Here's my 2018 post about Aretha Franklin from 2018, when she died at 76. The post has videos, music … and Elton John's reaction:
The loss of @ArethaFranklin is a blow for everybody who loves real music: Music from the heart, the soul and the Church. Her voice was unique, her piano playing underrated – she was one of my favourite pianists. … I adored her and worshipped her talent. … We shared the same birthday – and that meant so much to me.
"I'm sorry I couldn't have spoken to the young man," Cohen said of Cobain, recognizing some of his own past excesses in Cobain's downfall. "I see a lot of people at the Zen Center, who have gone through drugs and found a way out that is not just Sunday school. There are always alternatives, and I might have been able to lay something on him. Or maybe not."
[UPDATE: I originally said Soundgarden released their third album, Badmotorfinger, on the same day — which is what Wikipedia said on September 24. But later, Soundgarden did a Facebook post admitting that they had caused the wrong info to be put on Wikipedia. It was scheduled to be released that day, but it was postponed to October 8, 1991 because the band insisted on changing the album's front and back covers. You can see the original cover art in their Facebook post.]
All three albums were commercial and artistic breakthroughs for those bands.
They're the kind of album you listen to straight through, not skipping any tracks, because each one feels essential, from the hits to the songs you might have forgotten about but are happy to hear when they come on (Nirvana's "Lounge Act," RHCP's "My Lovely Man," Soundgarden's "Somewhere").
Nevermind has been celebrated for bringing an entire genre into
the mainstream and signaling an authenticity-driven reaction against
synth-heavy '80s music, even though the album itself has been criticized
(including by Kurt Cobain) for being too slickly produced.
Nirvana thought "Lithium" was the song that would break them into the mainstream. They never expected it to be overshadowed by you-know-what …
Two features of this song make it stand out as one of Nirvana's best. One is the lyrics, which were unusually clear for Cobain. "I'm so happy, 'cause today I've found my friends. They're in my head. I'm so ugly, that's OK, 'cause so are you. We broke our mirrors." There's so much you can read into that word, "ugly."
The other thing is Krist Novoselic's bassline. While the guitar part in the verse starts at the bottom and climbs upward, the bass starts at the top and descends. He wasn't a flashy bassist who drew attention to himself, but he gave extra attention to this song. He also does some tasteful noodling in the "I'm not gonna crack" section.
The chorus of "In Bloom" is brilliantly self-referential in mocking the whole idea of a band with fans, while being more lovable than that concept sounds. "He's the one who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along … but he knows not what it means …"
"Drain You" was one of Kurt Cobain's favorite Nirvana songs. I love how in the place where you might expect a conventional guitar solo, they instead do an eerie instrumental interlude with disorienting guitar noises and dissonances, culminating in a frenzied crescendo that leads back to the beginning. Grunge genius.
That same day, RHCP put out a 17-song funk masterpiece. "Give It Away" captures the essence of the band: gleefully sexual, deceptively simple, rhythmically infectious.
"Breaking the Girl" is an uncharacteristically acoustic Chili Peppers song with an electrifying percussion break (starting at 3:03). Chad Smith's propulsive drum beat gives a remarkable momentum to the song.
"Under the Bridge" is a haunting portrait of heroin addiction. I get chills when I hear the choir-like backing vocals start to sing: "Under the bridge downtown …" The beautiful interplay of the guitar (John Frusciante) and bass (Flea) at the end is worthy of comparison to George Harrison and Paul McCartney in the Beatles' "Something."
"Power of Equality" kicks the album off with an urgent note of social awareness ("American equality has always been sour"). The Chili Peppers' singer/rapper, Anthony Kiedis, was clearly self-conscious about this white band being indebted to many black musicians: "My lily white ass is tickled pink, when I listen to the music that makes me think." He makes an explicit call for racial harmony: "Death to the message of the Ku Klux Klan!" The song ends with an earnest lament:
People in pain, I do not dig it Change of brain for Mr. Bigot … Misery is not my friend But I'll break before I bend What I see is insanity Whatever happened to humanity?
Soundgarden found their voice with Badmotorfinger, which kicks off with the frenetic "Rusty Cage."
