Category: Music

Rolling Stones Deny Allegations of Moss Gathering

I took my mom and sister to see the Rolling Stones last night at Alltel Arena, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at the level of energy these old guys put out. Mick Jagger is 63 years old and he’s still a bundle of angular electricity. Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards mosey around more slowly, but have still got the juice, defying all laws of human physiology. By all rights these men should be dead, and look as though they are, yet they continue moving. Perhaps a zombie curse keeps them alive, because they don’t appear to have aged much since the 1980’s. They’re apparently frozen in time, and skinny as the day they started playing guitar. Charlie Watts is the eldest and ironically looks the healthiest.

And they rocked. These old bastards have been playing arenas for 30 plus years, so they have more experience at it than anyone else. The new tunes sounded as good as the old ones, and the highlight was a cover of “(Night Time Is) The Right Time” by Ray Charles. I have a whole new respect for these cats. Lord knows they’re not on tour because they want money (they have more than anyone could spend); they do it because it’s what they love doing, and they’ll do it ’till they drop. Here’s to you, boys.

We also had a great deal of fun people-watching. A Stones show is a cavalcade of white people and their fashion atrocities. Many people just aren’t honest with themselves about what types of outfits work for them. And oh, the sad aging rock chicks. The ones with voices of ash, who still think drunkenness is a requirement and tight clothing a must, despite the hasty departure of all their sexual weaponry 20-odd years ago.

Introducing…Sparky McCorkindale!

It has been an interesting and exciting day. The main reason is that I have learned that the keyboardist for Jellyfish, Roger Manning, is playing at South by Southwest on my birthday, March 17th. I have already planned to attend SXSW from the 15th through the 19th, and in addition to Roger, another of my all-time favorites, The Soft.Lightes are playing that same day. Not a bad way to turn 30.

Also, I have been immortalized by the marketing department of Mr. Electric. Today they had us put up a coloring book for kids. They had to come up with names for the characters….and so one of them is named Sparky McCorkindale. Click here for the PDF (5 MB).

Something else I’m excited about is that I just discovered the Toon Disney channel, which has The Tick on EVERY DAY!

My First Liner Notes

My friend and hero Ross Rice has just released his long-long-awaited second album, Dwight. For heaven’s sake, buy it. He’s awesome. The link has samples of the tunes, as does the website I maintain, and the myspace page. I’m particularly excited about this album because it marks my first mention in an album’s liner notes! And I’m in there twice! It’s such a little music nerd fetish…my name is right next to John Fields[1]!

So between jamming with a former Yes keyboardist last week, and now this, I’ve sufficiently jazzed the little music geek inside me for several months. Although last night would have made a neat trifecta, as I played a gig for Ducks Unlimited at the Doubletree Hotel, and there were rumors that governor Mike Huckabee might want to play bass with us. So I brought my Rickenbacker just in case. Sadly no Huck by start time. I almost bumped into him at the dinner, though.

1.) Collaborator with Andy Sturmer from Jellyfish, among many, many others.

Let’s Go to Japan…

…where apparently they kidnap American guitar players and force them to battle in cage-match riff-offs. I found this video at YouTube.com, which is slowly taking over the world as a video answer to Flickr. People upload videos and share them online for free. The content is an amalgam of home movies and TV clips. I did a search on some of my favorite guitar players and found this clip of Paul Gilbert and Marty Friedman from a Japanese TV show. Even if you’re not a guitar player, I think this video is illuminating as a cross-cultural experience. First the guys compete in a name-that-Kiss-riff competition (which Marty wins, although if the game were Beatles tunes, Paul would totally have killed him), then another one based on letters of the alphabet. There are also clips from random videos (UFO and Ramones, anyone?) and a completely surreal The Price is Right-esque advertisement for Paul’s PGM301 guitar. Watching it I couldn’t help but feel as though there is a parallel universe where guitar shredding never died. Kurt Cobain never made it to Japan.

Compounding the weirdness is the fact that Marty and Paul speak fluent Japanese throughout the show.

AllOfMP3.com

If you like the convenience of iTunes, but want even more for your money ($1.50 for a complete album on average), and you don’t really care about artists getting paid, I recommend AllOfMP3.com, a Russian music service that has tenuous claims to legitimate legality via Russian copyright law. For more info, ask Wikipedia.

Personally the only reason I pay for downloading music is to clear my conscience of charges of thievery from artists I love. Here I’m not so confident in the accurate tracking of royalties. There’s only the thinnest veil of legitimacy here. Still it remains, for me at least, a convenient and semi-legal way to find and download mp3’s (lossless files available as well) by album. As an added bonus, Russia gets many of the CDs that the US doesn’t, so it’s good for digging up weird Hungarian Zappa bootlegs or live Tommy Bolin shows or Massive Attack singles. Watch out for their alphabetization – sometimes it’s first name first. And there are a lot of artists listed under “The…”

Area Music Nerd Dies, Goes to Heaven

Sometime in December I was approached by Marty from Spiraling to see about the availability of gigs in Little Rock in late January. I sent some emails out and it looked like we were going to set something up at Juanita’s, but Sticky Fingerz snatched them up for an opening slot. The guys played there last June and we took them out to a party afterward and got to be fast chums. So this time around we had a party for them at my house after their show Saturday.

Despite a massive promotional effort on the part of Jessica and I, very few of the people who attended were there because we told them to be. We must have told dozens of people about the show. Losers. So much for my career in music promotion. Still the crowd was a good size and the band was well received. We ordered pizzas for the guys, so Jennifer and I went to the house to wait for the deliveryman. Jessica and Heather stayed behind so the guys could follow them to my house. Pizza Hut is getting fast, by the way. They do not play.

