Norwegian Black Metal

The closest I have ever gotten to liking anything that might be construed as heavy metal was the hard rock of the 1970s like Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and maybe the first or second outer rings into the 1980s like Motorhead. These were bands still rooted in the blues somewhat. And even Lemmy provides some semblance of melody and swing.

I started to lose interest in most of the stuff that came after around 1980. There was all the hair metal that meant nothing to me. I even include Halen in this category. Am I supposed to differentiate between Def Leopard, Rush, Iron Maiden, and such? I mean, I know Rush is more prog, DL is more pop, Maiden more hard rock. I don't know. But mostly, I just never cared much either way.

And then there was all the thrash of the late '80s/'90s, which sounded like very suburban kids taking the worst aspects of hardcore and metal and putting them together. But like Dylan sang, "don't criticize what you can't understand..." OK. I am just talking here. No critique. Just not for me. I remember being at one show at the Ritz in NY around 1986, with Celtic Frost and the Cro Mags playing together. I liked the energy of the latter and thought the former were unintentionally (apparently) hilarious. But neither was my cup of tea per se.

Later on, when we started playing festivals, we would witness such bands as Sepultura. That was some scary shit. I found it interesting. This Brazilian... I dunno, death metal band? It was all slow and low and guttural, like monsters in my nightmares. It was just so different and fresh sounding to my ears -- and eyes; what a sight! But after a couple of songs, it was time for the beer tent.

But in the past few months, I have seen a few very interesting documentaries about three very different metal bands. Anvil! The Story of Anvil was just a beautiful film about being in a band, struggling to make it, dedication, and personal relationships. The fact that I cared nothing for their music, and still don't, but still loved the film is testament to what a great piece of storytelling it is.

Then Tom Maginnis recommended seeing Iron Maiden Flight 666 Again, I care nothing about the music, though with this film, I really developed an appreciation for the musicianship and talent of the individuals. But again, the music was the least interesting part of the movie for me. Here is a story 180 degrees different than the Anvil movie. Iron Maiden are huuuuuuuge worldwide. This in and of itself was not a revelation. But it was the scope of worldwide adoration and the cult of their fans that was astounding. And the joy of the band members, their good fortune and modesty, their acceptance of each other, and the family aspect of the band makes for compelling stuff. The spine of the story is that they decide to pack everything -- crew, band, equipment -- into one 757 jet and hit all the more remote places that they rarely, if ever, got to play due to financial reasons. And the lead singer pilots the plane.

I've also been hearing a bit of noise about Norwegian Black Metal and today an article about a new documentary appeared in the Boston Sunday Globe. Trailer, here. So I went to Youtube and found this really interesting documentary about one figure of this genre. It makes for an intriguing and compelling film. I watched all five parts in succession and recommend the same for you and would be interested in reading some comments:

Cover of the Week 69

As I touched on in this post way back when, music is about the closest I get to religion. But when its hits me, it gets me deep and brings me to church.

There might not be a more perfect distillation of this feeling than Van Morrison's "In The Garden," this week's CoTW.


In the Garden mp3

Some Buffalo Stuff

Mark has posted some songs from the Nick Flynn/Buff Tom set a couple of weeks ago:



Also, we have contributed a live track to this cause:

www.righttracktunes.org Buffalo Tom "Thrown"live from the last Somerville Theater show, download for Target Cancer benefit.

Cover of the Week 68

No big essay/diatribe/rant this week. I've been mostly in negativeland and do not wish to sew bad vibes. I do enough of that. And anyway, I wrote a bit about the author of this week's cover, Jesse Winchester, back in this post.

Buy the damn record for chrissakes.

I also have a great version he did on a Live From Mountain Stage record.

Here is all I have to say about this song in particular: I think every married guy I know feels like this. I guess I know of no one currently stuck in an unhappy marriage. The first time I felt like this, I was 20. I married her. I didn't mess around trying to find other options.

Seriously -- the best choice I have ever made. Everyone who knows me will surely attest to the veracity. And it was pure luck.

Bless Your Foolish Heart mp3

(non) Covers of the Week 66 & 67

Man, it's been a bad week. Seeing Scott Brown take over the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for over 40 years was tough to watch. But it was also inevitable, I suppose.

Boston is not completely unique in this respect, I suppose, but as an outsider (I have only been here for over 27 years), I have always had a hard time squaring this politically liberal state with the small-minded parochialism on display everywhere from the archaic blue laws keeping stores closed on Sunday (now relegated to the past. But you couldn't buy any alcohol in the state until only recently) and bars closing at 2, to the seemingly walled-off neighborhoods that constituted the city -- Italians here, Irish there, African Americans seemingly nowhere...oh wait, there, they're over there. I find that my friends from New York have this sanctimonious attitude, as if New York did not have similar boundaries. But there is no escaping the fact that the mix in Boston is simply whiter on the face of it, outside of the neighborhoods and in the downtown and Back Bay areas. Watching a game in Fenway Park is almost like going to a game in Salt Lake City, except that many of the white faces are actually dabbed with splotches of red on big boys named Fitzy and Sully.

And it is not like growing up in the suburbs of Long Island was far more progressively illuminating than the suburbs of Boston. But at least in my NY hometown we had lots of black, Jewish and other kids aside from Irish and Italian. Sure, they largely stayed within their own groups. But in the town I moved to in Massachusetts, there was maybe one black kid, a handful of Jewish kids, but mostly Anglo, Irish, and Italians. And the suburb seemed a lot more conservative than the politicians that were leading the state.

