Happy Valentine's Day

"There never was a time when you or I did not exist. Nor will there be any future when we shall cease to be"

-Krishna to Arjuna in the Baghavad-Gita, quoted in the George Harrison albums Somewhere in England and Brainwashed

"That was me!"

-Paul McCartney

Is it important to be a cohesive person from one decade to the next?

If so, why?

What makes you the same person now that you were five years after you were born?

…that you were five years ago?

…ten years ago?

…ten years from now?

…a hundred years from now?

…ten years before you were born?

What is the same?      What have you always had?

What is different?  What will you always have?

What defines you?       What have you always been?

What will you always be?

No Matter What

NameMemoriesThoughtsBeliefsActions

StuffLovesFamilyFriends

NationStateJobHobbiesBodySoulGod

Who are yOu?

Beatles Fan? There's Something You Should Know

There is an album available now called Silver Beatles At Home 1960. It strongly suggests (with my scientific psychology major I have insurmountable internal prohibitions against using the word "proves") that before The Beatles were The Beatles The Beatles were The Velvet Underground.

The tape is of four teenage kids (Paul, John, George, and Stu Sutcliffe) goofing around with a tape recorder. The sound quality is terrible. The music is fascinating. It's almost all based on simple blues changes and a lot of it is instrumental. It's impossible to imagine these Beatles creating a song like If I Fell, to say nothing of Eleanor Rigby or Martha My Dear. Ironically, it's easy to imagine them going immediately to Tomorrow Never Knows, a monolithic slab of a song if there ever was one.

They are much closer to The Velvet Underground song What Goes On than The Beatles song What Goes On.

If Andy Warhol had heard this band in 1960 instead of Brian Epstein in 1962 they seriously would have become The Velvet Underground. Wild. Obviously two years of going to Germany and the Cavern Club and having to learn actual songs and having to entertain people for hours at a time made The Beatles what they became.

I highly recommend listening to a few tracks at amazon.com.

My fellow residents of Hennepin County can get it free at a rate of three songs per week using Freegal. (That link may only work if you log in first.)

Hurry, because this album will disappear as soon as The Beatles legal team gets their way, just like The Complete Decca Sessions did last year. It is part of that "Grey Market" of semi-legal bootlegs that bands don't actually want released but that were recorded before they had their legal team in place.

The Ten Greatest Guitar Solos Ever Recorded

1. "Let It Be" (album version), George Harrison
Perfect tone. A melody you can whistle. Versatility: I have learned and used this solo verbatim - in other songs. A transcendent overall form, building slowly to its highest notes, then relaxing back down to make way for McCartney. The perfect blend of repetition and freshness from one phrase to the next. The guitar comes raging back and is a soulful co-lead singer on the outro.

Honestly I could have made this whole list out of George Harrison solos. Hearing this song recently inspired me to write this list.

2. "Sympathy For The Devil", Keith Richards
The guitar solo that channels everything people who think Satan is cool think is cool about Satan. Violent, brusque, screaming insanity. The solo tells the story just as much as the lyrics do. And that last ripped chord before Jagger comes back in? A frustrated Satan vanishing in a burst of hellfire.

3. "Candy's Room", Bruce Sprinsteen
The fastest, most intense song on Darkness on the Edge of Town comes to a literally screeching halt then gradually speeds up and loses its mind to become even more intense than before. It seems he's tried to become this sort of this folky, songwritery guy now but here Bruce just freaking wails.

4. "The Wind Cries Mary", Jimi Hendrix
More eloquent than any words could be, this solo makes an initial powerful statement and then sings about the variations the statement suggests. Then it goes veering off into places that appear nowhere else in the song. Finally, a return and resolution of the early statements. This solo is like a satisfying mathematical proof if a mathematical proof was translated into a heroic fanfare.

5. "Sunshine Of Your Love", Eric Clapton
I once created a piece of art with construction paper, two corks, and a wire that tried to depict how this electric solo blazed and flew above a sea of color. This made me realize the necessity of getting my first wah pedal.

6. "Sweet Child O' Mine", Slash
The awkward fourth note of the scale has been involved in a lot of poignant moments over the years, usually yielding to the sweetness of the third, never more so than in the indelible first two lines of the solo over the verse chords. The more violent, minor solo later on and of course the intro that kicks the whole thing off are possibly the best guitar moments of the entire 1980s.

