Don't Draw Conclusions About A Person Simply From Reading A New York Times Article About Them. Read Something They Wrote Themselves.

This was an interesting article, shared without comment by a musician friend.

Defining and Demanding a Musician’s Fair Shake in the Internet Age

Now I am a songwriter and musician (please imagine Star Jones parody voice), but oddly enough my main initial reaction to David Lowery, the protagonist of this article, went something like this: Boo-freaking-hoo.

In 2012 he only made $440 in songwriter royalties from his 1985 debut album while back in 2002 he had made $1,147. To suggest that, thus, the system is broken, struck me as ridiculous. I was all set to blog about how writing a song has zero inherent monetary value. It's the promoters - the people who mesmerize journalists and other strangers into believing your song has value - who really earn the money. You made deals with multi-national corporations to record, release, and promote your music to the point where it gets a million plays on Pandora and now those corporations aren't giving you enough money? Again I thought, boo-freaking-hoo. You're actually impossibly lucky to have gotten as far as you have. Get some perspective. Get a real job.

The music business is the system by which the vast number of people who would not inherently care about music (hereafter referred to as Z for Zombies) are all but forced to care about music by people who forcefully shove that music down their throats (hereafter referred to as F for Feeders). The F can not create the product and thus require people who care deeply about music and create it themselves (hereafter referred to as B for Brains). Sometimes a young, naive, excited B, full of love for their craft (think 1962 Bob Dylan), makes a deal with a hardworking, highly skilled F (think Albert Grossman), to get their music to Z. Later B is sad to learn that F expected to receive money for getting B the attention of Z. "It's all because of my genius that Z loves me!" thinks B, deluded. B sues F, etc.

However!

Then I read David Lowery's original blog post and most of the indignant wind went out of my sails like Roseanne Roseannadanna.

My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make From a Single T-Shirt Sale!

Now I get it. Songwriters can't negotiate a rate with Pandora. The government sets that rate. That is unfair. Agreed. Nevermind.

Am I even going to post this? What would be the point? I guess the point would be don't draw conclusions about a person simply from reading a New York Times article about them. Read something they wrote themselves.

Which I knew already, having been myself the subject of 3 (three!) newspaper articles, all mildly or wildly inaccurate, over my twenty-four years in (actually mostly out) of the music business. Anyway, I woke up an hour early today with no hope of going back to sleep, thus blog post. Enjoy. Could have written a song, I guess, but what would be the point? I don't have an F and wish to avoid the attentions of Z.

My Favorite Bob Dylan Album And Why

Desire is my favorite Bob Dylan album. Why? The stories. The high drama. The wildly inaccurate tales of actual people like Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and Joey Gallo. The legend of Dylan's time with a gypsy tribe in Spain. The myth of Isis. Bob and Sara on the beach with their kids. The Greek and the natural disaster on Black Diamond Bay. All these stories and the characters are beautiful and full like a Megan Bell painting and yet they leave plenty of space so they go on and on in your imagination after the music fades.

Why? The players. Rockin' Rob Stoner and his dancing bass. Emmylou Harris, who felt like she was not keeping up and broke down in tears and must not have noticed the powerful spell she was casting over the whole thing, especially Joey. Scarlet Rivera, whose violin and Bob's harmonica should be a train wreck on paper but merge and wail like a mystical spirit on tape.

Why? Because like so many other Bob albums, the recording method shouldn't have worked but it does. Too many players on too few tracks resulting in an erratic mix, confusion, discord, legal issues over the lyrics about actual people, and as always no rehearsal, chord sheets, or lyric sheets for the players. Just follow Bob. Watch his hands. Listen hard. It shouldn't work, but the performances are magnificent, spontaneous expressions of joy and sorrow.

Why? The collaboration. As a devoted fan who wants Bob to be well and happy, who believes that after all he's given us that he deserves to be well and happy, I like that he wrote a bunch of these songs with someone. Jacques Levy, a playwright, contributes to the cinematic quality of the best songs on the album. I imagine them having fun, late nights writing and creating together and I'm glad for Bob.

