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SoundTreks: R.I.P. Mercedes Sosa, the "Voice of Argentina"

2009-10-07T21:42:45Z

SoundTreks: A regular feature on the music the other 97 percent of the globe is listening to.

A lot of debate has occurred over the course of music history about whether music itself can really effect political change. In real life, the connection between music and change often seems tenuous at best -- the dream of an aging hippie or an over-eager musicologist -- in the face of more direct or even violent means of revolution. But then, every so often, you hear a voice like Mercedes Sosa's, and all that skepticism washes away. Sosa's songs weren't always political, nor were her performances always even necessarily connected to revolutionary movements (despite the Argentinean government's opinions to the contrary). And she herself said, "Artists are not political leaders. The only power they have is to draw people into the theater." But the weapon the woman had at her disposal, which she often called the "voice of the voiceless," was precisely that: her powerful, compelling voice, a voice rich enough to convey her convictions, a voice capable of inspiring people and giving them strength.

Born in 1935 to a poor family in San Miguel de Tucuman (in Argentina's sugarcane country), Sosa won her first singing competition at age 15 and went on to help pioneer the musical-political nueva cancion movement that swept Latin America in the 1960s. The movement shed light on the concerns of the working people and the disenfranchised in the face of oppressive dictatorships. Though she was not known as a songwriter, Sosa put her own distinctive stamp on many of her peers' tunes, imbuing their tales of struggle and protest with her versatile style (which drew from not only Argentinean folk traditions, but also a wide range Latin genres), her bombo drum and, especially, her evocative contralto voice. In the 1970s, the ruling military junta took notice of her influence (as well as her connections to leftist groups), and the government's harassment forced her into exile. She lived for several years in France and Spain, brokenhearted and working as a musician and a teacher. When she returned to Argentina in 1982, she discovered that she had become a folk hero for her oppressed countrymen. She retained that esteemed position for the rest of her career.

A few of the thousands of mourners who came out to pay their respects in Buenos Aires

Over the course of her career, Sosa released 70 albums (several of which won Grammy and Latin Grammy awards), performed in venues like Carnegie Hall and the Coliseum, collaborated with artists ranging from Caetano Veloso to Pavarotti to Joan Baez, and served as a UNESCO goodwill ambassador. When she passed away on October 4 due to liver, kidney and heart problems, we lost one of Latin America's most beloved singers and a compassionate musical visionary. But the mark that powerful voice left on the world is indelible and prolific.

Take a listen to a few of the late, great Mercedes Sosa's most powerful moments below. Or Rhapsody users can listen to a full selection of her best work on this tribute playlist, a mere tip of this artist's considerable iceberg of work:

Playlist: R.I.P. Mercedes Sosa, 1935-2009

Mike Seeger: Farewell to the New Lost City Rambler

2009-08-21T03:57:10Z

America lost a genuine cultural treasure when on August 7, 2009, Mike Seeger succumbed to cancer. Though he lacked the high profile of his half-brother Pete, who is more or less considered the patron saint of the American folk revival, Mike is in many ways the greatest artist and musician to have emerged from the extended Seeger clan.

Seeger’s work as a sound explorer, archivist and music historian forms a large chunk of his reputation. He rediscovered and recorded the work of several obscure Southern and Appalachian troubadours, including the now-legendary Dock Boggs. In the last years of Boggs' life, Seeger had become his booking agent and closest confidante. Seeger also played a pivotal role in the bluegrass revival of the 1960s. Along with fellow folklorist Ralph Rinzler, as well as other East Coast “citybillies” utterly obsessed with the music, Seeger helped resuscitate the careers of both Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers.

]]> So yeah, our knowledge and understanding of American vernacular music wouldn’t be what it is were it not for Seeger’s profound contributions. But believe or not, they kind of pale in comparison to the man’s music. With his group the New Lost City Ramblers, Seeger revolutionized how folk revivalists interpret American roots music. Before the Ramblers hit the scene in the late 1950s, the overwhelming majority of liberal, urban folkies in places like New York City and Boston followed the aesthetic lead of Pete Seeger and the Weavers. They would adopt the words of classic folk tunes such as "Darlin' Cory" or "Tom Dooley" while more or less whitewashing the music. The end result was an acoustic-based sound that was sterile, stiff and painfully Caucasian.

The Ramblers were different and radically so. They actually sounded like their heroes: the aforementioned Dock Boggs, Charlie Poole, the Carter Family, the Skillet Lickers and so on. Studying one scratchy, old 78 record after another, Seeger and company strove to master every strange accent and archaic turn-of-phrase.

