Tag: Rock N Roll

The Day The Music Died

Happy Cinco de Mayo….have a beer and enjoy.

I finally got the new PC set-up and all seems to be working well but since it is Windows I am sure something will go off the rails at anytime.

Enough mundane stuff….onward!

It is a Sunday and a time for FYI and a little history or both…but not today…..I want to write about a personal observation….or was it an experience?

If you are awaiting some look back at a retro tune from the 70s then you will be sadly disappointed.

Back in the day I was a crazy music fan….I awaited the release of albums and would dash to the music store to get the newest before they were sold out…..such groups as CSN&Y, Guns N Roses, Eagles, Blues Breakers, Cream,  etc and then there were the individual artists like Jackson Browne, Tom Waits, Johnny Rivers, etc…..but over the years my enthusiasm for the newest music has waned….I just assumed that is was because I was getting old and did not particularly care about the newest groups and individuals.

To me the singers and artist of today sound all alike…..does not matter whether it is so-called country or pop….very little variation so it has become boring to me and I lost interest.  Where’s the imagination?

I just read it is not that I am getting older but rather the quality of the music today.

It’s not so much my skin or my increasingly creaking knees ― the thing that’s been making me feel old recently is my Spotify playlist.

From the Sugababes’ iconic Round Round to Buddy Holly’s Dearest and Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got To Do With It, most of the tunes on my most-played catalogue come from before this century (a lot of them from before I was even born).

The fear that I’ve become an insufferable, “they don’t make them like they used to” naysayer is real. But fellow cranks, take heart ― new research suggests that the belief isn’t all in our bitter, non-gen-Z heads.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, analysed over 12,000 songs in the English language recorded over the past 40 years.

The researchers looked at rap, country, pop, R&B, and rock genres because those are the most popular ones.

They used listener data from last.fm and Genius’ lyric database to see how popular music’s lyrics have changed over time, looking at Genius page views to see whether listeners were interested in the lyrics in particular.

They assessed lyrics’ “lexical, linguistic, structural, rhyme, emotion, and complexity descriptors.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/study-lyrics-are-getting-worse_uk_6613f41ae4b056f72058bb07

Getting older does not mean that you lose your taste in music.

As I look back at my music choices I recall waiting on pins and needles for the release of Super Session with Stephen Still, Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield…..one of the best albums I ever bought.

Enjoy some great guitar work.

And that is how you enjoy a Sunday!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Beatles Last Song Drops Today

After many years of no Beatles there is a New Hope on the horizon and it comes out today.

Sixty years after the onset of Beatlemania and with two of the quartet now dead, artificial intelligence has enabled the release next week of what is promised to be the last “new” Beatles song. The track, called “Now And Then,” will be available Thursday as part of a single paired with “Love Me Do,” the very first Beatles single that came out in 1962 in England, it was announced Thursday, per the AP. “Now And Then” comes from the same batch of unreleased demos written by the late John Lennon, which were taken by his former bandmates to construct the songs “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love,” released in the mid-1990s. Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison worked on “Now And Then” in the same sessions, but technological limitations stood in the way.

With the help of artificial intelligence, director Peter Jackson cleared those problems up by “separating” Lennon’s original vocals from a piano used in the late 1970s. The much clearer vocals allowed McCartney and Starr to complete the track last year. The survivors packed plenty into it. The new single contains guitar that Harrison had recorded nearly three decades ago, a new drum part by Starr, with McCartney’s bass, piano, and a slide guitar solo he added as a tribute to Harrison, who died in 2001. McCartney and Starr sang backup. McCartney also added a string arrangement written with the help of Giles Martin, son of the late Beatles producer George Martin. As if that wasn’t enough, they weaved in backing vocals from the original Beatles recordings of “Here, There and Everywhere,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and “Because.”

“There it was, John’s voice, crystal clear,” McCartney said. “It’s quite emotional. And we all play on it, it’s a genuine Beatles recording. In 2023 to still be working on Beatles music, and about to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s quite an exciting thing.” Harrison’s widow, Olivia, said he felt in the 1990s that the technical problems made it impossible to release a song that met the band’s standards. With the improvements, “he would have wholeheartedly” joined McCartney and Starr in completing the song now if he were still alive, she said. On Wednesday, a 12-minute film that tells the story of the new recording will be made public. Later in the month, expanded versions of the Beatles’ compilations “1962-1966” and “1967-1970” will be released. “Now And Then,” despite coming much later than 1970, will be added to the latter collection.

