WHEN DID THE STONES JUMP THE SHARK? A HOT TAKE

 Some bands don't know when to quit, with the Rollings Stones at the top of that list. I believe Some Girls is the band's last great album, an obvious response to the punk rockers who rejected the Stones and their generational mates as old and in the way, utterly useless to the current cultural grimness. It seems the band knew they had something to prove, and did so powerfully here, the songs solid, tight but bursting with gang fight aggression, jaded but hardly retiring, momentarily reflective and even sentimental but kicking aside the repast for a crazed, speed freak delirium both exciting and suggesting complete and total collapse. "Beast of Burden", "Miss You","When the Whip Comes Down", "Shattered"--peak songwriting throughout from Jagger and Richards in their last important album. This was the last time they could get away with being purely the Rolling Stones of legend without being accused of being a parody of their former greatness. They had two resolutely mediocre albums following Exiles--Goats Head Soup and It's Only Rock and Roll--and it was my hope that the unexpected vitality and verve of Some Girls would be a long-lasting return to form. But alas, not the case. But it is, in my view, among their best work, and is the last significant record they made. Following were discs that were good to fair to middling at best , none of which generated lasting heat and little of which couldn't escape the feeling that this was band that replaced corporate style professionalism ahead of inspiration. Their occupation was to sound like the Rolling Stones.

BALD HEADED WOMAN by THE WHO

 There were times when the usually spirited and inventive wave of Brit bands covering American soul and blues songs yielded music that was cartoonish and , say, insulting. The basic problem is singer Daltry, an energetic, versatile but sadly colorless vocalist who only manages a naive minstrel parody of , maybe, the Lightnin' Hopkins version that came before. Interestingly, the track was produced by Shel Talmy, who according to some references, claimed credit for writing the song , which was actually a traditional chain gang song , author unknown. Talmy is quoted why he took credit for composing a public domain song in Ray Davis: Not Like Everybody Else :"They were my perks, a way for me to get in on the publishing royalties, they were just folk things I adapted. Old public domain folk songs." It was a common practice. Much as I dislike the song, I do find the uptempo, gospel fervor of the conclusion pretty exhilarating . Keith Moon's drumming in this portion is him at his carpet bombing best.

A BRIEF EXCHANGE WITH BARRY ALFONSO ON BOB DYLAN WORSHIP

 

(Barry Alfonso, a scholar, writer and a cultural critic of uncommon depth and equipoise, is a friend with whom I've been having an ongoing conversation about many interests we have in common, Bob Dylan among them. I have been skeptical of Dylan's work since John Wesely Harding, and Barry has been an impressive defender. But with all things Dylan achieving critical mass , even Barry had to slam on the brakes. The dust mote that tipped the scale was an inanely praising review of Dylan's pricey retrospective, The Cutting Edge: 1965-1966 that appeared on the increasingly tone-deaf news site The Daily Beast. We had a brief exchange over what appears the relentless pouring over of Dylan's great period of work. We both agreed, it seems, that it's gotten thick and mindlessly redundant. -tb)

Barry Alfonso:Ted, one of our first literary set-to's was over the value of Bob Dylan's work. I defended Bob -- as I continue to do for the most part, with reservations -- while you made him into a most delicious chew-toy. However, this constant regurgitation of Dylan's golden years is getting pretty boring, leading even the most dedicated fan to scream ENOUGH and go put on some Ken Nordine albums.

Ted Burke:Most of our departures on Dylan's work, I think, was bout Dylan's post-John Wesley Harding album to the present day. I don't dismiss it entirely, but as a collection that accounts for his middle and late career, it is spotty at best. His is the problem of Having the compulsion to produce even when his muse isn't having lunch with him. But, yes, enough of exhuming of the glory days . As is, Dylan's work from that period is over examined and, I think, the tragic recipient of something that has cluttered and clouded appreciation of Shakespeare's plays, namely "Bardolotry", a near deification of the playwright. The writing that comes out of that is a slog. Writing about Dylan for most of the mainstream arts press, on line and print, has become a hagiographic exercise. The difficulty with the worshipful approach is that it obscures the real instances of brilliance in the work.

Barry Alfonso:I think some of that hagiography comes out of a fascination with Dylan as the embodiment of arrogant visionary youth circa 1965-67. His work after this period seems to exert less fascination. It also speaks to the lack of a commanding voice in popular music over the past 50 years. There's some combing and re-combing through the Costello catalog these days, but still there is no stopping the endless parsing of Dylan's prime era. His burst of brilliance speaks to the lack of similar bardic vision today.

