The Music of 1995

Last month my friend Kevin summarized his feelings for the music of 1995.  He wrote:

1995 music finally crushed me.  Off with the makeup.  Cut the hair.  Get clothes in a color other than black.  Trade in boots for loafers and quit Bartz's Party Store and start work at Fleet Mortgage/Washington Mutual for next 15 years.  95 didn't scare me straight, it frustrated me into society, and I owe it all to …… Coolio??

I decided it was my mission to prove him wrong, because my memories of the music of 1995 were quite positive, so I spent a month gathering music from this forgotten year.  What I found in my own collection was enough to make a strong case, but I went out and gleaned another dozen or so bands to feature – some I’d never even heard of before – and then my friend John hopped onto the theme, making an even stronger case.  Last Saturday, four of us got together in Wisconsin to do nothing but play and discuss music.  Here’s what we came up with for 1995.  For me, the first three albums along justify the entire year:

“High and Dry” and “Planet Telex” from The Bends – Radiohead

“Jackson Cannery” from Ben Folds Five – Ben Folds Five

“Common People” from Different Class – Pulp

“Honey White” from Yes – Morphine

“Universal Heartbeat” from Only Everything – Juliana Hatfield

“Downtown” from Mirror Ball – Neil Young

“Not My Idea” from Garbage – Garbage

“Summerland” from Sparkle and Fade – Everclear

“Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” from Batman Forever Soundtrack – U2

“Somebody’s Crying” from Forever Blue – Chris Isaak

“You Could Make a Killing” from I’m With Stupid – Aimee Mann

“The Universal” from The Great Escape – Blur

"Just Like Anyone" from Let Your Dim Light Shine - Soul Asylum

“Don’t Look Back in Anger” from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory – Oasis

“Hometown Blues” from Train a Comin’ – Steve Earle

“Radio King” from Down by the old Mainstream – Golden Smog

“That Was Another Country” from Glow – Innocence Mission

“Sandman” and “A Happy Ending” from Faust – Randy Newman

“You Must Go” from Walk On – John Hiatt

“In the Meantime” from Resident Alien – Spacehog

“Brain Stew” from Insomniac – Green Day

“You’ll See” from Something to Remember – Madonna

“Blue” from Tomorrow the Green Grass – Jayhawks

“Awake” from Wholesale Meats and Fish – Letters to Cleo

“My Friends” from One Hot Minute – Red Hot Chili Peppers

“This is a Call” from Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters

“Loose String” from Trace – Sun Volt

“All I Really Want” from Jagged Little Pill – Alanis Morissette

“Every Poet Wants to Murder Shakespeare” from Kisses 50 Cents – Bad Examples

“In the Blood” from Deluxe – Better Than Ezra

“Casino Queen” from A.M. – Wilco

And that’s only what we had time for.  There were many other band represented in 1995 that might have been worthy of our time: Big Country, Emmylou Harris, Smashing Pumpkins, Lloyd Cole, Graham Parker, Collective Soul, Del Amitri, Little Feat, Indigo Girls, Alice in Chains, Goo Goo Dolls, Dishwalla, Bruce Springsteen, Urge Overkill, Prince, Bar Scott, Semisonic, Vigilantes of Love, etc., not to mention jazz, hip-hop and other genres that we didn’t focus on but that undoubtedly had something to offer.

1995 may not have been perfect, but it surely had some terrific stuff.  Sure, for some of these picks I happened to play the one really good song from an otherwise mediocre album.  But you can’t tell me that when the oldies station plays “Happy Together” by The Turtles that you’re wishing the disc jockey had picked a deep cut.  Sometimes the hit is what makes the album.

Then again, I’d put up Radiohead’s The Bends against any album of any year, and it would hold up very well.

So was Kevin persuaded to view the music of 1995 in a new light?  Impressions are tough to overcome, but I think there may be a crack in the armor.  Perhaps Kevin can post a comment below if he cares to interject.

This Business of Music

In Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, Mark Caro offers a terrific analysis of today’s music business that has artists and labels scrambling to tap into on-line sources of income.  Far too often, these sources offer a pittance, calling into question whether artists can continue to create albums and make a living.

That the big labels screwed up and screwed up big in the late 90s when they fought tooth and nail the reality of the Internet goes without saying (and it’s eerily similar to the ongoing battles between Time Warner and local network affiliates – will cable even exist ten years from now?), but it’s doubtful that anyone could have predicted that online streaming would become the primary way people listen to music. 

The very idea of owning one’s music is becoming anachronistic.  Sure, there continues to be a “vinyl revival,” with LP sales increasing almost 6-fold since 2007 (a trend that couldn’t make me happier), but on the whole album sales have reached historic lows, and digital albums aren’t exactly booming either, growing a measly 1.9% in the second quarter of 2013, and possibly declining this quarter.