Why is Desire my favorite Bob Dylan album? Because all those things occurred to me when I was asked the question. I could just have easily said Time Out Of Mind and how it seemed eerily to speak directly to me the first time I heard it in September of 1997. I could have said Highway 61 Revisited and the way I involuntarily barked laughter, disturbing the peace and quiet of the St. Olaf music library, the first time I heard Jesus say, "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken!" I could have said Blood On The Tracks, of course. And who knows what will happen this afternoon, when I listen to Tempest for the first time? I could go on, honestly and sincerely, for at least this length about any and all of them. So yes, Desire is my favorite Bob Dylan album. But ask me again in five minutes.

The Two Bruce Springsteens

In the early '70s there was this skinny guy who wrote these epic story songs about really fantastic characters. You never knew where the songs would go or which of his huge, wild band was going to play the next solo. They blasted out of your stereo speakers and played long, unpredictable jams in concert.

From 1979 until now there's been this guy who writes these wordy folk songs about people who seem all too real. They're mostly people struggling in hard economic times or broken relationships or both. Once in a while they are happy. They're just like you and me. There's a highly predictable verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo or bridge, verse, chorus structure.

Since summer 2011 I have had a CD player in my car. What I've been doing is putting one CD in and leaving it for weeks, really listening to the music. It's been great and I highly recommend it. Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding, They Might Be Giants' John Henry (just a coincidence - didn't see that 'til just now), R.E.M.'s Reveal, and the Minnesota Orchestra's Beethoven Symphonies 1-8 (not ready for 9 yet) have been the heretofore neglected pieces of music I've really enjoyed getting to know in more depth. Recently I've been listening to Bruce Springsteen's Lucky Town.

Turns out there are also two of me. Here's how one part of me hears Lucky Town.

- Ugh. Why is every single melody 3-3-3-3-2-1-2-1-1-1-1-(down to)-6-5-5? (These are scale degrees. If you don't know what I'm talking about listen to my very sincere tribute to Bruce Springsteen.)
-These chord changes are the same in every song just in a different key.
-The drummer must have gotten really sick of playing that same medium rock beat on 7 out of the 10 tracks. I wonder how he got up the energy and enthusiasm. Maybe the huge amount of dollars per thump?
-The quiet songs are inaudible and if I turn up for them the next loud song blasts me away. Ah, early CD mastering. Still preferable to current CD mastering though.
-He might should have kept the E Street Band on hand for this one.
-Why is he trying so hard to become Bruce Cockburn? He was BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!?!?!?!
-Boring, boring, boring. I can't take another repetition of this whole album.

Here's how another part of me hears Lucky Town.

(Weeping) "Yes, Bruce, I too treasure the beauty, mystery, terror, and joy that comes with being an adult and being in a loving marriage and raising a family! Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh-ha-ha-ha!" (Further laughing and crying)

I don't know how that works, but there it is.

---------------------------------------------

Check it out yourself for a penny plus shipping at amazon. It's super cheap used because it was one of those "artist does something slightly different after a huge hit album so the public buys it right away then sells it when it doesn't sustain popularity because the public doesn't really care about music as music only about music as a cultural signifier for part of their fickle, shallow, hollow, insubstantial identity" albums. (See also: R.E.M.'s Monster, which, if they were really super environmentally friendly, they would just take out of print since there are four or five copies in every single used record store and they could save the petroleum used to manufacture new copies.)

Bob Dylan, Star Trek Fan

Who knew? Clinton Heylin knew, that's who. Clinton Heylin points out in his superlative book "Still On The Road" that two lines from the 1985 Empire Burlesque version of "Tight Connection To My Heart" are from an episode of Star Trek. He did not specify which two lines so I had to seek it out. This is why the internet exists:

From the episode "The Squire of Gothos":

SULU: Captain, how far do we go along with this charade?
KIRK: Until we can think our way out. Meanwhile, we accept his hospitality.