The Ramblers were one of the very first revival groups to put folklorist Alan Lomax’s cantometrics theory (which he unveiled in 1958 and '59) into practice. As Neil V. Rosenberg wrote in his tome Bluegrass: A History, "[Lomax] was now deeply involved in the development of a theory which posited a direct and essential link between musical performance styles and culture. He at once began preaching this theory, which he eventually named ‘cantometrics,’ to the 'folkniks.' Singing the words and melody is not enough, he said; one must perform songs in the style of their culture. Singing style, he asserted, conveyed the emotional content of the song."

This, of course, sounds obvious enough in 2009, but back in the 1950s it was an utterly radical concept -- and really quite controversial. Remember, this was a good five years before the Rolling Stones hit the States with their imitation of American blues, and folkies started embracing rock 'n' roll. The Ramblers were totally wild sounding; coffeehouses had never seen anything like them. Here were three white guys from New York City getting down with fiddle music as if they were born and raised in a holler in southwest Virginia’s Clinch Mountains. They were cool and soulful and, most of all, intense. Audiences were utterly mesmerized. Here’s what Bob Dylan said of Seeger in his book Chronicles, Volume 1: “What I had to work at, Mike already had in his genes, in his genetic makeup. Before he was even born, this music had to be in his blood.”

But Seeger wasn't just an imitator. Over the course of more than 40 albums, both as a solo artist and with the New Lost City Ramblers, the master stylist pioneered a sound that bridged our country’s rural-urban divide. For him Appalachia wasn't a geography; it was a state of mind.

When all is said and done, Seeger was an American folk musician. Plain and simple.

P.S. For more on Mike Seeger's music, check out our In Memory of Mike Seeger playlist.

In Memoriam: Michael Jackson

2009-06-30T21:05:10Z

Michael Jackson passed away on Thursday, June 25, 2009, at the age of 50. The monumental loss has been felt around the world. Jackson was a prodigiously talented singer and dancer -- an icon that transcended borders, race and age. Beginning in 1969 with the Jackson 5, Michael Jackson loomed over the pop landscape like no one before. Thriller, Off The Wall and Bad rank as three of the greatest pop albums of all time. But more than just the music, Jackson understood the value of spectacle in pop entertainment, and his own life took on a mythical quality. Sure, the fall in the '90s was fast and hard, but Rhapsody would like to take this moment to remember the numerous career highlights from the King of Pop.

	LISTEN: Michael Jackson’s pinnacle, the unforgettable Thriller		PLAY: MJ’s best songs not on Thriller
	REMEMBER: Our Editors reflect on the man, the music and his legacy		FAMILY: The greatest music from the Jackson clan
	DISCOVER: Songs from Aaliyah, Jay-Z, Kanye and Bjork that sampled MJ		READ: The Top 25 Pop Albums of the 1980s

R.I.P. Jay Bennett

2009-05-29T06:07:59Z

I saw Jay Bennett perform just one time apart from his seven-year stint with Wilco at a Detroit dive called the Lager House, in the shadow of the abandoned Tigers Stadium. For me, a huge fan of Bennett's contributions to Wilco and his first solo record, The Palace at 4am, the performance was hugely deflating -- a drunken mess of bluesy, distorted bar-band rock that seemed completely incongruous with the subtle genius who made Wilco records come to life. Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy's greatest talent has always been the ability to surround himself with the right musicians, and Bennett's holistic, high-minded approach as the multi-instrumentalist yielded both artists' best work. But that was hardly the Bennett that showed up that night in Detroit; the blown-out versions of tunes from The Palace at 4am grew more defiant as the room grew emptier, ensuring that Bennett would capture onlythe most determined of Wilco's audience who had turned up. Foolishly, I left early.

When Bennett was found dead last weekend, the news murmured through the Sasquatch Music Festival in central Washington State. The cause of death is still unknown, but the circumstances of a public quarrel with his old band followed the news closely. Recently, Bennett had filed a lawsuit against Tweedy for breach of contract and unpaid artist's royalties, stemming in part from his role in a 2002 documentary about Wilco, in which he was unflatteringly portrayed. Even though he was on a recording tear at his studio, Pieholden Studios (named for a Wilco song), and enrolled in post-graduate classes at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (an institution where he'd already earned numerous degrees), his health wasn't good; he was also about to have hip-replacement surgery and the timing of the surgery was linked to the lawsuit in message boards.