Will this be the hit that all seem to think?

Have a great weekend and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Robbie Robertson–R.I.P.

A member of one of my all time favorite bands, the Band, has died…..Robbie Robertson at age 80.

Robbie Robertson, lead guitarist and songwriter for the Band—a Canadian American group that famously backed Bob Dylan while achieving Rock and Roll Hall of Fame success in its own right—died Wednesday. Robertson, 80, died in Los Angeles after a long illness, CBC News reports. He wrote or co-wrote the Band’s most famous songs, including “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” and “Up on Cripple Creek.” The group lasted just eight years, but its best work seemed timeless. “I wanted to write music that felt like it could’ve been written 50 years ago, tomorrow, yesterday—that had this lost-in-time quality,” Robertson said in 1995. “It’s like you’d never heard them before and like they’d always been there,” Bruce Springsteen said of the Band in 2020, per the New York Times.

Born in Toronto to a mother of Mohawk and Cayuga heritage and a Jewish father who died before his birth, Robertson became enamored of the music played by relatives when he visited the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario. Robertson received advice there that he said he followed as he built his career: “Be proud you are an Indian, but be careful who you tell.” His first band opened for Arkansas singer Ronnie Hawkins when Robertson was 16, and Hawkins soon recorded of couple of Robertson’s songs. Hawkins’ backup musicians included Levon Helm on drums; the rest of the Band was put together in 1961-62 in Ontario. The Band released its first album, Music From Big Pink, in 1968.

The album landed with seismic effect, a blast of Americana music delivered at the height of the psychedelic movement. It helped lead Eric Clapton to leave Cream, the Beatles to launch a stripped-down Let It Be, and Elton John and Bernie Taupin to write and record their own music, per Rolling Stone. The Band built a following playing the Woodstock and Isle of Wight festivals and was proclaimed the “future of country rock” on a Time magazine cover in 1970. “I always thought, from the very beginning, that this music was born of the blues and country music, Southern stuff,” Robertson said, per Variety. “The Mississippi Delta area, and the music came down from the river and from up the river and met, and it made something new.

Robbie and The Band gave me many hours of listening enjoyment.

I was sadden when The Band call it quits and their movie The Last Waltz is a fitting tribute to Robbie and the others…..

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077838/

His talent will be sorely missed.

For those that may be too young to know or remember The Band….I could not think of a better way to say good-bye than “The Weight”.

Good-bye old friend.

Randy Meisner–R.I.P.

I have been a fan of the Eagles since their beginning in 1971….I even saw them in NOLA at the Warehouse when they opened for Poco.

We lost Glen Frey a few years back and now another band member has died, Randy Meisner.

A second founding member of seminal rock band the Eagles has died. Randy Meisner, the group’s original bassist and the writer and lead singer of iconic hit “Take It to the Limit,” was 77, CNN reports. “The Eagles are sad to report that founding member, bassist, and vocalist, Randy Meisner, passed away last night (July 26) in Los Angeles at age 77, due to complications from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease (COPD),” a statement posted by the band Thursday reads. “Randy was an integral part of the Eagles and instrumental in the early success of the band. His vocal range was astonishing, as is evident on his signature ballad, ‘Take It to the Limit.'”

Meisner played with Poco and Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band before forming the Eagles in 1971 with Don Henley, Glenn Frey, and Bernie Leadon, People reports. He left the band in 1976 because he was tired of touring, and did not perform with it again until its 1998 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. He was invited to participate in the band’s 2013 world tour (he reportedly had not been invited to the 1994 reunion) but declined due to health reasons. Frey died in 2016 at age 67, and Leadon left the band in 1975. The band, which starts its farewell tour later this year, now consists of its last remaining original member, Henley; Timothy B. Schmit, Meisner’s replacement; Joe Walsh, Leadon’s replacement; Vince Gill, Frey’s replacement; and occasionally Frey’s son Deacon.

Sorry to see a true talent leave us….

IST good thoughts for his family and may he now rest in peace.

It would be appropriate to end this post with his amazing voice.

Your talent and voice will be missed….

Good-bye and thanx for the memories.

The ‘Pink Floyd’ Controversy

50 years ago the icon Pink Floyd album, ‘Dark Side Of The moon’ was released and on this anniversary there is a plan to re-release the album to commemorate the occasion.

