Sept 16 AOTD: Robbie Robertson - Music for the Native Americans

Robbie Robertson - Music for the Native Americans 

1994





















Link to listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVMW9huVqCQ&list=PLD82F19E4CF1957E6

In 1994, Ted Turner commissioned a film documentary on Native Americans for his own network.  Seeking to avoid just using straightforward recordings of Indians singing and chanting, which might wear out in accompaniment with his visual series, he, instead, asked Robbie Robertson of The Band to record the music.

The half Mohawk guitar slinger and songwriter ("The Night They Drove Ol Dixie Down") recruited some of the best Native American and Native Canadian singers and an army of musicians and producers to make one of the best albums of the 90s.

The album opens with "Coyote Dance," and one of the album's features is immediately explored: a combination of Native chants, new age productions and droning synths and drums swirl together like eddies in a prairie stream. 

The next song features the morning bird-like vocals of Pura Fe, Soni, Jen of Ulali.
Translation: 

A hundred years have passed
Yet I hear the distant beat of my father's drums.
I hear his drums throughout the land.
His beat I feel within my heart.
The drum shall beat
so my heart shall beat.
And I shall live a hundred thousand years.

Next up ... We finally get to hear the soft, gravelly vocals of Robbie himself on "Ghost Dance," a wonderful lyric-retelling of the resistance that eventually led up Wounded Knee, which is referenced in the song.  The background vocals emerge wisp-like from the music, mirroring the rising spirits he sings of.  And when he introduces the breakdown to sing of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, it feels like trotting horses being reigned in ... and then slowly released again, until the end when said horses are brought to a stand with the cessation of drums and a forlorn, spoken, "We used to the ghost dance; we don't sing them kind of songs no more."

Much of the music is slower or mid-tempo, like "Vanishing Breed," and in songs like these we often hear Robbie's guitar work subtly snaking its way up through the mix to nestle alongside flutes, organs or hand drums - all of it amplified to fill out a canyon wide, cinematic soundscape.

Robertson feels as much like a documenting storyteller as a singer-songwriter on songs like "It is a Good Day to Die."  That dark voice lending gravitas to his subjects of loss, longing, and remorse.

Other highlights on the album include moments when Robertson strips it back to acoustic or electric guitar with simple accompaniment - perhaps just a violin and a drum - like "Akua Tuta," and "Words of Fire, Deeds of Blood." The space between the vocals and instruments often give more weight to the solos and voices. In the latter, the drums echo with enough reverb to shake your speakers ... if you turn it up. Perhaps most effective of all is "Ancestor Song," where Robertson and his production team disappear to leave only drums and chanting.

On The Band's website, this translation is given for Cherokee Morning Song:

We n' de ya ho
Freely translated: "A we n'" (I am), "de" (of), "Yauh" --the-- (Great Spirit), "Ho" (it is so).
Written as: A we n' de Yauh ho (I am of the Great Spirit, Ho!).
This language stems from very ancient Cherokee

The entire album works as transport back through time, back through the mist, back through a history of beauty and sadness.  It is ancient and mystical, a world music album dug up from our own backyard by a Canadian native, an American immigrant, a half mohawk, who guides us on this Native journey with ancient voice and modern guitar. Take the reigns and ride with him.

Sept 9 AOTD: The Who - Quadrophenia

The Who - Quadrophenia

1973



Link to Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyN7WUKRicw&index=1&list=PL705A234F43DA0E34


My last AOTD of the summer has been reserved for my favorite album of all time: The Who's Quadrophenia. Hands Down. PERIOD! (.) . It's the story of Jimmy the Mod, and the story of all mods and all teens, the story of the Sea or nature or God, and how that all works on our minds, on our sould.  It's a story of firsts: loves, drugs, jobs, identities, and spiritual awakenings.

I can't cover most of the material on this, one of the most packed, complicated albums out there; so I'm going to just start the album and give a running stream-of-conscious commentary:


PART ONE ...