But as Wilco fans return to Bennett's recordings, it's clear that his legacy won't be darkened by the clouds that hung over his late life. His legacy is that of a selfless, brilliant musician better at playing other people's songs than his own (many of his songs turn out overly crowded with ideas). He was the brains behind the decade's brainiest band, and an arranger who could transform Jeff Tweedy's occasionally obtuse treatises on yuppie discontent into sparkling, profoundly universal statements. It was this ability -- to see into the guts of a song and infuse it with just the right sound -- that made the musical settings for songs written by Woody Guthrie on the Mermaid Avenue recordings pitch-perfect. In celebration of his stunning career, we revisit some of Bennett's greatest musical moments.

Remembering John Martyn

2009-01-30T22:45:42Z

Nick Drake was a genius. There's no doubt about it. But he was a tad too effete for my taste -- a private school flower sprung from the gardens of classic literature and fine poetry. That’s not my world. I’m a clumsy, sentimental dude who shakes hands firmly with phrases like "Be a man about it” and "You’re my girl." This is why I mourn the death of Brit folk icon John Martyn, who died from pneumonia on January 29, thus joining his old pal Nick. Martyn's was an art that spoke to me: funky blues music for lovers that reeks of sex, booze and tears. Here was a guy who once referred to marijuana as "mary jane" because that’s what he actually called the stuff.

I don’t want to say Martyn sang from the heart; that implies I somehow know his essence. But he definitely sounded as if he did. The man could emote like nobody’s business. And yet Martyn was a profoundly avant garde individual, far more so than just about any singer-songwriter of his generation. Anybody who digs What's Going On?, Astral Weeksand There’s a Riot Goin’ On has to track down cult classics like Solid Air and the harrowing Grace & Danger (recorded while Martyn's marriage to singer and collaborator Beverly Martyn fell apart). Both albums are the creations of an artist dissolving the lines between folk, soul, free jazz, ambient electronic music and even dub.

For a long time it seemed as if the only musicians who understood what Martyn was up to were fellow mavericks like Arthur Russell, Talk Talk and Portishead. Nowadays, however, just about anybody tinkering with acoustic guitars and programmed beats -- and there are a lot -- seem to be nicking tricks from the guy. That's cool and all. But in the end there will only ever be one John Martyn. Rest in peace.

R.I.P. MC Breed

2008-11-24T22:05:39Z

Although he never reached the heights of stardom like other Midwest rappers such as Kanye West, Common and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Eric �MC Breed� Breed, who passed away from kidney failure this past Saturday at the age of 37, was a pioneer in his own right.

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Born in Flint, Michigan, Breed became the first commercially successful rapper to come out of the Midwest, scoring national hits with 1991�s �Ain�t No Future in Yo� Frontin�� and �Gotta Get Mine,� featuring Tupac Shakur. The latter�s unremorseful attitude gives a glimpse into the determination that allowed Breed to break down hip-hop�s geographical borders. Although he achieved modest success after that with a string of independent releases, his two biggest songs laid the foundation for the influx of talent that has become such a huge part of hip-hop and pop culture today. At the time of his death, he was reportedly working on a new album, MC Breed � The Original Swag, with Too Short, Erotic D, Ant Banks and the D.O.C.

R.I.P. Levi Stubbs (1936-2007)

2008-10-18T00:35:01Z

Fans of any '60s icon share a similar gripe: the legacy of too many great artists is inextricably tied to too few of their songs in heavy rotation on oldies stations. These select tracks get played and played out, and eventually even the lifelong Beatles fan reaches for the dial during the third daily course of "Yellow Submarine." Today, I cued up the Four Tops after reading about the passing of the band's leader, Levi Stubbs, who died in his sleep in his Detroit home at the age of 72, and was reminded about how this predicament is particularly hard on the stable of artists from '60s Motown: The Jackson 5 is relegated to "I'll Be There"; Stevie Wonder, a Motown artist with as deep and wide-ranging catalog of any, is on three times an afternoon with "For Once in My Life." For the Four Tops, the heavy-rotation hits come between 1964's "Baby, I Need Your Loving" and their final Top 10 in 1973, "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got)." Of the handful of stuff between these bookends, some, like The Big Chill-approved "It's the Same Old Song," represent Motown's streamlined mainstream operation. Others, like "Reach Out, I'll Be There," speak to the group's power in the studio. But it's the outlying, oddly successful hit "Bernadette," a tune that is among their most popular and their most enduring, that best demonstrates Stubbs' power as a performer. It's the rare example of a heavy-rotation hit that lives up to its responsibilities.