Eventually we had several people milling about the house, talking with the band, playing records and jamming in the playground. Pictures coming soon. I remember the tunes we hacked away at included ELP’s “Hoedown,” Yes’s “Roundabout” and some random Zeppelin. Mostly it was freeform grooves, with everyone trading instruments. Did I mention Tom played a tour with Yes? I can now say I am one degree of separation from Yes.

The remainder of the night consisted mainly of conversation, me standing in front of the stereo saying “ooh you have to hear this!” and burning CDs on the laptop. It was so nice to have fellow music nerds in the house – people who really appreciate my music collection and the random assortment of useless crap I have lying around the house. Each of those guys is a stellar musician who plays every instrument well and has a broad listening palette. And they’re completely ego-free about everything. They’re everything great musicians should be, but so rarely are.

We also left a message for Jamie, since she was the one who turned me on to the band. The guys crashed on the floor (we had a couple of air mattresses and I brought in my old mattress from the garage) and we had ourselves a nice little sleepover. I didn’t get to sleep until 4AM because Tom and I kept talking about vintage keyboards and prog rock.

I got two hours of sleep before I had to get up at 7AM for my bass playing gig at Christ the King Catholic Church. Surprisingly I made it through three services without falling asleep while playing. Afterward I went to Vino’s for lunch and then came home and sacked out, which is a shame because the weather was so beautiful.

Nice weekend, though.

Where Are They Now: D-Nice

So I’m watching my Comcast On Demand service, and under one of the various and labrynthine music directories I see a tab called “classics.” It contains four videos: “Take On Me” by a-ha, “Like a Virgin” by Madonna, “Need You Tonight” by INXS…all certifiable classics by any reasonable assessment. The fourth? “Call Me D-Nice” by former Boogie Down Productions DJ D-Nice.

You probably have no idea who D-Nice is. And why should you? He only made two records, and those back in the early 90’s before rap turned into commercials for the gangsta lifestyle. He’s one of the most underrated MC’s, and he stands as one of the few DJs in rap history to have a chart hit as an MC.

Take a listen: “Call Me D-Nice” (right click to save as)

Post script to this. I thought I’d Google D-Nice and see what he’s been up to, and I found one of the most interesting photoblogs I’ve yet seen. His. The D-Nice Journal. Among the more interesting recent entries – his vacation in St Barths, a party Will Smith gave for his longtime bodyguard[1], and a friend’s pictures of post-Katrina New Orleans.

15 years on, and D-Nice continues to impress. And he don’t stop.

1.) Charlie Mack, first out of the limo.

Wilson Pickett (1941-2006)

People have no idea how influential this guy was. His music is everywhere and for whatever reason people don’t connect with his name the way they do with, say, Otis Redding. Everytime I talk about Wilson Pickett to someone, they say they’re not sure who he is until I start listing the hits: “In the Midnight Hour,” “Mustang Sally” (much dreaded by cover bands for its status as the most requested song of all time), “Land of 1,000 Dances” (which I have to hum before people remember it[1]), “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” (you heard that one in the Blues Brothers, remember?), “634-5789” (20 years before Jenny’s “867-5309” came around).

The man was a soul giant. We have lost an important part of pop music history.

This one’s for you, Mr. Pickett:
Land of 1,000 Dances (right click and save as)

1.) The hook to which was shamelessly stolen by Ini Kamoze for his 1995 hit “Here Comes the Hotstepper” from the soundtrack to Robert Altman’s Pret-a-Porter. He called himself “the lyrical gangsta,” which of course Heath turned into “the lyrical hamster.”

Nerdboy Goes Wow

One of the reasons I like good hip-hop is the digging. DJ Shadow digs deep into music history to find good stuff, and sometimes I catch up to him. I was just listening to my vast cache of 70’s jazz fusion, Stanley Clarke’s “Concerto for Jazz/Rock Orchestra” in particular, when I heard the familiar strains of Shadow’s “Best Foot Forward” (the first music sample on the record, right after the spoken intro). Moments like that are magical, and I’m reminded of the times when I’ve caught up to De La Soul and 3rd Bass when they sampled Blood, Sweat and Tears, Steely Dan, and Syl Johnson. Even better was the time I bought Hooverphonic’s A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular and on the same day bought Isaac Hayes’s Hot Buttered Soul from which they borrowed heavily.

Inspired Thievery

Perusing Spinsouth‘s recent blog entry containing a fine Johnny Cash mp3, I realized I should be offering occasional free downloads. The lowly pointedstick.net server is probably too clogged up, but the littlerockmusician.com server isn’t doing much (other than hosting a forum that may already be dead because I never think to promote it[1]), so I can store stuff there. With that in mind, I give you:

Millard Powers – Simple Thing

Millard fronted an amazing band called The Semantics, alongside Will Owsley and Zak Starkey (son of Ringo, now in Oasis), and has also played bass for Ben Folds and Counting Crows (of whom he’s likely to become a full member if he hasn’t already). Millard and Will also moonlight in Amy Grant’s backing band.

This track came from Millard’s old mp3.com page. Since their original business model folded, Millard has been without a home on the web. Evidenly he has no interest in getting his music out through traditional means. I just noticed that some guy in Panama registered millardpowers.com only two days ago. Weird. I love Millard. He can do Ben Folds better than Ben Folds sometimes.

1.) I set the site up years ago as a way to keep in touch with my guitar students, and for anyone who wants to find a music teacher in Central Arkansas. By all means, check it out and spread it around.