MJwycha's Open Salon Blog

The 11 Top Albums for 2010

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:12:09 -0500

These are hard times. These are dangerous times. But the best albums of 2010 offered the old promise that music can be redemptive, vital, and important. So as we move into 2011, Crux of the Biscuit submits its picks for the 11 best albums of 2010.

Now, there were albums I would have liked to put on this list that, for one reason or another, just didn’t make the cut but are totally worth your time: Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast, Broken Social Scene’s Forgiveness Rock Record, The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Genuine Negro Jig (check out my review here), and Dr. Dog’s Shame, Shame are all highly recommended.

Other albums that didn’t make the cut were critical favorites that I admit to still trying to sort out: Sufjan Stevens’ Age of Adz, Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me, and MGMT’s Congratulations. These are artful and ambitious albums, but I confess that I don’t quite know what to make of them yet. To be honest I've only given these albums a cursory listen. Either I just don’t dig them or their charms have escaped me somehow. Ask me next December about them, and maybe I’ll have something more to say.

There were absolutely brilliant releases from veteran rockers, like Neil Young’s killer Le Noise, Robert Plant’s Band of Joy, and Roky Erikson’s triumphant return with Okkervil River on Love Cast Out All Evil. All highly recommended.

We were also blessed with important and insightful re-issues like The Rolling Stones’ masterpiece Exile on Main Street and Bruce Springsteen’s intense Darkness on the Edge of Town which offered new and shimmering perspectives on these classic LPs.

And, of course, there were albums which seemingly everybody in the free world liked except me: Robyn’s Body Talk, twee-pop Vampire Weekend’s Contra, The National’s flat (though highly praised) High Violet, and Kanye West’s self-indulgent My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. These albums are all interesting and artful, and may be worth checking out, but somehow left me cold and uninspired.

Inevitably there were albums I missed (or maybe you can tell me why Vampire Weekend is worth listening to or what I’m missing with The National’s High Violet), so feel free to tell me where I’m wrong or list your favorite albums in the comment section!

Here we go! Crux of the Biscuit’s Album Picks for 2010:

11. Erikah Badu - New Amerika Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh
All hail Erikah Badu. 2008’s New Amerika Pt. 1 focused on the political world while 2010’s Pt.2 focusses on the politics of the heart and soul. The songs, aided by samples and electronic effects, are at once ethereal and grounded. The grooves are so smooth it is at times downright slippery wet. This is a gorgeous and generous album with many beautiful spaces and surprises. Badu is free flowing and open here, accessing an inner personal honesty over these groovy tracks of love.

10. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker
A perfect and wonderful synthesis of Todd Rundgren, Revolver era Beatles, and the most interesting elements of shoe-gaze pop. The groove is rock solid, yet threatens to splinter off in a thousand different directions, while the vocals float somewhere in the stratosphere. The best headphones album of the year. Brilliant debut album--keep your eye on these Australian lads, they’re going places.

9. Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier
This was a surprise. Iron Maiden, that old war-horse of a metal band, released one of their best albums and one of the best albums of the year. No kidding. I'm totally serious. Final Frontier is complex, fun, grand, mythical, and engaging on a level that most rock bands don’t have the talent or inclination to aspire to anymore. Final Frontier is perhaps Iron Maiden’s magnum opus.

8. The Roots - How I Got Over
How I Got Over finds the Roots meditating on these dark and cynical times while turning toward hope and light and redemption. Black Thought continues to be one of the most underrated MCs in the history of hip-hop. The complex and thought-provoking rhymes he lays down here will keep you intrigued and intellectually stimulated for some time. And the band has never been more supple. Deep, buttery grooves and sparkling, searching rhymes for your heart and soul.

7. LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
I haven’t figured out how to read the album title yet.
Is it ‘This is Happening’ like, “oh my gosh, this music is occurring at this moment, this is really happening, right now!”?
Or is it ‘This is Happening’ like, “wow, this album is groovy and hip daddy-o! This is happening man! It’s what is current with the young people at this moment!”?

Well, anyway, electronic disco-punk music has no business swinging like it does on This is Happening.

6. Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More
From my review of Sigh No More in March: This is honest and true music that, even during the ballads, make you feel good, make you want to sing. Standout songs like “The Cave,” “Winter Winds,” and “Little Lion Man” manage to find hope and passion even within the themes of loss and fear. And I think we could all use a bit of hope and passion right about now…
Technically Sigh No More was released in England in late 2009, but it wasn’t released in the United States until 2010 so I’m counting it on this list.

5. Gil-Scott Heron - I’m New Here
From my review of I’m New Here in February: ...a major artistic statement as well as an important return by a brilliant poet. I’m New Here is everything that is right and good with modern-day art, poetry, and music. It is electronic soul-art. You should own this album.

4. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
The Suburbs is a pulsing, searching, and ambitious album. It’s not really a statement about living in the suburbs as much as it is a impressionistic musical painting about existing and striving in an in-between and fractured place. The music is wonderfully fractured, recalling the various strains of rock music one might hear rolling out of the windows of any suburban teen’s bedroom. The Suburbs is a big rock n roll album, at once nostalgic and current.

3. Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do
With The Big To-Do the Drive-By Truckers released the album that seems to be imbued and imprinted by the state of our political and private lives in 2010. Suicide, murder, broken relationships, broken towns, drinking, under-employment--yup this definitely speaks to the era. With big, driving guitar riffs and tight playing, there’s a catharsis in the music that makes the honky-tonk heartbreak go down like a snort of good bourbon.

2. The Black Keys - Brothers
Brothers is kind of a miracle; somehow The Black Keys make garage blues sound fresh and new. The Black Keys have always been great at the primitive garage blues, but there’s a nod to classic R&B in the attitude and musical phrasing which gives the music airy sonic spaces to inhabit. But what really sets this album apart is the energy crackling from each track. Brothers is simply a great rock n roll album. Do yourself a favor: buy Brothers, crank it up as loud as possible, and shake yo’ ass.

1. Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
“This is a war we can’t win/after ten thousand years, it’s still us against them/and my heroes have always died at the end/ so who’s going to account for these sins?”
I haven’t been this excited and enthusiastic about a rock album in years. Just when I begin to think that popular music doesn’t aspire to change this fucking, stinking world anymore, along comes an album like The Monitor.

New Jersey’s Titus Andronicus have created a sprawling and lasting work of rock n roll art. And God bless them. I mean that.

If Bruce Springsteen and The Clash had decided to record an album under the influence of Ken Burns‘ The Civil War documentary it would have sounded like The Monitor. Titus Andronicus are open with their debt to both 19th century orators like William Lloyd Garrison and 20th century artists like Bruce Springsteen, reincorporating and reusing quotes and lyrics to great effect on this 21st century album.

As we prepare to remember the 150th anniversary of our disunion, we coincidentally find ourselves mired in an era just as fractured and dangerous. The Monitor invokes the imagery of The Civil War to perfectly comment on our current state of disunion, our fearful and uncertain era.

“The enemy is everywhere/ I’m sick and I’m scared/And the enemy is everywhere...”

There’s blood and guts on this album. There’s fear and loathing. There’s triumph and hope. We shall overcome...?

“The things I used to love, I have come to reject/The things I used to hate, I have learned to accept...”

The Monitor seems created by the fear of terrorism and the sadness of a hopelessly fractious and divided citizenry. It is an album created by young people who yearn to live and breathe and build, but find themselves blocked at every turn by the selfishness and self loathing of those who came before. This is timeless and primal American Rock n Roll. Forget about the best album of the year--The Monitor is a great rock album. Period. Inspired, important, and triumphant rock music.

“Because where I’m going now, no one can ever hurt me/ Where the well of human hatred is shallow and dry/ No, I never wanted to change the world, but I’m looking for a new New Jersey/ Because tramps like us, baby, we were born to die...”

Crossover Crimes Against Music: Don't Quit Your Day Job Baby

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 20:12:48 -0500

What is the real difference between famous people and the rest of us? I have no idea. But sometimes I think the major difference is the ability for the famous to actively pursue childhood dreams of pop stardom. While most of us are confined to inflicting our mediocre singing to shower stalls, camp fires, and karaoke bars, famous people have the means and connections to “rock out with their cock out” on a much grander scale.