Boston-area Democrats are mostly the holdover from the days when northern big cities all elected Democrats to represent them, the urban, the working class. The voters understood they were voting in their best interest. Well, that explains municipal and even state elections. But the voters in Massachusetts have always voted Democrat nationally as well, with few exceptions. They have also been by and large amongst the most educated in country. So we had the highly educated professional class (many folks who come to the elite universities in the area historically end up staying) voting consistently with the working class.

Socially, however, these sides have not been without their clashes. Though slightly cartoonish, Good Will Hunting gets at this dynamic pretty well. The busing debacle of the 1970s is one extreme example, if I may continue my simplistic generalization. More mildly, when we first moved to the densely populated working class city of Somerville (bordering Boston and Cambridge), we were called "Barneys" (pronounced "bah-nees") by locals in corner bars (pronounced "bahs"). The etymology of this particular insult goes something like this: When Cambridge started to get too expensive for college kids and other bohemians, they started moving out to Somerville. The locals took exception and referred to Harvard Yard as "Hahvid Bahnyahd." Barnyard begot "Barneys." So any outsider moving into Somerville was labeled a Barney. In turn, early pioneers affectionately referred to their new stomping ground as "Slum-erville." And now I see things like this cool joint a block up from where I used to live. Man, there was nothing going on there when I was living there. Just some half-decent BBQ at Redbones, the Somerville Theater and some true dive bars like my landlord's Sligo Pub. Now it's Irish pub this, thai food that, martinis and jazz over here, and brunch there. We could never find decent brunch anywhere back then!

The term "Mass-hole" also gained prominence around this time. It was used mostly by outsiders to describe rude, or worse, violent drunken yob locals. These are the guys that yell at you in traffic as they cut you off, "what ah you, retahted, big guy? Let's GO!"

I don't know him personally either, but, yeah, it seems to me that Naked Scotty Brown could be one as well. There is plenty of evidence (and here). Oh, and here. You have to love an "up from the bootstraps" "family values" guy who happened to have been raised by a welfare mother -- who, along with his father, were married three times each. Nothing like the zeal of a convert!

But mostly, as with New York, Chicago, and other big northern cities, the various parties (non-political, that is) coexisted and voted together. Until a charming young socially liberal outsider Harvard aristocrat named Bill Weld ran for governor against a mean old socially conservative bastard named John Silber. I, like many, all of a sudden found myself voting for a fiscally conservative Republican for the first time. I mean, Weld seemed pretty close to Bill Clinton in almost every way to me back then. I had no love lost over Clinton either.

But while this can be limited to "self interest," one also has to consider how the greater good contributes to one's own best interest. This is big picture liberalism 101.
But I am sure I voted against my best interest in the long view. So how can I blame people for voting for someone like Naked Scotty Brown? Weld opened the gates for Cellucci and -- God, help us all -- Mitt Romney.

But for the seat that the Liberal Lion held all those years? I blame Brown's opponent (let's not mention her name since she saw no need to promote herself) and the Democrats in general more than the voters. This whole "in your best interest" thing seems to confirm the image the alienated voters have of holier-than-thou Democrats, as the GOP successfully drives social wedge issues between the average joe and the "liberal elites."

The bottom line, though, is I think voters let themselves be swayed by surface images and vague notions of "sending a message" from a legacy of liberalism that has contributed no small part in Massachusetts being among the top states in education, health, employment, technology, art, literature, and overall quality of life. These are the reasons I list for myself when in the middle of a cold gray January, I ask myself, "why do I live here again?" I could never live anywhere that is historically politically conservative. So that rules out most of the warm states. And yeah, roots -- family and friends and a band, music scene, cultural resources, history, the Red Sox, the Cape, etc., all kept me here. I love it here. I still laugh at all the weirdo Boston quirks. I still don't know if I am a New Yorker or a Bostonian, which must seem odd to people. But of anywhere between 8-10 regulars at my poker game, none of us are from Massachusetts originally. Few people in my neighborhood are. And, anyway, there are assholes everywhere. The proportions seem to seesaw from time to time. That might be one of the bigger lessons I learned from all those years on the road. These are the sentiments that came out in the Buffalo Tom song "Thrown" from Three Easy Pieces.

And then there was the Supreme Court decision, which I won't get into too deeply. I think of myself as being an absolutist on First Amendment issues. But I do not see how being able to spend unlimited funds as a corporation = speech. I need to read the decision closely, but either way, I think the results will be disastrous. Every individual retains the right to free speech. But was the provision faulty enough to bar opinion pages of incorporated newspapers and filmmakers from engaging in legitimate political debate as well as deep-pocketed special interests (on both sides) and the potential threat they pose to the democratic process? Was the baby being thrown out with the bathwater via McCain/Feingold? That is often the case with seeping regulation. But it seems like a conveniently narrow interpretation along poltical lines. Ultimately, the prospect of the results of this bum me out. And it is not made easier when I think I might be hypocritical when wanting to limit the amount of money in politics. I have no problem in regulating arms under the Second Amendment. "Well regulated militia" having the "right to bear arms," and all that. Of course, it does not say "all arms to be developed over the century." And speech can not physically harm someone except in extreme cases in the old "yelling fire in a crowded theater" sawhorse. And of course, that's illegal.

