Tag: music

Get ’em out

I would like to apologize in advance, because you’re going to be singing this amazing song for the rest of the evening, whether you want to or not. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll take your pants off, you’ll listen to it 37 straight times.

 He was the king of the jungle now he’s king of my heart 
And I’m Curious George, when did this all start? 
Well my life fell apart when you killed him. 
Man, Harambe was a real one (I miss you)
Yeah, you can’t stop this shine
Cuz I know he’s watching us from the sky

Mind. Blown.

Now, you all know that I love Babymetal, and I thought it was pretty cool that they were playing “Breaking the Law” with Rob Halford of Judas Priest at the Alternative Press Music Awards. So, naturally, I had to check it out. But the last thing I expected was who was going to start playing guitar on stage….

Yui is only strumming along, but Moa can actually play, even though their guitars weren’t mixed very loud, if it all. And Su is obviously having a great time being on stage with Rob Halford.

遠征

Spacebunny heard Babymetal was going to be in Switzerland, a reasonable drive by American Midwestern standards, so she arranged to acquire some tickets as an early Father’s Day present. We prepared accordingly for the drive north… and yes, the bones do actually glow in the dark.

I was not the only one in costume. The various metalheads and headbangers greeted our outfits with distinct approval, as did the natives; cars were honking at us, and more than a few drivers waved and gave us thumbs-ups.

The venue was small and held about 1,000 people, with a stage that wasn’t much bigger than that of 7th Street Entry. The Kami band was great, Yui and Moa were ridiculously cute and hopped around like little Japanese Energizer bunnies, and Su-metal’s voice was surprisingly strong in the live environment. Ironically, the one downside of Babymetal is that the Kami band can be a little too focused on demonstrating their technical chops; they often sacrifice the song structure in order to show they can play as hard and as fast as anyone.

That’s why the audience was a little slow to totally get into it until they played Karate, which is more conventionally structured and has an anthemic quality to it as well as a big pop chorus. When they followed it up with Megitsune, the whole place blew up. There wasn’t enough space to do all the Road of Resistance theatrics properly, but the girls did bring out the black flags and got the crowd into singing along. I was a little disappointed they didn’t do Onedari Daisuken, but they did do Gimme Chocolate from the first album.

My favorite part was when the girls took a break, the two guitarists and the bassist mounted the pillars on which the girls had been standing at the front of the stage, and took turns doing some impressive solos. The two guitarists were very, very good, but the bassist played an Eddie Van Halen-style guitar solo on the bass, which is something I’d never actually seen before. It was a really fun show, and we all had a blast.

Mailvox: and this is me laughing at you

I always find it interesting to observe human behavior whenever I put up a music post. In addition to those who are locked in time and can’t pull their ossified preferences out of the 60s/70s/80s/90s through which they lived their formative years, I’m always somewhat mystified by those who seem to think that discussing music is some sort of competitive sport.

I mean, if instead of discussing the example at hand, your instinct is to say “you know what is even better!” (link), then how are you ever going to analyze or understand anything at all? I just don’t get that.

But what is probably funniest is those who appear to sincerely believe that they just happened to be between the ages of 14 and 19 when the greatest music in the history of mankind was recorded. Not only that, but even the young appreciate this when exposed for the very first time in their lives to music they have certainly never ever heard before and now vastly prefer it to the songs they listened to before, and continue to listen to afterwards.

No, Virginia, Journey is not the musical pinnacle of the human experience. Neither, I am sorry to inform you, is Led Zeppelin, even if “Stairway to Heaven” was the #1 request on KQRS for the 42nd year in a row this year.

(I have to admit, one of the unexpected pleasures of my life has been Millennials expressing a genuine appreciation for the various musical innovations of the 80s while snorting in derision at the lack of creativity, poor production, and technical inferiority of the Classic Rock that was repeatedly shoved down our Generation X throats by the Baby Boomers. Don’t get me wrong, I like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Carry On, My Wayward Son” as much as the next guy, but music from that era now sounds as technologically dated now as the music from the 1950s did in the 1980s.)