I mean seriously, if Steve Jobs decided tomorrow he wanted to share his bitchin’ piccolo abilities with the world he’d have Moby, Kanye West, and the Dust Brothers lined up to produce the album by the end of the day along with a 17 city arena tour lined up with 3 Doors Down as his opening band: “See Steve Jobs Live! Prince of the Piccolo--this Friday at Madison Square Garden!”

For the good of the order, and the sake of hilarity, we offer six studies in musical crossover bungles. Yes, these famous people should have just kept their day jobs:

6. Eddie Murphy--Party All the Time
1985. Eddie Murphy had emerged as one of the most popular comedians, and had Hollywood crossover success with 1984’s mega-blockbuster Beverly Hills Cop. Why not cut a record with the superfreak himself, Rick James? What could go wrong? The song went to #2 on the charts, which leads us to believe that a significant portion of the population in 1985 got their drugs from the same dealer as Rick James.

5. Clint Eastwood sings cowboy favorites--Bouquet of Roses
In fairness to His Eastwoodness, Clint was still an ambitious up-and-comer when he recorded a series of bubblegum pop and country songs in the early ‘60s. But still. Man. Now, don’t take my word for it, but I’ve heard tell that this “Clint Eastwood” was gunned down in the Italian countryside a few years later by a tall stranger without a name.

4. Garth Brooks is “Chris Gaines”
This made no sense. Brooks already had crossover success. He was one of the biggest names in music during the 1990s. So why this Chris Gaines thing? Apparently it was part of some ill-fated movie about a tortured pop star, and Brooks released the album “in costume.” Frankly, we tip our hat to Mr. Brooks for the artistic ambition (something not seen in Nashville for quite some time).

Unfortunately the music, the attitude, and the style were vapid and silly. Garth Brooks pretending to be dark and edgy--all while singing the lyrics to the hopelessly corney “Let’s Get Together”.

3. Dogstar--Keanu Reeves asks us to take the blue pill.
Dogstar is to music as Keanu Reeves is to acting. Maybe he should take up painting so that he can be tortuously mediocre in three art forms. We call that the trifecta fail.

2. Bruce Willis as Bruno

Look, we acknowledge that Bruce Willis is a cool cat. We also acknowledge his inherent bad-assness, and immensely enjoy his movies (except for that last Die Hard--Dude, what was up with that?). But his misguided turn as “Bruno” is, well, disappointing.

No, not that Bruno. I'm talking about the R&B singing slob that from the ‘80s.
Where to begin here. The Return of Bruno is like listening to someone vomit on the soul of rhythm and blues. And what kind of world do we live in where Bruce Willis’ version of “Respect Yourself” is more popular than the Staples Singers?

1. John Ashcroft lets the eagle soar, and it takes a crap all over America.
Here’s something: I was a staunch Republican before I heard John Ashcroft’s take on “Let the Eagle Soar”. An hour after listening to our former Attorney General let his eagle soar I found myself wearing hemp, reading Marx, and plotting my move to Berkeley California.

Seriously Mr. Ashcroft, stick to eroding civil rights or eating babies or whatever the hell it is you do these days. You and music are not on friendly terms. Oh, yeah, and stay the hell away from those other singing Senetors too. You all suck.

I’ve heard it said that it was Ashcroft’s version of “Let the Eagle Soar” that served as the catalyst for Wikileaks. It’s some serious bad man. You can watch a performance of the song here. Not recommended.

"Let The Eagle Soar" does reveal it’s brilliance and insight when listened to backwards. “So we eat him who fell. His meat. For ohh!”

A Pause for Captain Beefheart

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 01:12:34 -0500

Don Van Vliet died today.

He had been retired from music about a decade when I first heard of this strange and idiosyncratic artist. Even though Captain Beefheart hadn’t released any new music since the early 80s, his music is still surprising and rare. It’s like listening to a unicorn taking a dump on a rainbow. And I mean that as a good thing. In 2010, his music remains, simultaneously rooted and singular, authentic and unreal, beautiful and demented. It’s really a hell of a trick to still pull off in these God awful commodified, compromised, and dangerous times.

