No dark sarcasm in the college

But my recent parody of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall Part II" is not my favorite parody.

I was in college when "The Wall" was released, and that happened to be the same time that Slim Whitman was becoming a viral sensation.

One of my college roommates combined the two by singing the line "We don't need no thought control," and then going up an octave.

Unfortunately, he didn't yodel.

No dark sarcasm in the office

One of my co-workers is on the office's team building committee, and sent out an e-mail about our office barbecue. The e-mail included the following statement:

The corn on the cob is supposed to be served with the chicken if you are not having chicken, please do not take the corn :)

I couldn't leave well enough alone:

If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any corn! How can you have any corn if you don't eat your meat?

Trololo, orchestrally (Jack Senzig's dream of an Edward Anatolevich Hill arrangement)

Perhaps you've heard the Edward Anatolevich Hill song "I am very glad, because I'm finally back home." I wrote about the song a few months back, after both Keith Andrew (of the Tall Ships) and Josh Haley (of the Medium-Sized Ffundercats) both mentioned the song. If you don't recall the song, here's a reminder:



The song, commonly called the "Trololo" song, is actually part of a musical tradition called "vokaliz." And apparently something about that song appealed to Jack Senzig, who posted a request as a comment to my earlier post.

I sure would like to get my hands on an orchestral score of this piece. Anyone with ideas look me up on joinchoir YouTube channel.

I visited the joinchoir channel, and I think I've discovered Senzig's intentions for such an orchestral score.

I am looking for repertoire for the 2010-2011 choir year. I especially want to have the kids perform pieces from Anime, video games and songs written for specific online communities. Compose your own, write your own lyrics or suggest a song that already exists. Songs that utilize technology are especially interesting to me. Vote for the suggestions you like. No promises.

This repertoire will be performed by the Gifford Children's Choir at Gifford Elementary School in Racine, Wisconsin (their blog is here, and their school mascot is Clifford the Gator).

So I began wondering if any such score for "Trololo" existed. I returned to the post of Justin Erik Hallador Smith:

[Hill] is best known for his interpretations of the songs of the Soviet composer, Arkadii Ostrovskii....The song he is interpreting, "I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home," is an Ostrovskii composition....

Hot dog, I thought to myself; if we're talking about a famous Soviet composer, then it should be relatively easy to find a score. Unfortunately, the wonders of alphabetic nuances got to me, because the main results of a search for "Arkadii Ostrovskii" led back to...famous singer Edward Anatolevich Hill.

But after doing some additional probing, I found out a little more about the song. It turns out that Hill was not singing the original version:

But what makes the clip more of an oddity than the typical '70s video is the fact that, despite bearing the complicated title "I Am Very Happy Because I Am Finally Coming Home," the song has no lyrics. Instead, Khil hums, laughs, and belts out the melody in a long stream of la la la's -- a performance that has earned him the nickname "Mr. Trololo."...

The song, with its distinctive cowboy-style syncopation, was written in 1966 by popular Soviet composer Arkady Ostrovsky. It wasn't always wordless. In the original version, the lyrics told the story of a man, Johnny, riding his horse across the American prairie to his sweetheart Mary, who knits socks as she awaits his return.

But Khil and Ostrovsky eventually decided that the suggestive lyrics were too "naughty" to pass Soviet censors and opted instead for the wordless version. Today, the singer says he can no longer remember the lyrics that once might have caused such a stir.

More importantly, the text gave me an alternate spelling for the composer's name, which led me to a Wikipedia entry for the composer (who died in 1967) and to a memorial site...in Russian...with music samples.

A lot of music samples.

But if you go to Вокализ Эдуард Хиль you can find Hill's version of the song (labeled "Vocalise" on this page). Right above that, incidentally (see Вокализ Муслим Магомаев), you can find a version of the song by another singer (Muslum Magomayev - see this page for a link to a YouTube video of the latter's version).

Unfortunately, all of this additonal knowledge did not lead me any closer to the musical score that Jack Senzig (joinchoir) so desires. So if you're a retired Soviet musician who performed on TV or in the movies in the 1960s or 1970s, and you happen to have the score of this song lying around in your dacha, could you please send it to Senzig? The people of Wisconsin will thank you for it.