As Bill Simmons wrote of basketball, you can respect the classic BMW for doing what it did first while understanding that the modern car is simply a much better automobile across the board. Anyhow, in response to some of the comments.

Sorry, Vox, you have no musical taste whatsoever.

I appreciate everything from Wagner and Vivaldi to Babymetal and DNCE and I can tell you exactly why in each case. But how can all of that compare to Skynrd? FREEBIRD!

I would like to commend you on not allowing your musical taste to age as you do. Too many continue to listen to what was popular when they were teenagers and it is embarrassing when these people attempt to foist their taste on next generation.

I understand why so many people age out, and it is entirely normal, but I find it absurd to dismiss music simply because it happens to have been recorded after you passed the age of caring intensely about music. And it’s particularly stupid to say “X is just Y” because it’s not true. In fact, quite often, X is musically influenced by Y, and Y not only recognizes that, but appreciates it.

Ironically, musicians are much more catholic in their tastes and generous in their praise than most of their fans are. I’ll never forget hearing Tommy Lee waxing on about what great musicians the guys in Duran Duran were, at a time when every Motley Crue fan would have dismissed them out of hand.

This is a joke right? I mean there is nothing funnier in the world then seeing the millennials victimized by their own sick twisted thinking and philosophy. The first thing I thought of when I heard the lyrics was that a Section 8 negro or illegal immigrants stole his car stereo haha…

It seems many of you fail to understand that the songwriter should be judged on how well he manages to evoke the emotion he is expressing rather than how you feel about the emotions being expressed. The mere fact that so many non-Millennials reacted so badly to the Millennial sense of loss and the desire to return to “the good old days” of childhood demonstrates how powerful the songwriting is.

You can learn a lot about a generation by listening to the music of its youth, and you can learn a lot about the history of that time too. It’s almost heartbreaking now to hear the optimism of the early 90s; I can barely stand to listen to the wonderfully intelligent Jesus Jones song, “Right Here, Right Now”, because now we know that we woke up from history only to get run over by the bus it was driving. We thought that we could move any mountain and that something good was going to happen, and we were so absolutely wrong.

Great song, it sounds like they couldn’t make up their mind what genre
they want to be in, so they went with all of them (emo, rock anthem,
trance).

Even more than that. They can do anything from country to early 80s to techno. Moreover, they know it and are not above musically flexing their muscles to flaunt it.

All these songs I’m hearing are so heartless
Don’t trust a perfect person and don’t trust a song that’s flawless
Honest, there’s a few songs on this record that feel common
I’m in constant confrontation with what I want and what is poppin’
In the industry it seems to me that singles on the radio are currency
My creativity’s only free when I’m playin’ shows

They say stay in your lane, boy, lane ,boy
But we go where we want to

They may not be confident about much, but they are certainly secure in their musical abilities and songwriting.

That singer is a whiny little bitch. I prefer Sabaton when I’m lifting weights in the gym.

And then I eat red meat, raw, and throw down a couple of brewskis before I go out and slay some pussy!

I still say he needs a beatdown. It would straighten out his thinking a lot.

This is backwards. They are already beaten down. That is why they are looking backwards rather than forwards. That is also why they are so offensive to the Baby Boomers, who can’t help but react to their implicit rejection of Boomer assumptions and ideals.

In my view, those of previous generations who dismiss Twenty One Pilots for being quintessentially Millennial are completely missing the point and failing to ask the salient question. Why do they express such a sense of loss? What is it that they are missing, what is the yearning in their generation that they express so vividly? There is a depth there that is absent in the vapid self-absorption of Boomer music as well as in the optimism turned bitter of Gen X music, to say nothing of the superficial posturings of more than three decades worth of the musical dead end that is rap.

They may not have the answers, but they are asking the right questions. And they may not be the fighters, but they will raise them.

Seriously good

I don’t mind being older and out of it musically. Every now and then the itch to write and record strikes me, but I haven’t paid any attention to new releases for over a decade, and what I hear at the gym and on the radio seldom gives me any cause to regret that. I liked rap back in the Public Enemy and NWA days, but it really has turned out to be the musical dead end some said it was always bound to be.

