Taste - "Catfish" From the CD Taste

Interesting, this internet thing. We all know about those NSFW photos and just the other day I found out that they're now calling the two girls one cup stuff NSFL, or Not Safe For Life, but is the internet Not Safe For Truth?

Check out our man William Rory Gallagher as a case in point where it may not be. Awesome guitarist, and seemingly an awesome guy, at least when he wasn't engaged in drinking himself to death. Stories about how he avoided the limelight and detested the starmaking machine abound. Rory just wanted to play his music, and who can argue with that?

No-one, of course.

But in casting our 'net for information on Gallagher, I kept coming up with this supposed quote about the man, goes something like this:

Interviewer: So what's it like to be the greatest guitarist in the world?
Jimi Hendrix: I dunno, go ask Rory Gallagher

A quick Google search for the phrase 'go ask Rory Gallagher' right now yields a supposed 88,100 matches, and while the murkiness of the deep web allows us to discount such a high number of results, clearly, this is a quote that's been repeated often on the various music pages of the internet.

And it's not there right now, but historical versions of Gallagher's Wikipedia page repeat the quote as well.

It's a quote that you want to believe: it casts a good light on both the quoted and the quotee. Hendrix, sometimes seen as arrogant while he was alive, seems humble, and Gallagher, always respected but never venerated when he was around, is recast as a Titan.

But almost immediately, the purported quote begins to tug at those strings which control your credulity. To me, at any rate, the question seems a little stilted. Would any interviewer, especially before Hendrix' death, actually ask the man "what's it like to be the greatest in the world?" It seems unprofessional, and anyway, I think that at the time, the common wisdom was that the greatest guitarist was in fact Eric Clapton. The graffito on the streets of London, after all, was never "Hendrix is God."

And while Hendrix would often enthusiastically drop the names of guitarists he admired, the printed record shows that most often the guys whose names he'd drop were called Buddy Guy or Albert King. It is true that Hendrix mentioned Billy Gibbons to Johnny Carson one night . . . but even there it's interesting that we can find actual citations from the pre-internet era to back this up. My Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock from 1977, for example, includes in its ZZ Top article a reference to Hendrix' statement about Gibbons, yet says nothing about anything Jimi may have said about Gallagher.

Does anyone know to whom Hendrix might have been speaking when he said this thing about Gallagher? Well, looking further, someone over on Amazon actually specified Rolling Stone and said that the interview was held in the wake of Woodstock . . . which is what you'd kind of expect to read, no?

But at any rate, I took the bait. I went ahead and bought Rolling Stone Cover to Cover, and once I got the thing, it was very quick: there are no instances within the pages of Rolling Stone between the magazine's birth in 1967 and Hendrix' death in 1971 where the name "Hendrix" and "Gallagher" cohabit the same article.

And there are only four if you expand the dates to the complete 40 years. I read each and every article. None mention the quote we're looking for.

Consider also that a site known for doing such things has deconstructed a suspiciously similar claim made about Hendrix and what he never said about another somewhat obscure guitarist, Phil Keaggy. Urban legends mutate, while the truth has a tendency not to.

This may or may not be Mythbusters. I guess it's entirely possible Hendrix said the thing to a reporter for Creem or to some college kid scribing for his newspaper. And I guess I should mention here that at least one person on the Rory Gallagher Forums believes Hendrix may have said such a thing at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970. But there are no pre-internet references that I can find, and I fucking looked. I have questions about what kind of professional journalist would ask such a leading question, and really, considering how so much of what came out of Hendrix' mouth was spacily disconnected, I kinda doubt the succinct answer as well.

So for me, the truth of this quote is convincingly busted, regardless of the 88,100 php or cfm pages that might pop up saying otherwise. And regardless of the next version of Mr. Gallagher's Wikipedia page, that no-one reading this can tell me won't say the very same thing, with citations to the same incorrect pages I've just (more or less) busted. The internet is nothing if not incestuous, and v 2.0 is itching to cite . . . as long as you're not too worried about rigor.

