Things we like: Savoy Brown, Peter Frampton

A few years ago, the fella who fixes my guitars asked if I thought the music I play is obsolete. I hemmed and hawed, but in my heart of hearts, I knew he was right: guitar-based rockaroll isn't the cultural force it once was. Reading the spate of bullshit internet articles on topics like "are bands dead," or even "are genres dead?" I have to say that for today's pop audience (whatever that is), whatever takes their favorite performer/producer's fancy to sample is probably fine, and it makes sense that in an economy like the one we're living in today, hip-hop and electronic music are the dominant influences. Entry costs are relatively low, and it doesn't require extensive training (lessons, practice) to get started. 

In retrospect, the '70s have proved to be the high water mark in terms of working class kids having access to the things you needed to make bands. As funk scholar Dr. Scot Brown points out, good-paying union jobs made it possible for Black working people to own homes with basements where their progeny could hold band rehearsals, and have disposable coin to buy instruments and PA systems. (I look forward to reading his book-in-progress about the Dayton funk scene.) Same thing was true in the German-Irish-Italian Catholic neighborhood where I grew up. We took rockaroll as our birthright. Nowadays, even young folks who can afford band equipment are up against gentrified real estate markets when it comes to trying to find a spot to rehearse. (Rehearsing at home is either an imposition on neighbors, an invitation to thieves, or both.)

Because I am on social media, I am aware that the leader of the appropriately-named Strokes doesn't dig blues rock -- a genre that is problematic, these days, because of the right-wing politics of many of its fans, not to mention performers like the guitarist whose name I shall not speak, who created an online stir by posting Confederate flags on his website (the irony of which evidently escaped him, and his stage dad). Myself, I grew up on the stuff. Back in '73, I bought new LPs by Johnny Winter, Beck Bogert & Appice, and Iggy & the Stooges on the same day; Johnny's was the one I kept. That summer, I missed going to the Watkins Glen festival because my best buddy from 7th grade and I wound up spending the weekend at some kid's house playing endless versions of "Smoke On the Water" and "Savoy Brown Boogie," and I broke the seal on my tinnitus leaning over in front of a Vox Super Beatle. (As my wife points out, this established the precedent for me preferring playing to watching anybody else play.)

As late as last year, I was jamming "Street Corner Talking" with some guys before Covid shut everything down. For my two cents, you still can't beat the SB lineup, fronted by Chris Youlden, that cut Blue Matter, A Step Further, and Raw Sienna. (I also used to sell records to Lonesome Dave and his Foghat bandmade Rod Price when they lived on Long Island in the mid-'70s.) In a way, those records are steeped in the hipi bullshit I was so happy to see dispensed with when I moved to Texas and saw bands like the Fabulous Thunderbirds. But '60s-'70s Brit blues has its own distinctive charm -- a richness of sound to compensate for its rhythmic clunkiness -- and the more creative versions, of which SB was one, touched on both jazz and heavy rock. (The most authentically legit-as-blues was, of course, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, before poor Peter lost his mind when confronted with financial success and LSD, giving way to the eventual ascendancy of the money-making Menlo Atherton HS lineup.)

Not really a blues band, although they played some, Humble Pie was an early obsession of mine. Their double live album Performance: Rockin' the Fillmore was the next record I had to hear four times a day (well, sides one and four, anyway) after Live at Leeds, and the cover with all the live shots was one of my favorite guitar-gawking opportunities along with the first MC5 and first two Yardbirds LPs. As a terrible tyro, I particularly dug Peter Frampton's guitar for the way he drew on influences (Django Reinhardt, Kenny Burrell) besides the usual blues suspects in the same way Ritchie Blackmore played Bach progressions and Rory Gallagher at least demonstrated an awareness of Ornette Coleman. 

