To listen live, click here.

Friday, October 31, 2008

J.D. Souther Solo Tour

One of our era's most infamous musical recluses is out on a solo tour through mid-December. Souther is touring in support of his first new release in 25 years, "If The World Was You".

Our crack research staff found a few Souther solo live performances worth watching, including this version of "Doolin' Dalton", a song he co-wrote with the Eagles for their "Desperado" album.



We also came across this recent performance taped at Dingwalls, a small club in London. The clip features two songs, "All I Want Is You" is first up, followed by one of Souther's better known compositions which he introduced by noting that it, "sounds better with the (Eagles') four part harmonies, but you didn't pay $300 and you don't have to walk two miles to your car!"

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Lowell George's Daughter, Inara

Recently, Little Feat released “Join The Band”, on which they enlist some big-name friends who join up for some Feat classics and more.

The album has some interesting moments, most notably an early Little Feat ballad "Trouble", which features Inara George, daughter of Little Feat founder Lowell George.

If, like us, you were totally unaware of Inara George until now, you'll be surprised to know that Inara, now in her thirties, is a recording artist in her own right both as a solo artist and part of the indie-rock duo The Bird and the Bee.

One of the many reasons Little Feat has always been a musician’s band is that Lowell George’s vocals were often unique both in phrasing, syncopation and melody. One would be doing quite well to capture the overall feel a ballad like “Trouble”, which laments about a bad day to end all bad days and describes a pretty bizarre series of events. One would think that capturing Lowell’s phrasing, as he twisted and bent his way through the melody hardly ever singing along with the accompanying musicians would be next to impossible.

Yet Inara manages to do all that and more on "Trouble", accompanied only by Bill Payne’s delicate and emotive touch on acoustic piano. Perhaps Inara succeeds handily because, as Bill Payne recalls, her mother Liz used to sing “Trouble” to her as a bedtime song when she was a little girl. Or, perhaps it’s just simply in her genes.

Inara and Bill Payne recorded “Trouble” in Los Angeles at Ocean Ways studio, formerly known as United Western, where Little Feat recorded their debut album in 1970.

Payne explains, “it's just her and I, and I was on the acoustic piano and she sang it. I had tears in my eyes at the end. I was there at the studio, which was the first place that Little Feat recorded for Warner Brothers. We were there the day Inara was born. Now it's almost 40 years later and I'm recording with Lowell's daughter.”

To hear an excerpt from Inara George's version of "Trouble" from Little Feat's "Join The Band", click here.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Brian Wilson: Lucky Old Son

By completing his long dormant SMiLE project, Brian Wilson gave us a glimpse of where he was headed musically in 1967. His vision took the concept album and the rock opera and combined them to conjure up his own unique quasi-symphonic concoction. Three movements...recurring musical themes...the works.

Like us, you may have thought completing SMiLE probably took everything Brian Wilson had left - especially if you saw the "making of" video. Yet several years later, we're listening to "That Lucky Old Sun".

"That Lucky Old Sun" is not SMiLE but, despite being a bit uneven, it's enchanting and powerful in its own way. It is most definitely a concept piece, following a similar structure to SMiLE, with the chestnut "That Lucky Old Sun" apparently sparking Brian's nostalgia for the life he has lived in California.

While not Wilson's best work, when "That Lucky Old Sun" is good, it's amazingly good.

Two sections in particular stand out, the first includes "Can't Wait Too Long", Midnight's Another Day" and a reprise of "That Lucky Old Sun". "Midnight's Another Day" evokes the same mood and feel as "Til I Die", Wilson's only new contribution to "Surf's Up". "Til I Die" was a powerful and disturbing "state of Brian" update he issued in 1971. It was his first attempt to describe what it was like for him trying to deal with his psychological issues and despair after he lost his way in 1967. "Midnight's Another Day" is a present day look back at the ordeal of a man who was, "Swept away in a brainstorm/Chapters missing, pages torn" and has come out the other side, albeit understandably worse for the wear. It's nearly as beautiful a song as "Til I Die", with equally strong lyrics and a brighter outlook.

The other memorable segment concludes the work on an upbeat note or two. It kicks off with "Going Home", a nostalgic upbeat reassurance that Brian has "Found peace of mind/One piece at a time". "Southern California" wraps up the project both literally and figuratively. Brian waxes nostalgic for everything California, especially his brothers, and acknowledges his accomplishments, which is summarizes by singing, "Fell asleep in the band room/Woke up in history."

That lucky old son.