On top of it all, I was mostly home sick, a cough, a sore throat. And it was a cold ugly winter week. I was able to get to a short set Buffalo Tom had this past week, but then took a turn for the worse. This morning was the first time I could speak without coughing or pain shooting to the back of my skull. So when I had the opportunity to play guitar and sing at the kitchen table, I took it. Forgive me if I go astray...

A couple of lesser-requested Buffalo Tom songs, one from Smitten, the other from our first LP. I look as spent as I feel in these. The home concert/bed head series continues. Maybe it's time to take the act out of my own kitchen and into yours. Get out of my dreams and into my car.

Cover of the Week 65

Author at a younger age at Graceland

I get the feeling that the crowd-pleasers of these covers and non-covers so far have been the songs from the not-so-distant past - alternative rock songs from Buffalo Tom and our most immediate influences or contemporaries. At least, that is what I get from the more vocal feedback. Clearly, though, this is a labor of love for me and I do it more for my own pleasure than anything else.

I would venture to guess that most people don’t have an Elvis Presley cover high on their list of requests. I think for people younger than me, those born after the mid-1960s, Elvis is almost nothing but a cartoon. His influence is too far removed. I am old enough, however, to remember Elvis alive and still sort of relevant, certainly still active. I remember seeing "Aloha Via Satellite" as a kid and wearing out the 8-track resulting soundtrack my mom had. Elvis was probably her favorite performer from the time she was an adolescent. We had numerous 45s from when she was a kid and multiple greatest hits collections.

And the musicians I loved as a kid -- Zeppelin, the Stones, the Who, Beatles, Creedence -- they all named Elvis as perhaps their deepest influence, along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. Elvis turned a lot of the rock & roller kids onto the blues originals.

I wrote to start of Part II of my Exile on Main St. book:

One of the records I owned when I was a kid was a 45 I inherited from my mother, who was a big Elvis Presley fan. It was “Teddy Bear” backed with “Loving You.” Since I was a kid, “Teddy Bear” obviously received a lot of spins on my portable record player. But it was really “Loving You” with which I became infatuated. Looking back, I realize how odd a song that is for a young child to focus on. Written by Brill Building legends Leiber and Stoller, it is an extremely intimate song in content, sound, and performance. It’s highly charged and romantic, with a traditional Tin Pan Alley ballad structure and melody. But in the hands of Elvis, it’s a slow-burning, ultra-sexy, slow dance number. What captured me early and often, however was the vibe of the record; the heavy, haunting sense of atmosphere. It feels like it was recorded at 3:30 AM. Presley sounds like he is slow dancing with a girl after all the guests have left a party or a club, the lights are low, overturned drinks and empty glasses and full ashtrays cover every surface. The piano is impossibly behind the beat. An upright bass pulses slowly, quietly, but insistently. The Jordanaires coo softly in the background. Elvis seems like he can barely raise his voice above a mumble and when he does, the results are striking and highly charged, spine-chilling... He sounds as if he is tipsy, drunk even, but totally in control. Presley is within the song and more romantic than sexual, but it could comfortably sit next to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” on a compilation. While I could have had little comprehension of the content of the song at such a young age, I had an instinctive awareness of the power, the undeniable force of the feeling simmering there.

My obsession with the song has been life-long and constant. I also wrote about it for Allmusic.com

Here is a picture of my mom and dad at a party in a basement. I had never seen this specific picture until I was cleaning out my uncle's house. But I had seen others from the same period, like the one below it, which is from my grandmother's basement, from their engagement party. A lot of time was spent in basements in the 1950s/early '60s.






Maybe it was these pictures coupled with listening to the records that got me in this mindset. As a kid, you start putting whatever puzzle pieces together that you can find.

Mark Feeney wrote about the contemporary perception of Elvis and his legacy in the Boston Globe (Elvis at 75: Can We Ever Again See the Performer, Not The Punchline?) about a month ago. I had just been ruminating on this around that time, thinking about covering an Elvis song. I have some friends, the husband is about my age. They named their son Presley. The King would have been 75 this year. I remember my friends and I were hit pretty hard when Elvis died. We were not yet old enough to think of him as a joke. What happened to his life is tragic, the result of the same sort of insular echo-chamber bad advice that allowed Michael Jackson to spiral downward. But for those who think music started with the Clash, know this: Joe Strummer was huge on Elvis. You should definitely start with the Sun recordings, but Elvis’ greatness continued right up through the RCA years and dots many of his movie soundtracks. His Memphis LP and comeback special also display the talent that remained.

John Doe recently covered the country version of “A Fool Such As I.” But like most songs Elvis recorded, it will forever be an Elvis song for me.

So here I try for more of an impressionistic version of the vibe rather than a replication of the song "Loving You."

Loving You Mp3

What Else Do You Need?

Check out Jesse Winchester on Elvis Costello’s Spectacle. Jesse might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Some my find him too straightforward or sentimental. To those I say: hey, there’s no accounting for the taste of such cold-hearted wretches like you who can’t recognize brilliant songcraft when it is staring you in your sad old bitter face. So go and pull out your Nitzer Ebb records and have a good time.

Look at the faces in the crowd. Look at my girlfriend, Neko Case, tearing up. Look at Elvis’s face. One of the greatest songwriters of our generation is sincerely humbled. As well he should be.