Of course, as is the case with most worthwhile works of art, it’s not for everyone. The music does take work, but the payoff is illuminating. It's like when you realize that Thelonious Monk’s “Ruby, My Dear” really does swing--you realize that the downbeat, the one, is actually there, whispering and floating in the spaces between the notes. It's like that with Captain Beefheart. The singularity of his vision is impressive even if you don’t really know what the hell is going on.

He grew up in the Mojave Desert, north of L.A., near the town of Lancaster. I have an image of him sometimes, when I am listening to his music, dancing a weird dervish in the desert--clapping his hands and stomping his feet in the dust. Tarotplane and my human gets me blues.

Captain Beefheart was friends with equally idiosyncratic Frank Zappa. As teenagers they devised a whole new language for American music out there in the desert.

Desert Boy Blues.

They were really two sides of the same coin with Zappa as the conceptual technician and Beefheart as the primitive artiste... gimme dat harp boy.
Modern music is all there in his best albums: Howlin’ Wolf and Edgard Varese, Son House and John Coltrane, hokum and Beat poetry. Disparate styles and forms deconstructed and reformed with the help of Beefheart's Magic Band.

He released a handful of searing and brilliant albums (Safe as Milk, Trout Mask Replica, Mirror Man, Lick My Decals Off Baby, Doc at the Radar Station) before quitting music in the early 80s to paint. He hasn’t been active musically for almost 30 years (although I really hoped he’d release a new album for the past 15 years), so what we’ve really lost is the idea of a true artist who forged his own path, who followed his own vision, who never sold out. How many artists today can we say that about, in this ugly and naked era of over commercialization and self promotion?

It’s a stupid and false sentiment, but I feel like the culture lost something good and pure today, something we won’t get back. Captain Beefheart was an artist who actually cared about his art as a creation--not as a commodity. In times like these, his existence was an archaic and rebellious stance.

Famous artists die all the time, and we all say, “oh, that’s a shame,” or “that guy sucked,” or “who?”, and then we move on to the next thing moving toward us on our increasingly connected and shallow paths. In the grand scope of things, Captain Beefheart wasn’t really all that famous, but I think that those of us who care about authenticity and integrity should pause to remember this original artist, Don Van Vliet/Captain Beefheart. His art wasn’t easy, it was often twisted and surreal, but it was honest and pure and inspiring. Strange songs along the road less traveled.

Captain Beefheart died today.

Dylan Files #4: Basement Tapes and Billy the Kid ('67-'73)

Thu, 27 May 2010 22:05:32 -0400

“Well, I've already had two beers
I'm ready for the broom
Please, Missus Henry, won't you
Take me to my room?
I'm a good old boy
But I've been sniffin' too many eggs
Talkin' to too many people
Drinkin' too many kegs
Please, Missus Henry, Missus Henry, please
Please, Missus Henry, please
I'm down on my knees
And I ain't got a dime.”

Dylan had impacted every aspect of popular music by 1967. He was already a cultural icon, an avatar, a musical signpost. He had gone through the zeitgeist as he had gone through folk, rock n roll, and superstardom. And what exactly did he have to report? What else was there to do, to prove, to move through?

The period between 1967 and 1973 seems to have been one of reassessment and rejuvenation. While the youth culture was extolling “flower power” and other kooky new age hokum, Dylan was reading the Old Testament and chasing hippies out of his Woodstock home with his rifle. All Along the Watchtower indeed.

“See you later crocagater, after while Allen Ginsburg…”

The music world was exploding with a technicolor blossom of anything-goes possibility. The psychedelic sound. The acid tests. Meanwhile Dylan was spending his time writing and performing idiosyncratic old-timey sounding music with The Band (nee the Hawks) in a basement in Woodstock New York. Some of the tunes were old standards. Some were new. Some were goofs. As Robbie Robertson told Howard Sounes “I couldn’t tell which were the songs that (Dylan) wrote and which were the old songs.”

