Sting at the Rosemont in Chicago

In the liner notes of Joe Jackson’s first live album from 1988, Jackson writes that artists should play the music they want to play when performing live shows because an audience will always see through a canned performance.  Sting appeared to have taken this advice to heart for many of the earlier shows on his “Back to Bass” theater tour, as he ignored a great number of hits in favor of deeper cuts from more recent releases.  You couldn’t blame some fans if they walked away from these performances a little disappointed. 

At the Rosemont Theater near Chicago on Saturday night, Sting’s stance appeared to mellow just a bit, as a few additional audience-pleasing songs were inserted into the set-list.  Still, it’s interesting to note first the songs Sting didn’t play: If I Ever Lose My Faith In You, Brand New Day, Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot, You Still Touch Me, Why Should I Cry for You, Soul Cages, Fragile (or anything else from his second solo album, Nothing Like The Sun), and Set Them Free.  If he’d denied the audience “Desert Rose,” “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” and “Every Breath You Take,” there might have been a riot.  As it was, Sting did a nice job of interweaving various highlights from his repertoire, including stellar deep cuts, into the set-list, though the show still hit a bit of a lull about two-thirds in when he focused on tracks from his last studio album of originals, Sacred Love.

Supported by a first rate 5-person band, including a fiddle to take up many of the solos heretofore handled by woodwinds, Sting looked – let’s be honest here – fabulous as a sixty year-old man, sporting nothing more than jeans and a t-shirt.  Yes, I’m happy he no longer takes off his shirt as he used to do while singing “Don’t Stand So Close To Me,” but I’ve no doubt he looks better shirtless than I do at 17 years his junior.  Ho hum.  He plays better bass than I do, too.  Absent on this tour were keyboards, and with rare exception, they weren’t missed in the least (and this is coming from a keyboard player).  Like Joe Jackson, Sting manages to rearrange his songs to fit the instrumentation at hand and still have a full and exciting sound.

My three favorite Sting songs were all played, with “I Hung My Head” and “Seven Days” two of the show’s best of the evening.  My other favorite, “Ghost Story,” which was preceded with an explanation of how String wrote the lyrics for his father, didn’t fare as well.  The song was rushed and its climax was in need of additional instrumentation.  Better represented were “The Hounds of Winter,” “Stolen Car” and “Dessert Rose,” the latter coming off surprisingly well considering the absence of keyboards, and one that coaxed the audience to its feet all the way up to the balcony.

Fiddle player Peter Tickell handled much of the solo opportunities with terrific results, the most memorable being an impassioned run during an extended outro of “Love Is Stronger Than Justice” (among the worst Sting songs ever recorded, though the fiddle helped to make it at least palatable). 

Sting’s voice was mixed expertly, with nearly every syllable clearly understandable.  Though the low-end of the band suffered a bit in the mix and the acoustic guitar came out sounding tinny, I appreciated being able to actually hear the stories in the lyrics unfolding during some of the more compelling songs.

Six Police selections were included, including “Driven To Tears,” “Next To You,” and the deeper track, “Demolition Man,” which came out even better than the original, as did “Sacred Love,” another subpar track from Sting’s last album, but which played better live than in the studio.

My three children attended the concert, and despite not knowing a good percentage of the material, they were able to enjoy the musicianship and the obvious talents displayed on stage.  Seeing Sting perform an acoustic “Message in a Bottle” to finish the show is a memory I believe they’ll hold onto decades from now.  It reminds me of how we had to leave the Paul McCartney show six years ago while he played “Yesterday” because one of my daughters was falling asleep.  Perhaps fourteen is a better age to witness a legend.  Oh well.

Next week we see Paul Simon at the same venue, and 70 years from now my daughters will be able to tell their grandchildren that they witnessed the greatest American songwriter (Simon) and the greatest English songwriter (McCartney) as youths.   Throwing Sting in the mix is icing on the cake.