I Am The Sea: The album opens with the sound of the sea, recorded by Townshend himself. Over the crashing of the waves, you hear the four themes of the album, the disparate personalities of our hero (actually an anti-hero), Jimmy. Growing up in Duluth, on the edge of Lake Superior, I can immediately identify with this opening.  In nature, especially near any moving water, I find my real self - both a part of the nature around me, as well as dwarfed by the size of the lake, a river, an ocean or a mountain.

The Real Me: This is it, taking us back to our most primal state of teenage maturation, struggling to figure out who the hell we really are?  We act one way for our parents, another for our friends, and then our teachers or preachers get another view, and maybe our bosses and co-workers at our minimum-wage jobs get a fourth view.  All the while we are struggling to decide WHO we want to be.  Check out the Gibson Thunderbird bass in this song! The playful bubbling was done in one take by John Entwistle, a "joke," he said.  Meanwhile the rest of the band loved it and demanded they go with that take.

Quadrophenia: you will hear all four themes again in this song.  And here's that makes it so clear why I love the mind of Pete Townshend - the most creative use of synthesizer, the simplicity of the piano carrying a theme, guitars and drums dually scaling peaks, circling up like wind swirling cathedral spires.

Cut My Hair: A cymbal wash ushers in (like water or like waves) Pete Townshend's vocals - and this is really the secret weapon of The Who and of this entire album.  Whenever a plaintive voice, a bemoaning consciousness - under the lion bravado - is needed, you will hear Pete singing.

The Punk and Godfather: imagine finally meeting your rock star idol.  Pete says that's what Jimmy does, and then this singer he worshipped just tells him to bugger off! And the disconnect between fan and star begins.  Disillusionment.  And we find the disconnect between ourselves, our newly forming ideals and the commercially-driven, self-centered politics of our heroes.

I'm One: This is the song I loved WHEN I WAS A YOUNG teen (I really came to love the full album as a masterpiece later in high school and then more in college).  Honestly, I always misunderstood the chorus. I took "I'm one" to mean "I am an individual," but it's really Jimmy saying he doesn't fit in anywhere else (not coordinated enough, not athletic enough, not good-looking enough), but he DOES fit in with his Mod friends.  Either way, and most times both ways, I love the song with its honest discussion of come downs, autumn (always a depressing time of school starting), feeling like a loser, loneliness, jealousy of another's style and look, but still struggling to put your personal stamp on the world. Maybe, as a teen, it is done in the company of a group or maybe you do set out as an individual. This is MY song, I can play it repeatedly and every line takes me to a moment in my life where I tried something and failed (playing an instrument or singing), looking awkward (I was nicknamed throughout my life various things like "Dumbo" and "coyote" due to my big ears and nose), never having the good clothes or not having them fit me right (I actually stole my older sister's "Levi" jeans at one point just so I would not have wear the ill-fitting Tough Skins or Wrangler jeans I was given as hand-me-downs from the neighbors).  For me and so many others (like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, this song screamed to us that we were not alone, that someone understood us: Pete Townshend, at least.

The Dirty Jobs/Helpless Dancer: I love these two songs back to back because it gets the nastiness, dirtiness, lowness of our earliest jobs or stations in life. Also, its one of the few places on the album where various minor characters seem to speak to Jimmy and say "you're one of us," a reminder that he's not special - neither as a hero nor as a victim. I also love his response to buck up and stay determined.  Helpless Dancer is one of the most interesting tracks due to the double vocals of Daltrey - as one line comes out of the left speaker (sounding a little more subdued), and then another immediately follows springing out of the right speaker, nastier, almost snarling - and back and forth - as the left voice rises to meet the intensity of the right channel voice.  This is Roger's theme and the explanation of why Jimmy loses his "toughness": he's just too disillusioned in the face of dashed hopes.

Is It In My Head/I've Had Enough: Two songs that remind us of the beauty of the band - the first song always reminds me that so many of our problems ARE in our heads - and we need to get OUT of our heads - out of the paranoia.  What happens next sounds like a modern day Walt Whitman, with his I hear America Singing - his listing - I've had enough of living, dying, smiling, crying ... childhood, graves ... It also contains a verse I've constantly found myself living to:
"Get a job and fight to keep it
Strike out to reach a mountain
Be so nice on the outside
But inside keep ambition"

Half the time I live that sardonically and the other half? ... Seriously! I want to say that my outside and inside are matching, for the purpose of integrity, which I so dearly cling to, but are they???  It's why Pete's theme (Love Reign O'er Me), which he describes as a "hypocrite" and a "beggar" is so appropriately embedded in here.

