Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Please excuse our appearance during construction.

I could come up with something here about how the changes will improve your life, but they probably won't. It's more like just a way to kill some time and make some nifty new logos and color changes. I did try to match everything up, though, and make it as gentle on the eyes as possible.

In the meantime, I'm posting my proposal from the last time I pitched a book for the 33 1/3 series. That pitch was for Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Derek and the Dominoes' only studio album, an unquestioned classic of rock. Not a winner, though. I think perhaps I was trying to cover too much ground, and maybe all the stuff about bridging the gap between dry academic writing and popular biography just didn't come off right. The thing about writing, as I've learned in the year or so since I pitched last, is that a small idea can carry you really far.

Proposals for the next round are coming due on Valentine's Day, and I'm waffling over what to choose as an album and how to approach it. But I've still got two weeks. Until then, here's the first pitch:

Few albums come with as cohesive and overpowering a narrative as Derek and the Dominos’ Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Eric Clapton’s unquenchable desire for George Harrison’s wife Pattie Boyd is at the heart of this story, but around it are woven other threads: a bid to slip the spotlight behind a pseudonym, the introduction of a crucial catalyst that creates a dynamic spark (Duane Allman) and the tragedies that followed in the project’s wake (its intial critical failure, Allman’s fatal motorcycle accident a year later, bassist Carl Radle’s death ten years on from alcohol poisoning and drummer Jim Gordon’s imprisonment for the murder of his mother a few years after that). Taken together, all these pieces form not just a story, but a bona fide myth, and as myths are wont to do, it makes convenient shorthand of a far more complicated and confusing story.

In looking at Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, I want to dissect the myth that surrounds it, fill in the gaps and holes and reassemble its story into something altogether more nuanced that will enhance any music fan’s appreciation of the album. The meat of my book will hew closely to a chronological look at the recording of the album during late August and early September of 1971, including in-depth looks at the additional material that’s since become available.

Ever since I began writing about music, I’ve wanted to create a bridge between the kind of dry, academic music analysis that dominates the dialogue when musicians talk to other musicians and the more natural writing in music books for the non-musician which, while an easier sell to the general public, often tend more toward biography than true musical appreciation. For example, it doesn’t help a non-musician to know that the shift in “Why Does Love Got to be So Sad” from verse to chorus is Duane Allman’s bread and butter when it comes to improvisation because it provides him the chance to modulate between pentatonic minor and major scales while throwing in a couple choice modal touches. But to simply say that the song’s alternation between frenetic desperation and bittersweet hope comes from Clapton’s lovelorn situation does little to illuminate what’s truly going on. Clapton wrote the song with keyboardist/vocalist Bobby Whitlock and their vocal interplay is a hugely important and overlooked component not just to this song but the album as whole. In the verses of “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad,” Clapton’s threadbare and straining voice is continually being smacked silly by Whitlock’s exhortations and outbursts while at the same time fending off the attacks of Allman’s guitar. For each line Clapton delivers, Allman counters with a jab of razor sharp, nickel-plated bite and with Clapton trapped between Whitlock’s steadily escalating cries and Allman’s buzzsaw, his desperation becomes palpable. When the chorus sweeps in to save the day, all these forces suddenly align, and what formerly seemed to be trapping Clapton’s vocal lifts it up, Whitlock pulling it up from above in harmony while Allman gently nudges it along. But instead of true resolution, the A major 7 tonality keeps it from feeling completely resolved. There’s nothing more solid than an octave in music, both notes ringing out in tune, but there’s something just a little forlorn about a major seventh, the top note slid off a bit from true, and so the back and forth proceeds for the whole song until it winds itself out into an exhausted and temporary peace by its end.

This kind of complicated interplay among the musicians courses through the entire album, and it’s one of the things that marks it as a genuine work of art, and not just another guitar wankfest. Allman’s each and every note resounds with taste and skill and it forces Clapton into the kind of concision and focus that’s matched only by his earlier work with the Bluesbreakers and never since. Couple that with having something real to say, and you’ve got a fertile field for improvisatory greatness.

It also turns out that the love story that inspired the album is considerably more complicated than most people realize. Clapton had already begun an affair with Boyd, despite her marriage to one of his best friends. Furthermore, he was in the middle of an ongoing fling with Pattie’s younger sister Paula, who served as a kind of surrogate for Pattie. Clapton, for all his emotive facility as a guitarist, has always been a private man, and in its way, this most personal of albums is no different. Clapton took inspiration from Persian writer Nizami Ganjavi’s Layla and the Majnun to craft “I Am Yours” and, of course, “Layla.” There are few things more stereotypically male than a wailing guitar solo, and from within the safe confines of songs that drew from epic sources or seemed to eerily echo his own situation (“Have You Ever Loved a Woman?”, “It’s Too Late”), Clapton used another man’s words to woo another man’s wife and constructed an onanistic fantasy of pure and chaste love. Examining this central dichotomy of the artistic process—the creation of a work dedicated to the adoration of another requires holding the beloved at a distance—will form a central pillar of the more psychological side of the book.