Why Berlin's Terri Nunn likes corporate events

As I've said before, even the biggest musicians don't always have concerts that are open to anyone who is willing to pay the Ticketmaster fees. Sometimes musicians play at corporate events, in which only people attending the function in question can attend. Over the years, I have attended concerts by such names as John Fogerty, the Gin Blossoms, the Psychedelic Furs, and Seal. Well, actually I didn't attend the Fogerty concert, and I skipped the Psychedelic Furs set, but I did see the others.

While we like to think that our musical heroes are pure and wonderful and reject the trappings of the corporate state, there is one clear advantage to performing at a corporate event.

You get paid.

Actually, there are other benefits, as Terri Nunn notes in an Oracle interview.

Blog Staff: This will be the third time you've performed at OpenWorld. What are your memories of the previous show?

Terri Nunn: The last time I performed at OpenWorld was one of the highlights of my life. The amazing Oracle people gave us the unbelievable opportunity to play with ELTON JOHN! I don't care where my career has gone or will go; that night will be a standout forever. The crowd seemed in a daze and it's no wonder. How often will you ever get to see Elton John and--even more incredibly--see him at a company party?

Later in the interview, Nunn also expressed her excitement at performing with the Black Eyed Peas.

I won't be able to make the concert this year, but I'm wondering - do you play the song "Sex" at a corporate event? (And do you play it at THIS corporate event?)

Eminem, Rihanna, and the soap opera that won't quit

Soap operas are criticized as completely uncool daytime shows watched by aging housewives, but the truth is that soap operas are everywhere. Sometimes they're labeled as such, if you recall the success of nighttime shows such as Dallas and Dynasty in the 1980s. But sometimes things aren't called soap operas, even though they are. If you consider a soap opera as a continuing storyline with overly dramatic overtones, then professional wrestling certainly qualifies.

And so does rap music.

Because the personalities in rap music are so strong, and because the rhymes are often autobiographical, you can consider rap music to be a soap opera of sorts, with some beats (rather than organs) in the musical background. This person's been arrested, this person's been shot, these two people have reconciled - the story weaves on and on, played by your local urban contemporary radio station several times a day.

Of course, there's a question as to whether the autobiographical storylines in rap songs are truly autobiographical, or whether they're exaggerated for effect. I don't know any of the rappers personally - for all I know Calvin Broadus is a practicing Mormon who doesn't touch gin & juice or smoke anything. But whether the stories are true or not, they certainly seem to be true, and therefore qualify as dramatic (or "overly dramatic" depending upon how you look at things).

And at times they can be unsettling.

Eminem is, in my view, an unquestionably talented individual, a talented rapper, and to all appearances a troubled soul. His lyrics are gritty, violent, and full of alternating bravado and self-doubt, often with a little twist (or a big twist) in the end.

Take his current song, "Love the Way You Lie." If you read the lyrics as Directlyrics rendered them, you see these conflicted lyrics of a man in a love-hate relationship. Finally, the lyrics conclude as follows (with expletive deleted):

I'm tired of the games
I just want her back
I know I'm a liar
If she ever tries to [expletive deleted] leave again
I'mma tie her to the bed
And set the house on fire

But the part that got to me about the song wasn't what Eminem said. Throughout the song, a female singer has been repeating a particular chorus, and after Eminem raps about tying a woman to a bed and setting fire to a house, the chorus comes up one more time:

Just gonna stand there
And watch me burn
But that's alright
Because I like
The way it hurts
Just gonna stand there
And hear me cry
But that's alright
Because I love
The way you lie

And as you're absorbing the fact that the "watch me burn" lyric is apparently to be taken literally, you begin to think about who is singing that lyric.

Rihanna.

You see, while Eminem has been publicly playing out his soap opera about his family, Rihanna has been playing out a soap opera of her own. Perhaps she wasn't tied to a bed or set on fire, but we do know that she was on the receiving end of abuse.

The whole thing makes Perez Hilton uncomfortable:

We still hate its message and the lyrics, but we love the song and we love the video too!

Oh yeah, the video:



Sadly - and I personally WON'T blame Eminem and Rihanna if this happens - there are probably some people who, rather than viewing the video as a cautionary tale, will instead decide to emulate it.

Your thoughts?

Gimme Some Truth - the Rutles rumor "Dirk is deaf"

During the aforementioned time that I was at Reed College, my future roommate Bill Ansell had a radio show (before I did, actually). One day he spent a good deal of one of his shows playing Rutles tracks. We threw things at the radio station.