"Slaves and Bulldozers" is a 7-minute epic that sounds like a fearsome machine, with staggering vocals by Chris Cornell.
"Mind Riot" is the relatively poppy side of Soundgarden.
"Outshined" defines the Soundgarden sound and attitude: powerfully heavy, and with a determination to get through life's dark moments.
Focus on the interlude that starts just before 3:00. On the surface, there's not much going on here — no key change, no guitar solo. But a gentle, introspective passage like this to contrast with the heaviness is the kind of thing that elevates a rock song, and distinguished Soundgarden from other bands of the time.
Mary Wilson, a founding member of the Supremes, the trailblazing group from the 1960s that spun up a dozen No.
1 singles on the musical charts and was key to Motown’s legendary
sound, died on Monday…. She was 76.… No cause of death was given.…
Although the Supremes faced difficulties in reaching success early
stages in their careers, [sic] their song “When the Lovelight Starts Shining
Through His Eyes” peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard pop chart in 1963.
Then came five consecutive No. 1 singles: “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Baby
Love,” “Come See About Me,” “Stop! In the Name of Love” and “Back in My
Arms Again.” …
The Supremes “transcend adolescence without repudiating it,” an article in The New York Times read in 1967, adding, “Their audience spans ages and taste barriers.”
By that year, the group had undergone
another change. Ms. Ballard was replaced by Cindy Birdsong and the group
was renamed “Diana Ross and the Supremes.” Ms. Ross left the group in
1970, and was replaced by Jean Terrell, leaving Ms. Wilson as the last
remaining original member.
The influence the Supremes had on Black
girls and women across America in the 1960s was undeniable. “You never
saw anything like it in the 1960s — three women of color who were
totally empowered, creative, imaginative,” Oprah Winfrey was quoted as
saying in “Diana Ross: A Biography,” by J. Randy Taraborrelli. As a
10-year-old Black girl, she said, “to see the Supremes and know that it
was possible to be like them, that Black people could do THAT … ”
And
the Supremes have influenced countless musical acts and girl groups
like Destiny’s Child, En Vogue and SWV, many of them borrowing from
their playbook and producing pop stars in their own right.
“We, the Supremes, can’t take all the credit,” Ms. Wilson told The Guardian in 2019.
“The writers and producers at Motown gave us the music and sound that
people loved. And then there was the glamour. My whole life is like a
dream. I tell you — if I were not a Supreme, I would want to be a
Supreme.”
Goodbye to Mary Wilson of the Supremes — one of the most important pop groups of all time.
(Left to right: Mary Wilson, Diana Ross, and Cindy Birdsong. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, credited to GAC-General Artists Corporation-IMTI-International Talent Management Inc.)
The Animals' singer, Eric Burden, said: "It really was Hilton who made the early Animals a rock band because I
don’t think the element of rock was in the band until we found him."
According to John Steel, Bob Dylan
told him that when he first heard the Animals' version on his car
radio, he stopped to listen, "jumped out of his car" and "banged on the
bonnet" (the hood of the car), inspiring him to go electric.…
Dave Marsh
described the Animals' take on "The House of the Rising Sun" as "the
first folk-rock hit," sounding "as if they'd connected the ancient
tune to a live wire." Writer Ralph McLean of the BBC
agreed that it was "arguably the first folk rock tune," calling it "a
revolutionary single," after which "the face of modern music was changed
forever."
Wikipedia also points out that it was the first "British Invasion" #1 single "unconnected with the Beatles."
I did this blog post 12 years ago, linking to both of my parents' memories of being in the same city where he died on December 8, 1980.
Both of their posts mention that they named me John when I was born 99 days later. Now I'm almost 40 and I'm living on the Upper West Side, not far from where it happened on West 72nd Street by Central Park. I've walked by there many times, always thinking about it, never quite believing it really happened here.
This was only their first studio album after their breakthrough album, Siamese Dream (1993), and the scope was daunting. 2 discs. 28 songs. Over 2 hours.
People always say a double album should've been cut down to a single album. But there's almost nothing on Mellon Collie that I would've like to see cut. It isn't perfect — maybe they could've replaced the weakest song on each disc with a couple outstanding B-sides. The Smashing Pumpkins have never been perfect. But this album achieved something nothing else in the '90s did. It feels like both an exciting culmination of the alternative rock explosion of the early to mid-'90s, and a poignant goodbye before rock would take a mostly unfortunate turn in the second half of the '90s.