Now, I did like “Stressed Out” a lot, but for all its potential to serve as the Millennial anthem, it sounded like just another good one-hit wonder band to me. I mean, “Cake by the Ocean” is even catchier. But then I heard this, which has me going through their entire catalog now, which is surprisingly interesting. “Semiautomatic” and “Lane Boy” are nearly as good, and “House of Gold” is nearly as pretty, but this is just a very, very good song… just be sure to stick with it until the third minute.

I promise you, it doesn’t go where one naturally assumes it will; it’s more than white Millennial emo-rap. And, of course, I can’t help but notice that techno is one of their musical influences or that there are Christian themes woven into their lyrics.

A summary of 2015

While we’re on the subject of music, one of my old NoBoys bandmates runs though the 2015 pop roundup with his a capella group, Face Vocal Band. One of these days, I’ll post a link to the first song he ever wrote, which is a bizarre one about a fish in love with a little girl who visits the sea shore.

There is no room for false modesty

Not where genius is concerned:

Keyboardist Morris Hayes arrived at Paisley Park as a production assistant. Under Prince’s tutelage, he eventually became not just a member of the New Power Generation but the band’s most senior member.

“I was just one of those church cats that played music by ear, so at first it was very difficult for me to keep up. We wouldn’t just learn one song, we’d learn a string of songs, and when we’d come back the next day I’d forget some. I remember he pulled me to the side and said, ‘Are you a genius, Morris?’ I said no. ‘O.K., then write it down. I don’t write it down ‘cause I’m a genius. I’ve got a million of ‘em, and I can remember. But unless you’re a genius, write it down.’ He gave you that extreme focus, where you knew you had to really come with it.”

It’s fascinating that unlike so many gifted individuals, Prince was able to coach less talented and help them improve. I wonder if that might have had something to do with his early relationship with Andre Cymone, his friend from junior high and member of both Grand Central and The Revolution, of whom it was said that he could play everything Prince could play, but only if Prince showed him how to do it first. Speaking of which, this article about his performance at the 2004 ceremony honoring George Harrison tends to support that anecdote as well as put both both his performance and his demeanor in context.

I had no idea that Prince was going to be there. Steve Winwood said, “Hey, Prince is over there.” And I said, “I guess he’s playing with us?”

So I said to Winwood, “I’m going to go over and say hello to him.” I wandered across the stage and I went up to him and I said, “Hi, Prince, it’s nice to meet you — Steve Ferrone.” And he said, “Oh, I know who you are!” Maybe because I’d played on Chaka Khan’s “I Feel for You,” which is a song that he wrote. I went back over and I sat down behind the drum kit, and Winwood was like: “What’s he like? What’d he say?”

Then I was sitting there, and I heard somebody playing a guitar riff from a song that I wrote with Average White Band. And I looked over and Prince was looking right at me and playing that song. And I thought, “Yeah, you actually do know who I am!”

I was actually more surprised that Prince had ever heard anything played by a band called Average White Band than at the fact he would remember a riff from it and be able to play it from memory. But then, they were pretty funky and even I would recognize “Pick up the Pieces”, so I suppose that makes sense.

My favorite part of the Harrison tribute article is how the clueless lead guitarist kept playing the Clapton solos in rehearsal and Prince didn’t make a fuss. He just strummed along, waited for someone else tell the guy to back off, then waited until they were on stage to show him how it’s done. Prince being Prince, I strongly suspect it was his quiet annoyance at the guy’s earlier failure to know his place that drove the unusual nature of his performance that night, particularly because he told the producer to let the guy go ahead and play the middle solo.


“Look, let this guy do what he does, and I’ll just step in at the end. For the end solo, forget the middle solo.”

That wasn’t just genius being expressed on that stage, it was also the contempt of a genius for mere talent and skill. Hey, even geniuses sometimes require motivation.

