The Big Whatever

It's alive....

May be time to begin this again.  I dunno. 

What do you think?

Why "Michael Clayton" rocks

"Michael Clayton" is an odd duck - a film with almost no sympathetic characters.  Even when it's people try to do the right thing, they often end up causing chaos or harm.  "There's too much confusion here; I can't get no release," as Dylan once said in other circumstances.  Michael is the only one in the movie who doesn't say out loud - until he has to - what he is.  He's the guy he never wanted to become, and he's in everyone's pocket because he let himself get there.  Everyone else sees him clearly.  When his boss asks him to help out to arrange a co-worker's wake, Clooney's face collapses - he thought he was an attorney; turns out he's a party planner.

Sydney Pollack's character believes that the end will always justify the means.  Tom Wilkinson's doomed crazy do-gooder gets it, finally, but it's too late for him.  Clooney has two brothers - the good one (the cop) and the bad one.  We know he's bad because we see that he's a lapsed addict.  He fell off the wagon and the bar that he and Michael were partners in has collapsed.  Clooney's a gambler, though. Maybe that's why the bar went down the toilet.  We see him at the table trying to win back the money he'd borrowed to settle the bar's closing debts, but that's a wash.  Finally, Michael's redeemed, but what to do now?  He's calling a cab.

Tilda Swinton's bitch on wheels just wants to get the job done.  She's no different, really, than Pollack, just less lucky.  Given the chance, she oozes so easily over to the dark side that she doesn't even know it's happening.  When she's finally called on it, she collapses like it matters to her.

Further on up the road...

Too many losses lately.  Two that you may not have known were bassist/bandleader/arranger Chris Larson and composer/arranger/saxophonist Harvey Cohen.  Harvey passed in January from ongoing heart problems; Chris left us last week, a victim of a fast-moving brain tumor.  Both were young, not just by my standards, but by anyone's.  Harvey was 55; Chris was 57.

The two had much in common, and though I'm not aware that they knew each other, they may well have.  It's really a small circle out here, and after a while, you've played with or at least heard of pretty much everyone.  Both were people who always spoke well of others, even when they could have been forgiven for venting.  Both overcame tremendous physical challenges and became gifted, fluid players and writers who always brought their best to the bandstand.  Both were sui generis; both will be missed.

I can't say that I knew Chris well, though I knew him for over ten years.  I wish I had known him better, but we were running in different circles, though we managed to do a few gigs each year together.  He lived in Idyllwild, so we didn't hang out, but we always found a lot to talk about on gigs, and he always brought a sense of humor and a sharp intelligence, along with his unerring instinct for the right notes (high praise for any bass player).  He was comfortable and just kinda right in any musical situation. He always found a way to get along in some pretty challenging spots and make the best of any opportunity to play.   A journeyman, he wasn't well known outside the local music community, but he was a quality cat, and he'll be long remembered.

Harvey was someone that I did know well, in fact he was one of the first players that I met when I returned to the LA scene after my road work days.  My wife worked with him in a steady band for ten years.  Harvey was a part of our life for a long time.  I played in his big band; he played in several of my groups.  We did dozens of shows together through the years.  In fact, we worked two dates last December with vocalist Kenny Ellis promoting his "Hanukkah Swings" album at the Jazz Bakery and the Canyon Club.  Harvey arranged and produced that CD and he was as proud of it as he was of his work on the Oscar telecasts, and his music for the animated "Superman" and "Batman" shows which brought him an Emmy.  If Harvey was in your neighborhood, you were going to get a phone call.  He'd be there in a few minutes, and you'd better have the coffee ready.  We spent last New Year's Day at his and Marilyn's house; we hung out long into the evening and made plans for the next time.  A week later, he was gone.  The testimonies at his funeral were all the same when you stripped away the extra words, the fumbling to describe character in a finite way: Harvey was a mensch from the old school.  There won't be many more like him, and we were privileged to have him as long as we did.

"Hand-picked music" (?)

If you're in LA, or if you're a "taste maker" elsewhere,  our own local college radio behemoth, NPR's KCRW, is a must-listen.  Music supervisors cull it's play list for the next hot movie/commercial/video/iptv tunes.  In fact, several ex- and current KCRW programmers have become music supervisors in recent years.  Nothing wrong with any of this, BTW; the station's taste is impeccable if narrow.