Mellon Collie had several hits, but what makes this album so amazing is that even if you took off all the hits, you'd still be left with more than a whole album's worth of great material.
First, some of the hits:
"Tonight Tonight":
"Bullet with Butterfly Wings":
"1979" (the band's biggest hit and a new direction for them at the time):
Now here are some of the other songs. It's unfathomable to me that these could be seen as "album tracks" or "deep cuts," instead of highlights from the album and band.
40 years ago today, October 8, 1980, was a great day for music.
On that day, Prince released his 3rd album, Dirty Mind. He wrote, produced, sang, and played everything (except for backing vocals on one song and keyboards on a couple songs).
Prince's first two [albums] established him as a doe-eyed romantic.… Nothing, therefore could have prepared us for the liberating lewdness of Dirty Mind.… Dirty Mind jolts with the unsettling tension that arises from rubbing complex erotic wordplay against clean, simple melodies. Across this electric surface glides Prince's graceful quaver, tossing off lyrics with an exhilarating breathlessness. He takes the sweet romanticism of Smokey Robinson and combines it with the powerful vulgate poetry of Richard Pryor. The result is cool music dealing with hot emotions.
Eddie Van Halen, the immensely influential guitarist whose band, Van Halen, was one of the most popular rock acts of all time, died on Tuesday. He was 65.…
Mr. Van Halen’s razzle-dazzle appoach made him the most influential guitarist of his generation. He structured his solos in roughly the same way Macy’s choreographs its Independence Day fireworks shows, shooting rockets of sound into the air that seemed to explode in a shower of light and color. His outpouring of riffs, runs and solos was hyperactive and athletic, joyous and wry, making deeper or darker emotions feel irrelevant.
“Eddie put the smile back in rock guitar at a time when it was all getting a bit broody,” his fellow guitar ace Joe Satriani told Billboard in 2015. “He also scared the hell out of a million guitarists because he was so damn good.”
Mr. Van Halen was most widely revered by his peers for perfecting the technique of two-handed tapping on the guitar neck. That approach allowed him to add new textures, and percussive possibilities, to his instrument, while also making its six strings sound as expressive as a piano’s 88 keys or as changeable as a synthesizer. He received patents for three guitar devices he had created. In 2012, Guitar World Magazine ranked him No. 1 on its list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” ...
His showstopping solo piece ... “Eruption,” [from Van Halen's 1978 self-titled debut album,] showcased his finger-tapping technique, which set a new bar for guitar pyrotechnics. While other guitarists — notably Allan Holdsworth, a major influence — had used this approach before, Mr. Van Halen had noticed that “nobody was going more than just one stretch and one note, real quick,” he said in a 1979 interview that was published 20 years later in Classic Rock magazine. “I hadn’t really seen anyone get into it as far as they could.” ...
In his 1979 interview, Mr. Van Halen clarified his guiding principle for the band. “All we’re trying to do is put excitement back into rock ’n' roll,” he said. “A lot of people seem like they forgot what rock ’n' roll is about. We’re very energetic. We get up there and blaze.”
Here he is play "Eruption" live — a literal guitar “solo,” just him alone:
More from the obit:
“I’m always pushing things past where they’re supposed to be,” Mr. Van Halen told the educational website Zocalo Public Square in 2015. “When ‘Spinal Tap’ was going to 11, I was going to 15,” he said....
The zest in Mr. Van Halen’s playing paired perfectly with the hedonistic songs and persona of his hard-rocking band, Van Halen, whose original lineup featured his brother Alex on pummeling drums, Michael Anthony on thunderous bass and the singer David Lee Roth, who presented a scene-stealing mix of Lothario, peacock and clown.
He played the guitar solo in Michael Jackson's "Beat It" (starting a little more than 3 minutes in):
The New York Times on his early years:
Edward Lodewijk Van Halen was born on Jan. 26, 1955, in Amsterdam to Jan and Eugenia (Beers) Van Halen. His father, a struggling Dutch classical musician who played clarinet, saxophone and piano, met his Indonesian-born wife while on tour in Indonesia.
