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Showing posts with label Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Show all posts
“Apparently people don’t like the truth, but I do like it; I like it because it upsets a lot of people. If you show them enough times that their arguments are bullshit, then maybe just once, one of them will say, ‘Oh! Wait a minute — I was wrong.’ I live for that happening. Rare, I assure you.”
-- Lemmy
A friend posted this quote, and I went searching for more.
Lemmy was rock and roll music personified, and I'll always remember 2019 as the year when I finally "got" Motörhead's music. It can take a while for music, art or literature to sink in, even when you're familiar with it.
I'd like to call a moratorium on the various other discussions about the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame -- all except the one confirming without a shadow of a doubt that any such institution without Lemmy and Motörhead in it fails to fathom what rock and roll means.
Here's a piece from 2016.
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January 2, 2016
I approach the sad topic of Lemmy's recent death as one of his many admirers, if not an outright fan.
Motörhead isn't my daily musical taste, and yet as someone immersed for decades in the variant of "Englishness" when it comes to rock and roll, the band's importance is something fixed and beyond denial.
Of course, Lemmy was the band. As for Ian Kilmister, one preview sentence says it all.
Motörhead’s inimitable frontman, who disowned his genre and disregarded his band’s totemic status, will remain loved for his articulate grit and realism.
As it happens, "hope I die before I get old" was a lame cop-out. Lemmy merely lived his art until he died, which probably was the point all along. In 2009, Dave Grohl summarized: "Lemmy's a living, breathing, drinking and snorting fucking legend. No one else comes close."
Obviously, Lemmy is gone, but his legend remains fully intact in a temporal world now lacking his presence.
Long live rock and roll.
Lemmy may have resided in Los Angeles for the past 25 years, but he remains a distinctly English cultural icon. This partly owes to rock and roll's special place in the British Isles, and not only England itself; the same is true in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
These were stratified and regimented societies prior to World War II, and after the war came a prolonged era of privation and austerity. American rock and roll was a liberating tsunami for the baby boomers there, with the added benefit of being spoken in a shared language. Lemmy came of age in this milieu, though I believe his iconic stature reflects more than music alone.
While it may have faded a bit during more recent multi-cultural times, there always has been a specifically English love of eccentrics, of those who refuse to conform to the societal molds binding the citizenry. In some ways, America was founded on non-conformity; not so much in Stoke-on-Trent, Brighton or Sheffield.
Call it eccentricity or simple human dignity; Lemmy resolutely lived his own life and pursued his own muse. Like Keith Moon, Viv Stanshall or Oliver Reed before him, Lemmy's middle finger remained stubbornly held aloft.
And this probably was the point all along -- for Lemmy, and for us.
In our own time of suburban New Gahanian social decline, it's an ideal worth remembering, and perhaps even emulating -- with or without a Rickenbacker bass.
I'm guessing Lemmy would approve if we switched to spray paint.
I can be such a fan boy, though first, something about furniture.
My CD Collection.
It is huge, numbering in the thousands, and like an invasive species of plant life, it threatened to take over all of my book shelves -- leaving no room for hundreds of books. Something had to happen, and so of course I continued to procrastinate, until finally the missus evicted my home office (that's me) from the home library. It (I) was moved to empty space in the rear of the house, and the CDs followed. Now there is proper shelving for them, and an ongoing wintertime project to label, file and shelve all the discs, whether in vinyl sleeves, paper envelopes or jewel cases.
I have become a research librarian, by turns dating and filing ... and listening to music I didn't remember even having. Tactile. Very tactile.
Houndmouth and some love from "World Cafe's" David Dye.
I'll continue to "sing" the praises of our hometown musicians made good, but you needn't take it from me.
“What gets me with Houndmouth is how well this band looks back in time musically. But ‘Little Neon Limelight’ isn’t just about a retro sound; it’s also about songs, two amazing lead voices and equally impressive harmonies.”
Give me just a little more time, and I'll have Houndmouth fully politicized. It's always been my goal, you know.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Class of 2016.
As I wrote on Facebook upon reading the news:
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a piece of crap, and unworthy of my time to comment ... and 2016 inductees Cheap Trick, Deep Purple and Chicago are three of my favorite bands ever. Today I'll observe a moratorium on RRHOF vilification, then it's back to the usual derision.
Arguably, given N.W.A.'s pervasive cultural and musical influences, the group's recognition dwarfs all the rest of it, but lest we forget, the RRHOF is a marketing tool. It isn't supposed to make sense, and the most interesting aspect of the induction of my three personal favorites is whether their legendary personnel issues will play any part in the festivities.
... The original quartet and septet lineups, respectively, of Cheap Trick and Chicago are being inducted, while the Deep Purple roster will encompass the group's first three lineups, including three teams of singers and bass players. Some of the intriguing reunion possibilities for the ceremony include Chicago with singer/bassist Peter Cetera for the first time since 1985 and with drummer Danny Seraphine since 1990, Cheap Trick with estranged drummer Bun E. Carlos, and Deep Purple with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, who's been gone since 1993.
The Chicago camp already has contradicted itself on Cetera's possible return (and ignored Seraphine). The singer is playing cute. Bun E. told Rolling Stone that he'd been invited and would behave, although financial squabbles have been friendship killers for him. The finest observation of all was made by drummer Ian Paice of Deep Purple, the group's only remaining original member.
"If some people are inducted together, it could end in a punch-up."
RIP, Jon Lord ...
... and Terry Kath. What's not to love about a guy who writes a song about his dog?
Gary Richrath’s death.
Never once before REO Speedwagon's 1977 live album You Get What You Play For was I a fan of the band, and my interest lasted only a short time afterward. This said, it was the preferred soundtrack to my debauchery the summer preceding my senior year in high school.
