I Saw Bill Kirchen Right Here in Euclid Records

Just three guys stood up there on the stage at Euclid Records last Friday afternoon. Well, properly, one of them was sitting behind the drum kit, chopping up rhythms into neat, orderly patterns, with a love for and knowledge of his cymbals beyond what many drummers have. The bass player stood, though, and he was a master of varied walking bass lines, the kind which have anchored country and blues and old-time rock'n'roll for decades. And the guitarist/vocalist was Bill Kirchen. That was more than enough.

Kirchen was the guitarist in Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen back in the 1970s. Pretty much everything written about Kirchen has to include that reference, and certainly, there were people in the store to see him who had treasured memories to share about seeing the Commander all those years ago. But, the guy has been making excellent solo records, and touring frequently for at least a dozen years.

For roughly 40 minutes in the store, Kirchen showed us why he's a contemporary artist worth hearing. Most of the songs he played were his own originals, though one could easily be forgiven for thinking they were obscurities from the early 60s. Kirchen's voice a perfectly comfortable baritone which knows how to deliver a honky tonk or rockabilly style. And his guitar playing is a grab-big of licks either lifted or derived from the playing of every great six-string expert, or at least those who played between 1950 and 1980.



For me, the highlight of the in-store performance was a driving and brilliantly vital cover of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'." Imagine if Dylan had decided to use this song as the announcement of his shift to electric rock music at Newport in 1965. It really did sound remarkably like that band, especially the drumming. (The drummer denied to me after the show that he had that in mind at all; perhaps it's just the perfect approach for such a rocking take on Dylan's style of that period.) I tell you, I got goose bumps; after all these years, and with setbacks every step of the way, believing in the positive nature of those changes hasn't always been easy. But, while this version didn't exactly sound like a victory march, it at least felt like the battle was being waged again.

The performance was recorded, and there will be a 7" culled from it released later this year as part of the Euclid Sessions series.

Albums of My Life - 1979 - Graham Parker and the Rumour "Squeezing Out Sparks"

by Steve Pick

Three weeks ago, when last we checked in with Graham Parker in this series, he had just released his debut album, Howlin' Wind, and revealed a fresh voice in a highly rooted pub rock approach. Now, two studio albums and one strangely enervated double live album later, we come to Squeezing Out Sparks, in which Parker discovers his voice to be even more exciting when applied to his own sound.

During all this time, Graham Parker and the Rumour - Brinsley Schwarz and Martin Belmont on guitar, Bob Andrews on keyboards, Andrew Bodnar on bass, and Stephen Goulding on drums - developed into one of the most torrid live bands walking the earth. I saw them in summer of 1979, touring behind this album, and to this day that 45 minute opening set remains a standard of comparison for any rock show I ever see.

For Squeezing Out Sparks, Parker turned in ten spitfire songs full of intense observation, anger, and dense wordplay. The titles alone evoke the intensity of the music - "Passion Is No Ordinary Word," "Don't Get Excited," "Nobody Hurts You," "Love Gets You Twisted." And the music kicks the titles in the butt.

Where to start? Bodnar and Goulding are on fire on this album, never content to lay in the pocket as perhaps they did sometimes (to great effect) on earlier records. Here, they play as if they are the focus of the music, with Bodnar's bass lines often providing highly effective counterpoint to the crackling rhythm guitar and Parker's melodic catch-phrases, and Goulding driving the choruses to greater and greater levels of intensity with constantly surprising invention on his kit.

Bob Andrews left the band after this, perhaps because he was feeling less important to the overall sound, but his keyboards, mixed behind the other instruments much of the time, add evocative colors and emotional nuance to what could otherwise be roars of power. Schwarz and Belmont, meanwhile, have worked out a perfect connection - Schwarz contributes almost as many guitar hooks in his brief but incandescent leads as Parker does vocal hooks, while Belmont's overdriven chorused guitar chords chop and throttle the rhythm parts.

Which brings us to Parker himself, spitting out lyrics fast and furious, never stopping to let us ponder such bon mots as "I draw a blank every time I think the football crowd is going to give me a boot" or "We're dying to be invaded and put the blame on something concrete." Parker is at heart a moralist who demands the world live up to his ideals, and if that sometimes puts him on the side of those who can't see complexity, it also puts his heart and soul into attempting to force passion into a world which often settles for going through the motions. Graham Parker wants to make us feel what he feels, and Squeezing Out Sparks is just about the most emotionally riveting rock album I know.