By the time Rockin' the Fillmore's version of "I Don't Need No Doctor" (which owed more to Frampton's driving riffage than Ray Charles' original) became a New York FM radio staple, Frampton was already out of the band and embarked on a solo career. I saw him live in '72, middle of the bill between Slade and J. Geils, supporting the Stevie Wonder-influenced Frampton's Camel LP (probably his early best, IMO, with a keyboard player who went on to play with Ian Dury and the Clash). When the electric piano broke a couple of songs into the set, instead of retreating backstage while it was repaired, Frampton said on the edge of the stage and talked to the audience, and I thought to myself, "This guy is going to be huge." Only time in my entahr life I ever called that correctly.

The mega-success of Frampton Comes Alive! made it radio-ubiquitous enough that I wouldn't have needed to own it even if I hadn't been a snob -- the kind of elitist who doesn't like anything that's too popular. In fairness (and hindsight), it was actually a pretty good synopsis of his first four solo recs, well performed, and holds up well even now. (My Ugly American moment: In Korea, playing an acoustic in a store, I encountered two Korean kids who shyly asked if I could play "Show Me the Way." I said no, sorry, I don't know it. Of course I did. Asshole.) The follow-up, I'm In You, truly was as lousy as everyone said it was, a fact that Frampton freely cops to in his memoir, Do You Feel Like I Do? (cleverly named for his most famous song, the set-closing talkbox raveup that I saw him do at the Academy of Music back in '72).

For my two cents, Frampton's book is a more engaging read than those of bigger name rockers for a couple of reasons. One, he's a likeable bloke and tale-spinner (early patronage by Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, touring with the Who, and uncredited session work on All Things Must Pass are just three highlights, for those interested in such). Two, his career trajectory has had enough ups and downs that it's far from the narrative of unremitting success and consumption that tends to make the second half of such tomes such a bore to stick with. 

Frampton's open and humble about his substance abuse history and relationship failures, and there are a couple of compelling subtexts -- his loss of, and subsequent reunion with, his famous black Les Paul, the Phenix; and his diagnosis with a degenerative muscular disorder and subsequent retirement from touring. Basically, he comes across as a nice cat who really loves to play guitar, and a perfectionist who likes working with reliable people (which could spell "asshole" to some folks). Never a cutting-edge figure, but it's enough to make me curious about his latter-day music (since his diagnosis, he's released an album of blues and one of instrumental covers). 

The music of the '60s and '70s has enjoyed unusual longevity. Whether it's due to the actual merit of the stuff or the fact that m-m-my generation's been so long-lived and affluent remains to be seen. Perhaps it will be swallowed up in the collective sample libraries of the world, or fade away the way Dixieland jazz has. Either way, I won't care when I'm with the ancestors. For now, I'm just curious to read Richard Thompson's memoir, which drops in a couple of weeks. All I ever need is something to look forward to.

The Chadbourne/Gonzalez Collusion's "Irresponsible RocknRoll Shenanigans"

In the year before Covid, it was my pleasure to take in several shows at Oak Cliff's Top Ten Records, who were booking an eclectic mix that included jazz, hip-hop, and experimental music. One of those shows was a solo performance by Eugene Chadbourne, whom I only knew as a name in my New Music Distribution Service catalog until the late '90s, when I heard a CD (Pachuco Cadaver) of Chadbourne and Jimmy Carl Black (the Mothers of Invention's "Indian of the group) performing demented-sounding covers of Captain Beefheart material. On the night I caught him, Chadbourne was in the middle of a series of Texas dates where he was backed by fellow shenaniganders, bassist Aaron Gonzalez and drummer Stefan Gonzalez, brothers and mainstays of Dallas' creative music scene for a couple of decades now. Unfortunately, the three didn't perform together the night I saw them, but they did on the nights in Houston and Denton that estimable engineer Michael Briggs documented for this shiny silver disc.

