Blogging, Books, Cats, Music, Mayhem
It’s that time of year. The Christmas tunes are out in full force. For the most part, I’m not a Christmas music stan. I don’t hate it, but a little goes a long way, you know?
But I have a confession… I actually love Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime.” Continue reading “In defense of “Wonderful Christmastime””
Been a bit between posts, so here’s another run at the jukebox for all my readers looking for a few good tunes to pass the time. Some oldies, some goodies, nothing boring and all good for your soul.
This is a melodic psytrance piece that runs seven minutes and never lets up. If I were the Peloton type, I’d definitely queue this one up for a indoor cycling session. But, alas, I am not. So I merely listen to this while typing. Give it a listen on Bandcamp, I think you’ll be hooked.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=1093589695 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]
This isn’t a new release nor is it new to me, but I put this on for the millionth time last night and it’s still just as fresh and enjoyable as the first time I listened to it. This album was a recommendation from a friend in college, who dubbed it to cassette for me. I can still remember popping it into my car stereo driving between Columbia, MO and Kirksville, MO – not knowing what to expect, I wasn’t quite braced for it.
Depending on who you ask this fits into the “country rock,” “alternative country” or “alternative rock” genre. There’s definitely a bit of twang and country influence here, and I’d be shocked if Mark Olson and Gary Louris didn’t have some Lynyrd Skynyrd albums in their collection. But the album really transcends genre, it’s just damn good music.
[youtube https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kGKXzr_-UvUI-9otP8G8i50Kqm3cbvJNM]
Loved the concept, an album with songs inspired by various protocols (FTP, IRC, HTTP, POP3 and Gopher!), but wasn’t sure the execution would live up to it. Turns out, it does. This is great video-gamish music that is fantastic to work to or just enjoy. This is nerd rock at its finest. Ironically it is available as download, vinyl or cassette – but not CD. Sigh. (Can’t argue with the digital download price, though. One Euro is completely reasonable.)
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=238542805 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]
Paul McCartney’s McCartney III was some of the best work that the former Beatle has turned in for quite a while. Clearly he made good use of the quarantine time to put together a fine album, but then did us one better and reached out to a number of contemporary artists to remix/re-imagine songs on the album as McCartney III Imagined.
I absolutely love what Khruangbin (another favorite of mine) have done with “Pretty Boys,” and highly recommend giving it a listen.
[youtube https://youtu.be/K-sjSobYNag]
It’d be amazing to put McCartney and Khruangbin in a studio and go for a full album.
That’s it for me on this installment. What are you listening to these days?
James Jamerson is just one of many session players in the 50s and 60s who went virtually unknown during his lifetime. Even now, after being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, and being featured in a documentary in 2002, he’s still not as well-known as he should be. Especially for a man who influenced Paul McCartney’s bass playing.
I’d never heard of Jamerson before reading about his influence on McCartney’s bass playing on the song “Taxman,” but I’d certainly heard his playing long before that.
Finding the tracks Jamerson played on requires a little digging. RYM provides 77 credits, and Discogs lists 164 records and singles where Jamerson is credited for playing bass. 10 for writing and arrangement. The bulk of those credits are post-Motown. (Intriguingly he is listed on Discogs as going by “Igor” in one instance. I’d like to know the story behind that…)
Jamerson wasn’t credited for most of his Motown work (which was not unusual), so most Motown fans didn’t know his name. But, as part of The Funk Brothers, he likely played on most (if not all) of Motown’s R&B singles. Including more than 100 that reached number one on the R&B charts.
The Miracles, The Supremes, The Marvelettes, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, The Spinners, The Jackson 5, and many others. All household names, but the backing band that powered all those songs were almost unknown. Apparently on purpose. According to the (now archived) Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee page for Jamerson:
According to Motown keyboardist and bandleader Earl Van Dyke, “We were sworn to secrecy, and one of the secrets was between James and [drummers] Benny Benjamin and Uriel Jones.” Jamerson followed the company west when Berry moved Motown’s headquarters to Los Angeles, but the association between Motown and Jamerson ended in 1973.
According to Allan “Dr. Licks” Slutsky, the electric bass was “still an infant” until “the first note Jamerson played on a Motown record.”