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The quality of "Bernadette" -- a Holland-Dozier-Holland song we've all heard how many times? 1,000? 10,000? -- isn't much like most other candy-ass stuff that Barry Gordy had successfully hocked to white teens through the early part of the '60s. It's scary and hateful. It's desperate. The last Four Tops hit of the decade, the song's central character comes alive in Stubbs' vocal, seething with jealousy and anger, allowing his possessive, hateful anguish to send his voice shredding into the rafters. As he flies off the handle, the other Tops -- Duke Fakir, Obie Benson and Lawrence Payton -- spell out their own deep anxiety in their tortured, wordless counter melody. It churns along to the relentless hammering of the snare drum and piano, increasingly shrill, unyielding, until it meets the ghostly exclamation point (nearly a scream!) of the Andantes, Motown's go-to lady back up singers, at the end of each verse. About two minutes deep, Stubbs' voice cracks while demanding, "Keep on lovin' me!" Then, there's another bizarrely perfect element � a brief moment of silence � before he's back at her throat, standing in the street, screaming her name. "Bernadette" has been playing on repeat since I started writing this, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. 10,000 times later, it'll have the same effect.

Are there countless other examples of Stubbs performing with such iconic, singular intensity? Certainly -- both on other hits ("Reach Out") and the plethora of B-sides and scrapped sessions that only came to light in the last decade. Stubbs' version of the Beatles' "Elenor Rigby" has all the bleak loneliness of the original, but he endows it with a soulful, cocksure strut, as if he's lonely and trying to convince you that he couldn't care less. In this -- the ability to deliver the spirit of these tunes, to own them, to entreat them with "guts and ass," as Bukowski once admired -- is the essence of Levi Stubbs' legacy. And it's one that, in his passing, is not only of a great artist, but also a hero of anyone who's ever stood out in the street, desperate or elated, flushed with passion or rage, looking for their voice.

R.I.P. Manny Farber, Poptimist Critic (1917-2008)

2008-08-21T19:31:00Z

by Chuck Eddy

"Manny Farber, a painter whose spiky, impassioned film criticism waged war against sacred cows like Orson Welles and elevated American genre-movie directors like Howard Hawks and Sam Fuller to the Hollywood pantheon, died on Monday at his home in Leucadia, Calif. He was 91...In a famous essay for Film Culture magazine in 1962, “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art,” he lambasted the portentous, meaning-laden cinema of Welles and his progeny and praised the freewheeling, instinctive work of underrated directors of crime, western and horror films." -- William Grimes, New York Times, August 20, 2008.

]]> "The best examples of termite art appear in places other than films, where the spotlight of culture is no where in evidence, so that the craftsmen can be ornery, wasteful, stubbornly self-involved, doing go-for-broke and not caring what comes of it. " -- Manny Farber, 1962.

"White elephant art these days means Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, H�sker D�, PiL, Big Audio Dynamite: over-the-hill bastards going through the motions for the bucks and the sucks. Ignoramuses disguised as experts lap up the alleged manna, then give Tom Scholz sh*t." -- Chuck Eddy, review of Boston's Third Stage, Village Voice, November 26, 1988.

"Radio is a good, weird machine," Greil Marcus insisted last year, and this year the theme was reflected in the singles lists of many critics who've never met--for instance, Frank Kogan, Rob Tannenbaum, Chuck Eddy, and Ted Cox. All were Amerindie partisans five years ago, and to an extent they still are, with Cox and Tannenbaum in the Lobos-to-H�skers tributary and Eddy and Kogan down with noise bands like White Zombie and Pussy Galore. But for singles they listen to the radio and get off on getting manipulated. Cox and Tannenbaum go for pop-to-schlock, Fleetwood Mac or Eddie Money, while Eddy and Kogan list a lot of street-rap. But all fell for diva/girl dance records that five years ago they almost certainly would have dismissed as, dare I say it, disco: Whitney Houston, Deborah Allen, Company B, Expos�." -- Robert Christgau, Village Voice, 1987 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll essay.

"I've been hiding in your walls and plotting with your mouse. I'm hungry, and I'm gonna eat your house." -- Woodbox Gang, "Termite Song," 2008.

"Punks came around and spat at their Woodstock-worshiping elders; they evolved into indie rockers, a new establishment. Hip-hop produced a separate critical stream complete with its own brand of purists. This 1980s generation has lately been taken down by younger poptimists, who argue that lovers of underground rock are elitists for not embracing the more multicultural mainstream... Prefer Ray LaMontagne to Toby Keith? You're an NPR-listening square! Irritated by T-Pain? You're a Luddite! Sick of Fergie? You're sexist!" -- Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2008.

