN FOR PUNKS"

Today would have been Joey Ramone's 55th birthday, and in New York, that is not a milestone that goes unnoticed. There is a long sold-out Joey Ramone Birthday Bash 2006 at Irving Plaza. Proceeds will go to the new Joey Ramone Foundation for Lymphoma Research, raising awareness and money to help find a cure for the form of cancer that took the punk pioneer's life April 15, 2001.

The show and foundation, heralded by Joey's mother, Charlotte Lesher and brother, Mickey Leigh, features a number of the musical kin and spawn of the Ramones, including Richie Ramone; the Strokes, Glen Matlock, the Alarm and members of bands from the Ramones' original CBGB era: the Plasmatics, the Dead Boys and the Dictators.

The most fascinating artist on the show may be Tracy Thornton, who will open the concert with his authoritative versions of Ramones songs played on steel pans, the tinkly-sounding percussion instrument often found in Caribbean tourist joints that feature calypso. Thornton, a former punk rock drummer from High Point, N.C., who had his Ramones epiphany in 1988, has released "Pan for Punks: A Steelpan Tribute to the Ramones." It's a remarkable project. Thornton transposed a chunk of the Ramones repertory note by note, and plays it with great heart and skill. (The album also includes a video of "Blitzkrieg Bop.")

When we think of Ramones songs, we think of three chord/two minute blasts of rhythm. Pan for Punks brings out the rich, elemental melodies that buoyed songs like "Teenage Lobotomy" so that you'd remember it even if you had one. For days I've been humming "The KKK Took My Baby Away," "Rockaway Beach" and "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend."

I was recently going through my back pages and found a cover story I wrote for Newsday—probably the first one I did at the start of a nearly 20-year-career there—from Jan. 25, 1976. It may have been the first major mainstream newspaper story to identify and try to understand the phenomenon. The article mentions numerous bands: Tuff Darts, Talking Heads, Television, the Shirts, the Planets...But for the cover of that Sunday entertainment section, along with the simple two-word title: "Punk Rock" was a photo of the most emblematic group, the Ramones.

It still sickens the heart to remember how stubbornly the industry—especially once all-powerful radio, and later MTV—insisted that the Ramones were not "musical" and that their image was all wrong for whatever their medium. A Columbia Records A&R man—a friend of mine at the time, who just didn't get it—says in the article, "In this situation, 'avant-garde' becomes a code word for 'awful' and 'crude' translates into 'basic rock and roll'...I mean, jeez." But another A&R rep, rock scholar Richard Robinson, saw major label cluelessness as almost a necessity for the development of these bands, many of which were 'crude,' but in a good way.

"It would be tragic if record companies started exploiting these bands," said Robinson, who had produced Lou Reed's first solo album for RCA. The labels hadn't yet figured out Patti Smith, whose "Horses" was already a weak-selling masterpiece: Robinson felt whatever was fresh and interesting about these bands would be mauled by the machinery of the industry. "It's the difference between music performed for 100-200 people and that made for 20,000," Robinson said. What we loved about the early CBGB days was being part of that 100 or 200, as each band began to grow up on that stage.

Ten years later, the Ramones could draw 20,000 people in South America, though they never got beyond the theater level in the U.S. "The Ramones" debut album in 1976 peaked at No. 111; "Rocket to Russia," widely and properly recognized as one of the great albums in rock history, made it all the way up to No. 49 in 1977.

History has proven the Ramones and their believers—their original manager, Danny Fields; CBGB owner Hilly Kristal; and Sire Records' founder Seymour Stein, who signed the band, among them—to be visionaries. And "Pan for Punks" reminds you why the Ramones' were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Behind the aggressive stance was a sound that was not just intense. It was beautiful.

How It Might Have Been: The Early History of Bob Springs (aka Bruce Springsteen) and the Seeger Sessions

2006-05-17T15:47:00.000-04:00

Fiction, by Wayne Robins

This summer, as we celebrate the 41st anniversary of the classic 1965 album, “We Shall Overcome: Bruce Springsteen & the Seeger Sessions Band,” it is worth taking a moment to consider the history behind this groundbreaking musical event. It is hoped that the following will convey the essential “truthiness” of the early days of rock and folk music. Any resemblance to real people or events is for satirical purposes only. No string instruments were hurt in writing this.

When Elvis Presley was drafted into the United States Army in 1958, the artist now known as Bruce Springsteen was a struggling rockabilly singer performing under the name Bobby Springs.