Chadbourne's Beefheart covers are always idiosyncratic, with Doc Chad warbling Don's lyrics over backwoods banjo accompaniment that's definitely an acquired taste. Here, the Gonzalez brothers simply follow him rather than trying to replicate the Magic Band's polyrhythmic fury. The real show begins when Chadbourne picks up his fuzzed out electric guitar for a run at Roscoe Mitchell's "Nonaah," the most famous version of which (on the 1977 Nessa double album of the same name) was one of the most epic examples of defiantly confrontational repetition ever waxed. Briggs, a man who loves his cats and brews a righteous cup of coffee, has captured Chadbourne's tortured tones with an extreme closeup clarity that usually gets lost in the mix when recording oversaturated guitars. Aaron and Stefan, who've played together since their teens and once composed a song entitled "Free Jazz Is Thrash, Asshole," are in their element here. The beauty and terror they conjure put me in mind of the version of Ayler's "Ghosts" that X__X played at Rubber Gloves a few years back. Stefan's toms remind me of Ronald Shannon Jackson's.

A version of Syd Barrett's "Lucifer Sam" approaches Brit psychedelic whimsy as the Japanese noise-rockers High Rise or Mainliner might have. Chadbourne spins out scorching leads while the Gonzalez brothers back him with atavistic savagery. (Reminds me of the time I stood next to Aaron onstage at 6th Street Live while Clay Stinnett and Brent Miller sat with their drumkits facing each other and shattered sticks for an hour, at the end of which Aaron showed me his hands, which looked like hamburger. These guys are serious.) Some goofy stage banter and an episode of free floating improv give way to Frank Zappa's dissonant Freak Out! classic "Who Are the Brain Police?" with Chadbourne's wah and Sharrockian chaos-slide strongly in evidence throughout a lengthy "out" section. The three musos wrap things up with a ferocious version of "Summertime Blues" that trounces Blue Cheer's for sheer heaviness coupled with aleatoric audacity. Proof positive that "weird" music can rock fiercely.

FTW, 3.17.2021

The dumb hate in the
eyes of the angry white man
who pulled the trigger.

Need to get out of the information bath for a bit.

Something different for a change: I learned this Fred "Sonic" Smith solo because Sam Damask, the only person I know locally who loves Sonic's Rendezvous Band as much as I do, expressed an interest in transcribing it. It's pretty much straight blues-rock pentatonics (using both the flat and natural 5th) until he throws in a sneaky 9th that changes the whole character of the solo at around the :31 point.

While I was blowing rockaroll lead, I thought I'd re-attack Winged Eel Fingerling's solo from "Alice In Blunderland" to see how it felt with the .013-.056s. Had to modify slightly (can't do double stop bends with the G on these bridge cables) but it felt pretty good.

FTW, 3.14.2021

A year into Covid and I get my second shot in two weeks, although I'm not chomping at the bit to run out and start doing things again, our state's governor having recently ended the mask mandate and people behaving the way they do. That and all the damn stories about old Asian people getting attacked. Haven't heard any from here, but I haven't really been anywhere for a year except a couple of doctor appointments and the little coffee shop round the corner, to buy our bags of beans. 

I'm waiting to re-up on my volunteer deputy voter registrar credential until after I've had the second shot. Repubs in the legislature have a bill, HB 1026, that would do away with the position -- one of 100-odd voter suppression bills they've proposed this session. Repubs are making noise blaming immigrants for Covid, a bullshit tactic designed to get people's minds off the $1.9 trillion relief package the US Senate just passed without a single Republican vote. In Texas, health care and infrastructure have much bigger impacts on folks' quality of life than some migrant bogeyman. We need to elect new state leadership that recognizes this. 

Against all odds (he wasn't even my third favorite in the primaries), barely a month into his administration, Biden looks like the president we needed to clean away all the rot that's accrued on our democracy since Reagan. Covid showed how unsustainable our late stage capitalist economy had grown; Biden's going full-on FDR because he had to. Unprecedented problems require radical solutions. Lots of work to do in advance of the midterms in 2022 and the national election in 2024. I'm sorry to be sitting out the municipal elections, but I'm doing the little I can to help a city council candidate. Start where you are, do what you can.