From the first verse of Tight Connection To My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love):

I’ll go along with the charade
Until I can think my way out

Awesome. I imagine Bob sitting around, maybe in a hotel room, working on this song that has been calling to him for at least two years. (It was originally recorded for Infidels with different lyrics in 1983.) He happens to catch this excellent episode of Star Trek at just the right time and gives himself that mental, "Yeah!" that you get when you are really pleased with something artistic you've done. He immediately goes to the studio and overdubs the new vocal, now complete.

Yoko Ono and The Beginning of Wisdom

Open this in a separate window and play it while you read: John Lennon

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

You've probably heard that. You may have even heard it's by John Lennon. But do you know what song? Do you know the line that comes right before it?

It is from John's "Beautiful Boy", a song about his then five year old son. It's from John's final album, Double Fantasy. The line always seemed out of context to me. It is, alone, such a great line that I always assumed he shoehorned it in at the end of one of his latest songs at random because, you know, it's such a great line and it had to make the album even if he didn't have a complete song worthy of it. Turns out I was wrong.

Last year the Double Fantasy album was released in a "stripped down" mix supervised by Yoko Ono and original DF producer Jack Douglas. I finally got to the top of the queue for it at Hennepin County Library. It is really, really good. Way better. Way clearer. I always liked DF but the kinda '80s production was a barrier to totally loving the thing and really hearing the souls behind it.

So what is the little known line that sets up this better known line so beautifully?

"Before you cross the street take my hand."

When I listened to it in this new mix suddenly the connection was obvious. "Other plans" = crossing the street, going where you need to go. "Life" = holding hands. What you're going to do across the street - going to some office or something - matters not in the long run. Holding hands? Especially with your child? That's what it's all about. It's not about what you do. It's about how you do it and how you treat the people you're doing it with. This is a lesson I have to remind myself of over and over. I think it's part of what some people call wisdom.

I am now right about at the age John was when he wrote these two lines that so clearly belong together. Maybe I just had to get to where I am now to understand the song.

So check out the stripped down version of Double Fantasy. And pray with me that Yoko Ono somehow gets jurisdiction over Empire Burlesque!

Pulling Out All The Stops

Fellow musicians,

Are you certain your album is done? Have you considered any of the following enhancements, used so successfully by the artists noted? Consider using the following "stops" as in "pulling out all the". They are not mutually exclusive and I have begun creating a song on which I intend to use all fourteen. Use all fourteen on every song on your album and I will refund your recording costs if you don't win a grammy*.

1. Children's Choir. Nothing says sincerity like the innocent voices of little ones. If you really, really mean what you are saying in your song, you simply have no other alternative. (Tina Turner's We Don't Need Another Hero, Bob Dylan's They Killed Him)

2. Modulate up a whole step. It's like writing a whole new song. There is an entire website dedicated the study and promotion of this practice. I have written two songs (Powerful Statement, We'll Go On Forever) that each do this two times or more. Make sure the kids really nail the first few notes of the new key - that can be tough. (Barry Manilow's Mandy, Looks Like We Made It, and every other Barry Manilow song)

3. Instruments drop completely out then blast back in after a big vocal line or total silence. Our ears need a break and then they need to be hit harder than ever right away. (Semisonic's Closing Time)

4. Rap break. Allows use of the very hip "feat." tag and will attract a whole new demographic to your music. (R.E.M.'s Radio Song and more recently The Outsiders)

5. Spoken section. Again just proving the sincerity. There is no reason you can't use all five of these so far in the same song: after a rap break, have your music track blast back in a whole step up with children speaking the words. This will not ruin anyone's life. (Elvis' Are You Lonesome Tonight)

6. Operatic chords and melody. This is harder to quantify, but I know it when I hear it. I think in C it would go something like this: d minor-G dominant 7-C Major 7-F Major 7-Bflat-E dominant 7-a minor-A dominant 7. (Elvis' My Boy or The Sound of Your Cry, possibly Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive)

7. Tension between scale degrees 3 and 4. Mi and Fa yield some real greatness when they're the main part of your melody. I noticed this when I really studied the wonderful chorus of Elton John's Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters and elsewhere I can't think of right this second.

8. Pick scrapes. Why would you only use the tip of your guitar pick when you can use the side as well? You paid good money for that pick - make the most of it. Studying Mick Ronson's (at 1:57, 2:10, and 2:38) brilliant guitar work with David Bowie can help you master this crucial technique.

