At Home in Hespeler

Kanye West, aka Mr Kim Kardashian and former Beatle Paul McCartney recorded a song together, the newly released single Only One. Shockingly, to some anyway, some of West’s fans don’t have a clue who this McCartney kid is. They took to Twitter to express their ignorance. One, for instance, read, “… Kanye is going to give this man (McCartney) a career w/ this new song!!” Yet another offered, “Kanye has a great ear for talent. This Paul McCartney guy gonna be huge.” Even better than those two, is this one: “who tf is paul mccartney???!??! this is why i love kanye for shining light on unknown artists.” Haha, silly kids, think Paul McCartney is an unknown artist, tee-hee. Good fun &tc., but who really expects kids to know 72-year old musicians? Who really expects hip-hop fans to be all that familiar with a guy who played rock music 40-50-years ago?

Generation narcissism, that’s who. The baby boomers assume because they love Paul McCartney, everybody must know who he is. Suddenly twitter was alive with mocking, these poor kids the target of supposedly mature adults. The tone of the comments were, how stupid do you have to be not to know Paul McCartney? The generation who taught these kids grammar, are shocked they aren’t up on their 1967-pop culture.

And yes, I’m old enough to be surprised that somebody wouldn’t know who Paul McCartney is, but why should I be surprised? I wouldn’t have known who Al Jolson was in 1976. Frank Sinatra was an old guy who was sometimes on TV, Dean Martin’s friend. What should be surprising is when you see some kid in a Beatles or Led Zeppelin t-shirt, not that some kids have no idea who those artists are.

But surprised too many of these people are. That says far more about them than it does the kids.

Uncategorized Kanye West, Paul McCartney

Much like Jimmy Page, Paul McCartney has been re-releaasing the wings catalogue, with upgraded remastering and bonus material. One such bonus item comes from Wings at the Speed of Sound: Beware My Love with John Bonham on the drums.

Bonham played on the session for Beware My Love, but the track that made it to album was one that was done without John Bonham. The Bonham track was not known to exist before this past June, when McCartney announced it would be on the deluxe edition of Speed of Sound.

Yesterday, McCartney pre-released Beware My Love (John Bonham Version) on iTunes. It is, as of yet, not available for download from Amazon, but surely that is coming.

The full Wings At The Speed Of Sound will be available November 4th.

via Ramble On Radio

Uncategorized John Bonham, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Wings at the Speed of SOund

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

“Do you think you could make him a list of bands and songs from the 70’s to listen to?”

My daughter is asking on behalf of her boyfriend, who is a Stones fan, “but he’s not into Zeppelin,” and wants to expand his musical horizons. Well, besides the fact I don’t really do lists and I consider anybody who’s “not into Zeppelin” beyond hope, sure.

For starters, any fan of 70’s era Stones should check out The Faces. The two groups sound, at times, remarkably alike, yet you would never mistake one for the other. Get their greatest hits album, “a nods as good as a wink….” and check out Stay With Me, Three Button Hand Me Down and Ooh La La.

As well, never ignore the albums when talking about 60’s and 70’s music. If you are a Stones fan based on any number of their hits, know that buried on the albums are songs you have never heard but are great. Pick your favourite Stones songs, and listen to the albums they came off. Chances are you’ll find songs you’ll like, and possibly whole album sides that just seem perfect (yes sides: the artists thought in terms of sides – not songs, not albums – and they are the way to approach the music of the era)

Working backwards from the 70’s, The Stones and Yardbirds both came from the same place, The Crawdaddy Club of the early 60’s. Each went in different directions, but they started at the same place. So too shall we.

The early Yardbirds is the thing, that Clapton stuff, and moving into the Jeff Beck years. Five Live Yardbirds to start, and then a greatest hits package of some sort. Branching out, check out the individual guitarists post-Yardbirds careers: Clapton with Cream, Derek and the Dominoes and his early solo work; The Jeff Beck Group (featuring pre-Faces Rod Stewart); and of course – you knew I had to get here – Led Zeppelin.