And as usual these days nothing goes by without some sort of conspiracy or controversy and Pink Floyd is no different….

Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” turns 50 this year, and just as iconic as the album itself, which spent a jaw-dropping 18-plus years on the Billboard charts, is the cover art designed by British graphic designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. Widely considered one of the most famous album designs of all time, the artwork features a beam of light refracting through a triangular prism, coming out the other side as a rainbow. Thorgerson said he was inspired by a photo he saw in a physics textbook. On Thursday, to mark the upcoming anniversary and promote its commemorative box set, the band uploaded a new logo to its social media accounts, showing a white triangle against a black background, with the number “50” inside it, and a rainbow filling in the zero.

What should’ve been an exciting time for Floyd fans to join together to celebrate the album, however, turned into an online battle, as some who’d apparently forgotten about the original cover art started accusing the band of suddenly becoming “woke” by using the rainbow, often seen as a symbol of gay pride, to promote LGBTQ rights, per USA Today. “Lose the rainbow, you’re making yourself look stupid,” one commenter wrote, as seen in a viral screenshot now circulating. “Just another band pandering,” noted another. Some even noted they wouldn’t be listening to Pink Floyd anymore because of the logo update.

Louder reports that other fans soon came to the rescue to educate these “less enlightened” detractors. “Boycotting Pink Floyd (as if it would matter) because you don’t understand prisms and can’t remember the original cover is beyond parody,” one person wrote. Still others came just to watch the comments fly back and forth. One of the most popular remarks: “Man, some people took ‘we don’t need no education’ too seriously.” At any rate, as that fight continues on social media, planetariums across the world plan on playing the album in March, along with “stunning visuals [of] the solar system and beyond,” per an announcement from the band. The $300 box set, which will include remastered versions of both the original album and the 1974 live recording, releases on March 24. Watch science at work in creating rainbows in this Pink Floyd promo here.

Maybe these detractors should have stayed awake in science class.

Like I keep saying…..’can’t fix stupid’.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

David Crosby–R.I.P.

One of may favorite groups back in the day was CSN&Y…..sad news from the music world….David Crosby of that same group has died….age 81….

David Crosby, a singer-songwriter and founding member of two hugely influential and successful folk-rock groups—the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young—has died. He was 81. His family announced his death Thursday, saying only that it came after a long illness. Crosby had remained active on Twitter up until Wednesday, Variety reports, when he joked about heaven, posting, “I heard the place is overrated… cloudy.” And he’d released an album, Live at the Capitol Theater, last month. Crosby, who contributed to both groups’ intricate and sublime harmonies, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice, once with each band.

Crosby grew up in Los Angeles. His father, Floyd, was an Academy Award-winning cinematographer, per Rolling Stone. He took a brief spin at college, then pursued a music career, starting as a solo act in folk clubs. He joined a band in 1964, when the Beatles had made bands all the rage, that already included Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark. Two incarnations later, the Jet Set were the Byrds, to which Crosby added his signature harmony on such hits as “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” As a songwriter, he was overshadowed by McGuinn and Clark, who fired him in 1967 as tensions in the band escalated. They gave him a list of reasons, including his songwriting, and said he was impossible to work with. “All of which is partly true, I’m sure, sometimes,” Crosby later said, adding, “But it was a drag.”

At Joni Mitchell’s house a few months later, Crosby ran into Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They sang a song together three times, learning how their voices could best blend in harmony. “When we sang that third time,” Nash later said, “my life changed.” The first Crosby, Stills & Nash album came out in May 1969 with three songs written or co-written by Crosby: “Guinnevere,” “Wooden Ships,” and “Long Time Gone.” The record was a hit, and the group began a tour after adding Neil Young. Their second concert ever was at Woodstock, in front of an audience of almost 500,000. In his memoir, Crosby wrote: “For that one moment we did something that tells you what’s possible with human beings. … Woodstock was a time where were was a prevailing feeling of harmony.”

His voice and his music will be missed….in memory of his music…..

You will be missed….and thank you for great memories.

Pink Floyd–30 Years On

In my youth I was a huge Pink Floyd fan and that has never waned…..so I was surprised when I heard the new Pink Floyd recording….dedicated to the brave and beleaguered people of Ukraine…….

