At Home in Hespeler

It came up last Christmas, one of my guests asked the question that comes up too often: “What the hell is wrong with Robert Plant? Why won’t he do a Led Zeppelin reunion?” It seems so easy, just sing the old songs, make a big pile of money and everybody gets to go away happy. So why won’t he do it? It doesn’t help that Plant tends to answer the question with a series of non-sequiturs: I don’t want to be singing cabaret; I want to move forward with new material – even as he spreads the old liberally through his set lists &tc.

In his new book, Robert Plant: The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelinby Dave Thompson looks at Plant and examines the man through the lens of his history, and the effect it has on Plant today. There are two major events in the Plant narrative, the death of his son Karac in 1977 and the death of his best friend from youth, whom he brought into Led Zeppelin, John Bonham.

On Karac Thompson writes:

His (Plant’s) lifestyle, he knew, had already placed his marriage under incredible strain—the months he spent away touring, leaving Maureen to raise two children on her own. Now there was just one, and Plant could not help but wonder whether things might have been different if he had been at home.

and on John Bonham:

It was John Bonham who sat next to him on the hastily arranged flight back to London, and then for the drive up to the farm. There the boy was buried, at a funeral where Bonham was the only one of the singer’s bandmates or management to even bother attending… Now, the very person who had stood alongside him throughout that terrible night, providing much of the glue with which he repaired his shattered psyche, had himself been taken away.

Those two quotes represent, as much as anything does, the thesis of The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelin. Those two events, presented as they are above, explain so much about Plant’s decisions, including the one not to re-unite Led Zeppelin in any long-term way. Thompson delves into what makes Plant tick far more deeply than into what Plant does or says, using the former to explain the latter. It’s a good thing that he does such a good job of examining Plant the person, because he gets far too many of his facts wrong.

Details like what year Page and Plant played Glastonbury, what they played at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction or the heretofore unheard claim that Yardbirds bassist Chris Dreja actually rehearsed with Plant, Page and John Bonham before turning down the job of bassist in Led Zeppelin and John Paul Jones was brought on board. Furthermore some of his opinion statements, such as the tone of Zeppelin’s songs come from Plant’s lyrics or that the last five albums in Plant’s career – Dreamland to lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar – are the best set of five he has done, including say Led Zeppelin II through Physical Graffiti, are laughable.

But Thompson isn’t after the facts of the case, so much as explaining Plant through the lens of those facts. The fact he got a date wrong here, a song wrong there doesn’t do unrepairable damage to the book. Neither does the obvious fact that Thompson’s trying, for reasons unknown, to tear down the mythology of Led Zeppelin and raise the myth of Robert Plant in it’s place.

In fact, Thompson’s conversational writing style, of which I have been a fan for a long time, makes The Voice that Sailed the Zeppelin a thoroughly enjoyable read. I did not always agree with Thompson, and he gets some of the basics wrong, but Robert Plant: The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelin by Dave Thompson is one of my favourite of the Led Zeppelin books out there. It’s well worth the read.

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One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

A quick story:

In late 1974, Sparks were one of the biggest bands in Britain…. There was only one shadow on the duo’s horizon. They had just dismissed their lead guitarist. So they… began casting around for a suitable replacement. Somebody well known. Somebody respected, but somebody whose career was maybe on a distinct downward spiral. Somebody… like Brian May.

… His band, Queen, had shot their bolt…

“I did like the band,” May reflected. “I loved ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us.’ Anyway, they came around, the two brothers, and said, ‘Look, it’s pretty obvious that Queen are washed up; we’d like to offer you a position in our band, if you want.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t think we’re quite dead yet.”*

You get that? The boys in Sparks thought Queen guitarist Brian May might want to lose his washed up band and join the one that was bound for greatness. Of course Sparks were in the year when they would record their two greatest albums, Queen was still a whole year away from theirs. But nowadays you can be forgiven if you ask of Sparks, who?

I am one of the worlds few people who would rather listen to Sparks 1974 album Propaganda than Queens defining work of a year later, Night At The Opera (featuring Bohemian Rhapsody). What is surprising is, I may not be the only one.