Recording for the Tupelo, Miss.-based Rebel Yell label, Springs was one of a number of Elvis-soundalikes trying to fill the King’s shoes in the late 1950s, including Conway Twitty, Ral Donner and Conrad Birdie. When Presley’s dear mother Gladys passed away on Aug. 14, 1958, Springs’ recorded a heartfelt tribute, encouraging Elvis to be strong for his family and country. The song, “Elvis, Kill A Commie for Your Mommy,” was a minor regional hit in scattered parts of the South in the fall of 1958.

Springs would have remained little more than a footnote in the history of rock had fate not stepped in. In the early winter of 1959, Springs was part of a package tour in the upper midwest. In early rock’s most mourned tragedy, three rising stars—Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens—died in a plane crash the night of Feb. 3, 1959. The next night, the surviving tour members, who had taken a bus, performed a tribute concert at the next tour stop, Fargo, N.D., where a local teenager named Robert Velline, just shy of his 16th birthday, warmed the crowd with his close-enough-for-comfort approximations of Holly’s style.

Backing Velline that night was the Big Bopper’s bass player, Robert Zimmerman, another teen from relatively nearby Hibbing, Minn., and Bob Springs on guitar and vocals.

Bob Springs manager, Major Tom Parker, took on Velline as a client that night as well. Just as he had created the stage name Bob Springs (Springs’ given name was Bruce Springsteen), the Major dubbed Velline “Bobby Vee.” (The manager would later become immortalized in David Bowie’s song, “Space Oddity,” with the refrain, “ground control to Major Tom.” These were supposedly the last words from the Fargo airport control tower acknowledging that the plane with Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper had disappeared from radar.)

Vee, Springs and Zimmerman hit it off, and decided to continue to tour and record together as Bobby, Bob and Robert, though some pressings of their 45 rpm singles identify the group as Bob, Bob and Bob. And one song, a cover of Valens’ “La Bamba” that was a minor regional hit in a few counties of South Texas and Central California, was credited to Los Tres Robertos.

There’s no question that Bobby, Bob and Robert were ahead of their time. They were the first group to utilize three electric guitars, the first to intentionally use feedback and distortion for effect, the first to transcend the limitations of the three minute single. (One early signature tune, a tribute to jazz musician Charlie Parker, was called “Free Bird.”)

But their 1959 concept album, “Ore,” a set of songs by Zimmerman and Vee about the heavy metal unearthed in Upper Midwest’s Iron Range, was thought to be deranged by their label, and never released. Furious and depressed, the band broke up.

Zimmerman went to Tennessee. He stopped at Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios and cut a track called “Memphis Blues Again” that, remarkably, got airplay on influential black stations like Memphis’ WDIA. When WDIA dj (and Sun artist) Rufus Thomas met Zimmerman for the first time, he was struck by the shy guitarist’s damp, limp handshake. “It was like shaking hands with a pickle—a dill hand,” Thomas joked. Zimmerman himself was amused. In need of a stage name, he considered Robert Dill Hand, then Bob Dilland, then, finally, settled on Bob Dylan.

Vee, of course, became a major pop star, with Holly-inflected hits like “Rubber Ball” and tinkly ballads like “Take Good Care of My Baby.”

But what of Springs? Aimless for a few months, he joined the Army. While Elvis had had a soft, highly publicized posting in West Germany, Springs was part of a top secret “Black Ops” team in Southeast Asia; they were among the first U.S. “technical advisors” to the South Vietnamese military.

Upon his return, he made a few attempts at reviving his rock career. Visiting a buddy who was an ex-Navy Seal in Norfolk, Va., Springs got up to sing in a club where hometown hero Gary “U.S.” Bonds was performing. Riding high with “A Quarter to Three” and “Seven Day Weekend,” Bonds tried to help Springs launch a rock’n’roll career. But derivative tracks like “Half Past Four” and “Eight Days A Week” never penetrated the charts in the U.S., though the latter especially became a cult favorite in the U.K.
Springs was feeling not just dissatisfaction with his career, but dismay at what he had seen in Vietnam. He began singing and writing songs about his experiences there.