PART TWO ...

5:15: Jimmy is on the train, leaving town, heading out to seaside towns he used to haunt with his old Mod buddies. He's pilled up and "out of his brain on the train."  Another great bass line from John and more drums that pound and scamper with frenetic urgency, evoking the anxiety of our hero as he ponders his situation.

Sea and Sand/Drowned: some of Townshend's best lyrics - and that's really saying something for an album that is four sides long.  Sea and Sand once again gets at reality - some of the most-straightforward lyrics on the album - the disfunction of his family, the lust for a local girl, the repeat of the style theme with the "GS scooter" and "jacket cut slim." The song is filled with yearning, punctuated with more illusion-splitting realizations - none of the girls are as cool as they seem - but neither is Jimmy!

Drowned is a spiritual twin to the material Sea and Sand: when he says "let me be a drop" in the ocean, "let the tide set me free," he's referencing God's love - the ocean - and His love for EACH of us - the drops (that will return to the sea) - another type of yearning.  I get this one, too, but will leave those thoughts for another day.

Bell Boy: imagine meeting someone that you once knew - that you once thought was soooo cool - and now, years down the road, that person is just like every bloke working a humbling job, kissing up to a boss, "running at someone's heels," "keeping his thoughts to himself, "licking boots for his perks" just to get by...! and where do you get relief from such a heavy let-down?  Another favorite line: "The beach is the only place where a man can feel like he's real."  Props to Keith Moon for his gruff, broken-down cockney delivery of the chorus!

Dr. Jimmy: This is the song I chose to play on my headphones to get myself pumped up for playing in football games in my senior year of high school.  Maybe it was just the line "I'll take on anyone/ ain't scared of a bloody nose."  This is Jimmy's last stand it seems - with everyone - complete abandonment - letting it all hang out - dangerously, violently and self-destructively.  It worked for me when I needed to summon my bravado, when I needed to put it all out there, on the field, with no fear. Listen to this and listen for the note bend - or maybe Roger's voice cracking  - on the world "hold" in the last line of the verse:

"I'm going back soonHome to get the baboonWho cut up my eyeTore up my LevisI'm feeling restlessBring another score aroundMaybe something strongerCould really hold me down"

The amount of aggression in Roger's voice wouldn't be matched until some of the punk bands of the late 70s and early 80s, but that it's juxtaposed with his sweetness in singing "Is it me?/For a moment/The stars are falling/The heat is rising/The past is calling" makes it an unparalleled delivery in all of rock.  Pete wrote for that voice with its rang. And Roger delivered.

The Rock/Love Reign O'er Me - 2nd song from the end, and it's a return to the instrumental, Quadrophenia-style, heard 2nd song in from the start.  All the themes are here - the guitar is singing, drums are crashing, synths are swirling, and that french horn keeps floating in. It sounds like The Who are intermittently marching off to war and into the sunset - a perfect intro into the finale delivered with thunderous punch and into the rain that begins "Love Reign O'er Me."  A finale like no other - Try it!! - go listen to the end of the Wall or Dark Side of the Moon (a close second, I'll give you that) - nothing stands up to this tour de force of Roger's roar, his soul-rending plea - Pete eloquently ramping up to the ending with woeful guitar - and then Daltrey letting rip his impassioned repeated delivery of the word "love," the final word shredding. That would be enough indeed, but then Keith Moon unleashes, stealing the final act of the  show with the most thunderous drums ever recorded (as far as I am concerned), even kicking over a stand of tubular bells for final crashing effect!  The Greatest Band. The Greatest Album.

  

Gratitude:

First: thank you to anyone who has read any of my posts on this blog.  Sharing my love of music, especially rock and roll, has re-energized me, my love for music, my love for writing, and especially my love for the art form of the album.