Pete Townshend and The Who in the Early 80s

After the death of Keith Moon, The Who limped into retirement (the first of many) with two albums in the early 80s: Face Dances and It’s Hard.  When considered alongside the band’s masterworks, these two releases aren’t often held in high regard by die-hard Who fans, despite the few songwriting gems of “Another Tricky Day” and “Eminence Front.”  But I think one needs to consider the makeup of the band itself, as well as Townshend’s solo releases around the same time period, to get a full appreciation of just how strong Townsend’s songwriting continued to be into his late 30s, and how exemplary the final two Who albums could have been (I’m ignoring The Who’s 2006 release: Endless Wire). 

Unlike other English bands that dominated much of the musical landscape starting in the 60s, The Who, while a tremendous ensemble of musicians when it came to arranging, were reliant on one man for their creative output: Pete Townshend.  Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles all had a strong duo of songwriters with a supporting cast of part-time composers.  The Who had one legitimate songwriter and a supporting cast of one (John Entwistle).  Had they been a band of two or three songwriters, they might have continued to shine during the 80s.

As it was, Townshend managed to produce exceptional music at a surprisingly prolific rate in the 80s, but instead of reserving his output, he spread his creativity over four projects: two solo and two with The Who.  The result was four decent albums instead of two gems.  I gotta believe that when Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle heard “Rough Boys” for the first time in 1980, they were thinking, “Damn, that could have been one of ours.”

Consider these four releases:

• Empty Glass, by Pete Townshend, released April 21, 1980
• Face Dances, by the Who, released March 16, 1981
• All the Best Cowboys have Chinese Eyes, by Pete Townshend, released June 14, 1982
• It’s Hard, by the Who, released September 4, 1982

Four albums in two and a half years.  Pretty impressive productivity.  All four albums have their moments of brilliance, and while I’d argue that It’s Hard is the best of the lot, if you condense these releases into two Who albums, I think you’re looking at the best Who releases since Quadrophenia (which is, to me, their magnum opus).  What if the final Who albums had the following track listings (or some variation of the following):

FACE DANCES 

• Rough Boys
• You Better You Bet
• Cache Cache
• The Quiet One
• Let My Love Open the Door
• Empty Glass
• You
• Cat’s in the Cupboard
• Gonna Get You
• Another Tricky Day

IT’S HARD

• Slit Skirts
• Athena
• It’s Your Turn
• Stardom in Action
• Dangerous
• Eminence Front
• I’ve Known No War
• The Sea Refuses No River
• North Country Girl
• Cry if You Want

Maybe you would substitute a particular song for another, but regardless, these two albums would have been at worst very, very good, and possibly even brilliant with the added contributions of Daltrey and Entwistle.

You could also argue that none of this would have mattered anyway – that once Keith Moon died, the energy of the band died too.  But I think if taken as a whole, the creative output of Townshend in the early 80s was even more impressive than, say, The Rolling Stones, who managed to put out two good releases in the same time period (Emotional Rescue and Tattoo You).  But unlike the Stones, Townshend’s gems were spread out over four albums, not two. 

Either way, not too shabby.  And for Townshend, his best solo effort was on the horizon: the brilliant White City.

The Clouds Part for Rufus

Foreboding clouds and cool winds yielded to a brilliant sky and mild temperatures last night for Rufus Wainwright’s fourth appearance at Ravinia in Highland Park, IL – this time with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – to perform five Shakespearean Sonnets, followed by a solo set of pop music.

Three of the sonnets originally appeared on 2010's All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, which Wainwright performed last year in Chicago with only piano accompaniment.  This time the sonnets were backed by a full orchestra while the singer, wearing a tan blazer and vest, a flashy scarf and white pants, stood at center stage, his hands clasped at his front for much of the show.  Rufus's vocal talents flourished in such a setting, and although some season-ticket holders might have not been sold on Wainwright as a classical artist (many of them left after intermission, or shortly thereafter), it’s undeniable that in pop music his vocal range and control have few equals.  As for the orchestral arrangements, at times they were too busy, with embellishments that cluttered up the melody, but at their best – like in Sonnet 43 – they anchored Rufus’s singing superbly.

For the second half of the show, Rufus appeared onstage – surprisingly without a costume change – for a solo show accompanied by piano, save for four songs backed by acoustic guitar.  His set list was less ambitious from his last Chicago appearance, sticking closely with fan favorites for the most part and ignoring his debut album, though he did unveil a new song devoted to publicist Barbara Charone, and he dusted off two lesser-played songs from his album Poses, “Grey Gardens” and “California.”