Deciding to break with what he felt was the “phoniness” of his past, he reclaimed his name, Bruce Springsteen. Accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and a harmonica held on a brace, Springsteen’s debut album for Columbia Records, “Greetings from Pnom Penh, Cambodia,” made him a darling of the Greenwich Village folk music circuit.
Soon, every folk singer from Gerde’s Folk City and the Bitter End in New York to the Ash Grove and the Troubadour in Los Angeles was singing Springsteen’s poetic, topical songs, like “Sown’ in the Wind” (“the seeds of freedom are so-wn’ in the wind”); “Think Twice, It’s Not All Right”; and the title song of his third Columbia album, which had the stirring line, “Those masters of war, baby they were born to kill...”

Springsteen was quickly adopted as a protege by the great political folk singer Pete Seeger. In 1963, they sang “We Shall Overcome” at the historic March on Washington, led by Dr. Martin Luther King. (It was one of the few times Springsteen ever sang in public with his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Joan Baez.) In 1964, Seeger and Springsteen performed together at the Newport (R.I.) Folk Festival to universal acclaim.

Yet Springsteen’s evolving musical curiosity would strain his relationship with Seeger. The following year at Newport was the debut of Bruce Springsteen and the
Seeger Sessions Band, an 18 piece lineup with fiddles, banjos and horns. Fistfights broke out among the usually peaceful throng: Some found the broad arrangements of the folk songs an adventurous, exciting tribute, while others thought the use of a horn section on folk songs to be sacrilege. Seeger himself was mortified: “It sounds like Benny Goodman,” he was heard to mutter backstage. Springsteen and Seeger didn’t speak for many years, although the venerable folk singer would ultimately make his accord with rock’n’roll in the 1970s, with a string of hits by Pete Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band.

And in that summer of 1965, as Bruce had written a few years earlier, “The Tide Was A Changin’.” Former folk singers like Barry McGuire of the New Christy Minstrels had antiwar, pro-Civil Rights songs like “Eve of Destruction” on the charts; L.A.-based folkies Jim McGuinn and David Crosby and their band, the Byrds, hit the top of the charts with an electrified version of Springsteen’s “Mr. Tangerine Man” and followed it later with a ringing rendition of Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn.”

In the early 1960s, Bob Dylan had moved to Nashville at the behest of his friend, Johnny Cash, writing songs such as “Desolation Music Row” that totally mystified traditionalists. But in the summer of 1965, he ended his isolation with an unexpected series of hard rocking hits: Wearing a white jumpsuit, colorful scarves, a black toupee and doing karate moves onstage, Dylan became not jus the most charismatic stage performer of his era, but achieved what was once only a pipedream in his 6-minute-long hit single, “(I’m Gonna be a Big Star, Baby) Like the Rolling Stones,” which endured a furious chart battle with the Stones’ own “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

All these great records, not to mention hits by the Beatles, the Animals, the Beach Boys, the Supremes and other Motown stars, had to compete for No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. For in 1965 into 1966, top 40 supremacy belonged to Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band, with five consecutive No. 1 singles from the album: “John Henry,” “Erie Canal,” “Pay Me My Money Down,” “Keep Your Eye On the Prize” and “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep.”

As you’re reading this, the 41st anniversary edition of “The Seeger Sessions” is no doubt rising on the album charts, while the single “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” stands at No. 2, just behind Neil Young’s “Let’s Impeach the President” at the top of the top 40. This week’s Greatet Gainer: the Rolling Stones’ revision of an oldie, “Jumpin’ Jack Can’t Afford the Gas Gas Gas.”

Rumors of a Bob, Bob and Bob reunion have surged through cyberspace, although some listeners to Latin radio swear that the reggaeton hit, “Presidente Puerco” is in fact performed by Los Tres Robertos.

Asked for comment, Springsteen simply said: “Don’t look back.”

2006-05-12T13:16:00.000-04:00

Happy birthday, Paula Sue.

DO THESE PANTS MATCH?

2006-05-02T15:26:00.000-04:00

My Morning Jacket To Play With The Boston Pops

BY Wayne Robins

You can't complain about the "commercialization" of rock anymore: That horse left the barn long ago, certainly around the time that the 1981 Rolling Stones tour was sponsored by the fragrance company Jovan. (About subsequent multimillion dollar Rolling Stones deals, Keith once told me, "I've got a lot of mouths to feed.")

But what happens when the music gets tied up with inappropriate Other music? It was with some incredulity that I read reports from last week's Coachella festival. In earlier incarnations it was something of an alternative culture event. So what was Madonna doing headlining there? From Madonna's point of view, it makes great sense: Expanding the fan base is every artists responsibility, and Madonna is nothing if not responsible. For something. Madonna sold her soul so long ago that she has been able to buy it back and reinvest it at a profit. But the presence of such a mainstream personality at Coachella says something about the festival's lost soul.