All such despairing for the shaky status of truth on the nets doesn't mean, of course, that we still can't enjoy Gallagher's music. And I wholeheartedly suggest that we do. I've linked for you here the song "Catfish," from the first Taste album. It's a blues standard that Hendrix also covered, and while I love both versions, I think I like Rory's version--sludgy, bloozy, powerful-- better.

File under: The Muck of the Irish

Explosions in the Sky - "The Birth and Death of the Day" from the CD All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone

I posted something at my Tumblr about the Explosions in the Sky gig I went to last night, and by the time I was done with it, I realized the piece was long enough to post here

Explosions.

I don’t know about you, but there are really three places where I listen to music: on my 45-minute drives to and from work, while doing the grocery shopping, and while bopping around the house on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon.

The point is, always I’ve got time to kill when listening. I don’t mind your expansiveness of concept right then. In fact I welcome it, You wanna take 20 minutes to do your Impressions of the Revealing Science of God? Great. Want to stretch out and use 19 minutes to paint me a picture of Swastika Girls? Kick-ass, I’ve got time.

It may seem incongruous to describe Explosions in the Sky as driving music, but I think that’s exactly what they are. They start with this tiny, quiet smidgen of a lyrical idea, and then keep piling on to it. Fifteen minutes later, the band is indeed exploding.

But you gotta have that fifteen minutes. If you”re in and out of the shop, let’s say, like I am at work, you either catch the beginning or catch the end, but not both. And the beginning makes the end, and vice versa.

While it seems that much of the (very large) audience last night knew EITS’ music better than I did, I still noticed something interesting: the cheers, when they came, were typically not at the end of the songs, but rather at the end of the explosions. Many of their songs have quiet codas reprising the beginnings, and several times last night I couldn’t hear these soft endpoints ‘cause the crowd was going nuts.

To me, that says that the crowd was there for the crescendos. Hell, the crescendos were what I was there for. Their crescendoes are awesome. But I also found myself at times kind of waiting around for them. The buildups that seem like necessary world-building while I’m driving seemed kind of interminable while I was standing on my tired and achy dogs in the packed and sweaty performance space.

Nothing to be done for it, not really. That is the kind of music Explosions in the Sky makes. They can’t cut it down or edit it, at least I don’t think they should. They and we just have to live with it: The music’s integrity relies on parts that don’t translate as well in a live situation.

On the other hand: When they had it going, the racket they made was as powerful as anything I’ve ever heard in my life. I say that even though I’ve seen Sonic Youth three times. I once saw a unknown band named Polline’ open up for the Mercury Program and I had thought that the capstone to their show was as unholy a noise as I was ever likely to hear. Explosions equalled if not surpassed it.

And they are like Sonic Youth, because when they get going, you’re not sure that everything you’re hearing is actually there, if you know what I mean. Everything is swirling so quickly and so loudly that your mind is a little unsure of how to process it all, and sometimes it makes things up to fill in the gaps. It can be audio pareidolia: you hear bells and voices and whistles and other non-existent aural patterns amidst the buzzsaws.

Or maybe they’re there after all. . . .

Anyway, in a nutshell, put up with the boring soft parts, as the loud parts are fucking incredible with this band.

The other thing that needs to be said is that Explosions thrash around. Mightily. Nearly spastic Michael James was dripping sweat five minutes into the show. All three guitarists are out of control at various points, sometimes all three of them at once. It was a joy to see them so very much into the music, and let's single out Munaf Rayani as a man who Pete Townsend could take to heart for the abuse he dishes out to his Fender.

And yo, loved the Texas flag draped over the amplifier.

Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone - 01 The Birth and Death of the Day.mp3

File under: Driving Music

Fleetwood Mac - "Hypnotized" From the Album Mystery to Me

Truth be told, Fleetwood Mac and I have never really seen eye to eye. When I was growing up, at a time when Rumours was ubiquitous, the teenage metalhead and/or prog freak I purposely molded myself into wasn't part of their demographic. Not even close. And now that I more closely match that (older, white, politically liberal?) demographic, the ship that might have once done the soft California rock thing for me has long since sailed.