I offer this project up as a chance to fully explore the central myth of a great album, to reintroduce it to those who love it as something new and more complex, and to introduce newcomers to its intricacies, its rewards, its ruddy brown and gold texture. Fans of Clapton are bound to take an interest, and my hope is that even people who never cared for him might find out that there’s much more to Layla than Clapton. It’s an exultingly messy, beautiful, desperate sprawl of a work that’s begging to have its full story told.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Oh actors who think they're rockers, when will you learn?



First John Corbett, now Kiefer. Here is Jack Bauer holding the new KS-336, which has all kinds of custom Kiefer touches, like a holster on the back for your Glock and an unerring sense of your own moral compass. Disdain for bureacracy comes optional.

More info on the Kiefercaster

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Separated at birth?



Mark Metcalf, of the video for "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister, who also played Bob "The Maestro" Cobb on Seinfeld.



Mark Madsen, of the Timberwolves.

Another tip for bands ...

And this one is pretty simple, although it's related to the one I put up here about a year ago: photos from MySpace are not high resolution enough for newspapers and/or magazines to print, generally. The biggest favor you can do yourself as a band-- with regard to getting press-- is have a decent picture of yourselves taken and have it easily available online and at least 1800 x 1200 pixels. It's really a no-brainer, because an article with a banging picture is way way better than one with an ad hoc solution.

Monday, January 22, 2007

It's official ...

George Karl's a crybaby

I just lost all respect for George Karl over this bush-league baiting crap. "I'm a simple guy. I couldn't pass calculus." Just shut up.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Duh daaaah duh-dah-dah



Menomena. My comrade-in-crime Max Sparber has just informed me that the tune we all know and love as one of the finest Muppets moments is actually from an X-rated movie from 1968 called "Sweden: Heaven or Hell". He's now pointing out that it's X-rated in the way that "Midnight Cowboy" is rated X. Not for being porn, but rather for general weirdness.

Enough about that, though. There's this band called Menomena from Portland, Ore., who are about to release a record on Barsuk called Friend and Foe. There are a lot of reasons to love this record: The cover art is by Craig Thompson, the comic artist who wrote the fantastically winsome graphic novel Blankets, and, even more importantly, it's probably the first great indie release of 2007. Of course, it's going to be joined this week by The Shins' Wincing the Night Away (which is also quite good-- I just finished an interview with guitarist Dave Hernandez, who was quite a pleasant fellow to chat with) and Deerhoof's latest, which people keep telling me will be incredible. I'll believe it when I hear it.

But Menomena (Duh daaaah duh-dah-dah). Short version: They sound like TV on the Radio cleaned themselves up and tried to be the Dismemberment Plan. Obviously, a gross oversimplification. There's something about the way that it's recorded that makes it, well, slippery. The vocals and the drums are very up in the mix, and they're often panned in creative ways, and good panning is something that's underrated and long-abandoned. Anyways, I'm just getting into it, really, but I'm planning on trying to nail them down for an interview in the near future. I understand they have some kind of crazy computer program that injects a bit of chance into their songwriting process, and it sounds fascinating.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

From The Onion or ESPN?

Bonds says Rose, McGwire belong in Hall of Fame

He's serious with this shit? Isn't this like someone on death row saying the two guys they executed last week should have been granted clemency?

In Hinder-related news

I spent a post a couple weeks back lambasting crap-rock band Hinder, which is something I generally don't spend a lot of time doing, but, you know what? It felt pretty good. So then a week or so later, I got a call from a publicist about a band called Finger Eleven, and the carrot that was dangled in front of my writerly nose was that they were opening a national tour for ... wait for it ... Hinder. So I was already suspicious.

I got the disc a couple days later and threw it in. The first track on it is called "Paralyzer" and it's the only track up on their MySpace page, so you can go listen to it for yourself. Remind you of anyone? It is, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the second half of "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand. I was flabbergasted. Writer types like to bemoan the music industry and how record labels are only interested in duplicating past successes, resulting in them always being a step behind when it comes to what's going on. A lot of the time, this is fairly accurate and sometimes it's not fair at all. But here? It's spot on.

I don't like crapping on bands. It doesn't make me feel good about myself or music, but that's because most of the time, the bands are working very hard trying to make a living doing what they believe in, even if what they really are is derivative and not all that special. But this Finger Eleven disc just smacks of a band that's either out to get paid, or one that started idealistic and then has let themselves be abused by a manager who's telling them what they need to do to make it to the top.

Apparently, that involves aping Franz Ferdinand. Of course, they're probably going to make more money this year than me, so that'll probably ameliorate the sacrifice of their soul a bit.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

My BFFs

I'm at the Nomad Pub over on the West Bank right now, checking out this week's Minneseries, which is this weekly night of music that I've been working on (and when I say working on, I mean asking my main man Matt Perkins what fantastic amazing bands he's lined up and then making an ad for the Pulse) for a bit. Really, Matt is the guy who's been doing all the heavy lifting, although when I can, I try to pimp the shows with Hot Tickets and hot ads and hot blogs. Like this one.