Which leaves streaming: YouTube.  Pandora.  Spotify.  iHeartRadio.  Slacker.  SomaFM.  For now, these services aren’t providing musicians with the income that physical sales offer.  Rates vary, but according the article, one would need to listen to a song 200 times for an artist to earn $1 on Pandora vs. earning, say, a dollar with a few sales on iTunes.  The argument goes that once these streaming services grow, they’ll be able to pay more to artists (as Spotify has in Sweden), but that remains to be seen.

(for a positively fascinating breakdown of how one artist makes money, check out Zoe Keating's self-reported income as a musician)

More likely, to me, is that music is simply going to become disposable, worth nothing or close to nothing.  In David Byrne’s terrific book, How Music Works, the former Talking Head’s member remarks how music, in a way, has come full circle.  Over a hundred years ago, the only time people enjoyed music was while it was being played.  There was no “owning” music.  You heard it at a performance, and then it disappeared.  At the time, recorded music was something to be feared.  John Philips Sousa warned us against recorded music, saying that it would not only devalue live performance, but impede the yearning to master an instrument:

The child becomes indifferent to practice, for when music can be heard in the homes without the labor of study and close application, and without the slow process of acquiring a technique,…the tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant…

Today, both of Sousa’s concerns appear to have been mollified.  Virtuosos are alive and well in every conceivable genre at every possible instrument.  And live performance is the one thing keeping musicians fed and audiences interested.  Performing used to be an artist’s cash cow, a necessary ingredient to spur physical sales.  Today, when access to musical recordings is ubiquitous, live performing is what’s keeping music fresh, immediate and inspiring, and audiences are willing to shell out serious cash to experience it.

In David Byrne's book, he devotes a chapter to revealing the budgets and income of two of his recent recordings.  It's enlightening, but ultimately not indicative of the average musician, since Byrne is still benefitting from the music business's past paradigm.  Things have shifted, and independent artists today aren't reeping the benefits of the 1970s business model. 

Perhaps one day the vinyl revival will really kick it into gear, and life will return to the glorious past yet again, whereby people gather in front of a turntable and take turns listening to the latest releases.  But in the meantime, an artist's bread and butter appears to be performing.  And perhaps that's the way it should have been all along.

The Music of 1979-1980

In our efforts to make music matter again in our lives (see Making Music Matter, part 1 and part 2), a few friends and I met at Kevin’s “Wall of Sound” basement in Wisconsin to play and discuss music from the golden years of 1979-1980, and the results were even more brilliant than I had expected.  What a incredible two year period, when hard rock, punk, new wave, soul, arena rock, fusion, prog rock, folk rock and every other kind of rock you can slap a label on converged for a perfect period of music proliferation.  And get this – most of it was actually played on the radio back in the day!  Crazy times.  1979-1980 might be the strongest two years in my book.  What about yours?

Here’s the list in all its glory – probably close to six hours of music.  It should be noted that music selections were viewed through the lenses of white suburban men who were once white suburban boys.  Notably absent are artists like Kool and the Gang, Isaac Hayes, Donna Summers, Earth Wind and Fire, etc.  We are worse for it.

The Knack – Good Girls Don’t

The Knack – Let me Out

The Police – Bombs Away

The Romantics – Tom Boy

Off Broadway – Bad Indication

Nick Lowe – Switch Board Susan

Roxy Music – Over You

Billy Thorpe – Dream Maker (this is not a good song, but was used to stump Kevin.  It was not successful).

Billy Thorpe – Children of the Sun

Jeff Beck (with Jan Hammer) – Star Cycle

Donny Iris – She’s So Wild (also used to stump Kevin.  This one was successful!)

Donny Iris – Ah!  Leah!

OMD – Red Frame/White Light

Pete Townsend – Let My Love Open the Door

Pete Townsend – And I Moved

Led Zeppelin – I’m Gonna Crawl

Blondie – Union City Blue

Ian McLagan – La De Da (this stumped everyone)

Alan Parsons Project – Snake Eyes

Fleetwood Mac – Brown Eyes

Talking Heads – Air

Rolling Stones – Emotional Rescue

Paul McCartney – So Glad to See You

Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Apart

Jackson Browne – Boulevard

The Kinks – Moving Pictures

Queen – Don’t Try Suicide

The Police – Reggatta De Blanc

The Cars – Let’s Go

Cheap Trick – Dream Police

Yes – Does is Really Happen

John Cougar – Ain’t Even Done with the Night

Bruce Springsteen – Point Blank

Bruce Springsteen – Cadillac Ranch

The Pretenders – Precious

Supertramp – Child of Vision

Bob Welsh – Precious Love

Rush – Free Will

AC/DC – Shot Down in Flames

Generation X – Kiss Me Deadly

The Kings – Partyitis

The Kinds – This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ To Glide

Neil Young – Powder Finger

U2 – A Day Without Me

U2 – I Will Follow

Rickie Lee Jones – Danny’s All-Star Joint

Bob Dylan – Gotta Serve Somebody

Steely Dan – Gaucho

Dr. Hook – Sexy Eyes

REO Speedwagon – Don’t Let Him Go

Yipes – Out in California

The Eagles – In the City

Head East – It’s Got to be Real

The Clash – Lost in the Supermarket

The Damned – Jet Boy, Jet Girl

Joe Jackson – On the Radio

Van Halen – D.O.A.