Strangely, Ann does not name names. Who are these youngsters, anyway? Do they really call underground rock fans 'elitists'? Where, exactly, have they done this? Are there really critics out there who make a rule of privileging music that they consider inauthentic and that only features guitars if the act didn’t play them or lyrics if the act didn’t write them, and who look down on all music by important artists considered part of the historical canon? Or might such critics more likely be figments of somebody’s paranoid imagination? And beyond all that, what exactly are today's poptimist whippersnappers doing that, oh I dunno, Chuck Eddy and Frank Kogan and Rob Tannenbaum and Ted Cox and Michael Freedberg and Davitt Sigerson and Deborah Frost and John Leland and Barry Walters and Phil Dellio and Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer and Robert Christgau, say, hadn't done long before Ann's mythic "1980s generation" came along?

Not to mention Manny Farber. I'm just saying.

So Long, Soul Man: An Isaac Hayes Appreciation

2008-08-11T17:59:41Z

by Chuck Eddy

Isaac Hayes never could say goodbye. And if few of us anticipated that the Black Moses would finally cross over to the other side -- on Sunday, as has been widely reported, his wife discovered his body next to a still-running treadmill in their suburban Memphis home, and he was pronounced dead an hour later -- maybe it's because he always gave the impression that he could last forever. In fact, that was the main point of some of his best music.

]]> When people say Hayes' early '70s recordings anticipated -- maybe even invented -- disco, this is part of what they're talking about. Of course, they're also talking about how the epochal wah-wah of 1971's "Theme From Shaft" so obsessively turned funk rhythms mechanistic; if there's ever been a more inexorable No. 1 pop single, I don' t know what it would be. But his more-lasting disco innovation was to expand the soul-dance beat toward eternity. On albums (not "EPs," despite claims on his Rhapsody page) like Hot Buttered Soul (1969), The Isaac Hayes Movement (1970) and Joy (1973), Hayes used potentially infinite foreplay and spoken seduction to stretch pop standards past the nine-minute mark: "I Stand Accused" lasts 11:30, "Walk On By" and "Something" 12:00, "Joy" 15:15, the incomparable "By The Time I Get to Phoenix" an impossible 18:40. Psychedelic rock bands were breaking radio-enforced time barriers back then, too, and James Brown had undoubtedly initiated the idea from a funk standpoint. But Hayes contributed a lushness that disco would pick up and run with; the trick was that, once the groove got going (and going and going), you could layer most anything else on top: strings, saxes, sex sounds, down-home guitar, offhand aesthetic comments about bringing it all down to soulsville.

Listen to the disembodied and repetitive female vocal chants in "Part Time Love," off Isaac Hayes at Wattstax (recorded at a historical mega-concert at the L.A. Coliseum in August 1972), and you're hearing a more heavy-metal version of a sound that acts like Silver Convention would turn into Eurodisco three years later. And Isaac got to rap music before rappers did, too. Most of his "raps" were patiently paced monologues designed to lure you into bed (which apparently sometimes worked); in October 1979, a month before the Sugarhill Gang charted with "Rapper's Delight," Isaac and Millie Jackson even hit No. 80 on Billboard with an album called Royal Rappin's. But 1971's "Good Love" definitely hinted at rap in the '80s sense. Hayes' sartorial style -- bedecked in chains that harked back to slavery while forecasting bling to be -- has to be considered a hip-hop antecedent as well. And as this link details, his rhythms provided a foundation on which scores of rappers since have staked their claims.

There are those, of course, who insist the man's most important work was done with David Porter, before the '70s even started, and I sympathize with them -- though, sorry, not with crazy people who think 1998's "Chocolate Salty Balls" from South Park was some kind of career pinnacle. ("Black Lassie" -- Cheech & Chong imagining Johnny Cash rewriting "Shaft" as an tribute to a "great American dog" -- always seemed funnier to me). But his session and songwriting work for Sam and Dave, Carla Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, people like that? Sure, why not. The best 2008 version of an Isaac Hayes number just might be Ted Nugent's barbecue-fed "Soul Man," off his live Sweden Rocks. And this also seems like a good place to point out, since you're unlikely to read it anywhere else, what an awesome year for Isaac Hayes songs 1979 was: ZZ Top's "I Thank You"; Rachel Sweet's "B-A-B-Y"; Isaac's own always-underrated, funkabilly-disco Top 20 pop cover of Jesse Stone's "Don't Let Go." (The Blues Brothers' iffier "Soul Man," which technically hit the charts in December 1978, doesn't count.)

So put Isaac Hayes in the lineage of hard rock, too; he deserves it. He's the cat who wouldn't cop out when there was danger all about. He didn't have to shake us like he did, but he did. And we thank him.