The Basement Tapes finds Dylan searching the past, pondering the present, and having fun with no deadlines, no agendas, no pressure. Pure music.

“The comic book and me, just us, we caught the bus.”

After the laidback reefer dream of the Basement Tapes and the terse sepia-toned Biblical/criminal parables of John Wesley Harding, Dylan moved even further into the country with the smiling and genteel Nashville Skyline, and later with the (for many of his fans) scandalous and reactionary Self Portrait.

“Is it rolling Bob?”

Dylan went back, revisiting songs as disparate as the 19^th century goldminer tune “Days of 49” to the Ronettes’ “Da Do Run Run,” writing light, tuneful pastoral pieces like “Country Pie.” It almost seems as though he was consciously separating himself from the hippie era, playing it straight, recording with people like Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Charlie Daniels. He cut his hair. He began crooning. He zigged while his fans were all zagging.

It is perhaps no coincidence that when the Woodstock Festival came through, Dylan left town.

“Nothing is better, nothing is best. Take care of yourself, and get plenty of rest”

Of course many of his fans felt as though he’d abandoned them. He’d become a musical Howard Hughes—cut off and musically distant from his fans. Given the craziness of his cultural ascent perhaps he was purposely tamping down expectations, shutting the pop world away for his own sanity and well being. However much fans might have been disappointed in Dylan’s musical direction, and wanted him to say Big Important Things (or whatever), it should be no surprise that the “country-rock” music he crafted during this period would have a profound impact on the pop world. We’ve been here before; without even trying Dylan changed the music world.

“Time passes slowly when you’re lost in a dream…”

And then in 1972 Dylan began to emerge again. He found himself playing cowboys and outlaws in the Mexican wilds of Durango. Directed by the legendary and irascible Sam Peckenpaugh and starring Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, and Slim Pickens, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid would find Dylan acting in his first (non-documentary) big-time movie. At the urging of Peckenpaugh, Dylan wrote the music for the film.

“Mama put my guns in the ground, I can’t shoot them anymore”

Considering the musical and stylistic changes Dylan had gone through over the preceding 10 years, it’s fitting that his character (a strange friend of Billy’s) was called ‘Alias.’

You know, ‘Alibi’ would have worked too.

Dylan ended this stage of his career in much the same way he’d began it—jamming with The Band. Things were a little different now—gone were the country jams of Woodstock (Dylan had relocated to Malibu), and the music was being prepped for a studio album—and there was talk about a tour, Dylan’s first in 8 years...

_{Dylan's performance on The Johnny Cash Show (1969)}

Capsule Reviews (Albums)—1967- 1973:

· The Basement Tapes

· John Wesley Harding

· Nashville Skyline

· Self Portrait

· New Morning

· Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (soundtrack)

The Basement Tapes

This is greatest unreleased collection of music in rock history. Sure, a truncated version was released in ’76, but that has nothing on the expansive and beautiful whole. Dylan leads the band through 128 songs ranging from covers like "Belle Isle" and "The French Girl" to stunning originals like "This Wheel’s on Fire" and "I’m Not There (1956)". Recorded (mostly) in the basement of the famous pink house that members of The Band were living in, the recordings exude a raw, good-time, earnestness that reveal a pureness of musical expression—even on the goofs (sometimes especially on the goofs). Music and cultural critic Greil Marcus wrote The Old, Weird America(The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes), which culturally connects the Basement Tapes to the Anthology of American Folk Music and the “secret history of America.” Best piece of musical criticism I’ve ever read.

There are various complete Basement Tapes bootlegs available, the most well known being “The Genuine Basement Tapes.” Personally, I recommend “A Tree With Roots.” –info here!

John Wesley Harding

This wonderfully terse collection of songs celebrates the sinners and the saints (Saint Augustine, John Wesley Hardin). The album is the exact opposite of the type of music everyone else was making during this era—short, to the point, utterly moralistic. It’s as if the Biblical Ezekiel were re-imagined as a taciturn folksinger busking on a country road somewhere outside the land of Nod.

Hard, brilliant, and elemental stuff.