9. Synthy answering phrases to the vocal. Your singing will never seem so human until it is contrasted with the eerie strains of a DX7 or one of its descendants. (Tina Turner's What's Love Got To Do With It at :41)

10. Special guest vocalist. The Beatles didn't expect people to listen to a single singer for a whole album - what chance do you have? Extra points if the song, tantalizingly, might actually be written about the special guest. (Carly Simon's You're So Vain)

11. Speeding up the tempo at the end. You hardly ever hear this anymore when everything is recorded to a metronomic click track, so you'll stand out from the crowd. (The Beatles' All Together Now)

12. Flanger on everything. Why add that eerie, windy sound to a single instrument when you can make the whole song sound like it was recorded on Mars? Caution: do not use on the entire song. (Doobie Brothers' Listen To The Music)

13. Muted guitar strums as percussion. You may not know it, but some of your favorite sounds are those with no pitch at all. Sure, everyone knows Smells Like Teen Spirit is F-Bflat-Aflat-Dflat, but it wouldn't be the same without the atonal strums in between the fingered chords. Go even further and don't play any chords (Paul McCartney's Maybe I'm Amazed - listen closely at 2:08) Go double super even further and add a wah pedal to the non-chord strums! (Isaac Hayes' Theme From Shaft)

14. Answering/counterpoint vocals. The main vocal can be open to all kinds of misinterpretation, so make your point even clearer by restating it another way in the background. They Might Be Giants are the foremost masters of this technique, most obviously on the song Dead.

Fellow musicians, you're welcome and I look forward to hearing your vastly improved works.

*offer is not legally enforceable.

Flash! A-aaaah! (Flash Gordon part three)

Did you miss part 1 or part 2?

The next day, Monday, I did the vocals in the afternoon. The evolving rough, literally caffeine-fueled, punk feel of the recording was too fast for me to get all the words in. Also, the notes of the melody are way out of what I might conservatively think of as "my vocal range." As I am sometimes able to do, I put all these limitations out of my mind and just did it and it's fine. It was super fun.

I have been thinking about Alex Chilton's death. When I heard about it, I immediately had the idea to record one of his songs and maybe even make a video of myself playing it and post it online. Then I thought about how very, very many people very much like myself will do that very thing. Alex Chilton was a master at confounding expectations, mixing genres, and doing exactly what he wanted to do in music without any consideration for commercial success or even, you know, logic.

I began to think of my Beatles/Punk version of Queen's "Flash (A.K.A. Flash's Theme)" as a spiritual tribute to Alex Chilton and so it is.

Finally, has anyone listened to "Chimes of Freedom" from Another Side of Bob Dylan lately? I mean really listened, not just let the recording you've heard a hundred times wash through your ears. I actually listened to that the other day and it was shocking how compassionate, wise, and moving it was. How many songs anywhere near the rock genre actually celebrate "the gentle" and "the kind"? I just sat on the couch and cried and loved everything and everyone. Okay, that's where I'm at with the whole thing.

Fraud, Anyone?

Let's pretend you're a band. Now let's pretend you're a band that has some people in it who played the Minneapolis songs on Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks album. Now let's pretend you call yourself "Blood On The Tracks Live" and distribute flyers and merchandise with that name. Do you think people coming to see you play would expect you to play songs from any particular album? Any album at all?

Let me help you out here. If you call yourself "Blood On The Tracks Live" and make a big deal about having people in your band who played on the album "Blood On The Tracks" then people who come to see you are going to expect to hear songs from...wait for it...it's a Bob Dylan album...from the mid '70s...that some of you allegedly played on...it's in your band name...?

No? No idea? Okay, well then never mind. Fool me once shame on me, or you, or whatever that is.

Maybe they did "Buckets of Rain" as their third encore but I'll never know because I was done with them. Final question: Idiot Wind - Wind = ?

Update: July 17, 2009
Umm...nevermind. There was a front page article in the next local paper about how they played a final set with local hero Dan Israel singing a whole slew of Dylan tunes. I had left by then, but "Buckets of Rain" was indeed among the tunes.