Now I know, not a Led Zeppelin fan, he’s heard them before and found them wanting &tc. But discussing the era without discussing Led Zeppelin is like not discussing The Stones or The Who. It’s an incomplete conversation. Everybody knows some Led Zeppelin songs, and judgement can be clouded by an incomplete picture of a band that played such a variety of music. Here’s what you do. Listen to, in order, Led Zeppelin I side 2 – the blues album; Led Zeppelin II, side 1, the heavy metal album; Led Zeppelin III side 2, the acoustic album; Led Zeppelin IV, side 1, the masterpiece.

Here’s the logic. After The Yardbirds, Cream and The Jeff Beck Group, the first album is in context. It’s their blues album, but side 2 will surprise you with the almost pop sounding You Time is Gonna Come, the acoustic solo Black Mountain Side, the pre-punk Communication Breakdown, Old Willie Dixon blues on I Can’t Quit You Baby and the jam How Many More Times. It has a little of everything, and turning the album over just to hear Good Times, Bad Times and Babe I’m Gonna Leave You will be a revelation.

The second album is their road album, and if Led Zeppelin invented heavy metal (they didn’t, and it’s an awful description of them as a band), II is when they did so. That in, everything you ever wanted to know about Led Zeppelin is in the first two songs of Led Zeppelin II. Whole Lotta Love, the supposed birthplace of heavy metal and What is and What Should Never Be, sweet ballad turned hard rocker in the chorus. They may not have invented heavy metal, but they did invent the heavy metal ballad with What is… The slide solo alone is worth listening to this album for.

The third album, written at a rustic cabin in the Welsh countryside, is everything Led Zeppelin is not supposed to be. Side two will literally shock the person who thinks they know Led Zeppelin but have never heard this. Four acoustic songs, each one completely different, yet not an electric guitar to be found. They return to the blues on the last song but it’s probably worth skipping until you’ve listened to the first four songs enough times to a) love them and b) wonder what the hell they are about. My favourite album side as a teenager, and still one that mesmerizes me.

Finally four, the masterwork. You know the songs on side one, but hearing them in context improves them. The sound of needle on vinyl (yes, listen to the records if you can – just ask first and put the damn things away when your done) a quiet E string being played in the open position, and then, all on his own Robert Plant, bel canto, singing on of the great opening lines:

Hey hey mama said the way you move, gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove.

How can you not like that? It’s immediately followed up with Rock and Roll, Zeppelin’s answer to critics who said they had gone soft after the second side of the third album. If you can take it up a notch from Black Dog, they do. And then, the greatest 14 minutes in rock and roll: The Battle of Evermore/Stairway to Heaven: Prelude and Masterpiece. Everybody has heard Stairway to Heaven in isolation, or at dance’s end after Play the Funky Music and Night Fever, or on the radio in a set with Hell’s Bells and Let it Be, and it loses something. But the pastural intro to Stairway in the shadow of the war ballad of Battle of Evermore gives it an entirely new feel. Oh and by the way, here’s why Led Zeppelin are the greatest band ever. That slide solo in What is…, Page gets the sweetest sound using an electric guitar and a distortion pedal yet in Battle of Evermore they convincingly create a massive sounding war song with 2 mandolins and an acoustic guitar. Nobody else can do that, and they do it while creating emotional intensity. Stairway ends side 1 ends the way Black Dog began it, Robert Plant singing a cappella – because when I tell you the artists thought in sides, I wasn’t kidding.

So that’s Led Zeppelin, and hour and a half spent investigating some of the greatest music ever. If you’ve followed the directions and still don’t really like Led Zeppelin, well then find someone else’s daughter to date, ’cause there’s not much hope for you. But at least everything else you listen to from the decade will have the appropriate context.