It was probably more than twenty years between having a discussion of any sort with somebody about Sparks. They would, and still do, occasionally churn out a new album, having gone through an euro-electro-pop phase in the early 80’s. In 2009 they released their 22nd album, The Seduction of Ingmar Bergen. Yet I have never known anybody to buy one, never saw a Sparks CD and never heard of anybody replacing their copies of Propaganda or Kimono My House on CD.

I had forgotten about Spark completely, actually, until about two years ago when I stumbled on an MP3 download of the aforementioned 1974 albums. I downloaded it, assuming they would be an embarrassing memory, rather like Loverboy. Instead, I found in Propaganda an album that I remember loving, and still think is an excellent album. In fact, if I was piecing together a list of my 100 best albums, Propaganda would be on it. The other album, Kimono My House, which actually came first, is almost as good.

I’ve been doing the rounds of record stores, record shows and that sort of thing a fair bit lately. Now that “vinyl is back,” there seems to be more opportunity than there has been in years to browse records. On top of used, there is a fair bit of new vinyl records out there, including a big whack that is being re-released all these years later as “160 gram vinyl.” To understand it, 160 gram vinyl is short for, “much better quality than we sold you back in the day when we could take you buying our product as a given.” They are, finally, providing really good quality vinyl albums, and they are doing so at a price point that would commonly be called, not cheap.

Of the albums that has been re-released, and is in stock in every store I’ve been in that sells new records, the most surprising has to be Kimono My House. And it’s not just there. It keeps turning up wherever I buy records. Last week I was at a record show and saw three copies of a record I have never seen at a record show before. Last week a Facebook friend posted a video of This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us. I was shocked that I knew somebody who remembered this band.

For the uninitiated, Sparks circa 1974 is hard to explain. Singer Russell Mael and his Charlie Chaplain/Hitler look-alike brother, keyboard player Ron, are the heart of the operation. Russell sang in an operatic falsetto over a solid rock and roll beat. When I say operatic, don’t think Bohemian Rhapsody, rather like Grace Bumbry singing Sausalito Summernight. Or, more aptly, Luciano Pavarotti imitating Grace Bumbry singing Sausalito Summernight. And yes, I know I just described a somewhat obscure band using a somewhat forgotten, if not obscure song. But Sparks are like that, in that they are unlike anything you have ever heard before.

Here’s a prediction: if you decide to check out Sparks after reading this you will either like them a lot, or dislike them… a lot. There really is no middle ground. If you can get past the operatic vocals, there is some great rock and roll being played. And once you get past the vocals, you will find you like the vocals, and soon, you will start to understand the vocals (hint: he doesn’t sing as fast as it sounds like he’s singing). Once you get to that point, well Kimono My House is available just about everywhere records are sold these days. You’ll want to be getting it before it disappears again.

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From I Hate New Music, page 50.
Thompson, Dave. I Hate New Music: the Classic Rock Manifesto. New York: Backbeat, 2008. 49-50. .

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Boy, that Bono sure can be an annoying guy. Certainly I have criticized him on these pages before. I don’t like some rich celebrity coming into my town and telling my government how they should spend my hard earned money. Hey, Bono,yea you talking to Paul Martin, shut up and sing!

I also don’t like rich celebrities constantly telling governments they need to spend more, and more… and MORE, yet then they arrange their affairs to pay the least they can. If you think governments job is to spend lots of money, the least you can do, the bare minimum, is give your fair share. I know you have a legal right to organize your corporation to minimize your tax load, but when you start with all  the talking you take on a moral responsibility to give the maximum you can.

That said, I like Bono. He is, at least, sincere in his beliefs. Bono sings about his political beliefs, puts his politics in his songs. He, in other words, puts his money where his mouth is. I don’t have to always like it, but I respect it. Want to use your celebrity to advance a cause, then use your sell-able talent to advance the cause and I can reject it or not as I please. Bono, virtually alone amongst rock stars, does this.

Frankly, I love his sense of melody. U2 is not my favourite band, not by any stretch. The Edge – which isn’t really a name – is just an alright guitar player in my books. The rhythm section is good, but a tight bass and drum combo hardly makes for great rock, although great rock is impossible without it. What sets U2 apart is Bono’s sense of melody. Songs like Mysterious Ways, Angel of Harlem and Sweetest Thing display an almost playful melodic sensibility. The boy can sing, and he can sing with some style.