The flagship music show is called "Morning Becomes Eclectic."  This listener of thirty years' standing remembers when the title truly fit: Under original host Tom Schnabel, Tchaikovsky segued into Miles into Muddy Waters into tribal chants and back, with no seeming theme or purpose.  It was internet radio before the net - if you don't like what's playing now, wait a minute. (Schnabel still spins in this style on the weekend shift.)  Schnabel eventually gave way to Chris Douridas, who was succeeded by current host Nic Harcourt.  Harcourt, especially, has great radio chops - he's your hip uncle sharing that new batch o' wax that just arrived with his friend; y'know - the slightly seedy guy who is always working his way over the Atlantic on a tramp steamship but always has the best new records before anyone else.  Harcourt has genuine enthusiasm for all things pop and poppy and groovy.  Trouble is - no more Miles or Muddy, let alone tribal guys.  If it ain't precious, or marketable to the media, it ain't on KCRW.  "Eclectic" be damned.  This show is built to showcase pure pop and, to some extent, dance and trance.  "Groovy" is the keyword here and if you don't get that, just listen for a few days and you will.  It's not something you can tell by the chord progressions or the instruments, but it's an attitude.  Like porn, you'll know it when you see (hear) it.

I just don't know anyone my age that likes this stuff or responds to it in any visceral way.  I agree that public radio should be about the new and adventurous, and not necessarily a reflection of listeners/donors tastes in all things. (Full disclosure here: been there; done that; read the donation promo; answered the donation lines.) I do wonder, though, how many of the paying audience for KCRW really listen to the music programming in more than a cursory way.  I can hear the sound of radio dials heading right every morning at nine as "All Things Considered " yields  to Harcourt's fifth-Beatle britpop. (Again, I really dig Nic's presentation and musical knowledge; just wish he'd take out his old pal's blues records for a spin once in a while...)

True this: I discovered Coldplay, Death Cab and Imogen Heap via Harcourt. But why no space in a self-proclaimed "eclectic" programming block for Miles, or Muddy, or Merle, or Johann, or Buddy Miller?  Could it be that all these artists are more gritty than groovy; a little less accessible, a little less well-suited to being played as aural wallpaper for the cubicles at CAA and NBC-Universal?

Mick Taylor

This digg item got me thinking about Mick Taylor, and about the experience of seeing him first with John Mayall at the Whiskey, then with the Stones at the Forum.  Taylor's playing was so jaw-droppingly intense, even as a teen prodigy who succeeded the might Peter Green with the Bluesbreakers.  At the Whiskey, her was barely older than I, but fully formed. (Like me, he seldom moved with the music, saving his energy for the music. I was vindicated again-another awesome lead guitarist who saw no need to jump around like a spinning top!)  Hed had a great feel for the blues, treating the songs with respect but not as museum pieces. That's not easy with the occasionally too-reverent Mayall, but Taylor pulled it off.  Blues is supposed to be fun too.  He had the widest, truest hand vibrato; it sounded almost as if he was playing slide, and his actual slide playinf was flawlessly in tune and creative, going beyond the usual cliches. His long notes hung and swung.  His playing was always limpid and to the point. no rococo filigree for him.  He came out of the same Buddy Guy/Pee Wee Crayton/Hubert Sumlin school as Clapton, but he got that a single note could sometimes stand alone and invite you in.  No need to encircle every note with a protective riff.

(By the way, where were these skinny English guys getting all those great old sunburst Les Pauls?  We could barely find them here and we spent every Saturday scouring the pawnshops and general stores.  Someone was getting them, but not us.)

Not that he couldn't, and can't, wail with the best, which is clearly what the Stones needed and got from Taylor.  On "Get Your Ya-Yas Out" he owns the rock solo style.  Keith is tough, and a true original, but the Stones have always needed, and seldom had, someone who could just stand there and fuckin' play a single-string guitar solo.  Taylor did, and the band has never and will never sound as good, but he obviously didn't fit the image as well as Ron Wood, who was a pretty fair soloist himself in his Faces/Gasoline Alley days, but has apparently decided as a Stone to take the (drug) money and run.  Taylor's post-Stones career has exactly caught fire in a big-time way, but it's not clear that's what he was really after anyway.  The records he made with Carla Olson are tasty, as are his solo albums, they're just not big-deal rock and roll records.  That's not necessarily a  bad thing, either.  Better to make a perfect miniature, I think, than simply another large empty canvas.