Moving on, but staying ever so briefly with the Stones offshoots, Aerosmith took influence from all of The Yardbirds, The Stones, Led Zeppelin and, as I’ve argued before, The Faces. Forget everything since they’ve reformed in the 1980’s, forget that Stephen Tyler loses credibility with every TMZ day, Aerosmith’s 70’s stuff is good to great. Start with the greatest hits if you must, but hit the albums too. The hits, Walk This Way, Sweet Emotion, Dream On are all excellent. But in the albums are some stellar tracks: Mama Kin, The Yardbird’s Train Kept a Rollin, Same Old Song and Dance.

In 1981 the Rolling Stones where playing locally at Buffalo. Opening that day at Ralph Wilson Stadium was a guy the rumoured to have been readied to step in and take over for Ron Wood if he was unable to continue, which seemed possible. Reportedly the only artist Bill Wyman would ask for an autograph over the Stones long career, the guys in the Stones where George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers fans, so shouldn’t a Rolling Stones fan be too? Start at the beginning, with One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer. If you can’t recite the line “I know, everybody funny, now you funny too,” with confidence, you really don’t get rock’n’roll.

Also on the act that day, Foghat. Try them out, and their British counterparts (I know, Foghat are British, but their success was in the US), Status Quo.

Leaving the Stones influence behind, there’s almost too much music, too many bands of the era. In some cases whole repertoires should be explored, in others, a song or two. In most cases, I’ll discuss and album or album side.

The Beatles: Since we are discussing the era of the late 60’s early 70’s, explore at your leisure the later Beatles. While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Revolution, Back in the USSR. There’s a lot of good rock music in there between John Lennon’s experiments in avant-garde and Paul McCartney’s soppy ballads. You’ll find stuff you like, including possibly some ballads and avand-garde.

Also, the solo Beatles is good. To me, Paul McCartney’s best work, ever, was his early Wings stuff – Band on the Run and Venus and Mars. Also his first few solo albums, including the song Maybe I’m Amazed. Lennon’s solo work is also good, sometimes great. Everyone knows Imagine, but Jealous Guy, Whatever Gets You Through The Night, Watching the Wheels and Woman are all excellent. George was the underrated Beatle, and he proves it in his solo work. His first post-Beatles work is All Things Must Pass and it has My Sweet Lord and What is Life. But pick up his greatest hits and find out how good he is. Then get Somewhere in England, or at least the song All Those Years Ago and hear his tribute to John Lennon, who was killed the year before. Most people don’t know that Ringo had a fairly good solo career, and his greatest hits album is full of fun little pop songs that are a perfect way to waste an afternoon.

The Who also fall into the must listen category. Considered one of, if not the most exciting live act of the time, the Who’s work spans the decades. From the 60’s, grab their greatest hits album, Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, as well as their live album Live at Leeds. For sport, imagine seeing The Who, playing as good as they do at Leeds, playing your university.

In the 70’s, check out Who’s Next. You know all the songs anyway, from the CSI intros, but listen to them in their entirety, in context. In the 80’s the post-Kieth Moon Who had former Faces drummer Kenny Jones keeping beat, and they released a couple of good albums, 1981’s Face Dances and 1982’s It’s Hard. Check them both out, including You Better You Bet, Athena, Eminence Front and John Entwistle’s ironic rocker, The Quiet One.

How’s that fro a start? There’s your homework, and there’s enough there to keep you too busy to be bothering my daughter. And when your done that, we’ll move on to individual songs you should be listening too.

The Freedom of Music, This Week on my I-Pod Beatles, Eric Clapton, Faces, Foghat, George HArrison, George Thorogood, Jeff Beck, Jeff Beck Group, Jimmy Page, John Lennon, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Rod Stewart, Rolling Stones, Slade, The Who, Yardbirds

All the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities

Life in Prison:

No, not another Lindsay Lohan story. In this case it’s Joseph Hyuangmin Son, more commonly known as Austin Powers villain Random Task.