But the reason I wish Bono – real name Paul David Hewson – a happy 50th birthday is the following story, as told by Dave Thompson in I Hate New Music:

Bono stands upon the stage, his eyes sharp, his voice steady. Behind him, his bandmates slow the music to a rhythmic throb.  “Every time I clap my hands,” Bono says slowly, “another person dies of hunger.”

He starts to clap. One. Two. Three. The silence in the hall is absolute. Four. Five. Six. The audience scarcely dares breathe. Seven. Eight. Nine. Every time he claps his hands, another person dies of hunger.

And then a voice rings out from the back of the room: “Well you better stop fucking clapping then.”

So happy birthday Paul Hewson, aka Bono, because even if that story is untrue, it’s a great one. And it wouldn’t be possible to believably tell without you.

Birthday Wishes Angel of Harlem, Bono, Dave Thompson, I Hate New Music: The Classic Rock Manifesto, Mysterious Ways, Sweetest thing, The Edge, U2

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

I’ve discussed the return of the LP in this feature before. In fact, this feature could almost be called “The Return of the LP,” some weeks. The music industry looking backwards in order to move forward comes up a lot, it seems. This week, for instance, Foo Fighter’s drummer and Dave Grohl pal Taylor Hawkins released his second album with his non-Foo’s band, Taylor Hawkins & the Coat Tail Riders. The album, Red Light Fever, is available in the usual sources: iTunes download, CD and LP. What’s new in the last year is, the LP sales are featured prominently on the bands websites. Buy it today on…, and LP is right there with the other two getting front billing. There was something else, something different and entirely new to me at the TH&TCTR web site: mention of eight-tracks. There was a twitter contest were you could win an eight-track of Red Light Fever and they would throw in the 8-track player. You could also listen to a streamed version of the album by taking a virtual eight-track and putting it in an virtual eight-track player. So are eight-tracks back?

In his self-proclaimed classic rock manifesto, I Hate New Music, Dave Thompson argues the eight-track was the best delivery method of music ever devised:

…Vinyl? Scratchy, warped and needs too much cleaning. Cassettes? Hissy, fragile and they look like crap. CDs? Coasters with a superiority complex.
MP3s? Great! I’ll happily pay ninety-nine cents for nothing whatsoever. Eight-tracks, on the other hand – you know you’ve got a pocketful of something with an eight-track. Plus, they have the greatest sound reproduction you’ve ever heard.

I’ve never owned a pre-recorded eight-track. I had an eight-track player/recorder as an adolescent, and used it to turn my brothers LPs into something I could listen to without pissing him off three times a day. Pirating they call it now, which it was in as much as I had to gain access to his room and leave again, with an album I wanted, without getting caught. Making an eight-track and getting the album back in less than an hour was survival more than piracy, but pirates had to survive too.

So while I learnt all the words to Bat Out of Hell, and had my introduction to Led Zeppelin IV – the greatest album of all time – off of an eight-track, I have never owned a store bought one. Never had Houses of the Holy with the fade-out-click-and-fade-in during No Quarter, may be the only person of my generation not to have owned Frampton Comes Alive on the format and certainly never had Venus and Mars on the format – which Thompson claims is the greatest aural experience a human can have, or something like that. No, I owned all that stuff on album, and made eight-track mixed tapes of the best of it.

Taylor Hawkins, however, apparently agrees with Dave Thompson about eight-tracks sound reproduction. The web site that streams his album brags of being in “eight-track quality.” It’s a cool page, where you place the eight-track tape into the animated deck, and it plays. You can’t skip songs, but you can click through the tracks the same as with a regular eight-track player. Nice.

But does it mark the return of eight-tracks? To answer, an observation: they don’t sell eight-tracks on the web site. It’s possible Taylor Hawkins is waaay out ahead of a trend, however, he doesn’t have enough faith in the trend to actually sell eight-tracks. Furthermore, I could find no other artist making their music available in the format, no stores specializing in it, not even any one selling new eight-track players. There are some web sites that specialize in eight-tracks, but they are nostalgic in nature.

Eight-tracks inherent strength in it’s day was it’s portability. When the car companies started putting eight-track players in cars in the mid-late 60’s, a time when AM radio was the norm, they created a drive around music system where you could chose what you would listen to when you drive. It created a demand, and eight-tracks took off. With in car entertainment systems that include DVD players, CD/MP3 players and iPod connectors, modern cars have no need for eight-track players.