I'm not going into the politics of "You Can't Be Too Strong," the ballad from whence the title of the album derives, because the subject is too divisive, and my opinions on it don't effect my opinions of the album as a whole. Graham Parker and the Rumour never sounded more exhilarating than they do throughout Squeezing Out Sparks, and anger never sounded more alive.

Albums of My Life -1978 - Bruce Springsteen "Darkness on the Edge of Town"

by Steve Pick

In this, the 21st installment of the series writing about one album for each year of my life, we reach the point where I start buying them in real time.

In 1978, something drew me back to music in a big way after a few years of merely dabbling. I started buying records as often as possible, and I listened to the radio all the time, and I read rock magazines. Creem and Rolling Stone, mostly that year. I was learning that things were happening which hadn't happened in a long time, that rock music was saying things which mattered again, and that there were new sounds which fell squarely in the rock tradition while shattering all the rules of the day.

In addition to discovering the New Wave (in part because KADI FM played Elvis Costello and Patti Smith in heavy rotation), I discovered Bruce Springsteen, a kindred spirit albeit a horse of an entirely different color. I remember actually making the purchase of Darkness on the Edge of Town; I bought it at Peaches in Dellwood, and the clerk, a former neighbor of mine, complimented me on my taste.

I remember dropping the needle on the record and thrilling to the tom tom intro of "Badlands" before suddenly the sky opened up and the full throttle force of the E Street Band burst from my speakers. I remember playing the record over and over, knowing that this was something special, even if I didn't quite yet know why.

To this day, Darkness is my favorite Springsteen album. It remains the defining E Street template, even though obviously those guys could drop some serious science on songs dramatically different from the ones contained here. But, here we have the force of the E Street Band, the astounding invention and power of drummer Max Weinberg, the thick sound and rhythmic perfection of bassist Gary W. Tallent, the unobtrusive yet essential keyboards of Danny Federici, the array of melodic commentary from pianist Roy Bittan, the penetrating full-blown tenor sax of Clarence Clemons, and the dynamic blasts of Springsteen's own guitar (or is that Miami Steve Van Zant? I never know who plays which part).

And there's Springsteen's voice, which he pushes to extremes he never did before or again. Listen to the way he screams from the gut on "Adam Raised a Cain," or the way he sounds so intimate and well, horny on "Candy's Room," or the rich expression he brings to "The Promised Land." He sounds rawer, and he sounds more varied, as though each song required a specific new vocal approach to deliver the emotional content.

The emotional content of Darkness is pretty much a frenzy of hope and pain and drudgery and release and desire and love and passion and revenge and retreat. The characters in these songs are not simple, are not symbols but very specifically drawn human beings with complicated experiences.

"Racing in the Streets," is one of the most mocked of all Springsteen songs because of it's opening lines. "I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396 / Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor" was ripe for satire by those who thought Springsteen's songs were simply love poems to cars and girls. But the man in this song is trying to be in love with life itself - "Some guys they just give up livin' / And start dying little by little piece by piece / Some guys come home from work and wash up / And go racin' in the streets."

The catch is, he's torn between the thrills he needs from cheating death itself - for racing in the streets isn't exactly a guarantee of safety - and the pain he knows he brings to the woman he loves, who has shut herself down to a shell of the lively girl she had been. "Tonight my baby and me we're gonna ride to the sea / And wash these sins off my hands." It ain't easy to ask forgiveness when you believe the very sin you're committing is what keeps you from dying. This will be a baptism that doesn't seem likely to lead to Heaven.

Ah, well, Springsteen challenges perceptions and conventions. He sings of working class people not as heroic stereotypes, but as human beings faced with the challenge of finding meaning in life. When Springsteen sings "I believe in the promised land," at first it seems something akin to "Born to Run," when he wants to take his woman and break on through to the other side. But, there is an awareness here of a contradiction - "Blow away the dreams that tear you apart / Blow away the dreams that break your heart / Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted." Isn't the promised land itself such a dream? And yet, the song sounds so full of hope, so cocksure that the singer (and those of us who listen and sing along, either in our heads or at the top of our lungs at his concerts) can actually defeat the forces arrayed against him, and find the life he wants.

Ultimately, it is the awareness that the fight itself, or rather the experience of making a life out of the individual moments we live, which matters. "Tonight I'll be on that hill 'cause I can't stop / I'll be on that hill with everything I got / Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost / I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost / For wanting things which can only be found / In the darkness on the edge of town." Not a simple moral, but a complex desire to wrestle with the powers that be, to keep searching til it's understood that these badlands are treating us good.