Now, Elvis is one of my favorite all-time songwriters. And I think he should get a Nobel Prize simply on the basis of forming this new television program (which I have only seen clips of, by the way, as my cable company wants to charge me $14 more a month to get this “tier” of programming) where he provides a wide audience for someone like Jesse Winchester. But Elvis has often seemed to let his cleverness, his words, and his concepts get in the way of good pop songs over the years. Don’t get me wrong: I am all for pushing boundaries and ambition, and the wish to write something that moves the head as well as the heart. Costello perfected that delicate balance for many years and still pulls it off more times than not. Waits is a pro at this. Dylan still manages to hit it from time to time, but now his brilliant lyrics are often backed by a 12-bar blues crutch.

It is extremely difficult to write a simple, beautiful song -- lyrically and melodically -- like this Jesse Winchester example. And Jesse has done so repeatedly. I’m only a recent fan. Look for “Little Glass of Wine,” or “Foolish Heart.” I would not be surprised to find out that Nick Lowe turned on Elvis to Jesse, but Elvis has apparently long had an amazing deep record collection, so perhaps not. Lowe has always done a good job with the above-described balance, as has Elvis, delivering the goods since “Alison.” But, like Tom Waits, Nick Lowe has been a guy who seems to get better on his later records. Sure, I loved the early catalogs of both of them, but as with Tom, Nick’s later records -- I’m talking about those from the past 5-10 years even -- leave me breathless.

So, if you don’t like that sort of thing, there is nothing I can do to win you over from the side of evil to the side of good. After all, I was told last night by a bunch of musicians, in the dressing room at Hot Stove Cool Music, things like “you must not like music,” and “everyone likes those first two records at least. How can you not like it? What’s not to like?” This was, of course, in response to my admission that I have never liked any Van Halen. Don’t start listing songs. I do not like them. I don’t hate them; I simply found nothing in any of it to enjoy. My brother Scott agreed with me, as did a few older musicians, who might have been more reluctant than I to alienate themselves at first, but sheepishly came around eventually. Who was on the side of good and who on evil in that situation? I feel like I stood with the Force in that instance Hot Stove Cool Music is a big tent.

*****

As is well known by now, the danger of having a blog, and of the internet in general, is the impulse to comment, write, and/or post something can be fulfilled in a matter of seconds and sent off to view with the push of a button. Like this video, for example. A friend of mine, Brendan Gilmartin, posted it on Facebook (sorry, I forgot who you were that did me the favor) and I react here. Immediately. Everything is instantly publishable. And for an impulsive personality like mine, this poses potential pitfalls that can easily end up as nagging regrets. In the past, I might get ginned up and make an off-color remark at a party, wake up with a throbbing head and queasy stomach at the crack of noon the next day, and slowly work my way into making an apologetic phone call or two. But after some Alka Seltzer, an afternoon on the couch watching some NFL game in which I have nothing personally invested, and a roast chicken dinner, the faux pas or sore feelings from the night before would quickly be receding in the rear view.

I don’t mean to imply that I am about to rail off on anything or anyone; I am certainly not. In fact, I am about to get all mushy. Again. You see, the perils of instantaneous modern mass communication also offerw the potential for one to pour his heart out, straight, no chaser.

I have been involved with Hot Stove Cool Music for nine of it’s ten years. We held the 10th anniversary event last night. In those early, pre-2004 World Series says, I never thought it would be more than a one-off, then two-year thing, and so on. But as a result of those first couple of years, I got drawn in seemingly forever -- by the charity, by the music, by it’s Boston-ness, and, most of all, by the bonhomie of the people involved in making it happen -- musicians, managers, baseball writers, baseball players, club managers, actors, bartenders, fundraisers, guitar techs, wives, husbands, kids...

I brought in my then-relatively-new buddy, Mike O’Malley early in those first few years. He immediately became MC and chief auctioneer. He is so good at what he does, that various Red Sox and the Red Sox Foundation tap him for virtually every event that they have. He flies out from his home at least a dozen times a year just to help on these charitable events. Friends of mine who watch him in this milieu never fail to remark to me how impressed they are at how he handles these things, as well as all the glad-handing and promotion before and after the actual shows. He works extremely hard. Imagine, for example, flying in on the red-eye only to have to sit and listen for two hours to the braintrust who typically make up the “talent” on wacky morning radio shows.

And yet Mike never fails to thank me -- thank me -- year after year, for bringing him into this organization. And that pretty much summarizes HSCM. Jeff Horrigan, Mike Creamer, Kay Hanley, and Peter Gammons constituted the foundation on this thing in year one and remain at its heart. Creamer does most of the heavy lifting -- from the bulk of the booking of music, to arranging the venue, comp tickets, car services, hotels -- everything to who is out of beer in the dressing room. But there are so many other folks who come back year after year to lend a hand. Egos have rubbed over the years, some people have joined, some have left. Often it is merely attrition. Sometimes it is a difference in opinion, philosophy, or vision. Rarely is it a heavy conflict.

The astounding thing about HSCM, though, is how few people have left the fold. It is like the mafia. You can’t get out that easily. It is heartwarming to see how much of a close group of people it is, how much we look forward to seeing and playing music with each other, hanging with each other’s families, etc. And we are fully aware of less charitable views of the event: we’re just a bunch of the same crusty old Boston rockers playing behind a baseball writer/commentator, baseball players and general managers strapping on guitars, the same group of people year after year, etc. Am I more known as a sideman for Peter Gammons than for my Buffalo Tom-acity? I don’t think so, but it is not an absurd question. Who cares? Seth Justman, keyboardist and principal songwriter for the J. Geils band certainly seems not to care about such trivialities. Can I tell you what a thrill it is for a rock & roll lifer, a deeply committed fan, to play and sing “Must of Got Lost” while one of the song’s authors is playing organ? I got to do so in practice and soundcheck and then Mike O. came in and shattered everyone with his lead vocal on the song last night.