Nashville Skyline

180-degree turn from JWH, Dylan sounds happy and content on this slight collection of countryish songs. Notable for the hit song "Lay Lady Lay", this album disconcerted many longtime fans. Is that Dylan crooning?--(the infamous Dylan-croon)-- Sure, there’s nothing earth shattering here—definitely not his most inspired album— but, hey, it’s charming, a good sunny summer back-porch listening album. And besides, he jams with Cash here, which is about as cool as it gets.

Self Portrait

If Nashville Skyline perplexed longtime fans, then Self Portrait drove them to collective apoplexy. Dylan releases a double album of covers like "The Boxer", "Blue Moon", and "Let it Be Me". And he’s still crooning. Now think about the era—1970, up against the wall motherfucker, revolution hanging heavy in the air—and Dylan’s belting out mainstream tunes like "I’ve Forgotten More Than You’ll Ever Know".

There are a ton of conspiracy theories as to what Dylan was doing here—

It was an elaborate joke on his fans
He was trying to stick it to his manager (who collected money from Dylan’s publishing)
He was being brainwashed by Nixon.
Or perhaps Dylan just likes well-crafted songs, enjoyed singing them, and saw these songs as formative to who he became (hence the title).
Or yeah, maybe it was just a big fuck you to the fans after all.

Whatever it was, I enjoy the Self Portrait. Yes, it could have been probably shaved down to a single album, but for the most part these are great songs performed with care. I guess I can’t say I’d recommend this album to anyone who wasn’t a rabid Dylanhead, but I personally find the album has a certain charm. Either this collection represents a portrait of an artist and his influences, or it’s the hippest fuck you album ever. Either way, it’s cool with me…

New Morning

Heralded as Dylan’s “comeback” album, New Morning isn’t as good as the critics proclaimed back in ’70—they were just happy to put Self Portrait and the Dylan-croon behind them, I think.

That being said, this is a strong, and assured album—somewhat more searching Nashville Skyline, but still firmly in the relaxed mood of the past few years. Musically it’s more ambitious, which probably has something to do with new producer and old cohort Al Kooper’s presence. Dylan even explores his jazzier side on a few tunes. Outside of The Basement Tapes, New Morning is definitely my favorite studio album of this era. Dylan is rarely as laidback and chill as he is here.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Soundtrack)

This is a really effective soundtrack—nice themes and musical interludes like Billy, and the "Cantina Theme" that really serve the film. Of course the gem here is the stone classic "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door".

Dylan (1973)

Scraps from Self Portrait released by Columbia in response to Dylan’s shacking up with Geffen’s Asylum label (for Planet Waves). Hear Dylan sing "Mr. Bojangles" and Joni Mitchell’s "Big, Yellow Taxi"! (Hmmm...)

_{Dylan and Cash recording in Nashville 1969--One Too Many Mornings. This is the coolest thing you'll watch today.}

Bootlegs

(Once again, this is just a short list of a couple of bootlegs from the era I enjoy—see bobsboots.com for a comprehensive list of Dylan boots)

Note: Although the Basement Tapes are technically a bootleg, the historic nature of the album demanded it be placed with Dylan’s proper albums.

Nashville 1969 (with Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins)

The recording sessions that produced the famous duet with Cash of "Girl From the North Country" found on Nashville Skyline. The recordings were kind of sloppy (but in a good, homey kind of way), so the planned album never panned out. But hey, it’s Bob Dylan cutting an album with Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins—that’s pretty frickin’ rad. And so is this boot.

Isle of Wight (1969)

Outside of a performance on The Johnny Cash Show and a memorial for Woody Guthrie, Dylan’s only big concert performance for this era was the Isle of Wight festival. He performed recontexualized/countryish versions of his rock songs in the late 60s Dylan-croon with The Band to an underwhelmed crowd. Interesting and historical boot that unfortunately suffers from major technical issues.

Almost Went to See Elvis

Taken from the many 1969/1970 recording sessions (Nashville and New York) that produced Self Portrait, Almost Went to See Elvis finds Dylan, with compadres like Charlie Daniels, George Harrison, and Carl Perkins, rambling, shambling, and having a whole-lotta fun. This is a decidedly shaggy affair, with Dylan and Co. shooting the shit between neat covers of songs like "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and (Perkins’) "Matchbox", weird covers of "Yesterday" and "All I have to do is Dream", and cool reinterpretations of his own songs like "Song to Woody" and "Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues". (And Gates of Eden here is wicked sick).