R.I.P. George Carlin (1937-2008)

2008-06-23T17:50:45Z

by Chuck Eddy

It's become this ridiculous clich� in recent years to pretend that "such and such people were the rock stars of their day," whatever that's supposed to mean. Just over the weekend, I saw the claim bestowed upon both early '60s advertising bigwigs (in a New York Times Sunday magazine piece about the TV series Mad Men) and old-time magicians (on Antiques Roadshow). But this morning, when I learned George Carlin had succumbed to heart failure Sunday evening in Santa Monica at the age of 71, the obits reminded me of something -- back in suburban Detroit, in 1974, when I was fresh out of eighth grade at Our Lady of Refuge, this fellow lapsed Catholic seemed to me like a bigger rock star than any rock star I could name, give or take maybe Elton John. And when you think about it, it was guys like Carlin and Cheech and Chong and Richard Pryor whose Watergate-era bullsh*t-detection and post-hippie potty mouths set the stage for what rock music -- or, even more maybe, hip-hop -- would eventually evolve into. So if George Carlin wasn't the rock star of his day, maybe spouting the seven words you can't say on television made him a rap star, at least.

]]> In high school, I bought copies of Carlin's FM & AM, Class Clown, Occupation: Foole!, and possibly Toledo Window Box before I'd purchased almost any albums with actual music on them. And it's easy to imagine that the Beastie Boys, say, must have been taking notes at some point as well. Between 1972 and 1975, five of his albums made the Top 40 in the United States. And while he never would attain such chart heights again, that probably has as much to do with the evolution of the entertainment industry as with his own work, which in some ways only continued to become more topically focused as time went on. "People used to say albums were hot, then they were cold, then they were hot for comedians," Carlin told Billboard's Chris Walsh, in an interview I edited last year. "There's just too much going on in the popular culture for that to work -- too many things competing for people's attention."

Discussing drugs or Catholicism or the 10 commandments or yeast infections or underarm farts, Carlin's humor was ultimately life-affirming even when he would end up naming albums Life Is Worth Losing; he insisted he was a skeptic, but not a cynic. Last year, according to that Billboard piece, he was still doing 80 live dates a year, after half a century in show business; MPI Home Video commemorated the landmark with a 14-disc DVD box, spanning his career. "It's very interesting to have lived through the golden age of radio, the golden age of television, the golden age of movies, the golden age of American popular standard music," he told Billboard's Walsh. "It's fun to live life."

Carlin, by all accounts, lived a full one. And when it comes to those seven words, "tits" still doesn't belong on the list.

Bo's Unsinkable Beat: Boom Chucka-Chucka-Chucka-Chucka Boom-Boom's Greatest Hits

2008-06-03T14:48:48Z

by Chuck Eddy

Bo Diddley, who died Monday at 79, inherited a beat that's been traced back through the '30s fieldworker blues chant "Chevrolet" to the millenium-old West African rhythm Kpanlogo, and he helped invent rock 'n' roll, funk, hard rock, disco, heavy metal, '80s pop, new country and rap music with it. (Via talk-rhymed first-person braggadocio in the latter case -- and "Say Man" has to count as one of the original dis records.)

]]> In tribute to the great man's passing, here's a wide-ranging, five-decade-spanning selection of landmark musical moments that his beat made possible:

Buddy Holly, "Not Fade Away" (1957)

Mickey and Sylvia, "Love Is Strange" (1957)

Johnny Otis, "Willie and the Hand Jive" (1958)

Elvis Presley, "Marie's the Name (His Latest Flame)" (1961)

Chuck Berry, "Chuck's Beat" (1964)

The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away" (1964)

The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy" (1965)

Donovan, "Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)" (1966)

The Stooges, "1969" and "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (1969)

Hello, "New York Groove" (1975)

Clarence Gatemouth Brown, "Mama Mambo" (1976)

Ace Frehley, "New York Groove" (1978)

REO Speedwagon, "Don't Let Him Go" (1981)

Bow Wow Wow, "I Want Candy" (1982)

George Michael, "Faith" (1987)

Guns N' Roses, "Mr. Brownstone" (1987)

Lila McCann, "Down Came a Blackbird" (1997)

Jimmy Ray, "Are You Jimmy Ray?" (1998)

Savage Garden, "The Animal Song" (1999)

KT Tunstall, "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" (2005)

Big & Rich, "Jalapeno" (2005)

Carrie Underwood, "We're Young and Beautiful" (2005)

Redhill, "I Can Make It" (2006)

Disclaimer: Only minutes after I finished compiling this, I noticed that Ben Ratliff at the New York Times had posted a similar list online Monday, with a good deal of overlap. Maybe there's other lists up there somewhere, too. If I were you, I'd use them all.