The J. Geils Band! Seth Justman! A man who knows a thing or two about writing a classic, simple, beautiful song. A man who knows soul, the blues, roots, and pop songcraft. Though, you would not know it was him, lurking there in the shadows. In fact, when Mike came in to rehearsals to sing the song the first time, he brought it. Knocked it out of the park -- which is a good thing for him because I was having such a great time singing it that if half-assed it (which he never does with anything), it was going to be mine. When we finished, I remarked at how great he sang it and, most impressively, while one the song’s authors stood right next to him playing organ. It soon became apparent Mike had not made the connection. I still don’t think it would have fazed him. Maybe it would have made him more nervous. But no one else would be able to see it. Mike comes in and owns the situation. He sells it.

Seth is not going to intimidate anyone. Until they know who he is, perhaps. But he is one of the sweetest guys you’d ever want to meet. And that’s why he fits right in to a band led by Peter Gammons. Mike Gent, Ed Valauskas, Pete Caldes, Phil Aiken, Paul Ahlstrand...you’re not gonna form a band with more heart than that. Generous of spirit and truly great musicians, I am humbled repeatedly.

We have a great time and , more importantly, have raised and continue to raise a boatload of money -- well over $3 million and counting -- for organizations like the Jimmy Fund for pediatric cancer research; the Home For Little Wanderers; the BELL Foundation’s Red Sox Scholars; and more. Anyone who has a problem with this is probably the same guy slagging off Jesse Winchester.

Straw man? Perhaps. Hopefully. I wish.

And part of our mission is to encourage bringing new blood into the event each year. How many such events have had such disparate acts as Low Anthem (last night -- I love them); For Peace (hip hop); James Taylor; Dropkick Murphys; Juliana Hatfield; John Legend; Pernice Brothers; Nada Surf; Lori McKenna? Last night, the band State Radio was probably responsible for selling at least 75% of the tickets, at $40 a pop. When I took the stage with my aging fellow “Hot Stove All Stars,” I looked over a sea of 20-something faces, all of whom seemed open and eager to hear all of the music being played. That warmed my heart. Maybe the day will be soon where we have grown this brand to such a spot where we can walk away and leave it to the youngsters. Believe me, I would love to have someone else take it over from us, build it, and get the same love we get from it.

But that would mean saying goodbye. None of us want to let go. I do think the House of Blues might have been too big a venue. And we always have post-game chats where we try to think of ways to make improvements. And we are always open to suggestions. Maybe we take it back to the beloved Paradise. Maybe it keeps growing. I know we need to get more ball players committed to showing up like they used to when the thing was lousy with the “idiots” of yesteryear. Maybe some of us old-timers will walk away for good someday. Just not yet. We’re having to great a time.

“Never thought about tomorrow/Seemed like a long time to come.”

(non) Cover of the Week 64

Some folks requested this one over at Facebook. Had a few minutes, so here you go, a bonus non-CoTW. I was a bit more dolled up than the "Porchlight" clip in below post.

(non)Cover of the Week 63

My friend Vincent T. -- the close friend of my recently deceased Uncle Vince -- called me this morning and let me know that Vince's cell phone is still on. He was not the first to try it. But he and others who have called it told me the same thing: It was therapeutic to hear his voice again.

I have not brought myself to call it yet. His voice is still clear enough in my head. But I have checked in and, recently, posted something on Vince's Facebook page. I have also posted something at the memorial site set up by the funeral home. And when I was down in Miami, though his computer had been taken in by detectives looking for whatever they could find (story here, and here, for those of you wondering what I am talking about), I started thinking more about the digital footprint we are all leaving. There's a voice, there are emails (I came across some funny fan mail and responses printed out, between Vince and Augusten Burroughs, e.g.), there are home pages, blogs, Amazon reviews, and so on. They are all still floating out there, perhaps forever.

I would like to say I have drawn some sort of conclusion, profound or otherwise, from this. But I think it simply is. And that hits us on some deep level. I mean, the shallowness that we associate with this digital culture, what we feel is fleeting and disposable, ends up to be very much the opposite. We are leaving bits of ourselves all over the place for others to stumble upon or actively seek out after we are gone. Sure, a Facebook page is not the same as leaving, say, the library of William Shakespeare (whoever "he" was) or catalog of John Coltrane behind as a legacy. But it is a lot more than the few crumpled and yellowed letters, photos, and press clippings of those who passed before 1990 or so.

There was a recent gag from the Onion about future "archeologists" discovering the lost civilization of Friendster. This is not so far-fetched.

This all got me thinking of a line I wrote and sang in 1990 or so, on the song "Porchlight," which was written around the time that the burgeoning technology of "voice mail" was becoming more mainstream. This was one of those "written from the road" tunes, as Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade used to joke about bands coming back to record their first records after being on tour for the first time. We had a beeper/voice mail system in place for personal calls and business calls, to be reachable in the days before cell phones, email, etc.

The line is, "Your voice got smaller 'til I realized it was gone."

The voice is only another trace, a ghost that lingers.