I may not hate them, but--with the one exception I'm getting to in my typically slow fashion--Fleetwood Mac's influence on my listening habits has been next to nil. "Rhiannon" and "Don't Stop" and the rest of the Mac's massive seventies radio hits have been like neutrinos, all around me, unavoidable, yet so wispy and insubstantial that they've passed through me inert and whole, colliding with nothing of myself, reacting with nothing at all I keep internal.

Words are funny things. Rotate them a quarter turn, and all their nuance changes. I dismiss Fleetwood Mac by saying they're "insubtantial," but 90 degrees away from insubstantial is "ethereal," and ethereal can produce a very nice feeling indeed.

"Hypnotized" is, I think, Fleetwood Mac rotated their own quarter turn.

It's the same kind of story That seems to come down from long ago Two friends having coffee together When something flies by their window It might be out on that lawn Which is wide, at least half of a playing field Because there's no explaining what your imagination Can make you see and feel

Seems like a dream They got me hypnotized

Now it's not a meaningless question To ask if they've been and gone I remember a talk about North Carolina and a strange, strange pond You see the sides were like glass In the thick of a forest without a road And if any man's hand ever made that land Then i think it would've showed

Seems like a dream They got me hypnotized

They say there's a place down in Mexico Where a man can fly over mountains and hills And he don't need an airplane or some kind of engine And he never will Now you know it's a meaningless question To ask if those stories are right 'cause what matters most if the feeling You get when you're hypnotized

Seems like a dream They got me hypnotized

Cadres of English blues fans and Peter Green cultists probably curse the name of Bob Welch for the band's detour into Yacht Rock after Welch arrived.

Fine. But to me, Welch's standing as one of the seventies' premier songwriters is cemented by this song and this song alone. And if it's Yacht Rock so be it. Van Morrison and Stevie Nicks and scores of Druid metal acts have attempted to shine a light Into the Mystic, but none, I think, have illuminated that foggy inconstant world quote so well as "Hypnotized."

what matters most if the feeling You get when you're hypnotized

Hell, there are books written on the subject that don't get it so right. I don't truly believe that Don Juan ever levitated or that space aliens created a lake in the Carolina woods or that a Mothman flew over Point Pleasant or that malign spirits ever crept over the sandy floors of the Chase Vaults.

But there's a little dreamy fugue we all enter when just thinking about these fantastical and sadly unreal things, isn't there? If these things are not real, at least they can give us this wonderful, fleetingly-grasped, dreamy fugue state.

What's remarkable about "Hypnotized," its music, its lyrics, is it's another transport in.

The fugue, the trance, it's just like the daydream reverie you feel when Bob Welch's atmospheric guitar fills fly by. It's just like the slightly unreal shimmer that Mick Fleetwood's triple-time beats can bring to things, and it's just like the mysterious soft keen of Welch's and McVie's voices combining, just slightly offtune, just slightly outside the sad and boring reality we're all forced to inhabit.

RIP Bob Welch

Steve Winwood - "Night Train" from the Album Arc of a Diver

"Night Train" from Arc of A Diver played on the way home, and it got me thinking of the time I saw Steve Winwood in Europe.

A little internet research just now and I can tell the tale: That my grandfather had decided he would take me to Europe after my high school graduation on or around the 15th of June 1983.

While Europe is pretty amazing even if you limit yourself to the parts your grandparents might dig, for the most part the excursion was exactly the whitebread sightseeing kind of trip you'd expect when you're with your grandparents. But on a couple nights they handed me some dough and let me run around the town we were in on my very own. And I of course did the things an 18-year old kid would: those having to do with drugs and rock 'n' roll. When we were in Amsterdam, for example, I hit the world famous Milky Way and bought and then consumed some Afghani black hash, the cottonmouth then averted with a bunch of skunky Dutch beer. And in Luxembourg, on the 20th, I went to see Winwood at the Théâtre Municipale.

It's a long time ago now, but I still do remember a long and excellent version of the same song I heard this evening while driving home. It's funny: Because I remembered "Night Train" so clearly, I'd long thought that this tour Winwood had done, and this show I had seen, was in support of Arc of a Diver, but I'm realizing only now that in fact the tour was behind Talking Back to the Night.