7. "Bell Bottom Blues", Eric Clapton
Like Coltrane he sort of plays the melody but with embellishments. Also like Coltrane (come to think of it) he uses harmonics. This song taught me to use the edge of my picking thumb to make the guitar cry a little bit.

8. "The Crane", Matt Wilson
From Trip Shakespeare's Across The Universe album. It's an entire melody to itself, climbing up in bent fits, then falling down into the lowest notes the guitar has to offer. Once I finally figured out how he was articulating some of the climbing parts, this solo taught me to bend a note on one string to match a note on a higher string, something I later found in Hendrix as well.

9. "Way Out West", Alex Chilton
From Big Star's Radio City album, a melodic distillation of everything good and chimey Roger McGuinn ever played. Hearing this taught me how to solo using chord shapes and to mix open strings with fretted strings where possible.

10. "Octopus' Garden", George Harrison
In a demo session in the now unavailable Let It Be film Ringo is plonking out this silly little number on the piano. Months later, with a fellow underrated Beatle leading the way it exploded into a 3-D rock masterwork. I used to quote bits of this during Honigman shows. The guitar intro, verse arpeggios, solo, and outro are justification for the song's existence and inclusion on the greatest rock masterpiece of all time, Abbey Road.

Also essential learning:
"Johnny B. Goode", Chuck Berry
"Patience", Slash
"Eruption", Eddie Van Halen
"Bohemian Rhapsody", Brian May
"Let's Dance", Stevie Ray Vaughan
"Dear Prudence", George Harrison

All right, what did I forget?

Anhedonia: When Nothing Is Fun Until Suddenly It Is

A few days ago I watched the "I Have A Dream" speech because it was a bonus feature for season three of Mad Men. That is a powerful piece of rhetoric. Rivers, mountains, streams. Judging people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Little Black Boys and Little White Boys and Little White Girls and Little Black Girls all playing together on the playground. Not taking the tranquliizing drug of gradualism. You should watch it. It's practically Shakespeare. So forty-eight years on, how are things going? Has the dream come true?

Tonight I went to a Beatles tribute band doing a concert in the park. Of course the concert had been moved from the park to a tent in a parking lot across the creek and the kids just wanted to play in the park. Depressed, I identified the songs by the opening bass notes, which were the only sound that really carried to where we were. Excitement about the concert became the usual mild anxiety about the children falling off the equipment or being injured by rampaging "big kids". Nothing is fun.

Twenty minutes later I said we could stay for ten more minutes. This is always my job, to put limits on and ultimately end our fun. With one of the kids, I got on what passes for a seesaw these days - big platforms with railings and handles on giant springs. An African-American woman with a little boy asked if she could get on the other end and I smiled and said yeah. We smiled at each other like all strangers who are acting as children's caregivers do. (The Parenting Smile means "See, I'm harmless. We're friendly. I'm one of the good ones.")

"Whee!" we said with our children. And suddenly I flashed back to Martin's speech and all the disappointment and depression about missing the ongoing Beatles tribute band was gone in an instant. I thought, "We're doing it, Martin! We're doing it! It's not perfect and it's maybe a little awkward, but we're doing it! Look, Martin! Look! Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!"

Cynical as I am, I can't believe how honestly good I felt right at that moment. I almost teared up. I was really caught of guard by this feeling of America being better and not just better but also improving - improving in our own hearts and those of the next generation we were seesawing with.

So thank you, Dr. King, for having the dream, articulating the vision, and making sure I would live in this version of America. Now I am going to go watch the next episode of Mad Men. Ha!

I Forgot How Good It Was

Recently something possessed me to pull out Tracy Chapman's eponymous 1988 debut album. I used to play some of those songs in one of my bands in college and I remembered liking the album throughout high school and college. I listened to it this week and it was absolutely amazing. Why?

-Unlike some 95 percent of albums recorded in the 1980s it hasn't aged a day. The instrumentation, the production, the lyrics, the style - all of it could have been done at any time in the last forty years. It sounds great.