R.I.P. Bo Diddley (1928-2008)

2008-06-02T19:41:06Z

Bo Diddley�s pre-language rock 'n' roll rhythm, the �Bo Diddley Beat,� was permanently embedded in the human consciousness in 1955 when Ellas Otha Bates (a.k.a. Ellas McDaniel, a.k.a. Bo Diddley) appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show playing it, instead of the Tennessee Ernie Ford song he had agreed to perform. The rest is indeed history as Diddley remains one of the three most important figures in the creation of rock 'n' roll and its subsequent offshoots. Like Chuck Berry's and Little Richard�s, Diddley�s influence was pervasive, and instrumental in the formation of the rock vocabulary -- legend has it that early Rolling Stones shows featured the band simply playing the "Bo Diddley Beat" for the entire night to a roomful of ecstatic kids.

]]> In addition to contributing his trademark rhythm, Diddley was also constantly experimenting with the sonic possibilities of his guitar, often physically manipulating the fretboard and strings way before Jimi (check him four and a half minutes into �Chuck�s Beat,� a jam featuring him and Chuck Berry dueling in studio, off of Berry�s Chess Box), totally overworking the reverb knobs and using early effects pedals to create an utterly distinctive and often otherworldly, almost psychedelic sound. Despite a lull in popularity with the waning of the rock 'n' roll era he had a hand in launching, Diddley was revered and active his whole life, recording and touring up until a stroke slowed him down in 2002, appearing in commercials and devoting much time and energy to various Katrina Relief projects. The 79-year-old mammoth figure of modern music may have died of heart failure yesterday but he staked a claim to eternity long ago.

Further Listening:
Bo Diddley Playlist

Play It Now

No Depression for You

2008-03-05T16:49:10Z

by Chuck Eddy

In a February seemingly loaded with music obituaries - reggae pioneer Joe Gibbs, drum legend Buddy Miles, Christian-rock godfather Larry Norman, crunk haven TVT Records - one of the more discouraging was the 13-year-old roots Americana magazine No Depression.

]]> I should confess here that I’d never been an especially vocal fan of the publication; actually, I was just the opposite. In an online forum in 2005, I complained that “its aesthetic is defined by bizarre genteel middlebrow folkie delusions about tastefulness.” The week the magazine folded, contributor Roy Kasten wrote a smart and moving blog obit claiming that “ND did attempt to cover a broader range of American music than any single music magazine on the racks." But that claim stretches the truth a bit. To me, No Depression seemed more defined by what it wouldn't cover (especially toward country music's more commercial end) than by its openness to different genres.

In fact, ND always struck me as one of the main guardians of a faulty line of thinking that New York Times pop music critic Kelefa Sanneh singled out in a Sunday NYT piece on Alan Jackson a few days after the magazine folded. “Mainstream country singers like [Jackson] are routinely written off or ignored by listeners and critics who claim to champion the real thing,” Sanneh wrote. “No profile of a quirky singer-songwriter or an aging pioneer is complete without a lazy swipe at the supposed intolerance of the Nashville plutocracy or the cravenness of country-radio programmers.”

That’s the alt-country stance in a nutshell, and I’ve never bought it. On the other hand, ND seemed to have somewhat softened its anti-Nashville prejudices in the past couple years (by putting Miranda Lambert on the cover, for instance), and alt-country and Nash-country have seemingly been moving closer together lately. Not sure whether the editors approved of Alan Jackson, but I get the idea that whatever concessions ND had begun making to present-day Nashville may have been too little, too late. Or maybe it’s just that, as the craft behind Nashville product kept getting harder to deny, the magazine couldn’t find an enemy worth fighting anymore.

Regardless. As much as I’d personally quibble with No Depression’s aesthetic, a lot of thought clearly went into its pages, and it's sad to see it fall by the wayside: bad news, in fact, for music criticism in general. There are definitely worse sins out there, especially these days, than being skeptical about stuff the music biz shovels at you. Here’s hoping those involved land on their feet.

R.I.P. Steve "Static" Garrett (1974-2008)

2008-02-28T16:14:41Z

by Chris Ryan

On Monday, February 25, songwriter Stephen "Static" Garret died of an apparent brain aneurysm, robbing pop music of one its most articulate and sensitive voices, even if his own voice was rarely heard.

]]> Born in Louisville, Garrett first made his name as a member of the late-'90s R&B group Playa, where he developed his prodigious skills as a songwriter. When Playa disbanded, Garrett became an in-house hit machine for Timbaland and Missy Elliott's Blackground Music.