As always, Rufus was humorously self-deprecating on stage, admitting before playing “The Dream” that he might not be able to get through it.  Last year, he struggled throughout the most difficult parts of the piece (if you can find me a more complicated piano part for a pop-song, I’d like to hear it) but managed to plow his way through.  This time, Rufus had to stop, utter “Let’s try that again,” and then finally acquiesce after a few more attempts to find an on-ramp.  “I can’t play it anymore,” he laughed, before playing a chord that allowed him to finish the piece.  Perfection or not, the audience seemed genuinely appreciative at his efforts.

A few songs later, Rufus offered a new piece slated for his next pop album (to be produced by Mark Ronson), and said it wasn’t entirely set yet, but that he’d approach it as an “open rehearsal, which is what the show has sort of become.”

The show’s high points were from Rufus’s more intimate songs – “Dinner at Eight,” “Martha,” and “Zebulon” – all devoted to various trials and hardships with his family.  During these pieces, the audience – at least those seated in the pavilion – fell completely silent, a feat which might not have been possible in a setting other than Ravinia. 

The concert ended with the upbeat “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk,” along with two encores, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and “Going to a Town,” the last introduced with Rufus’s admission that “although it’s sometimes been hard, I still believe in Obama.”

If there were any Tea Party supporters in attendance, they opted to stay silent.  When it comes to art, sometimes you gotta swallow a few political quips.

From Album to Tape to CD to .mp3 File to...the Cloud

Jon Pareles published an excellent article in the New York Times about the ever-evolving makeup of the music we listen to, and it all seems to be headed to the same inevitable conclusion: the cloud, which you may have already had exposure to on Amazon, Apple and Google.  Cloud computing isn't new and it isn't limited to music - people have been creating Microsoft Office documents on-line for years - but with regard to music, the cloud simply refers to on-line storage that allows listeners to access music from multiple devices via an Internet connection, rather than having to copy mass quantities of storage from device to device. 

For my own website, I've been using a DivShare to store my own compositions, though with the Big Boys now in the cloud business, I suspect it's only a matter of time before DivShare gets purchased.

Of course, having each music listener in the world own their own cloud requires storage - massive storage - and insane redundancy, not to mention user time.  Remember how long it took you to convert your CDs to .mp3 files all those years ago?  If you and I both own The White Album, does it make sense for each of us to have to upload the same album (again) and store it on-line?  Why not just have the album stored in one place that both of us have access to?

Apple is all over this concept with iMatch, that - for a fee - will recognize music you own (legally or illegally) and provide access to their own copies.  For those of us with hundreds or even thousands of CDs, this concept is an attractive one. 

Cloud computing continues the trend of diminishing the value of music, and poses a tricky problem for artists who are already feeling the squeeze since physical ownership of a song became unnecessary.  When listeners have access to any song at any time from any place, the song becomes something less in the hearts and minds of the listener.  As Mr. Pareles wrote:

"Songs have become, for lack of a better word, trivial."  Now anyone with Internet access has "an infinitude of choices immediately at hand. But each of those choices is a diminished thing; attainable without effort, disposable without a second thought, just another icon in a folder on a pocket-size screen with pocket-sized sound."

So Long, Amy

On Saturday, July 23rd, I threw in a CD in the car, a Marc Cohn album, and listened along with my family.  On the same home-burned disc, it turns out, was another album, my apparent attempt at efficiency three years ago when I purchased downloads of two CDs on the same day and wanted to make a hard copy without wasting two blank discs.  The second album began to play when Marc Cohn finished.  It was Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black," music I probably hadn't listened to in two years.  It was good to hear.

The next morning, also by chance, I flipped channels on the TV for a few minutes and stopped when I saw Amy Winehouse's image.  I learned that she had died the day before, about seven hours before I played her CD.

Coincidence?  Most likely.  And yet...

So long, Amy.  Another one lost at age twenty-seven.  I think of her in-laws, who in the midst of Amy's substance abuse, begged fans to boycott her music to help her get back on track.

And I think of how I didn't listen.