Also, never, ever purchase or consume a Chelada. (Commercially available mix of Clamato (yum!) and Bud Light.) Yuck. And never pour it out on a napkin just to see what it looks like. You don't want to know what it looks like.

Ten Bands You Have All Their Albums Of

This was an interesting one to me and I could spend untold hours documenting in detail exactly which albums I have and why the ones I don't have don't count (This means you, Yellow Submarine (original version), which actually now that I think about it I bought on LP in high school) but here is the short version of what could have become a compulsive time suck. Minimum is three albums (Sorry Jubilant Dogs fans except for Stu who has a live disc and a rarities collection).

10. The Velvet Underground
9. Kaptain Karl
8. Scot Ninnemann
7. Great Uncle Helmer
6. Evan Johnson (Yes, there are three - if you do not have the five disc "The Evan Johnson Anthology" you are missing out.)
5. Simon & Garfunkel/Paul Simon (unless you count "The Paul Simon Songbook", longtime inhabitant of my amazon wish list, but not something I actually strongly desire or need)
4. Billy Joel
3. Kirsty MacColl
2. Bob Dylan
1. The Beatles

Anyone else? What's interesting is that I think there are exactly ten bands I have all their albums of.

Screw The Fan

Hey, Bob Dylan has a new collection of previously unreleased material coming out. This happens every couple of years and what it means that I get all excited until I see how Sony has screwed it up. How have they screwed this one up?

There's a 2 disc version for $18.99. Good so far. Now, if you want the third disc with 12 more previously unreleased tracks (which of course I do) the price shoots up to 129.99. Come on! I love Bob and his music has meant more to me than I can even explain, but I'm seriously thinking of not buying this at all.

How about a 3 disc version without all the extra junk for around $40? I'd buy that. Shoot, I would have pre-ordered that sensible, imaginary product as soon as I got the e-mail about it!

PaMaCaNee!

So today when Child requested that we listen to some Paul McCartney (I am so proud of her!) I put on 1989's Flowers in the Dirt. Dear God, that is a wonderful album! Seriously! I fail to see why Flowers in The Dirt/Off The Ground does not generally receive the same "career resurgence" acclaim that Time Out Of Mind/"Love and Theft" did for Bob Dylan.

Well, no. No, I don't. Critics don't like McCartney solo - that's why. Elitist snobs.

For that matter, has anyone EVER had as much of an improvement from one album to the next as McCartney did from Press To Play, from which he seems oddly absent (a la Madonna's Hard Candy) to Flowers in the Dirt? I'm asking you. Comment.

New Morning is really good but Self Portrait is underrated. I really can't think of another pair of consecutive albums that were that much improved. Down in the Groove to Good as I Been To You? Maybe. No, it's still not Press-Flowers.

Top Fourteen Neil Diamond Characteristics

14. The Essential Neil Diamond and Bob Dylan's Time Out Of Mind are the only two albums I am aware of that use the Columbia Viva-Tonal Electrical Process.

13. One of the only songwriters who writes good songs about songs and songwriting.

12. No rhyme is too tired, silly, or unhip.

11. Elvis did at least two of his songs.

10. He was voted women's favorite music to listen to during sex.

9. He writes about anything he wants: imaginary friends (Shiloh), seagulls (Jonathan Livingston Seagull), and who-knows-what (Soolaimon).

8. You can put on his music and forget about it and enjoy your day a little more or you can listen on headphones and really get in to it.

7. The twin descending portamento keyboards that lead back to the title line on "Love on the Rocks".

6. You can always understand the words.

5. He's the truest descendant of the Sinatra "Tell a story/sing a poem" school working today.

4. He takes his work seriously

3. He appeared as himself on Saturday Night Live alongside Will Ferrel as Fake Neil Diamond.

2. The Band liked him enough to invite him to The Last Waltz

1. Surrounds himself with great players of music.

No irony or, really, humor in today's post. Just really was enjoying The Essential Neil Diamond this week and wanted to figure out/talk about why that was.