It was through his affiliation with Tim and Missy that Garrett found his muse in the rising R&B star Aaliyah. Filling Aaliyah's whisper with heartache, Garrett penned indelible, bedroom dramas that expressed weary and tear-stained sentiments, filled with longing and unchained melody.

Their collaboration, along with some of Timbaland's most groundbreaking tracks, produced contemporary classics such as "Are You That Somebody," "Rock Da Boat" and, perhaps their masterpiece, "We Need a Resolution," which surgically dissected the dissolution of a relationship with Garrett's words ("Where were you last night?/I fell asleep on the couch ... I want to know/Where were you instead?") acting as the scalpel.

In a statement released by Blackground, Garrett's friend and fellow R&B artist Tank said, "We have lost one of the great songwriters of our time." In addition to his work with Aaliyah, Garrett penned the dance-floor monster, "Pony" for Ginuwine, as well as "Say My Name (Timbaland Remix)" for Destiny's Child. He also worked with David Banner, Jay-Z, and most recently, Lil' Wayne.

Garrett, who leaves behind a wife and four children, was, at the time of his death, preparing his solo debut under the moniker Static/Major. But even if those songs never see the light of day, his other work, unlike the fading love found in his Aaliyah songs, will live forever.

R.I.P. Teo Macero & Joe Gibbs

2008-02-26T00:01:02Z

by Piotr Orlov

Behold, a requiem for the music producer! In 2008, when pretty much any Tom, Dick or Harriet with a Pro Tools set-up and some decent microphones could finagle a �produced by� credit onto the meta-data file of a digital release, let�s take a moment to pay homage to a pair of gentlemen who worked a little harder in creating great music. It wasn�t just different skill sets or historical perspectives that separated Teo Macero and Joe Gibbs from the multitudes of today�s whippersnappers. Macero, who passed away after a long illness on February 19 at the age of 82, and Gibbs, who died of a sudden heart attack on February 21 at the age of 65, also possessed visions (sonic, aesthetic, hell, even commercial) they could share with their collaborators and guide them to a new place. Rare gifts in the age of press-and-record.

]]> Macero�s story is more famous because its other central character is known by a single name � Miles! � and because Teo�s breakthroughs initiated a revolution that continues unabated. Yes, he was a talented saxophonist and a successful house producer at Columbia Records, responsible for recording such huge jazz albums as Davis� epochal Kind of Blue and Dave Brubeck�s Time Out. Still, these historically pale next to the journey Macero first undertook in 1968, recording long-form jams by Davis� increasingly electric band, and re-cutting these tapes into whole new compositions. (See: In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, On the Corner, etc.) Such meticulous post-production techniques spelled the end of chronological narrative in music more than a year before 16-track studios existed. In that first step towards a sonic (some would demean, artificial) freedom, imaginative listeners could already glean the impending use of studios as instruments and the rise of audio collages � strategems that would mark some of the best music of the next 40 years. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that � give or take Edgar Varese, Karlheinz Stockhausen or a couple other Darmstadt associates � Teo Macero�s vision helped break down space, place and time for all musicians that followed.

One sonic movement Macero unintentionally forecast is Jamaican dub. Forever associated with the genius of King Tubby and the madness of Lee "Scratch" Perry, �70s dub was also the province of Errol Thompson and Joe Gibbs. Gibbs got into the production game the same way many in mid-�60s Kingston did: start a record shop, then set up recording equipment in the back. Through a smattering of rocksteady and early reggae smashes, Gibbs ran a hitmaking machine that adapted to changes in taste and style. (Among them: Roy Shirley�s �Hold Them,� Nicky Thomas� �Love of the Common People� and Peter Tosh�s �Maga Dog.�) But it was when Gibbs teamed up with Thompson (as The Mighty Two) in �72, and set up a house band called the Professionals, which included the young drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare, that their sound became a cornerstone of reggae. With Thompson at the mixing board co-founding the dub wing � check their excellent African Dub series � Gibbs� steely and sleak productions helped define the music�s golden decade. From the conscious apocalypse of Culture�s Two Sevens Clash to the playfully serious �strictly roots� of Althea and Donna�s Uptown Top Ranking, Gibbs combined aesthetic judgement and commercial appeal, lighting the artistic beacon and racking up one Jamaican No.1 after another. Another vision for another version.

Further listening:
Remembering Teo Macero, (Rhapsody playlist)
Remembering Joe Gibbs (Rhapsody playlist)

Further reading:
Teo Macero obituary (New York Times)
Joe Gibbs obituary (The Guardian music blog)
Teo Macero interview, September '97 (Perfect Sound Forever)