Son was convicted of a 1990 Christmas Eve gang rape in Huntington Beach California. DNA evidence was unable to connect the actor to the rape until 2008.

He was sentenced this week to life in prison.

I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that life in prison in California is a bit nastier than taking up painting, the way Ms. Lohan performed her less severe sentence.

Oh, this can’t be good. There’s a new show coming up called H8R (hater, for those of us over 40 (IQ) who don’t get the abbreviations kids are using these days), in which the some celebrity confronts an on-line “hater.”

Hosted by Mario Lopez, H8R sets up scenarios where celebrities ambush their biggest haters… the celebrity then spends a little time with the hater, to try and change his or her mind.

Jersey Shores Snooki, for example, walks up to one of her haters and says, “I saw your rant about me. You don’t even know me. What is wrong with you?”

A battle of wits with Snooki? The knees tremble at the thought. Good thing I have no clue who she is and don’t think I’ve ever mentioned her before.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going out front to wait Sean Penn and Mario Lopez.

The envelopes are still sealed, but we already know Paul McCartney will be one of the winners at the 54th annual Grammy Awards on Feb 10th.

McCartney is going to be honoured as the 2012 MusiCares Person of the Year for both his “creative accomplishments and his charitable work.”

The 69 year old Knight has won 14 Grammy’s previously.

On Wayne’s World, Wayne and Garth attend an Aerosmith concert. Trying to access the backstage area after the show, Wayne protests to the security guard, “my girlfriend is back there.”

“A lot of guys girlfriends are back there,” the security guard replies.

It’s one thing being a young man, and losing the girlfriend to Aerosmith. It happens. It’s another world altogether when your middle aged, and the guy guarding the backstage area of the Casino, where the guys from Journey are popping Geritoil and drinking Midol, says, “A lot of guys wives are back there.”

If you are one half of publicity hound couple, and White House gate crashers, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, that’s exactly what you were told, figuratively if not literally.

Tareq reported “Real Housewife of DC” Michaele missing this week, claiming she was kidnapped. She wasn’t.

It turns out she had run off with Journey guitarist Neal Schon, and didn’t want Tareq to know where she was. “She and Neil are together, in Memphis, for Journey’s concert tonight,” Journey representatives Scoop Marketing announced.

Translation: a lot of guys wives are back there!

First no Mario Lopez at my door, now I don’t receive a cease and desist from Scarlett Johansson’s lawyer.

Doing a celebrity column, it is possible I should hang my head in shame and I accept this judgement.

This week two pictures of Johansson, wearing nothing but her Keds, as the old song goes, was leaked online. The catch is, she took the picture herself. The leak itself seems to be the work of hackers, and therefore, the picture itself is illegally acquired. Hence, the ceases and desists.

Maybe if I say some nasty things about Ms. Johansson, she will knock on my door and ask, “what is wrong with you?”

Fluffernutter Aerosmith, Joseph Hyuangmin Son, Journey, Mario Lopez, Michaele Salahi, Neal Schon, Paul McCartney, Random Task, Scarlett Johannson, Sean Penn, Snooki, Tareq Salahi

All the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities

An old joke, but a good one:

Upon the news that Paul McCartney was splitting with his then wife, Heather Mills, McCartney was asked whether he would ever go down on one knee again.

“She doesn’t like to be called that,” he answered.

It’s tough being Mrs. Paul McCartney, just ask Nancy Shevell, the next Mrs. Paul McCartney. Here’s the front page from yesterdays Daily Mail:

Murder, the Mob and the New Lady Macca.

Bet New Jersey trucking magnate Shevell wishes the most plasticized Beatle stuck with one-knee.

You think you have a problem mother-in-law? Uber Chef/Big Bully Gordon Ramsay is being sued by his, as well as his father-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew.