Second: I would like to thank Zach Palmer for first inspiring me to 1) suggest an album a day to write about, and 2) write about that album for others to gather a sense of why it might be worth listening to. He also made an archive list of the earliest albums of the summer that I recommended.

Third: I would also like to thank Jake Lindberg who about 2/3 way through this project saved me from writing an essay a day as texts on my phone ... and got me to this much more comfortable format of the blog.

Fourth: I would like to thank my sister, Melinda, who salvaged (via transcribing them to google docs) many of my texted essays before I started the blog.

Where would I be without my friends and family?  Probably ... "out of my brain, on the train."

Sept 8 AOTD - U2 - The Joshua Tree

U2 - The Joshua Tree

1987

Lin to Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FsrPEUt2Dg&list=PLIHqGfTiPiMWRadWXFtaSLGUI953vOTrt


In 1987, I was a lucky young man. On March 4, at exactly 11:30 a.m. (radio stations were all strictly forbidden from playing it before this time), the first single to be released from Joshua Tree was suddenly playing on the radio.  I was in my bedroom in my Dad's house, studying - my boom box speakers splayed out on my desk to either side of me.  I stopped - the opening drums and synthesizers capturing my attention... but really two other instruments, soon in the mix, the bass and something else... something I had never heard before ... like a constant wind whistling through some dessert canyon - and I found out later that was The Edge's "infinite guitar," created to hold "sustained" notes - but they appeared to be rising and falling, bending, and then fading ... before that voice. Yes, Bono. But in a much lower register than I had heard him before, and then dropping even more, a full octave at the ends of the verses ... and then that signature "Unforgettable Fire"-sound in his usual register, desperation in his voice as he sang "With or Without You," pushing to emotional heights on "...you give yourself away ... you give, you give, you give"!  I grabbed those speakers, pulled them closer to my ears, and then, as the song crescendoed, cried while listening to music for the first time ever.

Two more singles on the radio just as moving would in the upcoming weeks: "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."  The rest of the decade belonged to U2, it was theirs, rightfully claimed with spiritual anthems and experimentation that just didn't exist anywhere else.  The album plays out across a cinematic and sonic landscape - from America's Mojave desert to Ireland and Dublin's drug-ridden Seven Towers. But it was more the draw of a mythical, romanticized America that set the majority of the album's memorable tone. Bono's familiar, chiming guitar introduces "In God's Country," where Bono declares that hope can be found, we can "punch a hole right through the night" where "Liberty, she comes to rescue me."  The album FEELS like that mythical, place-of-dreams, greater than a Hamm's Beer commercial country, with clear blue water cascading down into our desert dreams.

I saw U2 that year on Joshua Tree Tour in Kansas City (and have seen them on every tour since) and witnessed, for me, the closest thing to what I had read about regarding tent revival shows, preachers whipping Southern crowds into religious frenzies. I had enjoyed music before this album and tour.  But now a new standard had been set.  Bono was even more engaging on stage than he was on record, at one point explaining that the meaning behind "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was a desire to "walk into a music store and not see any separation between the black music and classic rock." It was an incredible moment of hope from a man who would later do so much to build bridges between his white wealth and the needs of those in Africa. That night I felt that no matter what any of us in Kemper Arena believed in terms of faith, we could all spiritually or otherwise get behind this music.

The album also tackles drug addiction on "Running to Stand Still," the revolutionary crisis in Central America in "Bullet the Blue Sky," the death of one of their close friends in "One Tree Hill," and the out-of-work miner strikes of the 80s in England in "Red Hill Mining Town" (one of the most moving songs to NOT be released as a single) ... all before reaching an ending that addresses mothers having lost their children to brutal dictators in Central and South American countries in "Mothers of the Disappeared." It's a rueful, dark comedown, both beautiful in Bono's lyrics, but ominous in the effect-laden, synthesize instrumentation.  It's a fitting ending to an album that is filled with tension.  Streets with No Names can be liberating, but also downright terrifying in their directionless-ness.  And the first single - With or Without You - is really Bono exploring the pull between being a private, faithful husband and being an exposed, wanderlust rock and roll singer.  The album may best be remembered for its embracing of American idealism, but it is also a sociopolitical roller coaster of danger and death.  Perhaps that's its greatest beauty, that it is defined by love AND loss, the two backbones of our essence, of our humanity.