The forthcoming appearance of My Morning Jacket with the Boston Pops in June raises similar questions about who wins and who loses from such a matchup. The Boddhisatva boogie band (I'm talking about MMJ) performs with the Boston Pops Orchestra June 21 and June 22 as part of the "Pops on the Edge" series at Boston's Symphony Hall. (Other Pops presentations that week include "Bernstein on Broadway," "Gershwin Celebration" and "Sinatra Songbook.") The question to ask of MMJ and the Pops matchup is, why? Will MMJ appeal to Pops season ticket holders? Unlikely. Will MMJ's alt-leaning fans embrace the skillfully faux classical music of the Pops? More unlikely. This is a case of shrewd marketing by the Boston Pops, adding a veneer of hip to a schedule that will peak July 4 with its annual fireworks/patriotic music extravaganza, sure to include its best-selling renditions of "America the Beautiful" and "The Stars and Stripes Forever." As far as MMJ goes, all I can hear is "Mahgeetah" arranged for 76 trombones.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs . . . Yeah!

2006-04-12T15:43:00.000-04:00

by Wayne Robins

I certainly liked the Yeah Yeah Yeahs 2003 debut album, "Fever to Tell," but didn't see where the band was going to go from there. Like too many 21st century bands, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs made their positioning statement, but I expected the novelty of Karen O's alt-yodeling to wear out its welcome.

Which is why its such a surprise that the new "Show Your Bones" (Interscope) hooked me from the start, and hasn't let go. This is a band that appears to have gone against convention and worked on its craft (and its art) rather than just making branding and marketing deals the last few years. (Though as David Fricke points out in his Rolling Stone review, album opener and rock song of the year so far "Gold Lion" is named after an advertising industry prize.) Drummer Brian Chase, guitarist Nick Zinner and Ms. O have developed a bold sound that's both in your face and knows its place. On the White Stripe-y "Fancy," they build a wall of sound and then smash it down. Chase especially shines, playing with the reckless vigor of Keith Moon on "Phenomena" and "Honeybear."

Zinner, meanwhile, has been playing with Bright Eyes, according to Q magazine. But it sounds like he's been internalizing Glenn Branca's "Symphony for 100 Guitars" and learning to play it all himself simultaneously. And yet he picks his spots carefully: Check the power surge on "Way Out" and the way he takes it away when Karen gives him the cue to "take it away" on "Mysteries." Props to producer Sam Spiegel for allowing each song to find its own balance between noise and finesse.

Speaking of which, who knew Karen O would blossom so quickly into a singer with so many graceful moves? Not only has she transcended the squeal, she's become adept at conserving energy, conveying the considerable amount of honest emotion in the surprising variety and richness of the songs. More art, less artifice. You've got to say "yeah" to that.

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My Ten Best CDs of 2005

2005-12-28T16:05:00.000-05:00

by WAYNE ROBINS

It's that time of the year. Actually, I first made this list around Thanksgiving. I'm going to stick with it for now. But there were quite a lot of contenders that, if I had spent more time with them, might have nudged their way in. But that would have meant moving up the Waco Bros., and probably bumping Delbert, Poncho and/or Oasis. Fiona Apple, Rodney Crowell and Danger Doom may have been just as deserving. Especially Fiona, which I didn't get a chance to become obsessed with until late in the year. Anyway, these best-ofs often reveal much about the list maker. So what does this list say?

1. Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion, "Exploration" (New West).
2. Ry Cooder, "Chavez Ravine" (Nonesuch).
3. Robert Earl Keen, "What I Really Mean" (Koch).
4. Thea Gilmore, "Loftmusic" (Compass).
5. Oasis, "Don't Believe the Truth" (Epic).
6. Amy Rigby, "Little Fugitive" (Signature Sounds).
7. Delbert McClinton, "Cost of Living" (New West).
8. Poncho Sanchez, "Do It!" (Concord Picante).
9. Soundtrack Of Our Lives," "Origin Vol.1" (Republic/Universal).
10. Waco Brothers, "Freedom & Weep" (Bloodshot).

Rock's Back Pages
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About Thea Gilmore

2005-12-13T15:42:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been spending a lot of time listening to the wise-beyond-her-years music of Thea Gilmore. You can read about it in "A Thea Thing," at Billboard.com

A Small Victory
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