Ted Burke:Umberto Eco, the novelist, has written that there are limits to how texts, in this case songs, can be interpreted and made to seem to have yield previously undisclosed meanings and nuance. He insists that there really does come a point where interpretations only repeat themselves if we wish to stay with what is actually in the material; beyond that,it is a matter of academics and pop music critics trying to stay in business. Dylan, not to diminish the greatness of his best work, has been over discussed , inspected, and extrapolated upon where the actual man who wrote the songs no longer exists and the songs becomes mere props to brace up the flimsy theorizing that dims the worth of the music. I am not sure if I would say that there haven't been other songwriters in Dylan's time or in more recent years who haven't had visions, bardic and otherwise, comparable to Dylan's; Van Morrison, Costello, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, off the top of my head, have written and recorded work over the decades that has moments of major greatness that is , I think , no less than Dyan's .Dylan is the case of being the first one out of the gate, the mood of the times and the songwriter's desire to excel as no else had creating a synergy that changed the way the rent gets paid. I almost think it was merely a happy accident that it was Dylan who became the poet, the spokesman, the prophet, all that rot; if it hadn't been Dylan, another musician would have filled the need.Or maybe not. Phil Ochs, who I think is Dylan's equal as a "rock poet" , certainly had the talent but not, from what I've read about him, the temperament to get to the top and remain there. Dylan understood the complications of persona. In any event, it maybe a case of that if Dylan had not existed, the times would have created him, or someone like him. Contrarily, there is the Great Man Theory of history that puts forth that events of historical consequence are the result of the impact "Great Men" have on the destinies of the countries they rule . In this instance, if Dylan hadn't been born, we might still be wearing side burns and be listening to Como and Clooney through cheap car radio speakers.

Barry Alfonso:Yes and yes. Dylan did a lot of things first. And he changed. He rebelled against the rebels. Phil Ochs was an eloquent advocate and a poignant chronicler of his own disintegration. But he lacked that cruel streak, that arrogance that people seem to gravitate towards. The Great Man theory in history is pernicious and leads to the sort of blood and thunder hero-worship Carlyle and Wagner engaged in. But there is some truth to it and, yes, Dylan may have saved us from unchallenged Comoism.

Todd Rundgren from 1977

 
Todd Rundgren is an annoying whiz kids who can dually amaze you with his music and embarrass you with his lyrics. The words he writes are themes of cosmic consciousness and verbose mysticism and rival Yes' Jon Anderson for elevated pretentiousness. The sincerity of both Rundgren and Anderson may well be real, to be sure, but lets say that the precision of the intricate music making s a bad match with the muddy thinking visible in the respective set of lyrics. .Anyway, Ra, a 1977 effort with an occasional band, the ostensibly progressive rock and sometimes brilliantly kinetic Utopia, continued the Rundgren tragedy of good music with awful lyrics. When matters are at their best when the singing stops and the band is given the room to negotiate odd time signatures and reveal, in doing so, a remarkable, amazing in fact capacity to handle any style that strikes their collective fancy. The band (Roger Powell, Kisim Sulton, John Wilcox) proceeds towards some charging, frenetic, deliciously clever music.

But Rundgren, like, Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, allows the lyrics to become full-blown libretto. The merits of the extended narrative and the underlying bits of spiritualism is a debate left for those who seek truth in tea leaves and horoscopes, but the experience of having the words come at you, sun or recited in equal measure, makes this a record that does not rock you at all. Rather, it talks you into a fitful sleep, with dreams punctuated by agitated percussion. Most notable on side two's extended workout "Singring and The Glass Guitar", a detailed parable that breaks up the music, with Rundgren droning on with the plot particulars. The fantasy, what there is of it, is belabored at length. Every time the band begins something interesting or when Rundgren is doing an impressive guitar exposition, the recited lyrics intrude again, and so on. Either Rundgren considers himself a wise fabulist, or he just employs this clutter to kill time, fleshing out and lending continuity to passages he could not otherwise connect. The discerning 'Rundgren fan will throw away the lyric sheet and let the music mitigate the intellectual vacuity. Taking his world view seriously is like reading between the lines on a blank page.

Ian Anderson and the Music of Jethro Tull

I'm the first to admit that Jethro Tull had "pretty parts", but I would reserve that classification for those musical moments where a shining bit of ensemble work actually clicked and highlighted a fine band raging happily along with some problematic time signatures. In that vein, I rather like the Martin Barre composed introduction to "Minstrel in the Gallery", a tour de force of quirky transitions and sculpted dissonance that rises to actual art. 

Compression and brevity are the keys to those instances when JT catches my attention, but as often as not Anderson refuses to move from his signature amalgam of styles he likes and provides than is needed, or even effective, in the then-mistaken belief that length of composition and promiscuously convolutions of theme equals serious art. I was always one who preferred their progressive rock not to drag along the road. Lyrically, principle songwriter Ian Anderson is not so stunning ; he had an effective light touch with imagery in the early work like "Living in the Past" or the particularly riveting tune "Nothing to Say"; 'though perhaps guised in a fictional character's persona, Anderson all the same connects with a convincing humanity as matters of being alive without certainty are sussed through impressionistically and, yes, concisely,closer to true poetry . 