Sept 7 AOTD: Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

1973




Link to Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW-lXjOyUWo&index=1&list=PL3PhWT10BW3Urh8ZXXpuU9h526ChwgWKy

For my final three Albums of the Day of this summer, I am going to review what (at least currently) are my favorite three albums.  I'll do my best to explain why.  But let's face it, so much of what any one of us loves about any piece of music has to do with where and when we are in life, who we are with, and what we are experiencing at that time.  And sometimes it's just the magic of the music playing upon the chemistry of our brains, forming emotive synapses like sunsets and stars melding in a great euphoric sky.

I fell fully in love with Pink Floyd in the early 80s - especially while attending a military academy in Salina, KS.  It was there that life begin to show just how dark it could get, and I was ripe for some connective understanding from some fellow humans ... and thus ripe for the themes of Dark Side, which Roger Waters claims to have been about all things in life that drive us mad: pressures of school or our jobs, relationships, consumerism, violence, the passage of time, and and death. My love of science fiction also opened me to all the sounds of the album, from the opening bass drum simulating a heartbeat (meant to orientate the listener to the full human experience) to the synthesizers of On the Run, which evoke the stress of modern travel.

The record is truly an "album," all songs meant to be heard together, in order.  The 5 tracks on each side segue with no breaks between songs, and each is meant to be an ensuing phase in a human's life. It works so well, that I have never bothered to learn any of the parts of the album as songs (I always have to look at the liner notes to see), with a few exceptions: "Money" because its popularity on radio has made it a classic rock staple, and "Time" because it begins with the distinct sound of several clocks chiming ... and it's - perhaps - my favorite cut on the album with its line "...hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way ..."  This song addresses everything that piqued my interest at the time - everything British, time, the rat race ("run, rabbit, run") and if we could ever get off, and even a "magic spell."  It also ends with one of the best segues on the entire album, slipping into "The Great Gig in the Sky" that just sounds like part two, like a human's soul crying out in anguish against it's mind's great reveal just heard in part one. Also, listen for another of David Gilmour's mind-peeling guitar solos in "Time."

The album owes so much of it's creative sound to people outside of Pink Floyd themselves.  Take "The Great In The Sky": that's Clare Torrey delivering those exuberant, breath-stealing and haunting vocals.  Richard Wright composed the song with her.  She sued in the 2000s and finally gets liner notes-songwriting credit today.  And who recruited her?  Alan Parsons.  He who is responsible for just about every interesting sonic effect you hear, the most famous possibly the sound of change, ripping paper, and a cash register at the beginning of "Money."  Since this was made long before "pro tools," and other modern computer conveniences, he manually had to cut the tape pieces and then splice them together by hand to create the continuous rhythmic effect.

Side two reaches another epic peak (much like "Time" on side one) with "Us and Them," the other released single (besides "Money") and features a Floyd-signature tenor sax solo played by Dick Parry.

I honestly do not understand why my friends in the late 70s always had a need to get stoned while listening to this album. The beauty of the music, the echoes, the effects, those voice, and empathic lyrics ... well, it all combines to create one of the best natural highs I have ever experienced.  Best listened to ... in the Dark!

Sept 6 AOTD: Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

1963




Link to Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwgrjjIMXA&list=PLp4M9H57nRcsq2G1c_60FDeVruqLx0bpx

It's hard to believe that this is not only Dylan's second album, but his FIRST with all his own material (with the exception of one cut).  On his debut "Bob Dylan," he had followed the tradition of folk music artists by covering other's material, hence the passing on of music of the common people - the folk.

Now he was creating the anthems of every kind of folk: those thinking twice about military engagements, those struggling with poverty, and (amongst many other common struggling folks) those seeking equality, justice and freedom.  And he reaches all "folks" - all of us - on the first track, "Blowin' in the Wind" with a series of rhetorical questions that are also images, and rhetorical answers.  Perhaps the most resounding answer is "ENOUGH!" Already! But he was already, at the young age of 20, wise enough to know that people had to find the answers themselves ... they had to "find the wind," he told a Rolling Stone reporter.