It seems unlikely that any real demand for eight-tracks will be forthcoming, which means it seems unlikely eight-track tapes are about to achieve any kind of renaissance. Sorry Taylor Hawkins.

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One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

What happened? When did music become so bad? I don’t know what it is lately, but I feel like the whole music industry has fallen over a cliff. Good God, who are these people who have taken that which was so vital in our lives, and fucking ruined it?

I recently read a book by a guy called Dave Thompson called I Hate New Music: The Classic Rock Manifesto. He frankly makes far too many good points to write off as a crank. Good point 1: even if you think a new song is good, will you be listening to it in a year, five years, ten years from now? I know that answer, because I’ve fallen for it too many times. Good point 2: You want to know how hard the mighty can fall? From “In My Time of Dying” to “Radioactive.” That’s how hard.

Thompson cites the end of good music as coming from between 1976 and 1978. Boston’s debut album was the beginning of the end, not because it was a bad album, but because it was so carefully crafted, and sold so many copies. By 1978 these carefully crafted albums were also selling millions:

Infinity by Journey.
You Can Tune a Piano but you Can’t Tuna Fish by REO Speedwagon.
Don’t Look Back by Boston.
The Cars by The Cars
Double Vision by Foreigner
Toto by Toto
Pieces of Eight by Styx
Hemispheres by Rush

Never again would a band go into the studio for 18 days, and come out with a masterworks like Led Zeppelin did with 1976’s Presence. Now, the music was a commodity, to be manufactured to maximize sales.

Think I exaggerate? Think the state of the music world is just fine? Riddle me this, who was the hottest selling act this week? If you answered the not guilty of paedophilia in the strictly OJ Simpson sense of the word, Michael Jackson, the freakiest freak in freakville, give yourself ten points.  The spastic, hasn’t demonstrated an ounce of talent in twenty years, and no more than that ever, Jackson was selling out 50 shows at London’s 02 arena. 50 shows sold out in 5 hours. Never mind music, what has gone wrong in our world when that many people will pay approximately $100 each to see this thing, this diddler? But hey, it’s the hottest show in music, which really should be the end of this rant. What could possibly follow to demonstrate that the world of music is no longer worth your attention?

Britney Spears, that’s what. She’s doing wonderful business in her comeback tour. This weeks New York show had the ever awful Madonna in attendance.  Despite favourable reviews (well one) Madonna caused a stir when she left mid-show. Now clear your head and ponder that one item. In the middle of a concert, Madonna leaves and that’s the news.  Would they have shut down the tour if she yawned mid-performance? Why would any body care that Madonna left? Surely they were paying attention to the singer on stage? Alas, there was no singer. The lady dancing, sans musicians, with the top hat and microphone, she was lip syncing. The whole show, except the one time when she said, “Peace, New York.” People paid up to $750 to see Britney Spears not sing? Which is, I suspect, about $745 more than they would pay to hear her sing. But fear not, merchandise, including $150 velvet ensembles and $30 knockoff top hats, flew off the shelves.  Because, you see, post 1978, it’s about the merchandise.

It’s too easy, however, to blame all that’s wrong with the music business on Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, even Madonna. Largely accurate in many ways, but easy.  When Kiss recorded their first live album, Paul Stanley can be heard at one point asking the audience, “do you believe in rock and roll?” After an affirmative cheer, he commands the audience, “stand up for what you believe in.” This was before the invention of the Kiss Army, of which I was an inaugural member, but I have no doubt listening to Kiss Alive now that the audience followed this command like an army following an order.  Yes! we believed in Rock and roll, and Yes! we would stand up for what we believed in. That’s what we thought then, music wasn’t a commodity, it was a movement. We hated disco because it threatened our way of life, our core belief.  Disco was the Taliban, circa 1975 and liking disco was a subversive act. Disco died away for many reasons, not the least of which because there was a Kiss Army to kick it’s ass.

So why was Kiss’ resident demon/fire breather/blood spitter, Gene Simmons, in Toronto this week peddling baby clothes? Because Kiss is a commodity, that’s why. Because while the Kiss Army may have believed in rock and roll, the members themselves have long believed in the commodification thereof. Because in 1978, when Kiss was releasing comic books, it stopped being about the music.  And now, thirty years later, it really is that bad.

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