Pink Floyd guitarist and singer David Gilmour says he thought the band would never release new music again after the death of keyboard player Rick Wright in 2008—but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed everything. At midnight Friday, the psychedelic rock legends will release new single “Hey, Hey, Rise Up,” with proceeds going to support the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund, reports Pitchfork. It’s the band’s first original new music since the Division Bell album, which came out in 1994, when Vladimir Putin was still working in local government in St. Petersburg.

The song, which features vocals from an Instagram post by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the Ukrainian band Boombox, is based on World War I protest song “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow,” the New York Times reports. Founding Pink Floyd member Nick Mason is on drums, but Roger Waters, who left the band in 1985, was not involved. Gilmour, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law, tells the Guardian that he wanted to find a way to help the country. “It’s a really difficult and frustrating thing to see this extraordinarily crazy, unjust attack by a major power on an independent, peaceful, democratic nation,” he says.

Gilmour says he contacted Mason and other musicians and convened a recording session last week, using samples of Khlyvnyuk’s voice. The Ukrainian singer left the band’s US tour in February to fight for his homeland. Gilmour says he last spoke to the singer Tuesday. “He said he had the most hellish day you could imagine, going out and picking up bodies of Ukrainians, Ukrainian children, helping with the clearing up,” Gilmour tells the Guardian. “You know, our little problems become so pathetic and tiny in the context of what you see him doing.” He says Khlvnyuk was pleased with the song and told him: “One day we’ll play it together and have a good stout afterwards, on me.”

Now listen to the first new recording by Pink Floyd in 30 years….

Have a great day…..be well….be safe….

“Clapton Is God”

A very old piece of graffiti from the days of old……made the rounds on posters, t-shirts and other merchandise…..I would give you a look at the graffiti but there are too many making cash off the work….

Use your imagination….Clapton Is God is painted on a wall and there is a dog peeing on it

The news has me thinking of this……it seems the Clapton is playing God again with the pandemic….

Eric Clapton is no fan of a new policy in the UK that will require people to show proof of COVID-19 vaccinations for entrance into large venues and nightclubs come September. “I will not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present,” Clapton wrote in a Wednesday statement shared by Robin Monotti Graziadei, the same London-based architect and film producer who in the spring shared a letter in which Clapton, who has peripheral neuropathy, complained that AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine left him unable to use his hands and feet for two weeks. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the vaccine passport policy on Monday, hours after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in the UK.

Young people flooded into nightclubs, but Johnson warned such people that “some of life’s most important pleasures and opportunities are likely to be increasingly dependent on vaccination.” “By the end of September, when all over-18s will have had their chance to be double-jabbed, we are planning to make full vaccination the condition of entry to nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather,” he said, per the Guardian, which describes “an immediate backlash from Conservative backbenchers and the entertainment sector.” “Unless there is provision made for all people to attend, I reserve the right to cancel the show,” said Clapton, who’s next scheduled to play in the UK, at London’s Royal Albert Hall, in May, per the Guardian.

I see that health is not important….he wants to keep the cash rolling in and the public be damn.

So I think that dog in the photo has the right idea.

Clapton needs to retire to his exclusive Caribbean island resort and let the world be safe.

God these rockers are a greedy lot!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–11Dec20

This post should have been made yesterday but I got side-tracked with life…..I apologize.

On 10 December 1967—the day the music died.

One of my favorite musicians died in that plane crash…..Otis Redding.

His song “Dock Of The Bay” was a standard for us in Vietnam…..and to this day I get goose bumps when I hear him sing…..especially that song.

The song is a classic and should NEVER be re-recorded. PERIOD!

On December 10, 1967, a plane carrying Otis Redding and other members of his band, The Bar-Kays, plunged into Lake Monona.

They were on their way to a show, when their twin-engine aircraft crashed in the lake, miles from the airport. Redding, 26, a soul singer and songwriter, along with six others, died in the crash.

https://madison.com/gallery/news/archives/photos-from-history-redding-plane-crashes-in-lake-monona/collection_55f50468-1b64-11ea-95e6-9b97aa9fe109.html#1

Learn more about the Voice of Soul……

https://www.biography.com/musician/otis-redding

In his memory I would like to present his song that I still cannot get enough of…..and the memories flood back into my psyche.

May he Rest In Peace….we miss you.

Be Well….Be Safe….