James Brown

JB

I used to see James Brown every year  when I was a teen, either at the old LA Sports Arena, the Hollywood Bowl or the Shrine Auditorium.  A group of us would go, KGFJ  blasting on the car radio ("burn baby burn").  Primed by the incredible TAMI Show footage, we ate up the pure chitlin circuit spectacle.  No matter how many times the cape was placed on JB's quaking shoulders, we knew he'd always toss it off at least once more.  The exhilarating soul power of the whole thing was enough; we didn't really get the showbiz hooey of it, we just wanted to hear "Please Please Please" again and again.  The incredible band - two bass players!, the protean Clyde Stubblefield pounding the unstoppable boogaloo.

When I finally got in a band that could actually play "Cold Sweat" it was a big deal.  It was so important to get this right.  You don't fuck with the sacred, revealed text.  We were scribes, not illuminators.  We were like the living books in "Fahrenheit 451" memorizing each word and punctuation mark.  Faithful, slavish reproduction was our goal. Every grunt, every syncopated hit had to be in place; it had to be right.  This was "Cold Sweat," after all.

There will never be another like JB, and the rest of us will never get "Cold Sweat" exactly right, but we'll keep trying.

Got to get you off my mind...

Saw the great Solomon Burke at the Gibson a few weeks ago, thanks to Josh Lampkins for great tix and backstage passes.  You gotta dig a 400 pound guy who comes onstage in a wheelchair, is loaded onto a throne -yes, a throne- and sings most of the show with his young grandson standing nearly motionless on one side and a nubile unidentified girl on the other constantly mopping his shaven head (what-quit show business?). 

Still, the voice is just what you want it to be, even if most of the songs were done as fragments - the set seemed more like a long medley.  All the hits - "Down In The Valley," "Got To Get You Off My Mind," "Everybody Needs Somebody." etc.  Tight band,always alert to what seemed to be a turn-on-a-dime set list, but basically a chitlins circuit show with a bit of added jive and some tracks from the new "Nashville" album, produced by Buddy Miller, no less.  Most of the pretty girls in the audience ended up on stage by invitation from the king himself or one of his minions, dancing or simply watching.

Went backstage but too late to greet the great man himself.  The king had left the building, leaving us supplicants waiting for the next royal appearance.

It's come to this...

Mick Fleetwood JPEG

I dunno; maybe we should all have been listening to Mick Fleetwood's wine advice all along.  In fact, maybe he was dropping hints and we were just too deaf and addled to know.  "Go Your Own Way" was really telling us to try a rich Beaujolais with flaky fish; "You Make Lovin' Fun" was an ode to Chardonnay; and "Tusk," of course, referenced the thorny unyielding qualities of big California Cabs.

More on this later.  I'm still trying to figure it out...

OK; apparently he's serious about this, so we should be too, I guess.  Here's the site: www.sabreentertainment.net.

The best show I saw...

The best show I saw all summer was Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler at the Gibson Amphitheater.  The sound was crisp and real, the video screens worked, and perhaps best of all, the whole thing was being shot for a forthcoming DVD, which I'll be first in line to buy. 

They did some Dire Straits, some Emmy, some songs from their collaboration "All The Roadrunning," and it was all breathtakingly good; it really was.  So cool to see two mature artists (plus a great band of Nashville heavies) doing what they do unpretentiously and proudly.  Cool too to see Knopfler fade into the band on Emmy's tunes, and Emmy segue into backup singer/duet partner as called for.  It was more his night than hers if you count by whose tunes  dominated, but their mutual respect and lack of spotlight-hogging made it all charming and low key, from "Romeo and Juliet" - still as powerful as it was in 1984 - to "Red Dirt Girl" which has the knack of drawing you in to its short sad reality almost before you realize it's over.

Paul Simon

Heard a very cool interview with Paul Simon by Chris Douridas (I know, I know, but it was a cool interview).  It was on Douridas'  KCRW show last Saturday.  It's part of the iTunes Music series he produces, and it will be up on that site in a couple of weeks, along with live music clips.  Simon spoke at length on the origins of some of his songs, and about the writing process, or at least his writing process.  They also played a clip I've never heard before orf Art Garfunkle supposedly recording a PSA or commercial of some kind.  It's hilariously funny; he alludes to "surviving" the breakup.  Simon is "producing" the spot and and prods Artie to plug his (Simon's) upcoming "major college tour."  It's truly a crackup, worth hearing.

To file under "What's Wrong With The Music Business and Why Are There So Many Creeps in Show Business:"  I got a call today to provide music and on-camera musicians for a national commercial for a major auto maker.  It's a $500 buyout-no music clearance, no residuals, no guarantee on the length of the shooting day.  Someone will take this gig; that's the sad part of the story.