Despite this expression of opinion, I actually like the Rutles and its complete send-up of the Beatles, Beatlemania, and Beatlemaniamania. (Of course, George Harrison liked it too.) But I recently discovered that the jokes didn't end when Lorne Michaels and Eric Idle left the scene.

It turns out that the "Archaelogy" section of the Rutles' website includes the page New Rutles Rumor: Dirk Is Deaf. Inasmuch as Eric Idle - I mean Dirk McQuickly - didn't participate in Archaelogy, the issue had to be addressed. And it was, in a brilliant parody of all of the rumors that circulated about Paul McCartney in late 1969. An excerpt:

And, on the cover of the Shabby Road album, Dirk is crossing the road barefooted. He would obviously had not done this had he been able to hear people warning him that the asphalt would be hot and it would burn his feet.

See the rest here.

Why am I talking about cell phones in my music blog? Ask the NAB.

I think that Alan Reiter is angry. The use of phrases such as "amazing demonstration of arrogance" clued me in to Reiter's feelings.

You see, there's been a longstanding fight between the National Association of Broadcasters and the music industry. Normally people don't want to cheer for either of these entities, but the NAB is actually making the music industry look good.

You see, Reiter notes that there has been pending "legislation requiring radio stations to pay record labels and performers for playing songs over the air" - legislation that has been opposed by the NAB and others.

But the NAB is suddenly willing to allow these payments - as long as one teeny weeny little amendment is made to the legislation.

[T]he broadcasting industry wants Congress to mandate FM radios in all cellphones.

Reiter notes that the electronics industry opposes a mandate requiring them to put radios in their phones. (FCC DISCLOSURE: I was previously employed by Motorola.)

Reiter doesn't indicate how the cellular service providers feel about the whole thing, but I'm certain that it depends upon whether the service can be monetized. If Verizon, AT&T, et al can figure out a way to charge you to use an FM radio on a cellphone, you can bet that they'd be in favor of the deal.

But then the NAB would oppose the deal, because monetary limitations on access to the radio would adversely impact radio advertising revenues.

THEN who would we root for?

What's the true spin on Soundgarden's bassist's living situation?

Keith Andrew (whom I've mentioned before, in relation to Edward Anatolevich Hill) posted something that alerted me to a story about Soundgarden's bass player, Ben Shepherd. The story appeared in SPIN Magazine, and opened with the following teaser:

One guy's homeless, one likes sleeping all day, one's in Pearl Jam, and one's Chris Cornell. Beloved '90s titans Soundgarden are back, but where are they going?

The quote that SPIN, and everyone else, focused on is this one:

After dinner, Shepherd, Thayil, and I cross the street to the bar at the Palace Kitchen. Shepherd buys me a beer, and I ask him where he lives.

"Nowhere," he says. "Literally. I've been sleeping on studio couches and at friends' houses. I'm totally broke." Shepherd is part owner of a bar 15 minutes from here called Hazlewood, but he says he sinks any money from it into the solo album he's been working on since last fall. Six months ago, he split with his girlfriend and moved out of their house. "This is my home now," he says, holding up the sides of his slightly gamey overcoat.

There was a ton of reaction to it...and eventually there was reaction from Ben Shepherd himself:

Ben responds to SPIN
Syndicate content August 24, 2010 - 6:58pm

I feel the banner saying that I am homeless was merely a sensationalizing stunt done by workers at SPIN magazine to sell their story, or make it seem more exciting than it actually is. It makes me feel embarrassed for the truly homeless people to be associated at all in any way with the likes of me. I seem to have been lucky, as most of you, in never having to survive day to day (on the streets) anyway.

Furthermore, my friends and family have always been by my side so I have never gone without love, care, food, compassion, and understanding. I would actually like to thank whatever editor that played this hand for helping once again bring to light the subject of the homeless and uncared for human beings of this dangerously bleak world. I humbly ask for whoever reads this to realize we are all in this together, and try to just remember that once in a while and not only at some convenient time.

I in no way refute what was written in the article, I say what I mean with someone else's alphabet, so it is no wonder to me that my blathering can be so easily 'shined up' or misinterpreted to whatever purpose, especially to a stranger who has no idea of my horrible humor, or my delusional ideas. There I was thinking i was on top of the world, doing what i love and GET to do- (music I mean)- sure I've been couch surfing but that's a far cry from the plight of many many millions of good people worldwide. I just don't want our loyal and most badderasser fans to be mislead, or a bad light to be shone upon my family or friends who have helped me and tried to help me get along. It would be wholly unfair of me after all this to not stand up for them. Now feck auf, thanks.

Ben

So if we believe Shepherd, either (a) David Peisner or (b) Peisner's editor was either (a) too dim to realize that Shepherd was exaggerating/joking, or (b) knew that Peisner was joshing, but figured that SPIN would sell more copies if the words were taken at face value.

But regardless of how we interpret the spin (or the SPIN), it's undeniable that Shepherd has had some tough times since Soundgarden broke up. But in a way that's understandable. Before I found Ben's side of the story, I had written the following at Keith Andrews' original item:

To be fair to the musicians - and, for that matter, to sports figures - a lot of them reach dizzyingly high levels of fame when they are relatively young - in their early 20s, or even in their late teens. You probably have a better insight on this than I do, but I shudder to think what could have happened to me if by some quirk I had achieved great fame and adulation at age 17, or even age 21.

For the record, Shepherd was approximately 22 years old when he joined Soundgarden, and approximately 29 when Soundgarden broke up. (And no, I don't know how old Keith Andrew was when Dryve came together in 1993.)

And, although I DON'T think this was the band's intent (or SPIN's), but the whole affair does bring publicity to Soundgarden in advance of its forthcoming album.

But forget all that. Here's the video.



But that isn't what you really want to hear. You really want to hear some Edward Anatolevich Hill, don't you?



Although the bass part in Hill's hit is pretty weak.

On Pacific Island music (then - my KRRC radio theme songs)

Now I am certainly not an expert on Pacific Island music, but I have run across it from time to time.

Back when I attended Reed College, I had a show on the college radio station, KRRC. The show had a name (I named it after a former classmate who transferred out), an impressive advertising campaign (assembled via a typewriter, cut-outs from newspapers, and a photocopier), and a theme song. The theme song was taken from a record in the library (back then, the entire library consisted of records). The record included a collection of artists, and was entitled Hawaiian Steel Guitar 1920's To 1950's.

The theme song that I chose for my radio show was "Indiana March" by Roy Smeck. This was a fast number, played on the steel guitar in a semi-Hawaiian style. If Sousa had ever been forced to abandon brass and woodwinds, perhaps he could have played this march. I couldn't find an online copy of Smeck's rendition, but I did find a video with Sol Hoopii's version.



I used this as my radio show theme song for a while, but eventually I dropped it and switched to the next track on the same album, M. K. Moke's "Moana Chimes." This is a much slower number, very peaceful, and had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the music that I played during my radio show (your typical early 80s mixture of Devo, Talking Heads, Wall of Voodoo, and the like). Again, I couldn't find the original version, but I did find this tribute video.



But that was almost 30 years ago. What about now? Well, you'll have to go to my Empoprise-IE Inland Empire blog to find out more.

Stay employed - impersonate everybody H/T @joshhaley

Josh Haley recently shared a rather scary picture of Celine Dion with a microphone in one hand and a pointing finger on the other.

Except that the picture was not of Celine Dion. The picture was of a Celine impersonator named Gypsy Miller. Follow the link to see the picture, and what Gypsy/Celine can do:

Gypsy Miller performs all Celine Dion's hits,all in the original keys - no lip-synching! Her between song speaking voice, her moves, gestures, and attitude, as well as her ability to sing in both French and English make this one of the most amazing Celine impersonations ever seen.

But Miller does not merely rely on her ability to portray Celine Dion. She can also portray Cher:

Gypsy Miller's Cher Show is a high-energy performance that includes hits from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 00’s as well as plenty of audience participation. She captures the voice, mannerisms, humor, and the spirit of Cher perfectly.

I wonder if she ever switches costumes during a performance so that she can portray both artists. A medley of "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" and "My Heart Will Go On" would make for an interesting show.

But Miller does not merely rely on her ability to portray Celine Dion and Cher. No, she has one more trick up her sleeve:

The term EllaVis was first coined to describe Gypsy Miller’s pioneering performance of Elvis "had he been born a woman".

Yes, Gypsy portrays a female Elvis impersonator, complete with jumpsuit or leather as needed.

The advantage of this is that no matter what happens to musical tastes in the future, Miller will probably be able to find work.

To see all three impersonations, see this video.



I found this video via http://www.lauralandauer.com/videos.htm. Yes, apparently "Gypsy Miller" is a character also.

One more Celine video:



And no, that wasn't Gene and Paul - that was Destroyer.

Real estate agent from the stars

There are all sorts of real estate agents throughout southern California, and many of them have websites. Here is the website for one of those agents, Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford.



The musical notes that surround Rutherford's name are no accident, since Rutherford, under her maiden name of Marilyn Rovell, was a member of a 1960s girl group called The Honeys. However, she is more famous in musical circles for being the first wife of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, and being the mother of two thirds of Wilson Phillips.

Rutherford uses her past as an opening to talk about the present. When people ask about her musical fame, it offers her an opening to transition to real estate talk.

She knows her past is a big part of who she is today. And she knows that soon enough the conversation will turn to the present and her work as one of the Westside’s premier real estate professionals. And soon you’ll be talking about the most important issue at hand...your future and your real estate goals.

Having lived in southern California for her entire life, she obviously has an understanding of the area.

Since 1994, Marilyn has been putting her own creative stamp on Brentwood real estate. As one of the premier real estate professionals on the Westside, she simply never compromises when it comes to helping her clients achieve their goals. Her genuine passion for life and her career is music to the ears of buyers and sellers alike because they know that when they work with Marilyn, she simply won’t quit until she’s helped them achieve the results they’re after....

For Marilyn, her career, like life itself, is all about harmony. It’s about using her knowledge, insight and experience in Westside real estate to bring buyers and sellers together and create winning results for both. It’s about carefully listening to the goals and aspirations of her clients and then matching them with the ideal property to turn those dreams into reality. But more than anything, it’s about truly making a positive difference in the lives of those who put their trust in her each and every day.

I don't anticipate that I'll be buying a house in Brentwood any time in the near future, but if you plan to do so, this is presumably a real estate agent who will make you Smile.

Fleetwood Mac - harmony?

It's ironic to apply the word "harmony" to the mid-1970s/early-1980s version of Fleetwood Mac (see my previous post on the various versions of the band), since their personal relationships were anything but harmonic. But despite everything, Christine, Stevie, and Lindsey still managed to come up with the best vocal harmonies this side of the Beach Boys.

Take a listen to Little Lies.

Charley Sherwood Cryer, musical movie hero?

When considering musical movies, you have both the people in front of the camera, singing and playing, and those behind the camera, doing what needs to be done to get the movie out and get people singing the tunes.

Until recently, I had never heard of Charley Sherwood Cryer, but learned about him via The Music's Over, as supplemented by a comment from Cryer's daughter.

Charley Sherwood Cryer, born in 1926, was known professionally as Sherwood Cryer. A welder at Shell, he opened up a club named Shelly's in Pasadena, Texas. But things began changing when he ran into a musician named Mickey Gilley, who at the time was not as well known as his more famous cousin Jerry Lee - and perhaps Jimmy was better known at the time also. They teamed up, the club was renamed Gilley's, and Cryer added an attraction:

Gilley's didn't really begin to take off until after Cryer installed a mechanical bull for all the pipe-fitters and glass-cutters to work out some of their aggression somewhere besides each other. Gilley and most of the club's other performers hated it, but it was making too much money for Cryer to shut down....

Eventually the club caught the attention of some people who wanted to make a movie about urban cowboys. The Music's Over:

When the Urban Cowboy filmmakers wanted to recreate the bar on a sound stage, it was Cryer who convinced them to film the now-famous scenes right there in the club.

But massive success spelled the end of Gilley's as the partners split up and the building burned to the ground in 1989. Cryer subsequently owned an establishment in Deer Park called G's Ice House, as documented in this aggravated assault case that occurred on the premises.

Cryer died in August, 2009, age 81.

Orelsan and The Toxic Avenger, "N'importe Comment"

Jake Kuramoto shared this video because of its IRL references to online life. Kuramoto learned of the video via Europopped:

Orelsan and his friend The Toxic Avenger love Facebook. The Frenchmen love it so much they've made an entire video, filmed in Venice, featuring the social networking site.



The Toxic Avenger's MySpace page is here. And if you're worried about Orelsan literally poking women, some have accused him of worse things:

[A]n online video of a song he wrote two years ago, Sale Pute (Dirty Slut), came to the attention of feminists for its explicitly violent lyrics about beating up a girlfriend caught cheating. "If I break your arm, consider that we parted on good terms," was a rare printable lyric from his sexually explicit descriptions of violence.

Women's groups and the Communist party denounced "an incitement to hatred against women" and called for the rapper to be banned from one of France's biggest rock festivals...Le Printemps de Bourges. The Socialist party supported the call, stressing that France was battling high levels of violence against women.

The government joined the outcry, and the culture minister, Christine Albanel, asked YouTube and its French equivalent, Dailymotion, to remove the video from their sites.

I don't know if any French politicians have complained about the poking yet.

If you don't know what a "record store" is, don't go to the Vinyl Frontier in McHenry, Illinois

When I was growing up, I usually bought my music on round pieces of vinyl. Nowadays people don't even buy music in tangible form - it's just electrons and stuff.

But you don't have to download your music from Apple and Amazon. There's a store in my area called Rhino Records (and other similar stores), and there's a store in RoadDog's area called Vinyl Frontier.


View Larger Map

Friday was...a visit to the Vinyl Frontier in McHenry, one of the last local mom and pop record stores.

Spent a lot of time looking for CDs and talking with the owner...[who] showed my why analog is better than digital.

That is something I like about going to record stores that there is no way you're going to get it downloading. I feel sort of sorry for kids who will never get this opportunity.

Their MySpace page (hey, they're a music store) is http://www.myspace.com/music4less.

John Anderson, "Swingin'"

Ever since I wrote this post in my Empoprise-BI business blog, I can't get this song out of my head.

Blurred Vision @b_v_music authorized (authorised) by Roger Waters

When a new artist chooses to appropriate and modify the work of an existing artist, sometimes the relationship goes smoothly, while sometimes it doesn't.

The band Blurred Vision has released a video which adapts the Pink Floyd song "Another Brick in the Wall (Pt. 2)" to the specific situation in Iran. The new title is "Another Brick In The Wall (Hey Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone!)," and the lyrics have also been modified.

So how did Pink react? According to the Telegraph:

Roger Waters, a founding member of Pink Floyd, gave the rights to Blurred Vision, a duo living in Canada, to remake the classic under the title Another Brick in the Wall (Hey Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone).

Here is the video.



Some time ago, Brain Damage posted a quote from Jeffrey Morgan about the song:

"Rarely in the history of rock 'n' roll does a cover version come along that actually dares to exist at the right reactionary time. By cleverly updating Pink Floyd's 1979 iconic protest anthem "Another Brick In The Wall" exactly thirty years to the month that it was originally released, Blurred Vision are wielding their activist music as an irresistible force irrevocably set in motion to shake up the staid conventions of repressive regimes and show solidarity with common street soldiers everywhere. Thanks to Blurred Vision, the revolution will be downloaded."

Blurred Vision's website is here, which lists all the usual social media accounts, including the Twitter account @b_v_music.

A stunning example of band evolution

There have certainly been bands that have changed their sound over the years. Sometimes this is because of a change in interest of the band members - the Beatles come to mind here. And sometimes it is because of personnel changes - Van Halen and Genesis come to mind here.

But probably the most vivid example of a popular band undergoing a dramatic change in sound has to be Fleetwood Mac. Just take a listen to "Albatross" and "Gold Dust Woman." Go ahead, I'll wait.





While the bass and drums - the "Fleetwood Mac" part of Fleetwood Mac - remained constant over this period, all of the treble underwent a wholesale change. Blues fanatics were replaced by a melodic Englishwoman and two melodic Americans. Now Albatross was of course an instrumental, but the mid-1970s Fleetwood Mac certainly hit on some wonderful three-part harmonies.

And the guitar. How does one compare Peter Green and Lindsey Buckingham, two guitarists with very distinctive styles?

In 1999, Peter Green answered some questions about Fleetwood Mac after his departure:

First of all, I would like to thank you very much, Mr. Green, for taking the time to answer our questions. It really means a lot. My question is: What did you think of Fleetwood Mac's evolution from a heavy blues band in the late 60s, to a Rock/Pop group in the 70s and 80s? You did start Fleetwood Mac as a blues band, so what did you think when they became so popular playing a different type of music? (Josh Williams, East Liverpool, Ohio, USA)

It was a natural progression from blues to middle of the road stuff. I was very pleased for them when they became successful with Lindsey and Stevie.

How do you feel about the guitarists who followed you in Fleetwood Mac (Lindsey Buckingham, Rick Vito, etc.) ? Also, when you briefly worked with the band on TUSK, how did you feel about working with Lindsey as a producer? (Beau, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA)

I don't know what I feel about them. I was quite ill at the time that they popular. I felt that they had a more technical technique than I did. I didn't play guitar on the "Tusk" album.

In a separate interview, Lindsey talked about his influences, which weren't necessarily Chicago blues:

How did you get started on guitar?

I started playing guitar first of all when i was eight, because my older brother used to bring home all the Elvis records, Buddy Holly, the old Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis. Then I got into folk stuff and acoustic fingerpicking.

One influence was interesting.

What rock guitarists did you later get into?

I guess Eric Clapton and that whole thing--but at the time I wasn't into playing that stuff much. Peter Green, oddly enough, has a little bit of influence on me, because Then Play On [Reprise, 6368] was released around that time. I really liked his style of playing where a few notes mean a lot--even one note.

Now I don't know if Buckingham has ever played "Albatross," and I don't know that Peter has ever accompanied a singer on "Gold Dust Woman," but I'd love to hear the results. And of course you can hear Rick Vito taking the lead on "Albatross".

More on the Devo-Neil Young mutual admiration society

I previously mentioned how Devo admired Neil Young, and the feeling was mutual.

Wanna hear Booji Boy singing "Hey Hey My My"?



But what I didn't know now is that the album that contained the original version of this song (and the similarly named one) actually got its title from...well, it didn't come from John Lydon:

There are several urban legends revolving around the album title's origins. Rumor has it that the group Devo came up with the slogan as part of an advertising campaign for the product Rustoleum, a rust inhibitor. Neil has confirmed that he got the phrase "Rust Never Sleeps" from Devo but whether it was ever seriously created for an ad campaign is unknown.

Of course, the song is often tied to two other musicians - the aforementioned Lydon, who was mentioned (under his "Johnny Rotten" pseudonym) in the lyrics, and Kurt Cobain, who cited a phrase from the song in his suicide note. Cobain's wife, Courtney Love, put Cobain's interpretation of Young's line in the proper context:

[Cobain] "It's better to burn out than to fade away."

[Love] God! You asshole.

Young was as upset as Love over the whole affair.

"I read something and someone told me a few things that made me think he was in trouble that week," sighs Young. For the first time, he is not looking directly at me, but staring off across the table. He describes how he tried, over three or four days in the first week of April in 1994, to reach Cobain. "I even had my office look for him." By that Friday evening, Cobain had taken a life-threatening dose of heroin and shot himself....

Destroyed by grief, Young hit the studio and recorded his bleakest work, Sleeps With Angels. It was released with a moratorium on interviews. "I've never really spoken about why I made that album," Young told an interviewer in 1995. "I don't want to start now."

But today, he opens up. "I like to think that I possibly could have done something," he says, concentrating on finding the right words. "I was just trying to reach him. Trying to connect up with him." He pauses and thinks again. "It's just too bad I didn't get a shot. I had an impulse to connect. Only when he used my song in that suicide note was the connection made. Then, I felt it was really unfortunate that I didn't get through to him. I might've been able to make things a little lighter for him, that's all. Just lighten it up a little bit."

But how do Devo and Kurt Cobain fit together? Very well:

"Of all the bands who came from the underground and made it in the mainstream," declared Kurt Cobain, "Devo were the most challenging and subversive of all."

However, Devo and Young survived their brushes with fame. Cobain did not.

P.S. For other thoughts on Kurt Cobain, scroll to the bottom of this Empoprise-MU post on Steve Taylor and Jim Morrison.

Another take on "Ohio"

I know that I've been writing about Dala a lot lately, but here's one more Dala video. In this one, they're covering "Ohio" at a Neil Young-themed event.



Let's face it, Dala's version is pretty different from Devo's version (see this post to see one reason why Devo covered the song), but both Dala and Devo have a definition admiration for Neil Young.