Twelve Very Sad Musician Deaths

Elvis. His last album, Moody Blue, still sounds fresh, new, emotional, and fascinating. It pointed the way for much of what I remember of the next five years or so of music, especially early '80s country, which all sounds derived from "For The Heart" and "Moody Blue" and "He'll Have To Go". He was still active and creative and innovative and I'd love to know what he would have done for the last thirty years or so.

John Lennon. Possibly the saddest, most shocking, senseless, unfair rock star death ever. He wasn't effed up on drugs. He had a five year old son he loved, a smart, loving wife and collaborator, a new album (Double Fantasy) that was the best thing he'd done in almost ten years, and a public ready and waiting to welcome him back from his self-imposed exile. And he was only 40!

George Harrison. The last album (Brainwashed) is brilliant, the equal of anything he'd ever done. I would love for him to have gotten another twenty or thirty years; both for his own music and so he could hear the excellent music his son is now making (Fistful of Mercy) and tell him in person how proud he was.

Kirsty MacColl. Again the fantastic creative leap of the last album (Tropical Brainstorm) pointing the way to what else she might have done. She also never got the widespread, A-list acclaim she deserved for her outstanding songwriting.

Kurt Cobain. Nirvana is still the most interesting thing on modern rock radio, despite the familiarity of all the tunes. I never switch stations when "Lithium" or even "Smells Like Teen Spirit" comes on. I started teaching guitar the year he died and I always felt like the kids really learned something musically important by playing his songs.

Jimi Hendrix. What would he have done next? What would he be doing now? I can't even imagine it and neither can anyone else. That's what's so frustrating about a lot of the people on this list. A sense of an unfulfilled mission, the continuation of which would have benefitted the entire world. Perhaps most especially...

John Coltrane. His last recordings were the most extreme, intense, intelligent thing anyone had ever done and no one has ever matched him. Would he have topped himself somehow and showed us something even more new and revolutionary? The frustrating answer is that only he had the mind, the technique, the feeling, and the soul to do whatever it is he would have done next. You could make a case that an entire genre died with him.

Janis Joplin. Wouldn't it be cool to have some late '70s Janis albums? They would sound so soulful and rockin' and mellow by turns and probably sometimes all at once.

John Stenseth. My favorite regular performer at St. Olaf's Larson Coffeehouse by a wide margin and the only one to whom I willingly, enthusiastically surrendered the open mic night stage back in the day. His 12-string was a marvelous machine of melody and rhythm and his voice was a fountain of soul. It makes me question the very nature of existence that he, of all people, died so young.

Sandy Denny. I only recently discovered for myself the true glory and power of this British singer/songwriter, a giant of folk, and I look forward to hearing everything else she ever did and I'm sure I'll get to the point where I am knowledgeable enough to wish there was another thirty years of it.

Chris Bell. His post-Big Star recordings (I Am The Cosmos) are really excellent and I'd love to see where he would have gone. Plus, Like John L. above, his band's inevitable reunion would have been a lot more interesting and authentic.

Alex Chilton. He seems to have been pretty much done with studio recordings but his shows were still great, be they with Big Star, The Box Tops, or solo. I would've liked to have seen him another time or two.

Ars longa, vita brevis.
R.I.P.
Wish You Were Here.

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.

Coda to Culture Roundup

It's been a tough year for Barenaked Ladies. Some sort of problem with cocaine, cops, and fighting women or something like that on the eve of the tour promoting your first children's album is colossally bad timing. Then there was, I think, a plane crash. I'm not here for research, but anyway I think I remember some things like that. Not my business.

My point is that this morning we listened to Barenaked For The Holidays, the band's excellent seasonal CD. It is my second favorite Christmas album behind the super complete compilation of Elvis' Christmas recordings, If Every Day Was Like Christmas. Barenaked For The Holidays is great. I love that they took the time to really nail the Bono line of "Do They Know It's Christmas". (And tonight thank God it's them instead of you!) They do some funny, irreverent things, they do some poignant things, the music is varied and well thought out, and the sound is good. In other words, it's BNL at their best.

Movies? Yeah, I forgot about those. I don't see as many movies as I used to (a record of 55 in 1999 or one of those years like that) but Let The Right One In was quite good. It's in Swedish with subtitles if you can handle that. I loved the bleakness of the Stockholm suburb and the endless, relentless winter. I loved the basic decency of everyone in the film, trying their best to handle the tough situations they have been dealt. Plus, (Minor SPOILER ALERT! also perpetrated by the film's website) vampire!

And one more book. I finished the latest David Sedaris and started Jack Pendarvis' The Mysterious Secret of The Valuable Treasure. I've only read through the first story but I haven't laughed so hard since...well, since I just read David Sedaris, so that particular superlative phrase loses some power in this case. But I can heartily recommend the first ten pages of the Pendarvis.

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I'd hate to discourage anyone from officially "following" this blog if they are so inclined. At the same time, I have to ask a question. Hey, Save WCAL! Who are you really and why are you following me?

Well, I guess google bought blogger so now I have a google account. That sucks, but I didn't want to start a new blog somewhere else. Anyway, here's what I was going to say.

I am watching the end of Elvis' "duet" with Celine Dion from American Idol on youtube. It is interesting and I'm glad I watched it. Nothing I have ever seen better exhibits why I love Elvis with all my heart and feel, at best, indifferent to Ms. Dion. Elvis is very obviously pouring everything he has into the song, which played a major role in turning his career around. He seems to be holding nothing back. He has thought about what he is saying and he is saying it as if his life depended on his fans getting it. Whether it is true or not, and I think it is, to watch Elvis during this performance (as I have several times) is to look directly into his soul.

In sharp contrast to the American country boy giving everything he has to a song he believes in and conveys every word of, Ms. Dion is exposed more than ever as a distant, if arguably virtuosic, technician. She reveals nothing of herself, neither feeling nor conveying any meaning beyond her robotic conveyance of the notes. I'm glad I watched it and I need never watch it again. God bless you, Elvis.