*****

So, for this week's cover, I cover Buffalo Tom's "Porchlight." And as a change, I do it live from the breakfast table this morning. You can see I really dolled myself up for this brunch concert. Buffalo Tom has played this live only rarely. Tom Maginnis does not like drumming to it for some reason. We have not quite figured it all out. We played it as a request of Jon Stewart on his final T.V. show in the 1990s, well before he took over and redefined the Daily Show.






Vince and John, Bolinas 1970

My Hero

I don't care how self-serving this is, I am re-posting this because it makes me happy.

Old BT photos

For those of you not on Facebook, here are some links to galleries of old photos I recently scanned:


Facebook 1


Facebook 2


Facebook 3

Covers of the Week 61 & 62

I should have graduated UMass in 1988 but coming down with mono and picking up a couple of minors (and a girlfriend) along the way necessitated an extra semester. And really, why leave the Happy Valley in January? So I stayed around waiting for my girl (later my wife) to finish up her year and then we moved in together in Somerville that spring.

When I hear the song "Mallo Cup" it brings me back instantly to that exact moment -- I can remember walking around Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston in my Chuck Taylors and cut-off flannel shirts, in the beautiful spring weather. I was moving in with the girl of my dreams, living in absolute and hot sin. My band had just released a pretty well-received indie record on SST, the label of my heroes. We were planning out tours, more records, and the rest of our lives. We all lived within a couple of blocks together. We had just hooked up with the fabulous management team of Tom Johnston and Joyce Linehan, who worked with the Lemonheads, Galaxie 500, and more (later the went out on their own and we had Tom as our manager -- he had Bettie Serveert and Come later on). And, especially in hindsight, the Boston club and indie rock scene was entering a peak period. I feel like we must have just had a show at the Channel with the Lemons and maybe Galaxy 500 and/or Bullet LaVolta around this time. I am giddy just remembering it all.

We later went on to become good buddies and do a lot of touring across the U.K. and Europe (and a few shows in Japan as well) with the guys in the Lemonheads. Evan is still one of my all-time favorite singers and a guy with an enormous (Big Gay) heart that shows in his songs.

Also around this time, we were working on our second LP, Birdbrain, again with J Mascis producing. The first record was started with the great Tim O'Heir at the original Fort Apache in Roxbury. J came on about halfway through as another set of ears and suggestions. This second record, we had J from the beginning, along with Sean Slade. And we were recording at the then-new Cambridge outpost of the Fort, on Camp Street, walking distance from my new pad.

J and I shared a love of the great 80's Boston band, the Neats. They had started as a pre-REM (or at least concurrent) moody, neo-psychadelic pop band, with a somewhat dark sound, with a lot of reverbed-out guitar strumming (don't call it "jangle"). If you know the Chills, early REM, perhaps the Feelies, you might be in the right ballpark. Wiretrain? Maybe. But there was something very Boston about the early Neats. It contained this minor key, Cellar's By Starlight trait that is found in the Boston continuum stretching from at least Mission of Burma, Moving Targets, Buffalo Tom, to today's Mean Creek. They put out an EP and an LP or two with this template before morphing into a harder edged blues-rock combo. But when I had first come to Boston in 1982, I remember one of those magical Boston college radio moments, when I first heard "Red and Grey." Of course, it influenced me greatly when I decided to start writing my own songs. You'd be forgiven if you did not hear or remember "Pink on Green." Red and grey is much better color combo anyway.

The Neats were a legendary club draw in those days. I think they were on the cover the first time I saw the local music paper, Boston Rock. I would have been a junior in high school. I went to go see them every time I could when I was up at UMass and around Boston's clubs.

Well, they have reunited and played last night in town. And we have the honor of sharing the stage with them and another heroic combo, the Lyres, tomorrow night at the Orpheum Theater -- home to many fondly remembered mythical concerts of my adolescence -- for Boston's New Year's Eve celebration, First Night.

An early selection for CoTW this week, and a two-fer! Here is my own continuum of Boston rock, a medley of Red and Grey with Mallo Cup. Please forgive my guitar clams; I'm no Bert Jansch and had no time/patience to correct them. By the way, all of the Neats Ace of Heart label records are being (have been?) re-released. Go get 'em.

Red and Grey and Mallo Cup mp3.

Here is last year's New Years Eve CoTW

Cover of the Week 60

I was saddened to hear of the passing of the great American singer/songwriter, Vic Chesnutt, who passed away last night or early today.

Vic’s records had a huge impact on me. I brought out all of the following CDs while we were touring back in the mid-‘90s:

West of Rome
Little
About to Choke
Drunk

And I picked up some later ones, like Left to His Own Devices. But it was Little and West of Rome which really killed me.

Perhaps it is a cliche by now, but I am at a loss at how else to explain Vic’s gifts other than we know some artists go out to the outer reaches or hidden depths and report back to us. Vic plunged deep and quietly brought back versions of what other artist-seekers have sought. But he told it to his fans in ways that only he could. Like all great poets, his voice was intensely personal and his language specific and profoundly evocative.

We sought out Vic when we reached Athens, GA and were thrilled to play with him at the second iteration of the famous 40 Watt club. We got to play other gigs with him over the years. He was a great person to get to know back then but I had not seen him in many years by the time Tom Maginnis and I bumped into him with Kurt Wagner of Lambchop, in a hotel elevator in Utrecht in 2007 or ’08 when we were playing the same festival. I felt like I was again meeting a legend. He was gentle man but his presence and talents awed me.