Cover Me - The Good, the Better, & the Best

Last week I made my way through the heartland of America headed to New York City. As is my custom I try and break up the monotony by hitting the flea markets and small record stores along the way. I was rewarded this trip with three cover, one good, one better and one is simply THE BEST!

GOOD:
The first is a record of sacred songs from The Chuck Wagon Gang. I thought they just served up vittles, but what do I know. The photo on the cover is so wholesome it makes Wally and the Beaver look like Hell's Angels.




BETTER:
The second is from an Ohio based Gospel group The Evangelaires. The description on the back tells of a vocal group that is exciting (no), artistic (certainly not), different (I don't think so) and imaginative (nope). But all these adjectives can only describe the cover. I'm assuming that they played a little dress up for the photo shoot, at least I'm hoping. Otherwise the bald guy with the lollipop, the farmer, the waiter and the old fashioned lady might want to watch there backs when the leave, 'cause the hunter and his dog are looking like they're out for blood.



BEST:
This one is a crown jewel. A cover so astounding I nearly dropped it when I spotted it at a flea market in Indiana. It's The Best of The Crusaders (no, not those Crusaders). Originally a trio made up of three gospelaires that, on looks alone would be enough to feature in this blog. But The Crusaders, who by the way record in "ultra sonic sound", added the suave and sophisticated former auto racer, pro wrestler and now at 46 inches "the smallest gospel singer in the world" Little Buddy Dee. In the liner notes it says "to see and hear Buddy as he teams up with the Crusaders is an unforgettable experience". I'm sure, but this cover will definitely suffice thank you very much.

Albums of My Life - 1977 - Television "Marquee Moon"

by Steve Pick

Nearly 25 years ago, a very good friend of mine got to spend a few months living in Paris, and inevitably, she found herself wandering around in the Louvre one day. When she came across what I had always thought was the most famous statue in the world, the Venus de Milo, she suddenly burst out laughing. For the first time, she got the joke, as she had somehow lived her whole life to that point not realizing that this Venus had no arms any more.

The joke is in the second song on Television's impeccable Marquee Moon. "And I fell / Did you feel low? / No,not at all. / Huh? / I fell right into the arms of Venus de Milo."

Well, it's funny, but it's not merely a joke. The song exists on the border between feeling alive and aware of a future, and empty and lost and not caring about anything. Tom Verlaine's character seems to dance across the city of New York, encountering strangers on the Bowery, actors from Broadway, and an old friend who urges him to take a needless risk. He is aware of all these things, but none of them affect him; Verlaine holds on to the memory of astounding beauty, a statue so perfect that even with all the loss it has sustained over the years, it remains an ideal of artistic excellence.

And, then there are the guitars - honestly, as great as Verlaine's lyrics are, and everything about the way he delivers them, it is the guitar interplay between Verlaine and Richard Lloyd which elevates this album into the pantheon of greatness which it occupies. The liner notes take great pains to tell us which one plays which parts, but I've never really bothered to think too much about that. Instead, I prefer to think of the two of them melded into one mind, where rhythm guitar and lead guitar combine to create some of the most beautiful, eloquent, dirty, and hard-hitting sounds in all of rock.

I'm not a believer in any kind of God, but there is a passage in the song "Marquee Moon" which feels to me like a manifestation of the divine. It's a mysterious song, with images of darkness doubling, of lightning striking itself, of Cadillacs pulling in and out of graveyards, and of standing underneath a moon which feels like a marquee. All of this is sung, spat, delivered in Verlaine's exceptionally unconventionally pretty yet precise vocals, as one guitar chugs a rhythm, another guitar dances filigrees around it, the bass thuds in counter-rhythm, and the drums, as always on this record, are filling in astounding rhythmic details few would think of trying, let alone actually attempting.

Then, about four and a half minutes in, the filigree guitar takes off. The song is modal, and two chords alternate four measures of two beats each, giving the lead guitar enough time to slowly climb up the fretboard again and again every eight measures. But that's not doing enough justice to what happens here - there are explorations, inventions, melodic delights aplenty over the next few minutes, as the rhythms subtly speed up, the dynamics get louder, and the solo becomes more and more intense. This is the sound of searching, of attempting to find meaning, or God, or whatever profound secret one is interested in. And then, after climbing as high as possible, the piano delivers the sound of a rushing stream, and the guitar, now gently plucked with some effect pedal adding light resonance, gives the answer long sought. It is the beginning, the Word made Sound, and it brings calm to my soul every time I hear it. And then, it all starts over, the band returns to the rhythm, and Verlaine sings again, "I remember when the darkness doubled." The first verse leads to a fade-out, indicating that the answer is never enough, the quest must always continue.