In one momentous and soulful trifecta, the instrument found its voice, a fledgling record company discovered its heartbeat, and a generation took a bold step toward finding its groove.
That might possibly be giving Jamerson a little too much credit. Maybe. Then again, who am I to argue with a Beatle about bass?
Consider, Sir Paul McCartney, who knew Jamerson by sound but not by name. In a 2018 interview with Reverb, McCartney noted that his bass playing was influenced a lot by Jamerson.
But part of it, I think James Jamerson, him and me, I’d share the credit there. I was nicking a lot off him. Funnily enough, I’d always liked bass. My dad, as I say, was a musician and I remember he would give me little sort of lessons, not actual sit-down lessons, but when there was something on the radio, he’d say hear that low? That’s the bass. I remember him actually pointing out what a bass was, and he’d do little lessons in harmony [sings a line and then thirds above].
So when I came to The Beatles I had a little bit of musical knowledge through him, but very amateur. And I started listening to other bass players. Mainly as time went on it was Motown, James Jamerson—who became just my hero, really. I didn’t actually know his name until quite recently. James was very melodic, and that got me more interested.
Imagine being a musical influence on McCartney but never finding out because he didn’t know your name.
Jamerson has gotten some acclaim, posthumously. Allan Slutsky wrote Standing in the Shadows of Motown (1987), digging deep into Jamerson’s work. The documentary film of the same name (from 2002) covered The Funk Brothers as a group through interviews with surviving members of the band.
James Jamerson was born in either 1938 or 1936, depending on the source, in South Carolina. He died, far too young, in 1983 of pneumonia. His son, also named James Jamerson, also went on to play bass as a session musician and as part of the group Chanson. We’ll take a look at James Jamerson Jr. another day.
Next time you hear one of those Motown classics, think about the session players like Jamerson who made them magic.
Abbey Road is more or less The Beatles‘ final album1, and it contains some of the group’s strongest work – especially George Harrison, who finally gets his day in the sun.
I’m not sure when I got my first copy of Abbey Road. Might have been high school, or it might have been the first release of The Beatles’ catalog on CD. This was back in the dark, pre-Internet, ages when knowing exactly what the “official” Beatles releases were was non-trivial.
The vast majority of Abbey Road was in heavy rotation on the local classic rock stations all through my formative years, of course, but it’s best appreciated in its entirety.
Here’s where it all began, my lifelong obsession with music. Technically, it was the movie Help! that helped turn me into a music junkie, but we’ll go with the album here.
Here’s how it all started. When I was seven, I came home from Sunday school (yes, really) and turned on the TV. There was usually a movie playing on the local non-network affliate channel around Noon on Sundays, and on one day I cranked the TV just in time to catch Help!.
If you’ve seen the movie, you know it starts with an attempted human sacrifice that fails because the victim isn’t wearing the sacrificial ring. Where’s the ring? Cut to a shot of Ringo Starr’s hand while he’s playing the drums as The Beatles play “Help!”
Famed Rock critic Robert Christgau called Rubber Soul “when The Beatles began to go arty.” Reductive, perhaps, but also true.
Rubber Soul is not as adventurous as Sgt. Pepper or The Beatles, but it brings in elements that the band couldn’t reproduce on stage. And it also deals with some more mature themes than previous Beatles albums, albeit obliquely.
The album doesn’t jump right in to experimental tunes, though. “Drive My Car” is standard issue Beatle-y goodness that would have been right at home on Help! or Hard Day’s Night. It’s catchy, fun, and straight to the point. Continue reading ““Rubber Soul” by The Beatles (No. 8)”
Wings live album Wings Over America is another one of those albums that I pretty much wore out the cassette tape. Thank goodness for CDs and being able to play something hundreds of times without wearing out the media!
As a rule, I’m not a big consumer of live albums, but I’ll make a big exception for Wings Over America. I don’t recall what year I first picked this one up, but I was somewhere in my mid-teens and still massively obsessed with The Beatles and their solo careers. Paul McCartney and John Lennon in particular. Continue reading ““Wings Over America” by Paul McCartney & Wings (No. 47)”
Spike features Elvis Costello’s highest-charting single, “Veronica” – co-written with and featuring Paul McCartney. That’s just the cherry on the sundae for this album, though. Continue reading ““Spike” by Elvis Costello (No. 75)”