Rarely has a song, even in the heaviest metal, so scathing as "Master of War" been written or sung.  He peels back the politics of war to bare the truth of older, aloof, wealthier, soulless men mercilessly discarding the young in the wars they wage.  It's the third song in and he's already earned the Nobel prize for poetry he would not receive till 2016.

For me the apotheosis of the album is reached at "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," where he, once again, uses a series of questions of some innocent prodigal child returning (Where have you been ...?" and this time another voice answers the questions, and the images are harrowing!  But also entrancing in their poetic strength.

Here was the beginning of a revolution in songwriting that is still being followed today.

Sept 5 AOTD: Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run

Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run

1975



Link To Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcNtV41jwj4

Just a piano and harmonica intro ... and then that iconic line: "the screen door slams."  You could be anywhere in America listening to the Born to Run opener "Thunder Road." But when you listened back in the 70s and 80s, that porch, stoop, or front door was yours!  And you could clearly see Mary dancing to the radio.  Springsteen had reached a new peak as a story teller, using just the right detail and imagery to make a populist scene come to life.  The E-street band provided the rest of the ingredients, supplying keys, saxophone and drums that laid down grooves that were apropos soundscapes to stories of the city, leaving the city, the road, young romance, and friendships leaning loyal and sometimes friendships looming dark.

In a 2015 interview for Rolling Stone, Springsteen claimed that the album held "quite a sense of dread and uncertainty about the future and who you were, where you were going, where the whole country was going. That found its way into the record."  But every song also dishes up characters looking forward, looking out - across a street or across a river.  They all seem to think they can get across. For the 70s this was an album about class, and Springsteen recognized the truth and dread of the blue collars working themselves toward their graves, but he also offered hope, dreams, and a musical escape. In Cleveland, when Disc Jockey Kid Leo played "Born to Run" every Friday on his radio station, this was a chance for those who did not have fun on their jobs all week to see a glimmer of hope on the weekend.

Springsteen has also spoken in numerous interviews to a feeling of  "this was it: do-or-die," as Columbia Records had no belief in the commercial appeal of him or his band. In fact they wanted to redo his second album with session musicians.  So the sound of flying down a road at a hundred miles an hour on wheels that are blasting through Spector's wall of sound in the single "Born To Run," the single released about 6 months before the album came out - well, that's the sound of a man determined to put it ALL out there. And that's the feeling I get when I sing along - desperation, last chance, and giving it all I've got ... to get across.

But the rest of the album is just as colossal, each song looming like pillars of the night, streets, drug deals, and love  - all supporting that hot rod beacon perfectly located in the middle of the album.

Sept 1, 2, 3, 4 AOTD: Styx, Tom Petty, Queen and Police

Styx - The Grand Illusion

1977



Link to Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO62scTZ7Qk&list=PL15D2FB6E422EC88B

Hey folks, I am going on vacation to Canada to go camping for a week.  I'll be back next Wednesday.

So here are the albums for the days I will be gone:

Saturday, Sept 1: Styx - The Grand Illusion

Sunday, Sept 2: Tom Petty - Damn the Torpedoes

Monday, Sept 3: Queen - The Game

Tuesday, Sept 4: Police - Synchronicity

The first two arrived in the late 70s when my taste in rock was being solidified at the time with a penchant for the more intellectual, dramatic progressive rock (of bands like Styx) AND the classic rock of what sounded like the heartland of America to me, basically Springsteen, Petty and eventually Mellencamp.  Come sail away was as irresistible to me as Refugees was

The next were represent some of my early 80s obsessions.  My number one obsession at the time was Queen.  I literally wore out cassettes of "Live Killers" and "The Game," whereby after getting stuck, I would completely pull out the tape and then rewind them with a pencil.  I also took apart cassette players, determined to fix them, though that never went as well as recycling the cassettes themselves.

Synchronicity is an MTV album, with at least 3 or 4 major hits that were in constant rotation on the music network.  One of my favorite images from that era will always be Sting dancing in slow motion through about a hundred candles in "I'll Be Wrapped Around Your Finger."