I bought the album “So Long Bannatyne” out of the bargain bin sometime around 1975. It was a favourite for years, and still gets pulled out and played once in a while. Rain Dance is the best song on the album, and I thought I’d post it now, while I still can.
For certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair
One likes to believe in the freedom of music.Rush – Spirit of Radio.
Well, it’s over. 2016 is done, gone, finito, and with it goes the musical death toll like no others:
David Bowie
Glenn Frey
Paul Katner
Jimmy Bain
Sonny James
Sir George Martin
Keith Emerson
Frank Sinatra Jr
Jimmie Van Zant
Prince
Lonnie Mack
Leonard Cohen
Greg Lake
Rick Parfitt
George Michael
That’s a partial, very partial list. If your a fan of Parliament Funkadelic or Mott the Hoople, traditional blues or jazz, then the list gets worse and worse.
But there’s another name on another list, a list of – so far as I can tell – one. Back from the dead.
Frankie Miller is a Scottish singer/songwriter who had a series of good to excellent album with middling success. He could sing soul like Otis Redding, blues like Delbert McClinton and rock like Rod Stewart. Miller released 9 albums between 1972 and 1984, and had a handful of singles, neither of which charted over well. However, while not a huge commercial success, Miller was one of those guys who made a mark amongst his peers, writing songs for people like Bob Seger, Joe Walsh, Bonnie Tyler, Joe Cocker, The Bellamy Brothers, Ray Charles and Rod Stewart to name just a few.
In 1994 Miller was forming a band with Walsh, Nicky Hopkins and King Crimson’s Ian Wallace. One night in a New York hotel he was writing songs for the new band when his wife decided to call it a night. Miller was writing when she went to bed. Through the night she got up and found Miller on the floor in a pool of his own blood. He had a massive brain haemorrhage, spent five months in a coma, and when he woke up he couldn’t walk or speak, let alone sing. His career was over.
Working on a new album, Rod Stewart enquired whether Miller had any unreleased songs. Miller’s wife, through producer David Mackay, sent “two sacks full of demos.” Mackay decided to create an album of duets with the songs, and Stewart, Walsh, Elton John, Huey lewis, Bonnie Tyler, Kid Rock, Kim Carnes, Paul Carrack, Delbert McClinton and a host of others contributed to the album.
Double Take, Frankie Miller’s newest album is more than just one of the best albums of 2016, more than a resurrection of an artist who is far more worthy of fame and success than he has ever attained.
It’s one singer who 2016 didn’t get to take.
for certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair
musicians, Review, Rockin' and Rollin' and Never Forgettin', The Freedom of Music, This Week on my I-Pod
One likes to believe in the freedom of music.Rush – Spirit of Radio.
Procrastination is an ugly thing. It lends itself to taking a task, simple or complex, and making it harder. Case in point, David Bowie died and I was going to write about it, maybe discuss how often Bowie eulogies seemed to start with “I’m not one of those Bowie freaks, but I really liked x,” x being a song, en era, a character.
Bowie offered, I would have written, seemingly something for everyone. But instead of writing it, I procrastinated, held it off a week. And then Glenn Frey died.
Glenn Frey of the Eagles may be the anti-Bowie, never out of character as the cool guy. Instead of being the kind of act were everybody likes something in the catalogue, the Eagles are always surprisingly contentious. There is much more of a love/hate element to the Eagles. Who could imagine, for instance, The Dude getting thrown out of a cab protesting, “I fucking hate David Bowie man!”?
So I procrastinate, and now I have to weave together a web that interestingly compares David Bowie and Glenn Frey. Good luck with that, I’d say.
Do you remember when Farrah Fawcett died? It was the same day as Michael Jackson and of course the sad news of this beautiful woman, a highly talented and successful actress, was buried in the avalanche of grief for Jackson. So too is the fate of Dale Griffin, whose passing was announced a few hours before Glenn Frey’s.
Dale Griffin passed away on Sunday at age 67 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He was the drummer for 70s British glam-rock band Mott the Hoople. Mott the Hoople spawned the careers of Ian Hunter and Bad Company’s Mick Ralphs. Their biggest hit was All The Young Dudes, written by, wait for it… David Bowie.
Considered to be a youth anthem, Bowie protested that All the Young Dudes was nothing of the sort. “All the Young Dudes is a song about this news…” the news being that the world had only five years left to live, as told on the Ziggy Stardust song “Five Years.”
Pushing through the market square
So many mothers sighing.
News had just come over,
we had five years left to cry in.
Like so many Bowie songs, five years is a story that begins by introducing a person, or in this case, persons, as in mothers sighing. The mothers may sigh at the news and the young dudes may carry the news, but All the Young Dudes opens with Billy rapping “all night about his suicide…”
Five years opens the Bowie album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, featuring the song Ziggy Stardust:
Ziggy played guitar,
jamming good with Wierd and Gilly,
and the Spiders from Mars…”
Story telling is at the heart of art. We all get that a great book, or play, or movie tells a story. Fewer think along those lines when it comes to a picture, but spend an afternoon at a good gallery amongst the renaissance masters and you’ll find stories of heroic deeds and stories of saints and historical stories and even stories of average people, or at least average people of some degree of leisure.