It all relates to Ramsay dismissing his FIL last year, after he ran Ramsay’s company for years. The rest of the family were subsequently let go. They are all suing for unfair dismissal, as well as claiming a variety of employment breaches.

Things are so bad the family has told Ramsay’s wife, the beautiful and long suffering Tana, not to bother with them. They, in fact, sent her on her 44th birthday that reads, in part:

Tana, you are not welcome anywhere near our door… until you dispose of hat man (Ramsay), you are not welcome back.

Maybe if the Chef just kicked the garbage can, that would fix everything.

Actress Sienna Miller took a £100,000 payout from British tabloid New of the World. She had sued for £400,000 after the paper hacked her cellular phone and published a story based on the “breach of confidentiality.”

The tab settled with Miller, admitting a full admission of liability. Problem for News of the World is, Miller’s is the first of at least two-dozen breaches to go to court.

Hmmm. Two dozen x £100,000…

Fluffernutter Fluffernutter, Gordon Ramsay, Heather Mills, Nancy Shevell, Paul McCartney, Sienna Miller, Tana Ramsay

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

April 11, 1970. It was a warm day, as I recall it. Quite warm for mid April. It must have been a weekend, else why else was I at home in the afternoon? My dad was working outside, and the windows were down on his old dodge while he listened to the radio, CFRB – radio for squares.

The news came on and the announcer reported, “The Beatles announced yesterday they have officially broken up.” Paul McCartney had issued a press release.

My thought was, ‘Good. Now I won’t have to hear about Beatles this and Beatles that all the time. I don’t like their music anyway.’

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

In my defense, I was six, and all I really knew about The Beatles was from hearing people talk about them, and people seemed to rather go on about them. Bear in mind as well, I was living with people who listened to “radio for squares.”

It wouldn’t be too many years before I realized Ob-la-di Ob-la-da, a song I would run around the house singing, was The Beatles. And Octopus’s Garden, which I knew from a cartoon that was regularly on TV, hey that too was The Beatles. And before you knew it I discovered that in fact, I did like their music.

But at least people would stop talking about them.

When I was 12, I started learning to play guitar. Up the road from our house was a place with a Japanese family, including two guys who were late teens or early twenties. They were in a band and had a stack of amplifiers against their basement wall. I specifically remember a Gibson SG guitar, although there must have been other instruments. I became friendly with the guitar player, who blew me away with his ability to learn a song, by ear, in about half an hour – a skill I had never even imagined before that.

“The Beatles weren’t just a great band,” my guitar playing friend told me. “They changed the world: they changed how people dressed, how they cut their hair, even how they thought. And they introduced drugs into mainstream culture.”

Here it is, six years since the break-up, and people are still talking about the Beatles. Like I said, wrong, wrong and wrong.

In fact, as I moved into my rock and roll years, The Beatles individually would be as influential as they were collectively 10 years earlier. In the early to mid 70’s The Beatles were everywhere, making music that was comparable to their best. John Lennon did Imagine, Paul McCartney Band on the Run, George Harrison was big with My Sweet Lord and What is Life, even Ringo was singing Photograph – co-written by Harrison (although You’re Sixteen is kind of creepy in retrospect).

So much for the end of the Beatles. Despite Paul’s press release, and later the flying lawsuits, The Beatles were very much a going concern.

April 11, 1970. Marked on the calendar as the day I was wrong, wrong and wrong.

The Freedom of Music Band on the Run, Beatles, George HArrison, Imagine, John Lennon, My Sweet Lord, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, Octopuses Garden, Paul McCartney, Photograph, Ringo Starr, What is Life, You’re Sixteen

Saturday Fluffernutter – all the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities.