Marquee Moon gives us eight songs, five of which are easily among rock's masterpieces, and the other three are merely exceptionally good. I didn't hear it in 1977 - few outside of New York and the rock critic intelligentsia of the time did. I really have no memory of discovering this record, but it had to happen sometime in the next few years. I also have no memory of ever not knowing and loving and thrilling to what more than deserves every accolade it has accumulated in all this time. If you know it, you know what I mean; if you don't, you will not believe what you have missed.

The Biggest A-Holes in Jazz

by Joe Schwab

Keith Jarrett (renowned A-hole) picks on the audience at the Umbria Jazz Festival for taking his picture.



I would be remiss if I didn't also include A-hole hall of famer, Mr. Buddy Rich.

Albums of My Life - 1976 - Graham Parker - "Howlin ' Wind"

by Steve Pick

I started listening to FM radio in 1976, and in St. Louis, that usually meant KSHE, the rock station which dominated the local market to a degree unimaginable to those who didn't live through it. At that time, if you were under 25 years old, and you didn't wear a KSHE pig shirt, you were looked on with the same suspicion John Birch Society members viewed Hollywood actors and union leaders. You were not "one of us."

Well, I listened to KSHE, though the contrarian in me listened to rival KADI even more. My point here is I know I heard "Don't Ask Me Questions" fairly often on the radio in 1976, and I really want it to have been on the biggest station at the time, but I can't swear to it. I wasn't yet reading rock journalism, wasn't at all aware of what was bubbling up in England and New York. I do remember loving "Breakdown" by Tom Petty and "Don't Ask Me Questions" more than anything by Journey or Styx, though not so much more that I was ready to renounce the latter.

Now, I can't imagine not realizing "Don't Ask Me Questions" is a Bob Marley homage, but then, I wasn't hearing reggae as anything unusual. This was the way this song sounded (as I mentioned a few posts back when writing about Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come). And, as much as I enjoyed the song on the radio, I don't think I even considered looking for the album in stores - I certainly had no idea this Graham Parker guy had such short hair.

Eventually, of course, I shifted gears and formally aligned myself with the New Wave and Punk Rock movements. Graham Parker wasn't actually part of these, but he was on the periphery, and I grabbed all of his albums as fast as I could (easy in those days, as most of them seemed to be sitting in the cut-out bins ripe for the picking). Here was a guy with short hair, short songs, short guitar solos, and more hooks than you could hang Heidi Klum's clothes on. I played his first four studio albums to death back in the day.

Howlin' Wind is album number one (and actually, the second record, Heat Treatment, also appeared in 1976, and comes close enough to this one that I briefly considered covering the both of them as if they were a double LP). Now, I can hear the heavy Van Morrison influence which colors this record - Parker doesn't have the deep sonority of Morrison's voice, but he nicks some arrangement ideas, especially on "Gypsy Blood" and "You've Got to Be Kidding." And, having heard enough live renditions of many of these songs over the years, either in concert or on live records, the album seems a little more sedate than I remember it.

But, my goodness, it's still a great one - song for song, Howlin' Wind remains one of the most impressive debuts of any songwriter I've ever heard. Parker's skills are not necessarily in crafting complex melodies, but my goodness, he knows how to pack a punch in the chorus. Short verses, clever guitar or keyboard or horn hooks, and the catchiest, most singable choruses to come from one mind - that's the formula established here, which Parker has mixed together again and again for 33 years. I'm not saying he's ever matched his first four records, but he's never fallen so far away from those standards that you don't want to keep hearing him.

The backing by the Rumour deserves to be mentioned, as well. I saw these guys with Parker in 1979, and again with Garland Jeffreys a few years later (though keyboardist Bob Andrews had left by then), and there has rarely been a more talented and intense ensemble. You can hear the beginnings of their sound develop here - Brinsley Schwarz would step more clearly to the forefront on guitar later, and Martin Belmont would develop a rounder, deeper rhythmic approach. But already, they were in synch with Parker's songs, working the dynamics which such a repetitious style required.

Graham Parker wasn't revolutionary, a la the Ramones, whose debut album deserved consideration for representing 1976, but which was ultimately a little too cartoony, and a little less than perfect even in regards to their own role in music - the next two albums would do that. He was obviously a record collector who wanted to mix the soul, blues, rock, reggae, and country he had heard into a new and vibrant creation of his own. Still, for a conservative take on rock'n'roll, Howlin' Wind remains one of the most exciting and inventive records I know.