But pop music as story telling? Oh sure, we all get the Bob Dylan is a storyteller, even named his box set Storyteller. And yes, we get that The Who’s Tommy has some vague storyline, if only because we have been told as much so often. And above you can see that Bowie was telling stories, but it’s hardly the same is it? It’s not like you open a song with “it was a dark and stormy night.”
On a dark desert highway,
cold wind in my hair.
And so the Eagles open Hotel California with a variation of “it’s a dark and stormy night.” Like the opening to many a good story, it presents a time and a place, the desert at night, and creates an action, driving. Here’s another, see if you can spot the elements of setting:
I’m standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona…
The essence of good art is good story telling. In the last two weeks we have lost David Bowie and Glenn Frey, two men who were outstanding at telling their story through pop songs, no easy feat. They had different styles, used the format of the three to five minute song in different ways, but at their heart, they both told stories that we as an audience responded to.
May they rest in peace.
for certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair
Omniverse Vision is releasing a documentary of the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition, David Bowie Is. To coincide with the opening of the exhibition in Chicago (gee, now that’s 2 reasons to head to the Chicago area), the documentary will be screened in 100 movie theatres across the US on September 23. Here’s the trailer for David Bowie Is:
At Home in Hespeler will have a review of David Bowie Is coming soon.
Meanwhile, if you like Bowie, a couple of years ago this video, previously thought lost, of him playing The Jean Genie in 1973 on Top of the Pops was leaked. The film for it had been saved from destruction and living in the basement of a cameraman on the program. It shows Bowie (and Mick Ronson on guitar) at his absolute best.
And for those who opened the link up the page and thought, Bondfest? Maude Adams? Who? This is Maude Adams
Last month, Lady Hespeler and I braved the cold, and hwy. 6, and trundled off to Hamilton to see Elton John. Our last minute cheap seats, with a behind stage view, turned out to be gems, some 16 rows up and staring at the piano player’s face all night – and no, I didn’t shoot. While John’s voice is hardly in 70’s form, he was nothing short of excellent.
Promoting the reissue of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, he opened with side 1 from that masterwork, and spent the next hour and a half or so playing hit after hit. He had a tight little four piece band with him, including long time members, Davey Johnstone and Nigel Olsson.
Next Wednesday, Elton brings his Las Vegas show to the big screen, for a Front Row Centre Event, The Million Dollar Piano.
Track listing for The Million Dollar Piano:
Freedom of Music, meanwhile, returns this Sunday with a review the Deluxe Edition of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
or
Dear Artiststic Community: These People only Pretend to Have Your Best Interests in Mind
From the League of American Orchestras:
I’m writing to make you aware of an urgent policy development. If your orchestra engages international artists, or your musicians travel internationally as individuals, this will matter to you. If your orchestra tours internationally, this development will most certainly concern you.
On February 25, 2014, new strict limits immediately took effect for traveling internationally with instruments that contain African elephant ivory. Following a new Obama Administration effort to protect African elephants from poaching by combatting illegal trade in ivory, the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) ordered strict enforcement procedures related to the Endangered Species Act and the African Elephant Conservation Act.
According to the order, many instruments containing African elephant ivory will not be allowed into the U.S., even if a musician is simply returning to the U.S. with instruments in their personal possession, not intended for sale. Under the rules, a musical instrument that contains African elephant ivory may only be brought into the U.S. if it meets all of the following criteria: Was legally acquired prior to February 26, 1976; Has not subsequently been transferred from one person to another person for financial gain or profit since February 26, 1976; The person or group qualifies for a CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) musical instrument certificate; and The musical instrument containing African elephant ivory is accompanied by a valid CITES musical instrument certificate or an equivalent CITES document.A great many professional orchestra musicians, particularly string players, perform with instruments that contain small amounts of ivory, most frequently found in the tips of bows. Most of these musical instruments, while legally manufactured and acquired, would have been purchased after 1976, and will now be prohibited from entering into the U.S.
Still others that have not been sold since 1976 may be missing key documentation. While the timeline for strict enforcement of this policy at U.S. borders is uncertain, it could occur at any time. The League is in ongoing dialogue with federal officials to seek a solution that addresses wildlife conservation goals while also protecting international musical activity that requires musicians to travel across borders with the essential tools of their trade.
We need your help. Please complete this survey to provide us with information that will help us make the case. Become aware of the rules for travelling with instruments containing endangered species material. We have posted background on the new ivory ban as well as detailed guidance on the existing CITES rules for travel with items that contain other protected species, such as tortoise shell and rosewood. Contact the League’s Washington, D.C. office with questions. We are working to get all of the answers we can. Thank you for your attention to this matter, and your ongoing partnership as we work on your behalf.
Sincerely,
Jesse Rosen President and CEO, League of American Orchestras
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