I really don't remember much of the concert, but I've found it interesting to find that this guy here says that the show was in his "top ten gigs of all time." Not going there, but I definitely remember, and always have remembered, the experience as being one of an ace rock 'n' roll show.

Found the image next door on eBay, and looking at the back of the T-shirt now, I see that the gig I attended in Luxembourg is not even listed. Winwood had been in Brussels on the 19th and was in Saarbrucken on the 21st; I guess they decided to turn the day off into a payday sometime after the tour was booked and the merch was manufactured. I seem to recall coming across a small handbill for the event--rather than a grandiose poster--during the day while I was touring with my grandparents, which would reinforce this idea I'm getting that the show was scheduled and promoted last-minute.

Another, and probably the most vivid, thing I remember about this concert is that, arriving early, I hooked up and started chatting with a pair of Luxembourgians who were sitting next to me. I babbled something about Yes no doubt, and they recommended in return Barclay James Harvest. I mentioned Kansas, and they had no clue at all. Then the house lights went down and the three of us enjoyed the show as you do. The band was energetic, and the crowd was enthusiastic, and an encore got played, and Winwood said good night, and the house lights went up and the drummer threw something into the audience landed a few rows behind us, I figured it was a rag or whatever and I bid my newly met friends good night, told them well met and they said: hold on.

They said yeah, let's sit here and talk a bit more while the crowd files out, and I said sure, why not, time's not precious I'm on vacation. And we talked some more rock and roll, can't remember what but I'm sure it was pleasant enough, until the theatre was basically empty, one of the guys climbed backward over his seat and then crawled over a couple more until he found what he was looking for.

Climbing back towards us, he explained in a lowered voice that in European countries with harsh drug laws, and Luxembourg was that, it was fairly common for musicians passing through to toss their fans a bone so to speak in the form of little drug packets tossed into the audience.

I'd never heard of such a thing before, and I've never heard of such a thing since. but Luxembourger prog-rock brother sure enough had some dope in his hand when he arrived back in our row.

So I hung with my buddies a little longer. With no small aura of paranoia, we left the theatre and found a thousand-year old bridge or something nearby that gave us some cover from the long arm of the Duchy's law while we smoked the pot and let the buzz spreads it wanton fingers through us.

Then the moment was gone, and my Central European buddies and I parted for good, and I wandered stoned and more than just a little paranoid through the dark stone streets of Luxembourg for a short time, trying to and eventually succeeding in finding my hotel.

Good memories brought on by a good song.


Steve Winwood - Night Train.mp3


File under: Multi-instrumentalist Rock

My Lack of Favorite Things

 

Don't worry, Hipster Kitty, and Hipster Kitty fans, I haven't decided to change featured memes for this blog, although I will admit to having briefly considered it. But no, Music Nerd Octopus is just a guest today, on loan from his real home at http://fuckyeahmusicnerdoctopus.tumblr.com.

(And OK, before we move on, let's give that hyperlink address just prior a second look:

fuckyeahmusicnerdoctopus.tumblr.com

It may just be the greatest url ever).

Anyway, Mr. MNO is here to help me tell a story . A story about how last week Melanie and I were invited to go down to the Grand Central Club in downtown Miami to hear her Whole Foods co-worker play a set with her synth 'n' laptop band. The music was . . . not for me. The word that came to mind as I sought to explain was "techno," although they describe themselves as "rave/house,". which probably only serves to highlight how disconnected I am from music of this sort.

	A horribly blurred picture I took at the Grand Central Club. Can't tell the musicians, but aren't the colors pretty?

But good for Khadija and Mike, you know? And then after the show, we ran into them in the parking lot, and Melanie said nice things and in doing so pointed at me and muttered something about the weird music I listen to. And suddenly I was being asked by Melanie or Khadija about my favorite band or bands, and I literally had no clue as to how to respond. I muttered something like, "I don't really have any favorites," which sounds like I'm just not that much into music, and which is of course totally inaccurate if you're trying to figure out just what it is I am also.