Oh, oh! Jon and Kate’s separation has turned to the ugly side. Kate arrived at their Wernersville, Pa. home Friday when Jon was supposed to be having his quality time with the Plus Eight. Turns out Jon called in a babysitter; turns out Jon has been tutoring the babysitter, or so says a) the tabs b) Kate. Which is odd, because Kate keeps using her couch time on their TV show, “Jon and Kate Plus Eight,” to talk about how the tabloids make all this stuff up. So suddenly she believes them that Jon is boffing  23-year-old Stephanie Santoro, the “babysitter” in question? Well if it’s good enough for her, well I guess it’s good enough for me, Kate is the torrential bitch the tabs have been saying all along.

Led Zeppelin rumour of the week, courtesy of Ramble On:

John Paul Jones new band, Them Crooked Vultures, premiered last weekend at a post-Lollapalooza show at The Metro in Chicago. The Vultures (TCV in the appropriate newsgroups) feature Jones, Foo Fighters singer/guitarist/ Nirvana Drummer Dave Grohl on Drums and Queens of a Stone Age guitarist singer Josh Homme on, well, guitar and vocals. Reviews are suggesting that TCV are the greatest band since, um, Led Zeppelin.

Them Crooked Vultures are said to be releasing an album on October 23rd titled  “Never Deserved the Future.”

Les Paul (1915 – 2009): Three summers ago the family and I were in New York. After dinner, we decided to stroll to the Borders in Chelsea. For the first time in two days, I didn’t have a 5 pound camera slung over my shoulder. We walked in the store and this little old man was wrapping up a book signing. “Hey, that’s Les Paul,” I said.

“Who?” the family asked.

“You know my guitar at home, the Les Paul guitar?”

“Yea.”

“Les Paul,” I said, waving my hand in his direction.

As I said, he was wrapping up, talking to his rep and, well, he looked 100, so I didn’t want to bother him. But there I am without my camera. The family established a new New York rule after that, never go out without a camera.

Last fall I was back in NYC, and passed a club with 20 or so people lined up outside. “Who’s playing?” I asked.

“Les Paul.”

Ninety-three years old, and still playing. That’s what they call a working musician. But it’s not for his playing that Les Paul will ultimately be remembered – even now he’s barely remembered for that.

Les Paul was an innovator. In the Buddy Holly Story, a studio tech asks Buddy (played by Gary Busey), where he learnt to overdub? “Same place as you,” Holly says. “From Les Paul.” The whole idea of using two or more tape heads to layer sound one upon the other. In the early 50’s, Paul had specially made an 8-track tape recorder. By the late 1960’s, the Beatles where busy making Sergeant Pepper on a four track player, half the player Les Paul innovated out of thin air more than ten years earlier. A remarkable improvement in the way recorded music was produced. But really, who will remember him for a technical innovation, no matter how significant.

Les Paul invented the solid body electric guitar.

As Paul McCartney sang, “Who’s that movin’ cross the stage, it looks a lot like the one used by Jimmy Page.”

There can be no mistaking the visualization: Jimmy Page moved across the stage with a Les Paul Guitar. In rock and roll circles, it is the guitar. A stunning visual and audio instrument, the Les Paul is a perfectly balanced hunk of Mahogany that drove rock and roll from the mid-60’s to the present day. Jimmy Page, Slash, Cream era-Eric Clapton, Early Jeff Beck, Comes Alive era Peter Frampton to name just a few. The Les Paul guitar is the face of rock and roll.

Les Paul passed this week at the age of 94. He is being remembered for his music, especially his work with his wife Mary Ford. He is being remembered for his technical innovations that have altered how music is made. It will be, however, his namesake  guitar for which Les Paul will achieve immortality.

More importantly, Les Paul was a true musician, working to the end and  man who lived a full life worth living. May the same be said of all of us.

Fluffernutter Buddy Holly, Buddy Holly Story, Dave Grohl, Eric Clapton, Foo Fighters, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, Jon Gosselin, Josh Homme, Kate Gosselin, Led Zeppelin, Les Paul, Mary Ford, Nirvana, Paul McCartney, Peter Frampton, Queens of a Stone Age, Ramble On, Stephanie Santoro, Them Crooked Vultures