In 1962, when Mr. Van Halen was 7, his family relocated to the United States, driven away by prejudice against his mother and unfavorable work opportunities in the Netherlands. They settled in Pasadena, Calif. ...
In a new country, with a new language to learn, the Van Halen sons, Eddie and his older brother, Alex, turned to music as their lingua franca. Eddie first studied classical piano, which he excelled at despite a serious limitation.
“I never learned how to read music,” he told Rolling Stone in 1995. “I fooled my teacher for six years. He never knew. I’d watch his fingers, and I’d play it.”
"Lawyers and doctors, they're still 'practicing' — they ain't got it down yet, you know? It's music theory, not music fact. There are no rules. I never learned how to read music. Maybe that's why I'm so twisted and unorthodox. But if I would've taken guitar lessons … I wouldn't do all the silly stuff that I do."
Her cover of "Me and Bobby McGee" (written by Kris Kristofferson) was posthumously released on her 1971 solo album Pearl. Amazing how a song can be so happy, but so sad.
"I would say the overall sound of pop in the last decade or so has been the supertonic.… It's the easiest songwriting trick in the world to just hang out on the supertonic for as long as you want over any chords, and then resolve the tension by just moving up or down one note."
That's what Andrew Huang says in this video. He not only gives a convincing demonstration with a lot of songs, but also explains why this one note has become ubiquitous:
Leo Kottke turns 75 today. This amazing, innovative acoustic guitarist was born on September 11, 1945.
He's known for playing 12-string guitars and slide guitar, and for being influenced by JohnFahey, who launched his career. But Kottke is an original.
Wikipedia on Kottke:
He is known for a fingerpicking style that draws on blues, jazz, and folk music, and for syncopated, polyphonic melodies. He overcame a series of personal obstacles, including partial loss of hearing and a nearly career-ending bout with tendon damage in his right hand, to emerge as a widely recognized master of his instrument.…
As a youth living in Muskogee, Oklahoma, he was influenced by folk and delta blues music, notably that of Mississippi John Hurt. [Video of him.] Kottke learned to play trombone and violin before trying the guitar and developing his own unconventional picking style.
Here's a full concert from 1977:
Kottke is usually at his best playing alone, but here's a great little instrumental he did with a full band, "Uptempo" (also the first song in the concert above):
I highly recommend his 1999 albumOne Guitar, No Vocals, which is exactly what the title says, yet so much more. Here's the first track from the album:
Sonny Rollins, the great tenor saxophonist, turns 90 today.
Wikipedia says:
In a seven-decade career, he has recorded over sixty albums as a leader. A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas," "Oleo," "Doxy," "Pent-Up House," and "Airegin," have become jazz standards.
The phrase "saxophone colossus" regularly comes up when Rollins is discussed – not just because he continues to be one, but because the album of that title was the high point of the astonishing creative breakout he made in 1956. [Click the "St. Thomas" link above for a sample.] Through a succession of improvisational masterpieces that year, his torrential inventiveness began to inspire sax-players everywhere, including John Coltrane. Though he had been the dominant partner in recordings with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk that had begun several years before, it was from early 1956 that Rollins really took off. The saxophonist's personal merging of tenor-founder Coleman Hawkins's big-toned gravitas and harmonic sophistication, Charlie Parker's uptempo intensity, and Lester Young's lyricism opened a new chapter of jazz soloing possibilities on a saxophone. During this period Rollins had joined trumpeter Clifford Brown, pianist Richie Powell, bassist George Morrow and former Charlie Parker drummer Max Roach in a group that, under Roach's and Brown's joint leadership, became one of the standard-bearers of a pungent new jazz style dubbed "hard bop".…
Rollins had immense natural gifts, but he also grew up in Harlem in the
1930s with some of the most famous musicians of the day - including Duke
Ellington and Coleman Hawkins - living around the corner, and pianist
Thelonious Monk was a childhood friend who opened his ears to unusual
melodies and harmony. Rollins led a high school band that included the
Charlie Parker-ish alto saxist Jackie McLean, and Miles Davis was a
regular playing partner between 1949 and 1954.