So fuck. It's complicated. Melanie says something about "Sonic Youth" for me, and Khadija nods her head, saying "yeah we like Sonic Youth, too" and I nod my head also, but inside I'm like, No! I have real issues with Sonic Youth. They're not my favorites, they're just a band that was really good for a good while!, though fortunately I kept my mouth shut.

So what's the point here, beyond the fact that I am just as socially inept at age 46 as I was at age 16? Well, I think it's that in my old age I've moved past this concept we've all had of "favorite band." I remain enthused about music. With the resources available these days, I continue to discover new music all the time. I love music as much as I did as a teenager. Music may in fact be the only thing holding me together, with the household going bankrupt and the Astros in the shit-tank.

But I don't have a favorite band, and haven't had as I think about it, for quite some time. I don't know how to answer the question. I know of bands who used to be my favorites, Iron Maiden and Yes and Sonic Youth, but now they're each just one of many whom I like, each one of many with highlights and lowlights and stories and albums and songs, and I really can't say I prefer one to any other any more.

I think I have said something like "Boris are the best band on the planet" in the recent past, and on reflection now as I write I do even believe that to be true. But still, I wouldn't say Boris are my favorite band. Maybe it's splitting hairs, but I think not.

Perhaps it's that I now realize everything will turn to shit at some point, every band will break up, or release their sell-out album, or get in a lifechanging car accident, or just reach a point where they now no longer agree with me on the things I listen to them for.

Or maybe it was the fallow period that I had, four or five years in the mid nineties when I paid less attention to music than at any other time in my life, a time when I was led to concentrate on other things, a time which passed without anguish and relatively painlessly while my formerly favorite outfits worked on without my attention.

But mostly, I think it's this: of course I've had fun with my blogspot and now with my tumblr, but I believe I have a greater respect for the music now, as I now have a greater respect for growing older. I do take it more seriously than I did back when I was riding my bike to the record store. This isn't making silly lists in history class anymore. It's the way I live my life, powerful music to accompany me and to grab hold of as I struggle through. What it is, I figure, is that I've dropped some of my adolescent enthusiasms while still maintaining my enthusiasm.

Death - "Trapped in a Corner" from the CD Individual Thought Patterns

Chuck Schuldiner's dead. Been dead. I had no idea.

I'm not so sure whether the honorific that's tossed Schuldiner's way--"The Father of Death Metal"--is entirely accurate. I'm no expert but a quick look at Wikipedia confirms that both Carcass and Possessed released albums considered firmly in the death metal camp before Schuldiner's band put out their first LP in 1987.

But father or no, he was in there early. Think about it: his band was named Death. How early do you have to get into the death metal racket to ensure that the name "Death" hasn't already taken?

So father, maybe not, but pioneer: yes, absolutely. Back in my most thrashtastic days in the late '80's, I remember being aware of Death. I guess I'd seen Scream Bloody Gore or more likely Leprosy in the metal bins at the record stores. Anyway, I'd seen the logo and it's hard to forget it once you have. Even if you've not listened to the music.

A deep skepticism of the growling vocals* that my metalhead buddy Alan and I had developed kept me from listening to Schuldiner's band as it began. And my own estrangement from music for most of the '90's kept me from discovering them as they matured into tech death greatness.

It was probably in 2007 when I stumbled across the Wikipedia entry for Atheist's Piece of Time and thence to the article on technical death metal. Having been into prog and fusion for basically my entire adult life, the terms in which Atheist specifically and tech death in general were being described, its complex rhythms and time signatures, its experimentation, appealed to me. Surely to get at this music I could put up with some growls?

I could. Piece of Time once I bought it, in its relentless epicyclicity became a brutal, headbanging favorite, and thereafter I went looking for more tech death. One of the better albums I came up with was Individual Thought Patterns by Death.

And thoough I never really dug further into the Death canon, never delved enough, really, to find out even that their frontman had died, stupidly, tragically, the songs from that album have been in regular iTunes/iPod rotation for me ever since.

But I had no idea dude was dead, none whatsoever.