Journey – Too Late

Kansas – Hold On

Genesis – Turn it on Again

Talking Heads – Once in a Lifetime

Tom Petty – Even the Losers

Elvis Costello – Senior Service

Joan Jett – Bad Reputation

Aretha Franklin – Think

Aerosmith – Three Mile Smile

Aerosmith – No Surprise

Al Stewart – Midnight Rocks

Muppets – Rainbow Connection

Peter Gabriel – No Self Control

Elton John – Little Jeanie

Not too shabby a list!  And we didn’t even touch Pink Floyd, Billy Joel, Prince, The B-52s, Michael Jackson, Graham Parker, Robert Palmer, Santana, Kiss, ELO, Chaka Kahn, Pat Benatar, Dire Straits, ZZ Top, Toto, Styx, etc.

Tell me a two year period that’s better.  There might be!

The Tale of the Tape

I own a tape deck, a turntable and a VCR (and I’ve used two within the last week!), but even I had to do a double take at Time’s one-page feature this week on the resurgence of cassette tapes.  It seems that sales are up for both blank and re-recorded tapes, a surprising phenomenon given the digital revolution and the fact that even back in the day pre-recorded cassette tapes were the butt of jokes just shy of those for the 8-track.  Store-bought cassettes, it was widely known, were recorded on poor quality tapes that never sounded right on a good cassette deck.  The high ends were particularly bad and the overall sound couldn’t compare with that of LPs or CDs.  When I worked at a record store (remember those?) in 1991-1992, we sold thousands tapes, including a ridiculous number of cassette singles, and I couldn’t believe how many people were willing to shell out cash for such an inferior medium. 

Now I learn that new albums are being released on cassette and the collection of old tapes is gaining steam.  I truly didn’t see this coming.  Not two years ago, I finally decided that my studio needed to be freed of the cassette tapes that were mucking up coveted shelf-space and discarded several dozen.  Some were old store-bought tapes that my wife had accumulated, but most were Maxell XLII tapes of albums I’d collected over the years.  The thought that I could possibly sell these, or even find a home for them, was beyond comprehension.

Tapes were ubiquitous in the 70s and 80s.  For Christmas in 1978, I received a cheap cassette deck with a built-in microphone that my friends and I used it to record skits, but it was my brother’s purchase of a high-quality tape-deck that spurred daily recordings, be it songs off the radio, my own compositions, or copies of my LPs.  As soon as I purchased a vinyl LP, I transferred it onto tape in order to preserve the vinyl copy as well as have a more portable medium to play in the car.  So now if I play, say, my vinyl copy of Yes’s Going for the One, it should sound pristine, as it probably hasn’t been played more than twice since I purchased it. 

Maxell XLII was the tape of choice among my friends in the 80s, though some opted to pay the extra cash for the XLII-S.  Currently, in my now sparse collection of old tapes, I find I’ve got some of both.  The 90 minute tape was the norm, which was usually perfect because you could fit an album on each side, but some albums required a few extra minutes.  Hence, the 100 minute tape.  Genesis albums were the worst.  You could purchase a 100 minute tape, but even then you’d have to skip a track to fit, say, A Trick of the Tale onto one side. 

Aside from recording one’s own LPs, there were concerts to record off of Sunday night’s King Biscuit Flower Hour or interviews off of Monday night’s Rockline (which, I’ve come to learn, it still going strong after 32 years.  Nice!).  More important were the recordings shared between friends.  An old girlfriend made me a concert tape of Bruce Springsteen’s second night at Alpine Valley in 1984, a particularly cool memento given that I’d attended the concert the day before.  Other friends of mine made me mix tapes, exposing me to terrific bands and recordings I would have never heard on my own (Cracker’s version of the Carpenter’s song, “Rainy Days and Mondays”?  Fantastic!).  These, I haven’t the heart to get rid of.  I still have a box of cassettes, including many recordings of my own compositions in the 1980s and several copies of my first two albums, Meals and Ulcers (1992) and Rocks Off On Humboldt (1996).

And even though I don’t have copies of the mix tapes I gave to potential girlfriends, I like to think that scattered amongst the attics of the United States, these tapes still exist, little fragments of a guy with hopes that the beautiful female specimen might look at him in a different light.