Peco’s Blues

Outtakes from the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid sessions. I honestly listen to this a lot more than the official soundtrack—great instrumentals; great jam on Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s "Rock Me Mama".

______________________________________________________________________

Books

Chronicles Vol. 1 --Bob Dylan

Positively Fourth Street--David Hajdu

A Freewheelin' Time--Suze Rotolo

Down the Highway--Howard Sounes
The Old, Weird America--Greil Marcus (If you have any interest in Dylan or folk music, buy this book!)

Film

Festival! (dir: Murry Lerner)

No Direction Home (dir: Martin Scorsese)

Dont Look Back (dir: D.A. Pennebaker)

Eat the Document (dir: Bob Dylan)

Other links

Expecting Rain (the Bob Dylan site)

Bob Dylan.Com (Columbia Records)

MJ's Dylan Files homepage

Musical Plagiarism (?)

Sun, 2 May 2010 10:05:50 -0400

Talk about a day late and a dollar short.

I totally missed the boat on the whole Joni Mitchell/Bob Dylan kerfuffle.

To be honest, I didn’t really have anything interesting to say about it last weekend (although I enjoyed reading other’s opinions on the intertubes).

I mean, dude, of course Dylan has been lifting lines and melodies since the beginning of his career. He’s inserted lines from various movies and books, from Ovid, and even from an obscure 1990s Japanese novel. Standard blues and folk phrases and melodies can be heard on many of his albums. Oh, Dylan is a shameless thief no doubt. But really, this is nothing shocking. Hell he even called one of albums “Love and Theft.” In quotation marks.

I honestly don't understand Mitchell’s beef, but my guess is that it has nothing to do with Dyaln’s musical and literary larceny.

The bru-ha-ha did get me thinking broadly about the nature of plagiarism in regard to popular music. Here’s a tradition that once thrived on appropriation, borrowing, thieving, and recontextualizing.

Once upon a time, folk and blues artists traded and collected riffs, melodies, and phrases like baseball cards—gonna dust my broom—down at the crossroads—Casey Jones ridin’ the rails—12 bar blues—let that boy boogie-woogie. This was called folk music after all. Music that belonged to the people.

But now? Whose songs are these anyway? The artists? The people (folk)? The record companies? Multi-national conglomerates?

When recorded folk and blues music became big business during the middle of the 20^th century, artists and recording companies were obviously looking to cash in—there was a change in “accepted practices” and suddenly blues and folk music copyrights were tightened--"You can't have that riff man, it's my riff, it's CBS's riff, it's private property man!" It wasn’t music of the folk any longer—the music became a commodity and songs became property. Folk music meets the free market.

Of course, this new dynamic doesn’t reflect people’s real relationship to music. People and artists would continue to react to, to be influenced by, and to build upon the music they were hearing.

So, what do we mean by musical plagiarism?

I mean, was Woody Guthrie plagiarizing the Carter Family when he appropriated the melody from “This World’s on Fire” (also their “You Are My Sunshine”) for “This Land is Your Land”?

This is certainly muddy water, and I don’t have any answers.

However, it might be interesting to take a look at a couple of popular instances of “musical plagiarism.” Some are obvious hack-jobs and rip-offs, while others…man, I’m really not sure.

What do you think?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

All Day and All of the Night—The Kinks (1964)—Ray Davies

Hello, I Love You—The Doors (written 1965, recorded 1968)—Jim Morrison

Ray Davies unsuccessfully sued The Doors for this one. Although “Hello, I Love You” was released on The Doors’ 1968 album Waiting For The Sun, it was originally written by Morrison in 1965—a year after “All Day and All of the Night” was popular. Interestingly, in Electra’s initial press release for The Doors upon their 1965 signing Jim Morrison listed The Kinks as one of his favorite bands. Apparently Ray Davies is still pissed.