* * * * * * * * *
You may have noticed on Friday that an Atlanta appellate court had ruled key parts of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (some people, mostly those who complain about it, call it "Obamacare") to be unconstitutional, upholding a challenge to the law brought by Chuck Schuldiner's one-time home state, and mine own.

CNN tells me that Stephanie Cutter, an assistant to the president on the matter, disagreed with the rulling. "By bringing everyone into the health insurance system, we can not only lower costs for everyone but also finally ban discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions," she said.

* * * * * * * * *
While in the studio in early 1999, Schuldiner had felt some neck pain, and went to a doctor for what he figured would be a pinched nerve. After an MRI, it was found that instead, horribly, he had brain cancer; it was a large tumor growing on the pons part of his brainstem that was pressing on the nerve.

He immediately began radiation treatment, but was told the tumor was inoperable. After some time, he was told that the tumor had necrotized, not diasappeared but begun to die, and also that there WAS a surgery option; however, it was *really* expensive . . . .

Obviously I don't have Chuck Schuldiner's tax statements, but it's pretty clear that playing this brutal esoteric death metal could not have been that lucrative for him. And none of the record labels he had recorded for had ever provided health insurance. In any case, when it turned out that the possible surgery could only be performed at NYU, the hopital at first demanded 20,000 dollars before any operation could be performed. When the Schuldiner family said that was impossible and refused to sign away future royalties as was suggested, and MTV News started calling the hospital in following the story, the hospital agreed to accept 5,000, and the Schuldiners were able to come up with that amount.

He got the surgery in January of 2000, and it was reported to the media that it was successful, though later it would be revealed that only half the tumor was removed.
Schuldiner returned to work on a new album with a new group, but in May 2001, he was told that the cancer had returned, and that once again he would need surgery.

Schuldiner had bought insurance in the aftermath of the first episode, but the insurer he chose refused to pay for any of the newly-needed procedures, saying that the condition Schuldiner had was pre-existing. Schuldiner and his family were deeply in debt after the first go-round, so had very little to do but go begging in the face of this rejection.

"There is something terribly wrong when a country as great as America will let their citizens die for lack of insurance or money," Schuldiner's family said in a statement at the time. "[We are] aware every time [he needs treatment] that if we do not get the money, he will die."

The metal community during the Summer of 2001 mobilized itself as well as it could in order to help the Death frontman. Benefit gigs were played and benefit auctions were held. Some of this money, that which wasn't lost to crookedness or ineptitude, even got to the Schuldiners. They were able to get Chuck on a regimen of a chemotherapy drug called vincristine, but there never was a second surgery, as Chuck, weakened by the chemo, died in December of 2001.
* * * * * * * * *
I have worked for the same small industrial supply company for what is approaching twenty years. And while they have paid me a salary that has allowed me to take on a grossly inflated mortgage, they have never offered me health insurance. At certain times this has been irrelevant, as I cruised through the months healthy and unbothered. At other times, though--and now is one of those times--I have had to reach into my pocket to pay for the doctors I've needed to see. And let's also say that after six years of salary stagnation, and nearly 15 points of inflation, my ability to reach down is severely limited.

I can understand when it comes down to it why a small business would be unable to offer health insurance. The nature of groups is like the economies of scale that all businessmen understand. So if you've got a five-person company like the one I work at, it's difficult to get a good rate on health insurance. I understand that.

So why do these cocksuckers--cocksuckers like my boss, like this so-called Tea Party, like the magnates that run the corporations we work for and buy from--fight a plan that would create the largest (and therefore cheapest) group of all?

Obamacare is the law of the fucking land, yet the Right, which only gets more neolithic and only gets more savage in its ongoing war upon the middle class, and they won't be happy until 99% of the country's resources are in 1% of its pockets. Nothing you see around you--not the ridiculous argument over a debt ceiling that had been raised seven fucking times under George W Bush, not this absurd Norquist pledge, not the activist ruling penned by Dubina Friday--should convince you of anything but.

They didn't give a rat's ass if Chuck Schuldiner died, and (unless you've got a boatload of money) they don't care if you do, either.


File under: Death Metal



*We made an exception for Sepultura, not sure what our reasoning was, now that I think on it (Return)