Approaching the end of the Trout Mask Replica guitar project -- since September, I've been learning the guitar parts to all the songs off Captain Beefheart's knotty masterpiece and posting YouTube videos of myself playing them -- has caused me to realize the extent to which that project has given me a sense of purpose I really needed this year. Not the greatest one I've ever had, but good enough for what we're dealing with now. I'm looking forward to attempting "Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish," which Drumbo says in his book is the only piece on the album with no touch points (places where the parts sync up). Perhaps when I'm through with the guitar parts, I'll borrow Andre's bass again and try learning some of Rockette Morton's parts. 

This week I'm mixing it up, continuing to work on Beefheart material but also playing stand-up rockaroll guitar for the first time in a year. I think my band days are probably done (although I'd play a Stoogeaphilia show if Teague was in town and everyone else was willing), but I miss the cathartic release of playing loud over drums in front of an audience. Perhaps I'll learn some Sonic's Rendezvous Band tunes -- another band I don't know anyone else local who digs (except for one bass player who loves "City Slang" so much he bought an SRB LP even though he doesn't own a turntable). Not having to "sell" the material to anybody else is liberating. Glad I kept the looper.

It's different playing lead on the heavy strings (and listening to Rory Gallagher recently made me miss putting vibrato on everything to the point where I almost got out the Strat), but aside from not being able to bend more than a half step or do vibrato on the wound G, it doesn't slow me down much, so I think I'll keep them after I'm done with the TMR stuff. Between playing, running, meditating, cooking, keeping house and helping Kat in the garden (our 16th wedding anniversary -- wax, apparently -- is in four days), I'll stay busy as long as I can.

Beefheart-ismo

 "Wild Life" is the hardest Trout Mask Replica song I've attempted yet, which means it's the new "hardest thing I've ever played." No other TMR song I've learned up till now (and I still have half a dozen to go) has more epitomized the conventional wisdom about the album. With its jarring polytonality and contrasting time signatures, it's the closest I've come to throwing up my hands and declaring "It's total chaos!" since I started this project. Listening to the record, it's impossible to hear 70% of what's going on here. The parts (particularly Zoot Horn Rollo's) are so dense -- consisting of multiple repeating figures, but lots of 'em -- and the guitars are overshadowed in the mix by Don Van Vliet's voice and saxophone.

 Luckily for me, however, the guitars are hard panned left and right (although one of my reference recordings -- made using crappy phone video -- was missing the first couple of seconds, as a considerate chap on YouTube kindly informed me, after syncing the videos I made of the individual parts together). Also luckily for me, there's a nine-bar-and-two-beat rest in Jeff Cotton's part, which gave me the touch points I needed (the rest comes when Harkleroad's in F# and Cotton's in Dm). After playing the Cotton part over the looped Harkleroad part all day, I finally got a take that came close (the "live" guitar is a little behind nearing the end, but by listening and hesitating, I'm able to get them to match up at the end). It ain't immaculate, but at least you can hear the formerly-inaudible parts and get the general rhythmic contour of the piece. I could have messed with it more today, but I needed to clean the house, get in a run, and make dinner. Another time, perhaps.

Speaking of YouTube, I was inspahrd today to see this slammin' hardcore performance of a Beefheart tune, played by three musos who were in the last touring lineup of the Magic Band. Android Trio is Eric Klerks (bass, guitar), whose side project La Sirene was mentioned in a recent post; Max Kutner (guitar), whom I saw putting a unique spin on the Zappa canon with the Grandmothers of Invention at the Kessler a few years back; and Andy Niven (drums), whose ears are big enough to accommodate sounds from jazz to Zappa to metal. (Presumably Peter Niven, who vocalizes on the track, is a relative.) Looking forward to hearing lots more from these guys. And I shared their vid with some local hardcore guys in the hopes of interesting them in playing Beefheart music. Got to work the room.