The man had a knack, in the day, of getting to the point and getting you to think about things other than material gain. That word smithing, I think, has been far less in evidence since their career took off, from 'Aqualung" on ward.

PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE

 

Peter Townsend coined the popular term "Power-pop", joined with a not-so-raucous rock backbeat. That was over ten years ago, and Townsend's term, intended no doubt as a throwaway term, like those  elements of conceptual sophistication wherein Lowe takes a cue from other artists (Warhol, Stuart Davis) who have taken the artifacts of a throw-away culture and have transformed them into objects of art. Except for some catchy tunes ("Breaking Glass," "Heart of the City"), most of the material was no more convincing than the average Sha-Na-Na sendup. Pure Pop, in general, was contrived and too deliberate in execution, the old case of an artist being more interested in form than substance.On one level, the title was a perfect parody of the dumb products record companies used to release for consumers they perceived as witless and gullible. In a 1967 interview, where he was trying to describe the music of the Beach Boys, Townsend, an ashamed Beach Boy zealot, explained that the Beach Boys were in the vanguard of a new movement of pop music. A pop music that eschews the traditional needs of white rockers to emulate their black mentors and produce a kind of rock and roll that was indigenous to the white, middle-class experience. Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' primary songwriter, merged creamy, smooth-as-glass harmonies of the Four Freshmen, the rhythm and blues guitar work of Chuck Berry, and wrote lyrics about surfing, fast cars, puppy love, staying true to your school, and so on. Townsend's point about power-pop was this: it was sleek, professionally rendered music that never ventured beyond the banal in its subject matter.

Spearheading the new Power-pop movement is Nick Lowe,  Lowe, a founding member and songwriter in the sadly departed Brinsley Schwartz and best known to rock fans as Elvis Costello's producer, released a record last year that laid out Lowe's methodology in the title: Pure Pop for Now People. On one level, the title was a perfect parody of the dumb products record companies used to release for consumers they perceived as being witless, gullible, and bereft of any sense of discrimination. Yet on another level, it reveals an  transformed them into objects of art. Lowe the conceptualist, wanting nothing to do with the priggish high-toned pretensions of "art-rock" (ELP and Kansas, let us say, not Roxy Music or Steely Dan or Robert Fripp), nor with the knee-jerk anarchy of most punk-rock acts, wanted to produce music that had the same clean, self-contained aesthetic values of the Beach Boys and the early Who, and yet retained a smart-assed, snot-nosed, wise-guy cynicism. The result, Pure Pop, was just that: a smorgasbord of borrowed riffs and chord progressions, vocal arrangements lifted from any number of vocal bands from the sixties, a plethora of musical styles that ranged from rockabilly, boogie-blues, to Phil Spector. Pure Pop, though, was far from the knockout it could have been. Lowe's production was cluttered and muddy. Lowe, though, has made a sizable step forward with his new record, Labour of Lust. Like Pure Pop, the record is a mélange of contrasting styles and attitudes where Lowe demonstrates an impressive

 character and nerve. Lowe's new material sounds better as well. The songs are better arranged, sound more complete, sound more like real songs rather than effete parodies. Lowe's humor is set in a sharper context. "Big Kick, Plain Scrap," featuring one of those James-Brown-style bass lines that defines the essence of funk, is overlaid with a mumbling, sleepy voiced vocal that utters a word salad of lyrics sounding like Captain Beefheart (if the Captain were the lyricist for K.C. and the Sunshine Band). "Dose of You," a perfect Buddy Holly emulation, puns relentlessly about VD, mixing up the tired theme of a young man trying to woo a woman with a seldom-spoken element of what can happen with love.Lowe remains a bright minor talent who has yet to show that he can break out of his narrow confines, but the improvement on Lust indicates that his will be a career that will warrant attention.

COVID MEMORIES

Sticker balls (left), Corona virus model (right).

 
I worked at the Birch Aquarium Bookshop for 14 years until I finally retired in 2015. In that time I saw the shop evolve into a gift shop, full of toys, games, artwork, delicate glass items, and hundreds of impulse boy toys for the kiddies. AndS yes, they kept books around. But parents with mewling toddlers were the rule of the day, the Aquarium needed their purchases to support their grand efforts to educate the public about Ocean preservation.

Among the kiddie toys featured in bins at the cashier stations were these items, rubber spheres composed of suction cups, which of course stuck to smooth flat surfaces. We called these things "sticky balls" (insert snicker here) and accepted that when school groups came through the store from the aquarium, toddlers, and teens would grab the balls and throw them at the counter glass.

There was a large painting of fish hanging behind the counter, which was protected by a large pane of glass. Of course, a flurry of sticky balls would be tossed at it and we would look behind us after a rush and realize the painting was covered with these multicolored spheres adhering to the protective glass; it looked as if it had broken out in Technicolor gin blossoms. They were among the many banes of my long-term Aquarium employment, and had gratefully forgotten about them.

That is, forgotten about them until the rise of the Covid pandemic. The nightmares haven't stopped since.