One mix tape hit pay-dirt. 

I still have the tape I made for my future wife in 1993 when she was just a hope.  Looking at it now, I wonder why the hell I didn’t include more selections from the very solid year of 1992.  Where is the REM?  Peter Gabriel?  Lemonheads?  XTC?  But oh well.  It’s a little snapshot of a lovesick boy.  And it got the job done.

“A WONDERFUL LITTLE MIX”

Side A

These are Days – 10,000 Maniacs

Loveable – Elvis Costello

Under African Skies – Paul Simon

Big Yellow Taxi – Joni Mitchell

Be My Number Two – Joe Jackson

Chuck E.’s In Love – Rickie Lee Jones

Oh Daddy – Adrian Belew

Sail Away – Randy Newman

High Flying Bird – Elton John

Saturday – The Judy Bats

Don’t Get Me Wrong – The Pretenders

Umbrella – Innocence Mission

Taking My Life In Your Hands – Elvis Costello

Earn Enough for Us – XTC

It’s My Job – Jimmy Buffett

Side B

Late in the Evening – Paul Simon

Candy Everybody Wants – 10,000 Maniacs

The Woman’s Work – Kate Bush

Showdown at Big Sky – Robbie Robertson

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters – Elton John

Real Emotional Girl – Randy Newman

The Greatest Thing – Elvis Costello

Stranger than Fiction – Joe Jackson

The Wonder of Birds – The Innocence Mission

She’s Mad – David Byrne

Selections from Randy Newman’s score to the movie Avalon.

McCartney Sweats it out in Milwaukee

It’s a little bizarre that a man only four years younger than my father is able to transfix an audience in sweltering heat for just short of three hours.  On Tuesday night at Miller Park in Milwaukee, Paul McCartney, forty-nine years after taking the U.S. by storm with The Beatles, played his heart out, shirt soaked with sweat, and gave a performance that fans are sure to remember for another forty-nine years.  Just as with Springsteen’s recent concerts, last night’s show begged the question: why don’t all performers work as hard and show as much appreciation as this guy does?  If a seventy-one year old McCartney can do it, why not (fill in the blank of some of the lame performances you’ve seen lately)?

After seeing McCartney in 2005, I decided that I wasn’t going to attend any more of his shows.  I’d noticed he’d aged in the two years since I’d seen him last, and I didn’t want to see this iconic singer/songwriter continue to degrade before my eyes.  But allowing my son to see him this time around changed my mind, and eight years later, McCartney almost seems to have become younger, withstanding the blistering heat and deftly managing a set list that didn’t once take him out of the spotlight.

Of particular note last night was the setlist, offering surprises that left many of the die-hard fans elated.  For me, the inclusion of “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” was worth the price of admission alone, but he surprised with other songs: “Junior’s Farm,” “Hi, Hi, Hi,” “Listen to What the Man Said,” “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” and several songs never performed live before this tour, including “Lovely Rita,” “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” “Another Day,” and “Your Mother Should Know.”  One of the most effective songs of the evening was another unexpected song, “Mrs. Vanderbilt” from his largely represented Band on the Run album, as even the unfamiliar in the crowd willingly shouted out the “Ho, Hey Ho” refrain. 

McCartney’s skipping of thirty years of repertoire between Tug of War’s “Here Today” and last year’s “My Valentine” is about the only criticism I could possibly make of the show.  It would have been cool if Paul had at least made a gentle nod to his compositions of the 80s and 90s, substituting a couple of the lesser interesting Beatles tunes for “Stranglehold,” “My Brave Face,” “Off the Ground” or “The World Tonight.”  But this is quibbling.  Backed my his proficient band of the last decade, the performances were uniformly fantastic, almost to a fault at times as keyboardist Paul Wickens recreated nearly note for note the brass and saxophone parts from McCartney’s repertoire, though his strings were a nice addition on songs like “Eleanor Rigby,” “The Long and Winding Road” and “Yesterday.”  Band members Rusty Anderson, Brian Ray and the particularly entertaining drummer Abe Laboriel Jr., supported McCartney throughout, and their impeccable backing vocals helped to mask McCartney’s weakening upper register.  Paul’s falsetto, however, required no masking, as showcased on songs like “Something” and “Maybe I’m Amazed.”  That he still has such brilliant falsetto at seventy-one is amazing to me, and it’s a skill that, if lost, would perhaps cause him to call it a day on live performing.

Ending the show with “Helter Skelter” and the last of the Abbey Road medley, McCartney completed a sampling of what is likely the most impressive repertoire of a live performer today.  There were audience members in attendance who had seen McCartney play in Milwaukee in 1964 with The Beatles.  I doubt they saw as good a show then as they did last night.