Billy Gibbons on a fellow guitar player

I thought this was fascinating, being the perspective of one great guitar player on another:

So much has been said about Prince but I do think it’s important to remember that his guitar playing was, I don’t know, just sensational. Tell me how you’d describe it.

Well, to borrow your word, sensational is about as close a description of Prince’s guitar playing as words might allow. I believe that the feeling one was left with, if afforded the luxury of actually seeing Prince perform … we’d be looking for other superlatives. Because it’s almost got to the point of defying description.

You had an interesting encounter with Prince.

It was following the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th anniversary celebration [in 2009]. They had a two night grand hurrah at Madison Square Garden and I was invited to perform with Jeff Beck. And following that appearance, I found myself back at the hotel and I wandered off in search of some late-night grub and my favorite 24-hour joint was shut down for unknown reasons. I tiptoed across the street to the Tiger Bar. I was just standing at the front and I was approached by a rather large gentleman and he said, ‘You’re wanted at the corner table.’ And there was Prince sitting all by his lonesome. And I gave him a brief tip of the hat and sat down and said, ‘Hey man, it’s so good to see you.’ He said, ‘It’s so good to see you. Let’s talk about guitar playing.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ And in the next two hours we really dove into the depth of his intent, interest and focus toward technique and tone. I left that evening even more mesmerized than I’d previously been, just knowing the sincerity that Prince kept toward his playing, his performing and his all-around showmanship.

You’re a little bit older, you come from Texas and I’d imagine you first learned about Prince in the early ’80s, when you were both MTV stars.

As you may remember, he began bubbling up without a lot of advance fanfare. There was just this vague knowledge of this new guy on the scene called Prince. And then, of course, we all got our world rocked when “Purple Rain” showed up at the theaters. Even today, I’m struggling to try and emulate that guitar introduction to “When Doves Cry.” It’s just a testament to his extraordinary technique.

Wait. When you say emulate — you mean you try to play it and you can’t?

I continually come back to attempting to piece together each and every one of those segments. And it’s very short. It’s not an extended solo by any means. But the way it is delivered. There’s certainly no way to write it. You’ve just got to dive in and feel it to see if you could come close.

What I find so interesting about these tributes from famous musicians is that they almost precisely echo what I’d heard from so many less well-known musicians around the Minneapolis scene in the early 1990s. Most of you probably never heard about Power of Seven, which was my short-lived effort to improve the music in the game industry, which ended up in little more than a few soundtracks for SSI and Bungie. But the Seven referred to the seven individuals originally involved, one of whom was Mike Koppelman, who engineered, mixed, and mastered Diamonds and Pearls before going on to found Bitstream Underground.

He, and others like the member of The Revolution who recorded a single with Paul Sebastian before we founded Psykosonik, always spoke about Prince and his attention to detail in awed, almost reverential tones. So, I’m not surprised to hear that even a great guitarist like Billy Gibbons was impressed by his knowledge and technique.

This is why I, and others, find it irritating when people dismiss him as being just a pop star. It’s like calling Mozart just a piano player. There is both talent and skill that goes into both musical performance and composition, and virtuosos of either are extremely rare. An individual who is a true virtuoso of both is practically a unicorn. Then throw in the voice, the multiple instruments, the engineering, the conceptual sensibilities… it’s literally unimaginable to me. I can more easily grasp Julius Caesar or Socrates.

And while one cannot reasonably expect Prince’s music to survive the test of time in the manner that Mozart’s has, one also cannot say that he did not make the most of the incredible talents he was given. Like everyone else who had anything to do with music in Minneapolis, I am absolutely itching to know what is in that vault. It’s been said for literally decades that he was putting his best stuff in there rather than let Warner Bros. have it, and said by some who are known to have actually heard a few of the tracks. And Prince being Prince, the chances are good that quite a lot of it is actually finished work, rather than bits and pieces of various song ideas.

Can you imagine if there is another Purple Rain in there? Or another two or three?

Bleeding purple

It’s not often I miss being in Minnesota. But I would have liked to have been back at First Avenue last night for the party celebrating Prince’s life and music. I can’t think of a better place for it.