Vic's song, "Florida," was specifically influential on my song of the same name. They both approach deaths in that state. But that’s where the similarities end; mine is a raging wail about a relative growing old and dying surrounded by the flimsy trashiness that abounds there, while Vic’s is a plaintive meditation on the suicide of a friend. I wrote about it here on Allmusic.com about 10 years ago.

So, I could not think of a more apt cover this week. Vic took his own life, it appears. And I have just spent three weeks in Miami picking up the pieces of a senseless and obscene tragedy in Miami, written in older posts.

Sorry to be the bearer of such sadness on Christmas night.

Donations for Vic's family can be made via this link, thanks to his friend, Kristin Hersh.

Florida mp3 (recorded December 25, 2009)

Covers of the Week 58 & 59

When I was just starting out selling real estate, in about 2001, I sent out a couple of letters to owners of no more than a handful of houses around me that I had seen and admired for years. I am not an aggressive sort by nature, and back then I was even less sure than I am today about transitioning into brokering real estate as a day job. By now, I am established and have gotten a bit more used to this persona, though it is still somewhat of a struggle and not something I always wear naturally; am I a singer/songwriter/Buffalo Tom guy, or am I a suburban real estate agent? I don’t think I have yet fully reconciled these two disparate occupations.

Nothing came of those few letters I sent back then. And over the years, I have quite established a referral base which allows me to be slightly less aggressive in self-promotion and marketing. But I got an email this week that read:

Hello,
Although you once expressed in selling our house, we're not interested yet in selling what we have or buying a new house. What we'd like to ask is where we can find your CD, Diving for Gold. Our son is a big fan of Buffalo Tom, and we'd like him to have the CD for Christmas...

Well, I wrote back telling the kind folks how embarrassed I was that I had been so forward in my early attempts to establish myself in town as a broker. This certainly does not square with how an aloof rock & roller is supposed to be. And though such tactics may reek of desperation, it is sort of necessary in a medium-sized town filled with hundreds of agents.

But I also noted that Buffalo Tom had no CD by the title. But it did sound familiar to me, and of course, it is the title of the CD by my friends in the band Session Americana. I told Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy (not everyone up here is named that, I have to note) that I would be glad to ask my buddies to sign the CD.

Nonsense, the Kennedy’s replied, regarding my admission of shame regarding the letter; they were flattered and proud that I admired their house enough to write. And they told me they had mixed up the titles on their son’s wish list and now were requesting Three Easy Pieces.

On my second reply, I noted the email address, from Joe Kennedy “(no relation).” It actually started with an “XJ.” X.J. Kennedy?

Soon after moving to Massachusetts in high school, I had picked up this poetry anthology called The Modern Poets at a used book store in Boston. It basically surveyed poetry from the Modernists up through the ‘70s. Each poet covered in the book had a full-page black-and-white portrait -- generally naturally-lit candids -- across from a short bio and a poem or two. Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and a few others were noted for their Massachusetts roots. Included among these Boston-area poets was X.J. Kennedy, who looked very cool with big mutton chops and horned rimmed glasses, if my memory serves. It was one of those important books in my development as a reader.

I remember being struck by that image, the poems, the Boston ties, and would later take note when I noticed Mr. Kennedy’s name pop up over the intervening years. When Wikipedia started taking root, I noticed that X.J. Kennedy was listed as a resident of my town. And the most recent notice I took was this past month, when Mr. Kennedy and the famous poet and author, Donald Hall, were slated to ready at a gallery here in town on a weeknight. I had mentioned this whole back story to my wife, this arc from high school on; how X.J. was a “famous poet.”

I had fully planned on attending such a rare event in our sleepy little town, when family business popped up and called me down to Florida unexpectedly.

But here I was a few weeks later examining the email address. So I Googled Mr. Kennedy, and sure enough, he and his wife, Dorothy, came up as living here in Lexington. And he had told me in his email that he was 80. That would square with the stuff I found on the internet. So I wrote back:

Dear Mr. Kennedy,

You are not, by chance, X.J. Kennedy, the poet, are you? If so, I am quite honored. (Well, if not, I am still honored, ha ha). I am taking a wild swing from your email address. I had read you as a kid in high school, having picked up an anthology called something like, "The Modern Poets." I was smitten with writing poetry and went on to take a class with James Tate up at UMass in the '80s. I probably would have gone on to try for an M.F.A., but was waylaid by the burgeoning Buff Tom Era.

Well, of course he was the same. And of course, he was humble, saying something like “‘famous poet’ is an oxymoron.’” So I arranged to swing by his house, a two minute walk from my own, with a copy of Three Easy Pieces and the Exile book for good measure. I was welcomed in warmly by Dorothy and Joe (he threw the “X” in their to distinguish himself from the other Joe Kennedys in and around Massachusetts politics). We had a great visit. They are truly gracious folks. We went up to their office over the garage and Joe chose and signed three books for my kids. He and Dorothy have done well with writing and putting together books for children and text books. It turns out that another of their sons was in a Boston area band about 10 years ago called Ollie Ollie. I remember talking to a member or two of that band and getting a demo, which I really dug. So the small-town feel of Boston circled around.

Of course, this has nothing remotely to do with this week’s CoTW. But at this point, if you’ve been following for any length of time, you have come to expect such tangents. It is merely what happened to me this week. The take-away is that you never know who is living around the corner from you. Although, nowadays, it is getting harder not to know; we’re all out there.

