Saw the great Solomon Burke at the Gibson a few weeks ago, thanks to Josh Lampkins for great tix and backstage passes. You gotta dig a 400 pound guy who comes onstage in a wheelchair, is loaded onto a throne -yes, a throne- and sings most of the show with his young grandson standing nearly motionless on one side and a nubile unidentified girl on the other constantly mopping his shaven head (what-quit show business?).
Still, the voice is just what you want it to be, even if most of the songs were done as fragments - the set seemed more like a long medley. All the hits - "Down In The Valley," "Got To Get You Off My Mind," "Everybody Needs Somebody." etc. Tight band,always alert to what seemed to be a turn-on-a-dime set list, but basically a chitlins circuit show with a bit of added jive and some tracks from the new "Nashville" album, produced by Buddy Miller, no less. Most of the pretty girls in the audience ended up on stage by invitation from the king himself or one of his minions, dancing or simply watching.
Went backstage but too late to greet the great man himself. The king had left the building, leaving us supplicants waiting for the next royal appearance.
I dunno; maybe we should all have been listening to Mick Fleetwood's wine advice all along. In fact, maybe he was dropping hints and we were just too deaf and addled to know. "Go Your Own Way" was really telling us to try a rich Beaujolais with flaky fish; "You Make Lovin' Fun" was an ode to Chardonnay; and "Tusk," of course, referenced the thorny unyielding qualities of big California Cabs.
More on this later. I'm still trying to figure it out...
OK; apparently he's serious about this, so we should be too, I guess. Here's the site: www.sabreentertainment.net.
The best show I saw all summer was Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler at the Gibson Amphitheater. The sound was crisp and real, the video screens worked, and perhaps best of all, the whole thing was being shot for a forthcoming DVD, which I'll be first in line to buy.
They did some Dire Straits, some Emmy, some songs from their collaboration "All The Roadrunning," and it was all breathtakingly good; it really was. So cool to see two mature artists (plus a great band of Nashville heavies) doing what they do unpretentiously and proudly. Cool too to see Knopfler fade into the band on Emmy's tunes, and Emmy segue into backup singer/duet partner as called for. It was more his night than hers if you count by whose tunes dominated, but their mutual respect and lack of spotlight-hogging made it all charming and low key, from "Romeo and Juliet" - still as powerful as it was in 1984 - to "Red Dirt Girl" which has the knack of drawing you in to its short sad reality almost before you realize it's over.
Heard a very cool interview with Paul Simon by Chris Douridas (I know, I know, but it was a cool interview). It was on Douridas' KCRW show last Saturday. It's part of the iTunes Music series he produces, and it will be up on that site in a couple of weeks, along with live music clips. Simon spoke at length on the origins of some of his songs, and about the writing process, or at least his writing process. They also played a clip I've never heard before orf Art Garfunkle supposedly recording a PSA or commercial of some kind. It's hilariously funny; he alludes to "surviving" the breakup. Simon is "producing" the spot and and prods Artie to plug his (Simon's) upcoming "major college tour." It's truly a crackup, worth hearing.
To file under "What's Wrong With The Music Business and Why Are There So Many Creeps in Show Business:" I got a call today to provide music and on-camera musicians for a national commercial for a major auto maker. It's a $500 buyout-no music clearance, no residuals, no guarantee on the length of the shooting day. Someone will take this gig; that's the sad part of the story.
Big article in Sunday's NYT about radio, or the lack of terrestrial radio opportunities for developing artists. Nothing mentioned specifically about the "legacy" artists that aren't served by trad radio, though. Haggard and Jones, Jackson Browne and Michael Brecker are left to fend for themselves.
I think there's a a lot of people who don't quite know what music to listen to these days.
They don't like hip hop-it scares them and they don't understand the odd mix of acetylene energy and molasses languidity. They don't really like "rock" or more specifically, current KROQ-style rock. It's too aggressive and vague, and they miss songs that convey a message in the old-school way that Bob Dylan and Neal Young and Curtis Mayfield did (the messages in hip hop go unnoticed; they get lost in the unfamiliar patois). If they found Weezer and Green Day and They Might Be Giants, they'd like it. They'd probably like a lot of emo, but they don't find it.
There is the "let's rock, man" crowd, but thy're pretty much in it for the beer, though they do go to concerts and buy CDs. Mostly Lynnard Skinnard, but still...
There's an audience for music that is mystical and swings and can carry both a message and a make you want to dance. Dylan and Young and CSNY and Mark Knopfler and James Taylor and Paul Simon can still fill large halls, if not stadiums. Prince and Steely Dan and a few more have their followings, but they're not mainstream. The thing is, none of this stuff is on the radio, unless you have sattelite radio, and statistically, you probably don't, although you will. James Blunt and Beck and Jewel and other younguns are around and trying to help where they can, and I haven't even mentioned the "Americana"/"No Depression" gang. They get about as much airplay as JP Sousa. You're as likely to hear Wilco or Golden Smog as you are to hear Steve Allen or Vic Damone. Actually, less...there are more stations playing light jazz and tuxedo-pop vocals than Americana.
I dunno. I'm thinking of a new blog here; something that would just be music, art, photography. No stuff about the kid (sorry, Sarah); no politics. Not like this.
Some possible threads: Chicago blues. Americana; twang; Knopfler; guitars and gear; Scorcese; John Ford; Woody Allen. Maybe tech stuff.
Do we need this blog?