Music Suffers More Loss

Closing Thought–26Oct20

It has been a bad year for music…..rock and country…..and the losses are not finished yet.

Arlo Guthrie, the son of famed folk singer and activist Woody Guthrie has decided that he will no longer tour and give live performances….

You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant—but it appears we’ve seen Arlo Guthrie tell us that in person for the last time. In lengthy posts on his Facebook page and website, the 73-year-old folk singer announced Friday he’s retiring from performance immediately. He’s canceled numerous shows he had planned around the country for the next year and said he won’t be booking any more, per the AP. “It’s been a great 50-plus years of being a working entertainer, but I reached the difficult decision that touring and stage shows are no longer possible,” he said in the statement titled “Gone Fishing.” Guthrie didn’t respond to email and phone messages asking to elaborate, but he indicated in his statement that health issues played a major role. He said he’d suffered two strokes in recent years, including a serious one that hospitalized him for several days last year.

The son of folk music legend Woody Guthrie rose to overnight fame in 1967 with the release of “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” a hilarious 18-minute talking blues ballad about how his Thanksgiving Day 1965 arrest for littering kept him out of the Army during the Vietnam War. He went on to record more than 30 albums, write several children’s books, and occasionally appear in TV shows and films, including playing himself in the 1969 movie “Alice’s Restaurant.” Guthrie, who frequently declined to play “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” for audiences over the years, had planned to perform it at next year’s shows. In July he released a new song, Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More,” and indicated Friday that his retiring from the stage doesn’t mean he’ll go away completely. “In fact, I hope to be a thorn in the side of a new administration pretty soon,” he said in a veiled reference to President Trump.

This is not the only bad news……country rock musician Jerry Jeff Walker has died…..he was most famous for the hit song Mr. Bo Jangles….

Jerry Jeff Walker, a Texas country singer and songwriter who wrote the pop song “Mr. Bojangles,” has died at age 78. Walker died Friday of cancer, family spokesman John T. Davis told the AP. “He had battled throat cancer for many years, and some other health issues,” Davis said Saturday. Walker emerged from New York’s Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s and he was a founding member of the band Circus Maximus. He moved to Texas in the 1970s and in 1972 scored a hit with his version of the Guy Clark song “LA Freeway.” Walker and the Lost Gonzo Band in 1973 recorded an album live in Texas called “Viva Terlingua” that became a classic of the country-rock scene. Walker had since released more than 30 albums.

In 1986, he formed independent music label Tried & True Music and released albums under it. Walker was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2017, undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, he told the Austin American Statesman in 2018. “I guess I took my singing for granted, and now I don’t,” he told the newspaper. In 2017, it was announced that Walker had donated more than 100 boxes of his music archives to The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, including tapes, photographs, hand-written lyrics, and artifacts. Walker’s survivors include his wife, Susan, son, Django, and daughter, Jessie Jane.

But for me his best song was …..

I’m an old fart so I remember both these artists as if they were here yesterday…..

The one I did not know was Viola Smith the World’s Fastest Girl Drummer”…..

The “fastest girl drummer in the world” is gone. Viola Smith, a swing musician who fought for female inclusion in the big-band era, died Wednesday at home in Costa Mesa, Calif., the Washington Post reports. She was 107. At a time when jazz giants like Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman dominated the dance-band world, Smith led her own group—the all-female Coquettes—with a 12-drum kit that featured two big tom-toms by her shoulders. The band was best-known for the playful arabesque “The Snake Charmer” with Smith’s dramatic drum-frills. She also made waves with a 1942 DownBeat essay called “Give Girl Musicians a Break!” that urged top band leaders to include more women—especially with so many men fighting in World War II.

“Instead of replacing them with what may be mediocre talent, why not let some of the great girl musicians of the country take their places?” she wrote. “Girls work right along beside men in the factories, in the offices. … So why not in dance bands?” They mostly didn’t, but Smith found steady work in Phil Spitalny’s all-girl band—which played in the Abbott & Costello comedy Here Come the Co-Eds—and later in the Kit Kat Band jazz quartet heard in the musical Cabaret on Broadway, per the Guardian. Born in Wisconsin in 1912, Smith lived much of her life on the road, then moved to New York, and later settled in Costa Mesa. She left no immediate survivors. “I really had a charmed life,” she told Tom Tom in 2013. “Unless people call drumming work. Then I worked hard in my life.”

They will be missed.

Thanx for the memories.