In an unrelated note the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles is also apparently still pissed over the The Doors’ “Oedipal Section” in “The End.” Says Sophocles: “Morrison gives new meaning to the term ‘motherfucker.’”

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He's So Fine—The Chiffons (1962)—Roland Mack

My Sweet Lord—George Harrison (1970)—George Harrison

This famous plagiarism lawsuit ruled against the former Beatle in favor of Bright Tunes, the company that owned “He’s So Fine.” The judge called it a case of “subconscious plagiarism.” Harrison ultimately bought the Bright Tunes Company. Meanwhile the Vishnu is just happy to have the mantra Hare Krishna associated with a cool song rather than with “those weirdoes at the airport.”

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I Want a New Drug—Huey Lewis and the News (1984)—Huey Lewis

Ghostbusters Theme—Ray Parker Jr. (1984)—Ray Parker Jr.

A musician ripping off Huey Lewis is like a director ripping off Uwe Boll. Very pathetic. But Huey Lewis received a nice (undisclosed) settlement from Ray Parker Jr.—until he blabbed about it to VH1, and Ray Parker Jr. countersued.Whole lot of suing for two completely stupid songs.

Too bad both songs are ultimately indebted to M’s “Pop Muzik” released in 1979.

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Run Through the Jungle—Creedence Clearwater Reival (1969)—John Fogerty

The Old Man Down the Road—John Fogerty (1985)—John Fogerty

Not to be confused with Geffen’s lawsuit against Neil Young for “not sounding enough like Neil Young,” this lawsuit saw Fantasy records suing John Fogerty for sounding too much like himself! He was sued for plagiarizing himself!

Fogerty, of course, won the case.

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Love is a Wonderful Thing—The Isley Brothers (written 1964, released 1966)—Ronald and Ernie Isley

Love is a Wonderful Thing—Michael Bolton (1991)—Michael Bolton & Andrew Goldmark

This suit resulted in the largest settlement ever for a musical copyright infringement—hack singer Michael Bolton was required to pay over $5 million dollars to the Isleys. Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if the ruling had something to do with the fact that Bolton's music sucks donkey balls coupled with his ruining forever Percey Sledge's “When a Man Loves a Woman” and Otis Redding's “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.”

I like to think the judge was simply offended by Bolton's existence. I like to think of the ruling as reparations for crimes against rock. Of course, I also like to think that there is a special place in hell for Michael Bolton and every single one of his lame-ass fans.

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Ice, Ice Baby—Vanilla Ice (1989)—Douchie Van Periwinkle or whatever his dumb name is.

Under Pressure (1981)—Queen & David Bowie

Vanilla Ice sampled the classic Queen/David Bowie bass line and tried to pass it off as his. He ultimately paid Queen and Bowie an undisclosed sum of money. The outrage from this song probably has more to do with the fact that Vanilla Ice is a no-talent ass-clown than for his act of musical sampling.

And speaking of sampling…

As we wade deeper into the 21^st century, thanks to technology, the pendulum seems to be swinging back the other way toward a time when it's the music that's important--not the artist or the company. For over twenty years, DJs have been sampling riffs and grooves from recordings to form new music. Is sampling musical plagiarism?

With computer software making it easier for anyone to become a creative DJ and lift pieces of copyrighted music, coupled with the continuing collapse of the corporate music industry, we seem to be heading back to an era when musical piracy was valued and encouraged. In both the academic and business world there has been vigorous debate about whether this is all right or wrong—the ethics of free information and access to music. Certainly this is a worthy debate.

But we should also frame this discusstion within the nature of artistic context. I ask again, whose music is this anyway? Is there really a difference between what Woody Guthrie did with the Cater Family song and what Jim Morrison did with the Kinks song? Or what DJs and hip-hop artists do with that sample from the old record?

Is an act like Girl Talk just a clever thief, or is he contributing something of value? Where is music going in an age when more and more people can manipulate and recontexualize the music on their hard drives? Are we criminals or artists? Is there even a difference anymore?

_{Girl Talk's "Play Your Part (pt. 1)}_{From Girl Talk's album "Feed the Animals" 2008--Illegal Art}