To see and hear Brian Wilson and his band performing several tracks from "That Lucky Old Sun" live in front of an audience on Yahoo! Music! "Live Sets", click here.

If you're interested in Brian Wilson and his band's AOL Sessions live in the studio performances of several tracks from "That Lucky Old Sun",
click here.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Who Was Jerry Wexler?

Good question.

Unfortunately, it's a question not enough people can answer. Which is precisely why we’ve excerpted Bruce Weber’s excellent obituary, which appeared in The New York Times.

Jerry Wexler, who as a reporter for Billboard magazine in the late 1940s christened black popular music rhythm and blues, and who as a record producer helped lead the genre to mainstream popularity, propelling the careers of Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and other performers, died at his home in Sarasota, Fla. He was 91.

Mr. Wexler was already in his 30s when he entered the music business, but his impact was immediate and enduring. In 1987, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recognized his contributions to American music by inducting him in only its second year of conferring such honors.

Mr. Wexler actually didn’t care for rock ’n’ roll, at least as it evolved in the 1960s and ’70s. Though he signed Led Zeppelin and eventually produced records for Bob Dylan, Carlos Santana, Dire Straits and George Michael, his main influence came in the 1950s and ’60s as a vice president of Atlantic Records, working largely with black artists who were forging a new musical style, which came to be called soul music, from elements of gospel, swing and blues.

“He played a major role in bringing black music to the masses, and in the evolution of rhythm and blues to soul music,” Jim Henke, vice president and chief curator for the Hall of Fame, said in an interview. “Beyond that, he really developed the role of the record producer. Jerry did a lot more than just turn on a tape recorder. He left his stamp on a lot of great music. He had a commercial ear as well as a critical ear.”

Mr. Wexler was something of a paradox. A businessman with tireless energy, a ruthless streak and a volatile temper, he was also a hopeless music fan. A New York Jew and a vehement atheist, he found his musical home in the Deep South, in studios in Memphis and Muscle Shoals, Ala., among Baptists and Methodists, blacks and good old boys.

“He was a bundle of contradictions,” said Tom Thurman, who produced and directed a documentary about Mr. Wexler in 2000. “He was incredibly abrasive and incredibly generous, very abrupt and very, very patient, seemingly a pure, sharklike businessman and also a cerebral and creative genius.”

The title of Mr. Thurman’s documentary, “Immaculate Funk,” was Mr. Wexler’s phrase for the Atlantic sound, characterized by a heavy backbeat and a gospel influence. “It’s funky, it’s deep, it’s very emotional, but it’s clean,” Mr. Wexler once said.

Though not a musician himself, Mr. Wexler had a natural rapport with musicians, who seemed to recognize his instinct for how best to employ their gifts. He presided over the 1954 recording session of Ray Charles’s breakout hit, “I Got a Woman.” He said later that the best thing he had done for Charles was to let him do as he pleased.

Mr. Wexler wasn’t always a mere listener. In the mid-1960s, at a recording session with Wilson Pickett, Mr. Wexler wanted more of a backbeat in the song “In the Midnight Hour” but couldn’t explain in words what he wanted, so he illustrated it by doing a new dance, the jerk.

In the late 1960s and ’70s, he made 14 Atlantic albums with Ms. Franklin, whose musical instincts had been less than fully exploited at her previous label, Columbia. Mr. Wexler gave her more control over her songs and her sound, a blend of churchlike spirituality and raw sexuality, which can be heard in hits like “Respect,” “Dr. Feelgood” and “Chain of Fools.”

“How could he understand what was inside of black people like that?” Wilson Pickett said. “But Jerry Wexler did.”

Gerald Wexler was born in New York City on Jan. 10, 1917, and grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan at a time before the building of the George Washington Bridge, when swimming in the Hudson River was a summer pastime.

His work at Billboard attracted the attention of Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, then a small independent label focusing on black music. Mr. Ertegun asked Mr. Wexler to join the company in 1953.

Over the next decade Mr. Wexler’s drive, his sales and promotion skills, and, according to the business practices of the day, his indulging in payola — the bribery of disc jockeys to play a company’s records — helped make Atlantic a leader in the recording industry. In the 1950s the company produced records by the Drifters, the Clovers, Joe Turner, Ruth Brown and, in partnership with the songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the Coasters.

In the 1960s, however, Mr. Wexler and Mr. Ertegun began to take different paths. Mr. Ertegun gravitated toward rock ’n’ roll, while Mr. Wexler — was drawn to the niche sounds he found in places like Memphis, where a small label, Stax Records, its principal studio located in a former movie palace, had gathered a mix of black and white musicians and produced a sound based on spontaneity and improvisation.

