Down Home with Bob Seger

Ramblin' Gamblin' Man (1969) was Bob Seger's full-length declaration of intent, a fine example of the grainy, near-primitivist punk thrash that only a town like Detroit could deliver. This album got constant play when I lived in Detroit and probably got even more after I moved to the comparatively Edenic San Diego. The contrast between the two places wasn't lost on me. Detroit had a certain industrial-grade musical aggression, a willingness to get down and dirty without worrying too much about finesse, while San Diego seemed almost absurdly relaxed by comparison. Seger's record carried some of that Detroit weather with it, a reminder of a place where rock and roll could still sound like a physical confrontation.

This is an earnest and brilliant example of garage-band genius, the kind of thrashing primitivism produced by musicians who were definitely not virtuosos but who nonetheless managed to howl, jam, and slam all the pent-up teenage rage of their Michigan fan base into a minimalist fury. There's very little here that could be mistaken for sophistication, and that's precisely the point. The playing is frequently ragged, the arrangements occasionally lumbering, and the production has a wonderfully unvarnished quality. The band sounds less interested in getting everything right than in making sure nobody walks away unscathed. There's a certain democratic quality to this kind of rock and roll: you don't need to be a great musician to participate, but you had better be prepared to throw yourself into it."Black Eyed Girl" is a gloriously lumbering blues number, with prime Seger shouting, screaming, and bellowing, his rasp climbing toward an appealingly frayed high note. He sounds like a man who has no intention of saving his voice for the next performance. "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" is a hard-charging rocker built around a simple, killer drumbeat, with all sorts of weird psychedelia, feedback, wah-wah pedal orgies, and Seger rasping his lungs out over the commotion. The song has a wonderfully reckless quality, as if the band has stumbled onto something exciting and has no intention of stopping to figure out exactly what it is. The instrumental flourishes don't so much decorate the music as contribute to its general state of agitation. Everything is in motion, everything is turned up, and subtlety has been left somewhere outside the studio.

"Down Home" is another barn burner, a great companion piece to the Stones' domestic-life portraits, particularly "Live with Me." There's a similar fascination with the less respectable side of everyday existence, the pleasures, irritations, and disreputable characters that make up a life lived without much concern for appearances. Seger had a knack for finding musical and emotional mileage in these ordinary, sometimes unlovely circumstances. He wasn't trying to make the lives of his characters more attractive than they were. There was something recognizable and occasionally uncomfortably familiar about them.

Seger would refine his approach considerably over the years, with mostly good and occasionally great results. He became a more polished songwriter and performer, and eventually found a way to bring his particular brand of Midwestern rock and roll to a much larger audience. But something was lost along the way, or at least pushed into the background. On Ramblin' Gamblin' Man, the music still has the feel of something being worked out in real time, with the rough edges and occasional excesses contributing to rather than detracting from the experience. It isn't a record that asks you to admire the musicianship or contemplate the finer points of arrangement. It wants to grab you by the collar, drag you onto the dance floor, and leave you wondering what the hell just happened. This album gave me the idea that hard rock, at ground level, should sock you in the jaw and kick you in the head. I still think that's a pretty good idea.

Kudos for Phil Lesh

 The Grateful Dead remain a problematic band for historians who like to place artists in strict genres and loath those who breach the boundaries. The band had equal footing in all things Americana--old time rock, blues, old school rhythm and blues, folk, country, bluegrass-- with the rest of their music easily moving into areas that are modal, jazzy, influenced not a little by Eastern forms of improvisation, and not a little avant gard . It seemed at times that they flirted with the edges of progressive rock, and it seemed as if they weren't conciously trying to emulate their virtuoso European cousins. Not to say that the majority of this limitless and often exhilarating eclecticism comes from Lesh, but the late bass player's already broad musical training and playing experience--theory, composing, playing trumpet in jazz band situations--certainl

y informs the off-center improvisations his foundation for the Dead. Part of the Dead's musical genius was how they anticipated what the others were going to do in the moment of extemporaneous music making--we generally think of Bob Weir's uncanny skill to be precisely where he needed to be during Garcia's roaming guitar leads. But here we have an isolated and extended example of Lesh's particular genius as a bassist. As has been said in the NY Times obituary, his lines often became lead parts in themselves, offering sublime counterpoint and alternative melodic compliments to Garcia's decorative riffing , as well as working in perfect sympathy, simpatico, with the dynamic drum work. Lesh had a jazz player's instincts.

Hopefully cautious

  

It was a wonderful, joyous, and hopeful experience viewing the election map this morning after. I watched the election for a solid four hours last night, switching between the various news channels, and as they called one seat after another for the Democrats and the amount of blue increased on the various election maps on the channels, it became obvious that America wanted America to be America again, to paraphrase the Langston Hughes poem. We have been a great nation that has done great things for the benefit of its people and for the world . I'm not blind to our part in the worst situations both domestically and internationally, but it seems to me that we've righted ourselves and got on the beam again, willing, and able to do the right thing. But Trump was a horror both in his first term and a worse debacle in his second; he is what happens if you let a cut-rate banana republic strongman take charge of the power being President brings you. God willing and the creek don't rise, the Democrat will take on the long task of setting things right and bringing Trump and his sycophants to an accounting for their sins against the nation. Remember that their wasn't much ticket splitting in the various results: voters rejected Republican slates throughout the night and put Democrats in their place, in the House, the Senate, and in the Governor's offices. I hope this shows the national change of mood and that our better angels can now guide us to a new time of justice, peace and good deeds in general. But has been said, there is much work to be done. But I am hopeful, for a change, and that's not nothing.