*****

One of the other events of my week (aside from recording some new Buff Tom tracks), was a benefit Christmas reunion of the old annual Fuzzy Christmas show at the venerable Plough and Stars pub in Cambridge. Fuzzy were a beloved Boston band that had organized a few such holiday hootenannies at pubs and clubs in Boston. This one was held to benefit Stephen Fredette, of the old, also-beloved Boston outfit, Scruffy the Cat. Stephen, being an American musician, could use some help defraying his medical costs. For those of you outside of America that haven’t already heard, if you are not employed full time by a company offering private medical insurance and get sick, you’re fucked and you have to hold benefits at pubs at $8/a head to help defray astronomically inflated medical fees.

Audrey Ryan started the night with some beautiful solo songs. After her set, while Brian Sullivan, of Dylan in the Movies, played a few songs, she requested that I do “Blue Christmas,” which I used to do at the old Fuzzy Christmas pageants in the 1990s. Well, lo and behold! What does Sully/Gooby pull out? Yes, “Blue Christmas.” Well, I wasn’t going to play it anyway. I was given the honor of playing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” and “Everyday is Christmas” (by Smokey Robinson) with Tanya Donelly and Chris Toppin. On the former, we switched it so that I sang the erstwhile “lady” part (“The neighbors might think/Say, what’s in this drink?”) and Top and Tanya sang the once-male beseeching answer part of the duet (“But baby, you’ll freeze out there/It’s up to your knees out there.”) It was Tanya's idea. And I liked it. It somehow fulfilled all my eighth grade fantasies.

We also had the pleasure of having Arthur Johnson, of the late great band, Come, playing drums, Elizabeth Steen on the piano, and Winston Bramen of Fuzzy on bass. Later, Arthur joined Chris Colbourn and me on stage for a mini-2/3 BT set. Arthur and his wife, Donna, left Boston years ago for Atlanta. So it was a thrill to see them.

It was a fun night all around. A blast from the past. And old fashioned 1991 Christmas. And, though I did not get to play “Blue Christmas” there, I offer it to you here and now. I segue only semi-seamlessly into the sad-assed George Jones tune (how many of his tunes are not sad-assed?), “The Grand Tour,” another cover I used to do in the 1990s. I had been discussing this only just last week at the Q Division Studios Christmas party with Winston and the great Boston young buck, Josh Buckley. So here, it seems to come out of the “Blue Christmas” narration rather easily.

A note about “No Show” Jones: Phil Aiken and I went to go see him about nine years ago in Lowell Auditorium. Now, eastern Massachusetts is notorious as being a place that most country music tours skip. It is probably the worst market for country music in the country. So it is rare to have a George Jones within 40 minutes drive of Boston.

I think I have told this story before.

But anyway, Phil and I get all excited, even if it is tempered by sober (not a word you ordinarily heat often in George Jones stories) expectations of more realistic M.O.R. performance from George. We are surrounded by people we don’t ordinarily see out around Boston music shows. These are the salt of the earth. Say a prayer for them. They constitute the 2000 people that listen to Boston’s only country station.

The opening act is some sort of Grand Ole Opry version of Steve and Edie, but they can sing. And they are backed by Nashville pros. We got a kick out of them and their shtick.

There is a short break while they ready the stage for Mr. Jones et. al. These preparations include getting the Power Point show ready to scroll on the backdrop movie screen behind the stage. We can see someone moving a cursor around on a desktop. This is going to be a real show biz-level production we can see.

Well, soon enough the lights dim and out walks this guy with a mullet and cut-off denim shorts. I swear to you he looks like David Spade in the cinema classic, Joe Dirt. He has a huge American flag (you will note that this was not long after 9/11) in one of those crotch-level flag holders that they use in parades. He takes center stage, under a spot light, standing stock still. We hear the powerful voice of George Jones, singing with clarion clarity, the “Star Spangled Banner,” our national anthem. The crowd is almost heating up to a frenzy level now, with patriotism and fandom, And no one can see George yet. Is he offstage singing?

When the lyric reaches the lines, “Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave,” there is a slight rest in the recording (for that is all it was, a pre-recorded version), the flagman/tourbus driver starts to undulate his pelvis in a figure-eight pattern, making the flag whip in big sweeping waves. Of course, the crowd goes nuts.

And then George comes out, backed by a band in maroon button down shirts and pleated Docker khakis, like they are managers at an Applebee’s, and -- backed by the dazzling Power Point show -- they kill for over an hour of classic George Jones numbers. I don’t think they ever got to my favorite Jones song, “The Grand Tour.” See what I wrote about the song for allmusic.com about 10 years ago here.

But you can bet your foreign-born ass that they ended with Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to Be an American.” Hell yeah!

Happy holidays to y'all.


Blue Christmas/Grand Tour Medley mp3

Speaking of the Reach of the PTMOR Blog....

As noted in the below post, the PTMOR blog has been getting around -- to the Alps in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, e.g. I see, via Google Analytics -- an amazing tool, by the way -- that I have been getting page visits from 44 countries in the past month. We would love to hear greetings from all of the different places -- I see a scattered few visits from Russia, Turkey, India, Argentina, Poland, etc. Please say hello in the comments. All of you in more predictable places like the U.K, Canada, Australia, Benelux, etc., don't be shy either. I appreciate the give/take. Feliz Navidad, and happy holidays to you all.