At some point around this time, my gang saw the band at an LRS $1.02 concert in Louisville, performing the set list as recorded on the live album. It was only months before REO's next release made them superstars.
The dollar-two show was noteworthy for my varsity baseball jersey getting stained with flying blood when a fight broke out up front, but what floored me completely was Gary Richrath, for not only was he extraordinarily skilled at playing his instrument. In addition, he simply had the guitar superstar look down to a science. Richrath was an Adonis. He had the hair, the moves and the swagger. He could choke that neck, too.
I was tall, gangly, socially inept, prone to self-loathing and not at all the air guitar hero type. Here was this short, handsome, curly-haired dude commanding the auditorium. Surely Richrath got the girls. Whatever the vagaries of timing, it hit me hard and was tantamount to a man crush.
Time passed. Lots of time. REO became a huge 1980s-era arena band specializing in power ballads, and I lost interest. Apparently so did Richrath, who departed before the decade's end and disappeared. He returned for the obligatory "Behind the Music" interviews, then vanished again.
REO was a distant memory, and then my friend Jay burned a copy of the live album for me. I hadn't heard it in decades, and the memories stirred. In late 2014, I took to the Internet in search of Richrath. It had been 20 years since the VH1 documentary. Where was he now?
Granted, we're all subject to the ravages of the decades ... and yet what I saw on YouTube was unfathomable. Richrath wasn't recognizable in recent videos, as performing with bar bands in Peoria (he'd returned home to help care for his mother) and in a first-time-in-ages onstage reunion with REO. Bloated and all jowls, he also seemed to have lost his chops.
He died suddenly in September, and the news plunged me into mourning -- not for a fellow I never met, but for my own lost youth. That's the way it always plays out, doesn't it? The notion of rock stardom is nonsensical in the main. At the same time, I appreciate the rock star helping me through a difficult summer.
The Dubliners.
My father liked big bands and the music of the swing era, and I was introduced to the genre very early. When I began exploring music on my own, thanks to the LPs at the public library, my search took me far beyond Glenn Miller, to the roots of jazz (New Orleans, Chicago and Harlem), and later outward in all directions.
During the 6th grade, my friends began pulling me away from the music heard at home. Early favorites were the Beatles, Steppenwolf and Black Sabbath. Ever since then, when the topic of "favorite bands) arises, the default reply has been phrased in the pop/rock idiom: The Who, Manic Street Preachers, Def Leppard, et al.
Finally at the belated age of 55, it occurs to me how ridiculously narrow a viewpoint this is.
When all is spun and done, surely Duke Ellington ranks up there with Oasis, U2 and the Smiths. So does Bix Beiderbecke.
And so does the Irish “folk” group called The Dubliners (1962-2012). In fact, I need not preface my preference for Ellington, Beiderbecke and The Dubliners with “jazz” or “folk” or any other specific modifiers. Each represents an aggregate musical output through working careers. Each has brought me great pleasure. They're all part of a huge, wonderful melting pot.
My parents took me to see Duke Ellington perform in Louisville in 1971, but I never once caught The Dubliners playing live. The band constantly toured Europe, and on several occasions our paths were a few weeks from crossing, but a show never came to pass. The earliest and probably best Dubliners lineup was finished before my first trip to Europe started, and yet I’ve always enjoyed the many different configurations that followed.
Moreover, the band’s ethos of a half-century is one worth emulating. Players came and went, and all of the living former members remained family, and performed together from time to time.
Cheap Trick, Deep Purple and Chicago: Take note of this refreshing, mature attitude. Meanwhile, here are The Dubliners in their rare old times, with the classic lineup and Luke Kelly on vocals:
Yes, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ultimately stands as the epitome of First World meaninglessness.
At the same time, when three of your favorite bands are to be inducted in one sweeping act of vindication, it's at least worth a brief self-congratulatory grin. I've been a fan of Deep Purple and Chicago since junior high school, and Cheap Trick came along only shortly thereafter. Their music brings me pleasure; so be it.
Each of these three bands has survived the ephemeral ups and downs of the marketplace, and remain working musical entities. For fans, it's all about the music, but more pointedly, for working musicians, it's about dollars and cents. As with any other business, workers come and go, and often their decisions have to do with money and personalities, not art.
Unsurprisingly, there is an interesting back story for each in the context of personnel. Deep Purple's Ian Paice fears fisticuffs might erupt between present and former band members if they were to share a stage.
Everyone wants to know whether Peter Cetera will reunite with Chicago, but what about original drummer Danny Seraphine, who was fired a quarter century ago, and later wrote a tell-all book about the experience?
And then there's Cheap Trick, three members of which evidently attempted to dump drummer Bun E. Carlos in 2010. After legal wranglings, Carlos remains a partner in the business operation, but is blockaded from performing live with the band. He's in a curious sort of limbo, though at least the checks are still being cut -- after the lawsuit was filed.
When he asks for financial information, does he receive it? Do they forward his snail mail? Have they blocked his e-mail?
Interesting. Very interesting. I have absolutely no idea why, although there is a certain melancholy attached to a statement like this:
"Any friendship we had went away when I had to file a federal lawsuit. That cost a bucket of fucking money. Going after these guys wasn't pleasant. The friendship sort of frittered away there."
... We just drew up a contract that said, "I don't tour with the band, but I'm a full member of the band." We've got all these corporations. The touring company said, "If you quit touring, you lose your vote." I wasn't going to let that happen. I'm a full member of the band. So we drew up a piece of paper, and a couple years later the check stopped coming. I met with Scott Borchetta — that was something special. And then I had to sue them in federal court to get my money back. We did a settlement last spring and its all hunky dory. That's the short story.
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