In the early 1970s Mr. Wexler helped resurrect the career of Willie Nelson with two albums for Atlantic, but he left the label in 1975. (It had been bought by Warner Brothers in 1967.) Later he produced Bob Dylan’s 1979 album “Slow Train Coming,” a celebration of the singer’s embrace of Christianity, for Columbia. When Mr. Dylan accepted his first Grammy Award for best male rock vocal performance, for the song “Gotta Serve Somebody,” he first thanked God and then Jerry Wexler.

In the 1980s Mr. Wexler helped Linda Ronstadt with her career-changing album of Sinatraesque standards, “What’s New,” a project begun when she spent an afternoon with Mr. Wexler listening to records and for the first time heard the 1930s singer Mildred Bailey.

“When I said I wanted to sing like that, Jerry said the best way was to get a pianist and learn how those songs are done,” Ms. Ronstadt told The New York Times in 1983. She added, “One thing Jerry Wexler taught me was that if you’ve got a sexy or torchy song, you mustn’t attitudinize on top of it, because it sounds redundant.”

Given the chance, Mr. Wexler would have produced to the end and beyond.

“I asked him once,” said Mr. Thurman, the filmmaker, “ ‘What do you want written on your tombstone, Jerry?’ He said, ‘Two words: More bass.’ ”

Monday, August 18, 2008

J.D. Souther Is Alive

J.D. Souther, a songwriting recluse who could have been a founding member of The Eagles if he'd wanted to, is about to release his first new recordings in 24 years.

Founding Eagles Don Henley and Glenn Frey are Souther's close friends, with Souther and Frey having started out as a duo called Longbranch Pennywhistle. Linda Ronstadt, who was Souther’s girlfriend at that time, needed a backing band. Souther encouraged Frey to go on the road with her and that band went on to become the Eagles.

There were discussions about Souther joining the Eagles — he even acknowledges rehearsing with them. “But we were not essential to each other,” Souther has explained. “They didn’t need me in the band and I didn’t particularly want to be in a band.” Instead he helped write some their biggest hits, and despite their monumental success, he stayed detached. “I was a part of it in a way that suited us all best. I didn’t want to be answerable to four or five other people. I think democracy is a swell way to run a country, and not so swell a way to make art.”

While J.D. Souther isn't exactly a household name, Don Henley gushes about Souther’s talents, saying, “J.D. was the primary creative force behind Eagles songs such as ‘The Best of My Love’ and ‘New Kid In Town’.” Glenn Frey has said that Souther “gave away all his best songs. He would start things and we would finish them."

Souther’s eponymous 1972 debut was well received, but met with little commercial success. It included the original version of "How Long", which the Eagles re-recorded 35 years later and included on "Long Road Out Of Eden".

It wasn't until 1979, when "You’re Only Lonely" hit the charts, that Souther achieved the commercial success his old friends had been experiencing throughout the preceding decade.

"If The World Was You", is a project Souther has been working on for years. The songs were recorded live in the studio with a five-piece jazz ensemble.

Souther explained, "The best way for me to cut, it turns out, is to really learn the songs with a band and just go in and play them". The new CD is scheduled to be released on October 14th.

Track listing for "If The World Was You":

1) I'll Be Here At Closing Time 3:38
2) House Of Pride 3:16
3) Journey Down The Nile 4:46
4) One More Night 4:18
5) In My Arms Tonight 4:22
6) Rain 5:03
7) A Chorus of Your Own 6:19
8) The Border Guard 4:26
9) Brown (Osaka Story) 5:49
10) Come On Up 4:20
11) The Secret Handshake Of Fate 12:56

If you're curious, you can hear "The Border Guard" on J.D. Souther's MySpace page.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Joe Cocker: "With A Little Help From My Friends"

This has been making the rounds and is worth a few minutes of your time. It's Joe Cocker's 1969 Woodstock performance of "With A Little Help From My Friends" close-captioned for those who always wondered just what he was singing.

Monday, June 30, 2008

It's Official: We're Trendy!

Study Shows Workplace Radio Listening Going Online Very Fast

According to a recent Internet & Multimedia study the percentage of people who said they listen most frequently listen to radio stations through a computer/the Internet has grown from 12% to 20% in just one year. At the same time, the percentage who said they listen to a regular radio has dropped from 88% to 80%.” That’s a pretty big change in just twelve months. Among college graduates, the percentage who listen via the Internet is even higher: 30%!

Congratulations...we're all ahead of the curve!