I talked to several of my friends from Minnesota over the last day, some of whom are still there and some of whom are not. And it’s been bittersweet to see how all of them, at least to this extent, still bleed purple. It’s a little hard to explain the sense of loss to non-Minnesotans, because it’s simply not about celebrity worship or the death of a popstar, as so many people understandably, but mistakenly, think.

It feels more like losing a cousin of whom you were inordinately proud, in part because he was so proud to bear your name and be a part of your family. Practically everyone I know had some casual connection with Prince, be it a chance encounter somewhere, a friend who worked for him, or a mutual acquaintance. It’s not a very big city, after all.

Minnesota, and Minneapolis in particular, has always had an irrelevancy complex. And not without reason; everyone at my East Coast-populated university seemed to be astonished that Big Chilly and I were not some sort of lumberjacks or farmers, while we were surprised at how… backwards they were, especially with regards to music.

But Prince not only put Minneapolis on the map, he genuinely loved the city, the state, and the people. And in that place, at that time, with that particular demographic mix, people really did genuinely transcend the usual racial issues; it took me several years away from Minnesota and six months in Tokyo to understand that certain differences actually were relevant, and just as importantly, mattered greatly to nearly everyone of any color. Perhaps only in Minnesota would a black man describing someone not liking “his kind” be referring to work habits and not race.

Prince was a part of that, both cause and effect. It was interesting to hear both his manager and some of his black bandmates talk about how growing up in a 95 percent white community affected the development of his music; they listened to KQ92 and all the classic rock just like we did because there simply wasn’t anything else on the radio besides news, classical, and terrible 70s pop on KS95. In Minneapolis, we didn’t even understand the concept of “crossover” music because it was considered normal to have a black bassist in a white band or a white guitarist in a black one; in fact, one of the members of the larval form of Psykosonik was black.

Don’t think I’m saying this as some form of virtue-signaling; you know I
don’t believe in that. I’m simply trying to describe the innocent, and
fundamentally naive, mindset of the time, which is probably not
unrelated today to disastrous things like the settlement of Somalis on the West Bank or Liberians in Coon Rapids. (I know, I know,
oh, the irony.) There is probably an interesting historical study to be done there regarding the optimal level of a minority group in a population.

As for Prince, there was a sort of etiquette everyone understood concerning him. You did NOT make a big deal about him. You didn’t tell him you were a fan, you didn’t tell him you loved his music, and you didn’t take pictures of him, you simply said “hi, Prince”. He would usually smile, accept the homage implicit in the recognition, and go about his business. If he wanted to talk to you, he’d send his bodyguard over to let you know. On more than one occasion, I had to warn out-of-town guests not to react to him being around, but everyone in Minneapolis just seemed to understand that Prince was not to be bothered. Maybe it has to do with the Scandinavian ethic, I don’t know. It’s just how it was.

It is sad that such a beloved son of the city died alone in his incredible studio-mansion. But I have no doubt that he knew his hometown loved him, as the photo above shows. I know many, perhaps even most of you, won’t grasp what Prince meant to his fellow Minnesotans, but even if you don’t, try to understand that we are mourning one of our own.

Minnesota mourns

The artist known as Prince has died. He was 57.


Prince’s body was discovered at his Paisley Park compound in Minnesota early Thursday morning.


Multiple sources connected to the singer confirmed he had passed.

I’m very sorry to hear this. Like many who grew up in Minnesota, his music was the soundtrack to my youth. Playing on stage at First Avenue was surreal, because it was the stage he had owned. Playing on stage at his own club, Glam Slam, was an incredible experience. I met him several times, usually at The Perimeter, and he was unfailingly civil. For a world-famous pop superstar, he was astonishingly approachable, and I never heard anything negative about him from my many friends and acquaintances who encountered him everywhere from the nightclubs and recording studios to the car wash.

There are some people who seem larger than life, and it seems impossible that they can die. Prince Rogers Nelson was a unique musical talent who had a special relationship with his hometown. His music will live on. Here is hoping that his huge collection of unreleased recordings will one day be released to the world.