Best Friends Forever is playing right now. Heard 'em? They're like spaz geniuses: two chicks and a guy drummer who sing songs about being best friends, Orlando Bloom and Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln song is hitting particularly close to home with me, since I'm knee-deep in reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, which is about the run up to Lincoln being nominated as the Republican candidate at the convention in Chicago and how he assembled his cabinet out of his staunchest rivals, rather than toadying yesmen, like some presidents we have right now.

Stuff like Best Friends Forever is kind of a mystery to me, because by all rights I should hate it. I'm not a fan of cutesiness in my rock, nor of barely tuneful vocals, but somehow, they make it work. And I mean work. I guess it's got a genuineness, a guilelessness (wow, is that a word? Yes, confirmed by dictionary.com) that keeps it actually cute, rather than cutesy. Plus, if you look around, every person here is smiling. Funny music is hard to do-- way harder than you probably think. Nobody who's good at it probably spends one-quarter of the amount of time thinking about it as I do. For stuff like this, to paraphrase that miserable Dane, there's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

This just in: Knob Creek is great.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Sour grapes.

Crybabies

Man, the Chargers need to shut up. Of course, I have to say that I'm a Shawne Merriman hater from back at least a week ago, and I think his "Lights Out" dance is incredibly stupid and that he's a self-aggrandizing, pumped up freak. I saw him interviewed last week and someone asked him if his four-game suspension hurt him statistically in terms of being named defensive player of the year and he said it probably did a little bit. You know what hurt your chances for being named defensive player of the year? Being suspended for using steroids. I'm not naive enough to believe that he's the only one using steroids in the NFL or anything, but seriously, how cheeky do you have to be to think that the reason for your suspension has nothing to do with losing out to Jason Taylor?

Early in the game I saw him tackle somebody and then jump up and look around to make sure everyone was watching and then he did his spastic, idiotic little celebration. Seriously? It makes you look like a moron. If I thought I could make fun of him without getting the snot beat out of me, I would.

Should the Pats have shown a little more restraint? Probably. Do I blame them for getting excited when they upset the Super Bowl favorites on their home turf in a dramatic comeback? No, I don't, and LaDainian Tomlinson can go home and cry on his MVP trophy for all I care.

Done. I'll be back to music very soon, I promise.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

I'm on the radio right now.

But you're probably not going to catch it, because I highly doubt you're reading this at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night. Nevertheless, you can listen to me on Homegrown at this address. I'll have some more stuff to say about all this later.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Go. Now.



Everyone. Right now. Get up and go see "Children of Men."

I'm still too completely overwhelmed by it to really say anything yet. I'll just say, I didn't listen to music in the car driving home. And that never happens.

That said: Digable Planets' second album, Blowout Comb: still great, and still underrated.

Friday, January 5, 2007

MinneapolisCast Call for Songs

Just stirring the soup here, folks:

Write a song to be posted on the Minneapoliscast website. I'm looking for 28 artists for the 28 days of February. A new song from a different artist every day.

February is a short, cold and dare I say, abysmal month. So to help get through the cold, I'm trying to put together a project inspired by They Might Be Giants' Dial-a-Song. I'm looking for 28 artists to submit one new song each to be posted on Minneapoliscast during the month of February. One new song each day. In the spirit of They Might Be Giants, the songs can be anything. A 30-second recording into a handheld tape recorder is fine. Whatever you can muster and get to me by February 1, I'll use. This is NOT limited to folks who have already been on the podcast, so spread the word. Send them to me on cassette, CD or mp3.

Artists this is a call to action.

Fellow media and music industry folks, please help me by promoting this with your people, either by posting it on your website or sending it out in your newsletters.

Mail songs to:

Minneapoliscast February Song of the Day
c/o Tony Thomas
4044 13th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55407

Or send me an mp3 either as an e-mail attachment to truetone at gmail.com or a link to one posted somewhere.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Full (of crap) from a value meal

Has anyone else noticed that every single ad for a value meal from any chain at all touts its giant size in comparison to some kind of eensie-weensie value meal from another restaurant? What restaurant is this? If they all have huge value meals, then who has the little ones? You used to see direct competition between McDonald's and Burger King where they really went at each other, but has the competition become so scattered (among Taco Bell and Subway and all of them) that they're reduced to attacking some kind of made-up chain with overpriced food on their value menu?

Which doesn't even enter into the question of the questionable nutritional value of these value meals. Like it's our inalienable American right to get giant burgers for a dollar that will all end up killing us.

Killing us deliciously, but still.

In music news, I've been listening to Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism recently. A great turn-of-the-year album. That and a bunch of Miles Davis from the Prestige years (the first great quintet with Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, John Coltrane and Red Garland) and this Chess Records compilation called Killer Fretwork, which has some great guitar nuggets by people like Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, and plenty of other lesser known blues performers.