Here's Rollins and Monk:
Live in Denmark, 1968:
Rollins elevated the Rolling Stones' 1981 song "Waiting on a Friend" into something sublime.
Mick Jagger said:
"I had a lot of trepidation about working with Sonny Rollins. This guy's a giant of the saxophone. [Charlie Watts] said, 'He's never going to want to play on a Rolling Stones record!' I said, 'Yes he is going to want to.' And he did and he was wonderful. I said, 'Would you like me to stay out there in the studio?' He said, 'Yeah, you tell me where you want me to play and DANCE the part out.' So I did that. And that's very important: communication in hand, dance, whatever. You don't have to do a whole ballet, but sometimes that movement of the shoulder tells the guy to kick in on the beat."
Wikipedia says he hasn't played live since 2012 due to health issues. But Sonny Rollins, saxophone colossus, is still living.
Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. Parker was a blazingly fast virtuoso and introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. Primarily a player of the alto saxophone, Bird's tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber.…
Parker was an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat Generation, personifying the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual rather than just an entertainer.
Here's bassist Christian McBride:
Jeff Goldblum, who's an accomplished jazz pianist in addition to being an actor:
President Bill Clinton: "When I was young, I listened over and over to his solos — breaking old patterns, building something new. 60 years later, I'm still in awe of him."
(Photo of Parker, with Miles Davis in the background in 1947, by William P. Gottlieb, in the public domain, via Wikipedia.)
Ringo is the first Beatle to turn 80. Since he was the oldest Beatle, that would still be true if all of the Beatles were alive.
In this video, drummers play Ringo's set and talk about what was so great about his drumming.
Dave Grohl: Define "the best drummer in the world." Is it someone that's technically proficient? Or is it someone that sits in the song with their own feel? Ringo was the king of feel.… You hear his drumming and you know exactly who it is.
Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers): He really had a knack for coming up with really interesting musical parts that became rhythmic hooks.
Here's another video with a more in-depth analysis by Sina. I especially like a minute and a half in, when she plays an example of "what Ringo is not like." She plays a series of flashy beats that she says sound familiar because they've been used in many songs, but you'd be hard-pressed to place them as being from any one song. Then she plays a beat that's clearly distinctive to one Beatles song and would be hard to mistake for anything else.
As an example of Ringo's inventive drumming, here's "She Said She Said." From the beginning, Ringo frequently breaks up the 4/4 beat with drum fills as John Lennon sings about having a conversation. The instruments become more flowing and dreamlike when the time signature switches to 3/4 as John thinks back to his childhood. Ringo blends into the background and plays no fills during that flashback, as a contrast with the disruptive present day in 4/4.
When I posted a list of "my top 20 favorite albums" with a rule of no more than one album per artist, it was a no-brainer to include a Stevie Wonder album. The hard part was deciding which one.
At the end of this post, I've embedded one song from each of those albums, without including any of the hits, because he's about so much more than the hits. He's one of those artists where you have to listen to the full albums from start to finish. Of course he put out a lot of great songs before and after the 1972-76 albums, but those albums stand out. Of all the dozens and dozens of songs on those albums, there isn't a single dud, and there are many buried treasures.
His music from the late '60s onward still holds up well as a pure listening experience, with no need to explain why we should appreciate it or how he fits into the history of anything. At the same time, he's had a ubiquitous influence on the last 50 years of music — so many artists like Prince, Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, etc. It's hard to imagine what pop music would sound like without him.
The combination of songwriting and performing is astounding. Not only did he develop a style of melismatic singing that generations have imitated, but he's also an excellent keyboardist, harmonica player, and drummer.
He's done all that with a physical condition many of us would think of as bringing unfathomable misery to anyone who suffers from it. Yet Stevie Wonder gives the impression that an effusive, impassioned joy flows out of him more naturally than from almost anyone else.
NME reports that while Sen. Bernie Sanders was participating in a Senate committee meeting, the background of his video at home showed "a bass drum head from Prince’s backing band the New Power Generation and a framed Red Hot Chili Peppers tour poster."
I'll bet his favorite Red Hot Chili Peppers song is "Give It Away" and his favorite Prince song is "Free."