-The words are clear and have not become trite or meaningless. If anything, the words are even more relevant and meaningful now than when they were written in Reagan's '80s. The very first time we listened to it the kids were asking questions about what the singer was saying and we had some good conversations about it. (Child: "Why did he say it would do no good to call the police?" Yes, I remember not being sure if the singer was a man or a woman the first time I heard Fast Car on the radio. So right there it's expanding their consciousness and possibilities by introducing a woman who doesn't look or sound like a Disney princess. And we learn that different people have different experiences with government services.)

-Like the other contemporary Elektra label albums by Billy Bragg (Worker's Playtime) and They Might Be Giants (Flood) I hear and notice new things revealed every time I listen to it. (Good gracious, was Elektra on a super hot streak from 1988-1990 or what?)

-It has never been remastered for modern radio so it is not horribly compressed. There are truly quiet and loud parts, but not to the extent that you have to keep turning it up and down.

-The songs are catchy and I literally dreamed about them last night. Chapman is a brilliant writer of words and music and the production focuses perfectly on the hooks and the meanings and the melodies. It's basically just one of those rare, perfect albums like Ziggy Stardust or Abbey Road where everyone involved got everything just right.

Seeing as how it sold six million in the US alone, several used copies of it are available at amazon for under a dollar. What's stopping you? Be inspired.

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.

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

Did you miss part 1?

So now we are in 2010. As part of my anthologizing project of putting everything I ever recorded on my cassette four track onto my computer for potential remixing, I recently came across "Marriage of Dale and Ming (And Flash Approaching)". It was every bit as hilarious as I'd remembered and also strangely moving. I'd still only ever recorded the two songs, and that was in 1996 and 1997. At this pace, two songs in fourteen years, I would finish the 18 song album in 2066, at 94 years of age, three years after Zefram Cochrane invents warp drive and the Vulcans make contact with Earth. To pick up the pace, I decided to record a third song from the soundtrack, using a fun, simple beat that had been going on in my mind on and off for a few weeks.

At first I could not find the music. I had to give the original book back about thirteen years ago but I had the good sense to make copies of all the Flash Gordon songs. I had put them in a pristine white folder I found in a dumpster (not that I was looking there, you understand. It practically jumped out at me. Originally it contained information about a hospital's taxes or some such thing.) along the river in Northfield behind Division Street. Can you believe the things people just throw out? Anyway, I searched my archives but it still took me a few days to find it, and I only found it while I was looking for something else.

I have been listening to a ton of Beatles lately and have had this cheerful beat going through my mind a lot. I thought it was the beat to "She Loves You" but a quick look at my Beatles Complete Scores revealed that it's not quite. Nevertheless, I used the half measure intro to "She Loves You" and the beat I had in my mind as a starting point for my new recording, which I decided would be "Flash (A.K.A. Flash's Theme)" That was the song that most intimidated me in terms of actually finishing the album, so I decided to tackle it head on. I had it in mind to use a typical Beatles/Ringo tom-heavy "bridge section" beat for the bridge section but couldn't really find one in Complete Scores, so I just used a dramatically slowed down version of the lopsided "Ticket To Ride" beat for the bridge.

I set up my drum kit last Sunday. That in itself was an adventure, as I haven't had it set up for a while. I had to take the heads off, clean it, remove the sponges the previous owner had put in for no reason I can discern and I never got around to removing all of until now, reassemble, and tune it. I recorded the drums first and they were a little too fast. Take four was good enough that I thought I would continue with it. Next was acoustic guitar, then bass, then electric guitar.

For the electric, I used a Chandler mother-of-pearl "Serious About Tone" pick because I've heard Brian May is nuts about picks and sometimes uses English coins to get the most powerful sound. They don't make those picks anymore but I have a stash. I knew I wouldn't get the Queen guitar sound, so I went for The Carpenters instead. On "Goodbye To Love" Richard C. plugged his electric directly into the recording sound board and turned it up until the VU meters were deep in the red. It's awesome. I did a similar thing and it sounded very raucous and inspiring. I ended up taking an impromptu solo during one of the spoken sections. It ended up sounding like a surf instrumental.

If you really want to know the kind of thing that is almost always going on in my actual mind, sometimes even while I am talking to people in person, you will continue bravely on and

Go to part 3.

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.