Month: January 2007

The Grammy awards folks announced yesterday that they convinced convinced the Police to play a song together to open the show on February 11. Yes, I’ll be watching (or Tivoing) it. No, I’m not thrilled and overjoyed. Too much time has passed, and I know how old Sting looks now; I don’t want to see an old Andy Summers and an old Stewart Copeland rehashing material that was current almost thirty years ago.

What I want is for them to get together—in the studio, not on TV—and pull a Mission of Burma by creating an album that’s just as amazing and vital as their early work. But I’m afraid the odds are against it.

Confession: I’ve been on a Beatles kick for a month or more now, as a quick glance at my Past Listening pages will show. Ironically, I think it started the last time I was in Las Vegas, with all the ads for the Cirque du Soleil show Love, based on the Beatles catalog. I also finally got a chance to listen to some of the Beatles discs I had ripped as part of The Project.

Now, coming back to the Beatles might not seem to be such a Big Thing, but consider: I basically gave away my Beatles collection, consisting of all the albums from Rubber Soul through Abbey Road, when I was in college. I had been nuts about the music when I was in high school, but by that point I had started to see it as juvenile, somehow. I had become aware of the roots of rock in American blues and folk music, and I had become captivated by the irony and anger of the better 90s alternative music. The Beatles seemed too pat, too earnest, too pop. So I gave the discs to my sister and forgot about them.

Except I had to go back and buy a new copy of The White Album, later.

And then in grad school, I sang lead on an a cappella arrangement of “Got to Get You Into My Life” … and fell in love with that song’s brassy soul. It had always seemed a throwaway track to me, tucked as it was right before “Tomorrow Never Knows” on the totally brilliant Revolver, but now as I studied it it was revealing hidden depths.

I was also becoming aware of how difficult it was to write the sort of melodies and nail the sorts of harmonies that the Beatles pulled off album after album. And I think my investigation of the roots of rock and roll was starting to make me curious… after listening to Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and others I wondered: what happened when this music hopped the pond to stir up four lads from Liverpool?

So in the last month I started picking up the early Beatles albums on the cheap. I had always dismissed the albums before Rubber Soul, preferring the clever songwriting to the albums that made teenage girls scream. I mean, come on… most of the early albums had cover songs on them. But after hearing a lot of 1950s Sun Records, I got curious. And I’m glad I did. Hearing the Beatles’ version of Carl Perkins’ “Honey Don’t” is very very cool. Hearing some of the great originals on the earlier albums (“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl,” “Money”…

Fast forward to today. A coworker of mine lent me the George Martin mixtape Love, and I listened to a fair percentage of it today. And to my surprise it’s good. There are some really imaginative things in it: Ringo’s drum solo leading into “Get Back,” the merging of “Blackbird” and “Yesterday,” playing “Sun King” backward… It plays like a quiz recording, “spot the song.” It’s a lot of fun to listen to and very pleasant—not groundbreaking but fun.

Lots of stuff happened this week, most of it between the hours of 10 pm and 3 am for various reasons. So today’s Random 10 will be brief. I will, though, point to one new site in my galaxy of affiliations: 43 People, which is now collecting my stories of meeting various famous and semi-famous people. Check out the leitmotif in the Willard Scott and Boyd Tinsley stories…

1. Woody Allen, “Pets” (Standup Comic)
2. Simon & Garfunkel, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (Old Friends)
3. Led Zeppelin, “The Rain Song” (Remasters)
4. The Sundays, “Here’s Where the Story Ends” (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic)
5. Joanna Newsom, “Swansea” (The Milk Eyed Mender)
6. Charles Mingus, “Better Get Hit In Your Soul” (Three or Four Shades of Blue)
7. Cat Power, “He War” (You Are Free)
8. U2, “The Fly” (Achtung Baby)
9. Ryan Adams, “I See Monsters” (Love Is Hell)
10. Sting, “Little Wing” (…Nothing Like the Sun)

I was surprised and saddened to learn of the death of two jazz luminaries this weekend. Michael Brecker was a pretty stellar saxophonist, Grammy winner and collaborator with pop luminaries ranging from Paul Simon (“Still Crazy After All These Years,” The Rhythm of the Saints) to Steely Dan (Gaucho, Gold) to Parliament (Trombipulation) to a host of jazz gigs under his own leadership, including multiple Grammys. I will always remember him for his superbly wry and understated guest spot on Dave Brubeck’s Young Lions and Old Tigers, the “Michael Brecker Waltz.” Leukemia took him too soon.

I was saddened about Alice Coltrane too, though reportedly she had been in poor health for a number of years. Fans of her husband John’s work generally are of two minds regarding Alice’s contributions to his later works, when she replaced McCoy Tyner on piano in his performing ensembles. Either they think of her as Yoko to his John (particularly those who don’t like the later, more experimental albums), or they recognize her work as a passionate collaborator and an important contribution to the sound and concept of such albums (Expressions, Stellar Regions). She was also an important contributor to the work of McCoy Tyner himself (Extensions). She will be missed.

Well, an exhausting week draws to a close. Really, I’m not sure what else I can say. I’m ready for a three day weekend and that’s all.

Oh yeah, and we might get some snow on Monday. So suck it, Seattle. (Boy, am I pissed that the city of rain has gotten more snow than we have so far this year.)

1. Tadd Dameron and John Coltrane, “Super Jet” (Mating Call)
2. The Cure, “The Blood” (Head on the Door)
3. Beastie Boys, “I Don’t Know” (Hello Nasty)
4. Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble, “O Ignis Spiritus” (Mnemosyne)
5. Herbert von Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic (Johannes Brahms, composer), “Ein Deutsches Requiem, 3. Solo: “Herr, Lehre Doch Mich” (Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem)
6. Ayub Ogada, “Ondiek” (En Mana Kuoyo)
7. Sonic Youth, “Brother James” (Screaming Fields of Sonic Love)
8. Beck, “Nothing I Haven’t Seen” (Sea Change)
9. The Reindeer Section, “Raindrop” (Y’All Get Scared Now, Ya Hear?)
10. U2, “All Because of You” (How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb)