Bill Frisell - Ghost Town - essence of the artist

I feel true passion for only a few things in this world:  my family, St. Louis Blues hockey, John Singer Sargent paintings and the music of Bill Frisell.  Along with a nice glass of Bordeaux and some take-out Chinese, that may just about cover the bases.

 His sound is wholly unique, lyrical and insanely melodic but he often plays disturbingly off-kilter music.  He plays jazz for the twenty-first century, or is it chamber music or Americana, whatever that means?  He has put out covers of jazz standards and pop tunes, an album of country songs, a John Lennon tribute, a song for song cover of an Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach record, world music and silent film soundtracks. He called his best of album Folk Songs.  To say he plays all over the place is a compliment of the highest order, and his sound is utterly unmistakable.

I have distinct times in my life which I associate with specific Bill Frisell records.  Second Sight by Marc Johnson’s Bass Desires (featuring Frisell and John Scoffield) served as the soundtrack to my college radio midnight disc jockey days.  Naked City played constantly in our apartment in Japan.  I spent long nights studying during business school to Have A Little Faith In Me and Live.  I rocked my first daughter to sleep to the strains of Nashville (while living in Memphis, not Music City USA) and couldn’t imagine my early days in Cincinnati without Lagimas Mexicanas in my car’s cd player.  His work always offers a sense of surprise despite being of a single sonic voice.

I own more than one hundred cd’s on which he plays, so choosing one can be sort of like crawling down the rabbit hole.  Ah, but what a trip.  For me, the album that best speaks to his artistry is Ghost Town, his truly solo work of mostly quiet music.  He includes reinterpretations of his own songs, old and new as well as covers of Hank Williams, George Gershwin and the Carter Family.  

 

In interviews, Frisell is soft spoken and on stage he is tightly wound concentration.  On this date he plays the songs accompanying himself with nothing but over-dubs and loop effects: a one man string band.   Wildwood Flower feels like country pickin’ on the back porch.  The slightly sinister Creep, assembled from backward guitar loops, fades into the menacing Variations On A Theme (Tales From The Farside).   

It all sounds of a single piece, a soundtrack to a road trip through an echo laden and starkly beautiful landscape.  Sweeping skies over a rural countryside rolling by, constantly shifting but timelessly beautiful.

 

The jewel of the set is the medley of Ghost Town/Poem For Eva.  Two of Frisell’s finest melodies, blended together seamlessly.  Frisell once explained his inspiration by saying his niece Eva wrote him a poem, so he wrote one for her.  The song begins quietly, building layer upon layer of bell-like notes until it finally swings into a long descending coda.  The track eventually became played over the closing credits for the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line (yes, Frisell did the music for that, too) and it never fails to bring a smile to my face and the hint of a tear to my eye.  Like the rest of Ghost Town, it is a work of soft spoken genius, technically dazzling and it feels entirely American.

Jack Johnson - In Between Dream - sunny laid back domestic bliss

Jack Johnson rose to popularity as something of a Renaissance man in the early days of the twenty-first century.  A professional surfer, independent film maker and laid back singer songwriter, Johnson hails from Hawaii with an aw-shucks grin and shoeless approach to love, life and music.  Jack Johnson comes across as the guy who has the life every guy wants to live, but we're not so lucky. 


Like Jimmy Buffett and James Taylor before him, his songs have a lilting breezy quality belying their quiet sophistication.  And also like those artists, his rather narrow range results in a body of work so consistent his albums tend to blend together.


This constant casual groove makes In Between Dreams such a delightful pleasure.  Johnson ruminates on domestic bliss with a keen eye for the details that bring his characters and settings to vivid life.  The sense of domesticity in a tropical paradise bubbles up over and over again.  The natural world pervades every tune and time runs slow.

The quietly acoustic settings and mid tempo tunes really give the sense of a bunch of friends in a circle playing for their own pleasure.  The musicianship sounds both casual and sophisticated simultaneously just as Johnson's nimble phrasing owes a debt to hip hop wordplay more than traditional rock and roll.  In fact, he does make music with the same circle of buddies - G. Love, Matt Costa and Donavon Frankenreiter among  others, touring together, appearing on their albums and vice versa.

He sings about family from a sweet place and it seems no surprise that he followed this album up with the soundtrack to the Curious George animated movie.  I love the sense of joy and the calming spirit of these hip sing-alongs and they have served as the soundtrack to many of my family vacations.  The first scrapes of his guitar strings from Better Together literally put me in a peaceful state and his ruminations on his love ring true.

The remaining songs flow from the same waters.  Moderate tempos, pretty melodies with interesting rhythms  and  sweet stories (or pleas for a sweeter world than the one in which we live) breeze into each other until the last song drifts off into the breeze.  It all sounds easy and I can't help but think this guy despite having it all, still sounds humble, singing straight from his great big heart.

I can truly relate to these little homey stories. Jack was born in mid-May, I was born in mid-May.  Jack married his college sweetheart, Kim and I married my college sweetheart, Kim.  Jack has three kids and I have three kids.  Jack and I have are exactly the same, give or take the rock star / surfer / film maker thing.

Like Buffett and Taylor (and I, for that matter), it has become clear that Jack Johnson will not garner much respect as a great artist.  His music is too cozy and his range too narrow despite his efforts to stretch out on later works.  He offers none of the typical rock star drama and danger so present in our manufactured popular culture, continuing to live in Hawaii with his wife and kids and focusing on his work and environmentalist charity.  Of course taking care of his family and making the world a better place for them doesn't seem like such a bad life after all.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Live / 1975-85 - The Boss delivers on the promise

With Born In The USA, Bruce Springsteen finally became the mega-star critics and the faithful had been expecting for over a decade.  He reached a massive worldwide audience by delivering what he always had:  poetic tales of the hopeful and oppressed set to a walloping rock and roll beat.  And if some of the newcomers missed the point of the title track, the Boss made his position clear when he pushed back when President Reagan tried to co-op his message for Republican political gains.


His follow-up to the album that dominated the airwaves of 1985 was a sprawling five album box set before such packages were commonplace.  And it perfectly served a wide variety of purposes.  First, it bought Springsteen time to clear his mind from the craziness that was Born In The USA.  Time to craft an appropriate response to the changes in America and his personal life that would be the 1987's Tunnel Of Love.


Secondly it finally offered the live document of the E Street Band's legendary concert experience, widely bootlegged but previously unavailable in any official capacity.  Finally the set offers up a history of the E Street Band and Springsteen's body of work up to this point, bringing the new audience up to speed with the what the cult had known all along.  E Street Band guitarist and Little Steven Van Zandt had famously produced The River to catch the sound and fire of the band's live show for that album.  

The truly amazing fact in hindsight is how well Live / 1975-86 delivers on all fronts simultaneously.  Over the course of three and a half hours (roughly the length of a typical Springsteen show) the Boss' grows from backstreet poet playing small Jersey Shore clubs to American Icon selling out stadiums.  Both subtle and clearly logical, the tracks unfold seamlessly.

The songs universally deliver higher energy and emotional truth superior to the beloved studio versions.  Songs from the early albums are more full and wildly energetic in the live setting.  The Nebraska tracks stand up well with the rest of the catalog, fully fleshed out and powerful.  The Born To Run wall of sound comes through loud and clear and the songs from the River are both lighter and tougher in this setting.  And as a showcase for his total body of work, Springsteen could not have delivered a better document.

Thunder Road starts off with an intimate piano arrangement that highlights the quiet desperation driving the lovers into the unknown.  Born In The USA roars with the tortured venom of the desperate veteran returning home only to find he has somehow become the enemy himself.  And Springsteen's legendary on stage stories and comments relieve the tension (such as "this is for all the girls here" delivered with a chuckle before Fire) or bring clarity to the songs (on the introduction to Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land, pointing out that the schoolhouse favorite is really "an angry song").

A single track sums up the entire experience over the course of eleven and a half minutes.  With sympathetic guitar noodling in the background, Springsteen tells a story of growing up with a father that just didn't understand his son during the Viet Nam years.  As he finishes the tale, he launches into a harmonica driven  version of The River.  The band locks in behind him until the a breakdown near the end of the track.  One can see the singer with his back to the audience, head down, moaning low until the the drums kick in and the weight of fate and desperation pours out into a rolling coda, the band grown into a living, breathing beast.

Here the Boss sums up the deliverance offered only by rock and roll.  Like Roy Orbison, he's singing for the lonely and hey that's me and you.

Miles Davis - 'Round About Midnight - Columbia Records reintroduces Miles to the world

Considering his astonishing body of work today, one can be easily overwhelmed by the cornucopia of riches produced by Miles Davis.  Arguably America's most important artistic contribution to the world, Jazz today has faded into the background when heard at all.  Miles is both victim and in some ways a party to the music's current state.  An artistic genius who often drug his faithful cult kicking and screaming into the mainstream as he pursued a wider audience, he literally changed the music at least half a dozen times during his long career.  Sadly today, the popular masses of Jazz fans were fractured into ever smaller and smaller shards until today they represent a tiny fraction of the public and the music has been relegated to urbane backdrop for sophisticated restaurants and dinner parties.

In the late fifties, however, Jazz was adult America's music, not yet supplanted by the kid's Rock and Roll music.  With the formation of his "Great Quintet", an ambitious Miles Davis had his sites on the big time.  His performance of the Thelonious Monk tune "'Round Midnight" at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival caught the attention of Columbia Records executives (along with virtually everyone else) and the nation's most powerful record label prepared to elevate Miles to stardom.

The Miles Davis Quintet, consisting of Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones and John Coltrane, performed popular standards with a rhythmic drive and elegant sophistication.  Miles trumpet sound, light and airy, danced over the breathing pulse of the rhythm section and most importantly, contrasted perfectly with the earthy density of Trane's  saxophone.


The group wrapped up their contract for Prestige Records over a two day recording session that yielded four classic albums worth of material.  Relaxin', Steamin', Workin' and Cookin' showcase the band at the full height of its powers, but Miles was clearly just warming up for their major label debut.

Calculated to make him a star, 'Round About Midnight, Miles constructed the album like a set list introducing the listener to his  body of work.

The cover image shows him looking sharp and intense.  The over-saturated color, a little unworldly; Miles is listening, not blowing.  The music rewards close listening, but works fine ambiently as well.

The album opens with 'Round Midnight, the tune that everyone was talking about since Newport.  Quiet and moody, Miles muted trumpet sets a late night vibe, both intimate and immediate.  Ah-Leu-Cha and Two Bass Hit are played at a somewhat slower tempo than when Miles performed them with Bird and Diz, emphasizing tone over the be-boppers' technique.  Budo, a track from Miles first masterpiece, Birth Of The Cool, stretches out from the original with a more relaxed groove.  And of course, there are the standards:  Cole Porter's All of You and Bye Bye Blackbird. 

Ever mercurial, Miles would disband the quintet a year later and create a string of masterpieces during the final years of the decade including his works with Gil Evans and of course Kind Of Blue.  Making it clear that this introduction was, after all, just the beginning of a beautiful relationship between the artist and his wider audience.

Roxy Music – Avalon - when the party's over.

In popular culture, artists cross the fine line between artistic integrity and pandering to the masses at their own peril.  Listeners often make this distinction between these two states of being with the artist discovering where they landed after the fact.  With this in mind, what Roxy Music achieved with their final studio album fairly boggles the mind.  When critics called it art-rock, they were really on to something.

Roxy Music formed in 1971 around two future musical giants:  Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno led an edgy, glam-rock and highly experimental outfit.  Eno left the group after two albums and sound on future albums became smoother but no less complex.  The glam touches became less edgy and the songs more romantic, the energy mellowing somewhat over the course of the band's recording career.

In hindsight, Eno and Ferry both seem to have matured during the seventies and eighties both creating intricate soundscapes that ebbed and flowed, the songs bubbling out of a soothing, organic sound then fading again.  Eno took this to one extreme with his ambient musical experiments, but Ferry created a similar sensation within a more popular musical context.

 

Ferry recorded both rock and jazz standards solo and with orchestral ensembles.  His suave vocals and sharp attention to detail both sonically and lyrically define his best work.  His best music has a timeless quality, and it’s hard to imagine him not dressed in evening attire and without one of the beautiful models who graced the band’s album covers at his side.

The logical conclusion of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music’s sonic evolution, Avalon sounds like a single song.  The tempos and the orchestration run together with the lyrical themes exploring intimate relationships in dreamy waves.  The whole oozes romance, a gauzy palette with elegant touches throughout.  After the music fades out, one is left with the haunted, almost drunken sensation like the end of the night after attending an exceptional cocktail party.  The perfect nightcap to the glitzy, glamorous arc of his band.  

Josh Ritter - The Animal Years - you may not know him, but you should.

I find it borderline criminal that Josh Ritter is not a household name.  A critic’s darling, often considered one of the finest living songwriters, he flies under the radar of the general public.  He has released seven studio albums and several live ones but this gem should have become a massive hit.  Alas, no.

His lyrics have a timeless, articulate quality without the pretentiousness that so often creeps into the work of the less accomplished.  Ritter most often draws comparison to Dylan and Springsteen and I’ll buy into that.  Like those giants, he is able to throw of casual poetry that becomes more elegant upon close inspection, like a rose opening to reveal its beauty.   Like Dylan, he searches for new sounds and perspective on each successive album.   Like Springsteen his work often describes an everyman but under wide open rural skies rather than on Jersey’s mean streets.  And like the Boss, his Royal City Band provides the perfect platform for his songs.

Born in Idaho, but educated at Oberlin College in Ohio.  He traveled northeast and began his professional music career.   He tells stories with a literate quality.  I often feel they are set in the vague past, like a Hemingway novel or a Faulkner story. 

The Animal Years collects some of his finest songs, creating little self contained worlds populated by real characters.

Lillian, Egypt is the story of unrequited love between a silent movie star and an everyman cast as the villain' driven by Scott Kassier’s piano.  The tracks seem to breathe like the breeze on a warm day, the intensity surging on Wolves, hushed on In The Dark and reaching a cacophonous boil on Thin Blue Flame.  Good Man and Monster Ballads flow with a casual grace that belies the underlying craft of their composition.

In interviews and in concert, he bubbles over with a thankful joy, as if humility won’t let him accept that his success thus far could be due to anything but luck.  He has set course creating an exceptional body of timeless work, crafting one exceptional album after the other.  

The Animal Years is as good a point as any to enter Josh Ritter’s stream, to float along through history, love and loss and always hope.  Personally, I hope more listeners will have the chance to experience his music.

The Beatles - Abbey Road - and in the end

OK, confession time.  Growing up, I couldn't stand the Beatles.  I am just young enough to not remember the excitement of the impending arrival of a new album from the Fab Four, and yet they were ever-present.  I remember their two greatest hits collections coming out (the so-called Red and Blue albums).  Their music rang out in steady streams from every radio.  How boring.  The final straw was probably a kid (who I didn't care for) who collected Beatles stuff and would not shut up about them.  Yawn.  Today, I wish I had my musical act together in elementary school like he did, but at the time...not so much.

The difficulty judging their body of work is obvious: how can one understand the Beatles in the context of a popular music that was utterly transformed by their appearance on the scene?  You can't consider their work outside the mainstream that absorbed everything it could from them and still can't really compare. 

What hyperbole doesn't understate their cultural impact?  One simply cannot hear the Beatles with fresh ears.

With all of this in mind, Abbey Road perfectly summarizes their art and craft.  In a catalog of milestone songs, performances and especially albums, their final statement reaches the pinnacle.  The experiments of song-craft from albums like Revolver and Rubber Soul and production from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band have been fully mastered and assimilated here.

The songs touch on nostalgic early rock and roll and tin pan alley, heavy metal and blue-eyed soul. The production shows off the instantly recognizable individual voices and instrumental contributions as part of a more sophisticated whole.  The band plays with a loose professionalism and joy of spirit despite the sophisticated production.

The album leads off with Come Together, perhaps the heaviest track in their catalog.  Because feels like a final homage to the Beach Boys, their long time rivals from across the pond, with beautiful and startling harmonies.  Something, George's finest song, would become a legitimate standard which none other than Frank Sinatra described as "the greatest love song of the last fifty years".  Ringo contributes the wonderful Octopus's Garden. 

Side two of the original album (yes kids, we used to have to turn them over) consists of a perfect medley of songs we all know by heart but few could name culminating in The End, a perfect statement of the Beatles purpose and worldview.  And finally, Her Majesty, the hidden track on the LP as if we all needed to hear a little joke to lighten the mood after all was said and done.

Let It Be would arrive in record stores the following spring.  But despite some great songs, the Phil Spector sound, uneven material and venomous acrimony on display in the accompanying documentary all felt like a cash-in by Capital Records executives. 


Today Let It Be feels like a sad coda, but in the true chronology of their recording career the Beatles, who had shown us all what could be accomplished if we only believed, had saved their best for last.