Released shortly after his American debut, as "Your Song" was peaking, "Tumbleweed Connection" had no hits, but it's Elton John's best album.
MY FATHER'S GUN
It closed the first side, it's not talked about much, but I haven't been able to get it out of my head since my college buddy told me he was in the process of selling his father's gun, a World War II artifact.
It's unfortunate that Elton's voice is not what it once was, but as soon as you hear the mellifluous notes on this track you melt. That's how great he was, why he still sustains today, because he could write (with Bernie Taupin's help), play and sing. Qualities that were seen as necessary forty years ago but somehow are not seen to be required today.
Yes, Elton's a classic.
And even though you'll rarely hear this song today, those who know "Tumbleweed Connection" cherish it, as they do the other ten cuts.
Yes, all killer and no filler!
WHERE TO NOW ST. PETER?
My favorite cut on "Tumbleweed Connection."
The way it used to work with vinyl is you'd settle into one side first, then the other. Oh, you'd start off playing side one, but if you were enraptured with side two first, you'd stick with that until you knew it all and then switch back to side one.
"Where To Now St. Peter?" opens side two.
I bought Elton's first two American albums at the same time. And over time I've come to enjoy and appreciate the first almost as much as the second, the haunting sound of "Sixty Years On" and "The King Must Die," but despite having a huge crush on "Take Me To The Pilot," the track I had to hear again and again in my dorm room at Middlebury College was this, "Where To Now St. Peter?"
You know how some cuts immediately grab you from your pedestrian life and propel you into a much better world?
That's the essence of "Where To Now St. Peter?"
I'd come home from the Middlebury College Snow Bowl or Mad River Glen, take a hot shower and lie on my bed listening to "Where To Now St. Peter?" on headphones.
It was an ethereal number far from the mainstream back then and it still is today, which is why I love it so much.
COME DOWN IN TIME
Arguably the best cut on "Tumbleweed Connection."
It's subtle, you don't discover it immediately, it's quiet after the raucous first side opener, "Ballad Of A Well-Known Gun."
It's romantic. It presages interactions to come. It's got rich instrumentation absent from today's compressed scene. This is what money could buy, this sound. And never underestimate the album's producer, Gus Dudgeon, he crafted this sound, Elton's worked with others, but never at this quite high a level.
COUNTRY COMFORT
More famous in its Rod Stewart incarnation, from "Gasoline Alley," released nearly simultaneously.
Elton slows it down and adds gravitas, it's one of the few situations where the cover is better than the original, but the original is quite fine.
You can see the story.
SON OF YOUR FATHER
And speaking of covers, Spooky Tooth did one of "Son Of Your Father," but unlike Rod Stewart's version of "Country Comfort," it does not trump the rendition of the writer.
This is how great Elton was, his minor work is as hooky as that of most first line artists today. It's all about the chorus, with the backup vocals, you can't listen without shaking your head in time.
LOVE SONG
And speaking of backup vocals, you can hear Lesley Duncan with Elton on her composition here.
How stunning, how generous, that a burgeoning artist would cede one of the ten cuts on his album to someone else, think of the songwriting royalties!
Yes, today it's all about credit so you can get paid. Music back then was more of a community, and from that community came music much more memorable.
I'll be honest, I was worried at first my album was defective, I thought the ticking in the right channel was a surface imperfection, the bane of vinyl records in their heyday. I was as famous for returning records as I was for buying them.
Alas, it's part of the track.
AMOREENA
I never hear anybody talk about this, but it was my second favorite cut on "Tumbleweed Connection" after "Where To Now St. Peter?" and I love it no less today. It's the way Elton waltzes his fingers over the keys with such groove, such attitude, something that Pro Tools and comping has eviscerated, trying to get it right people so often excise the magic.
And then there's the vocal, employing the same groove. And the chicken-pickin' guitar.
"Amoreena" is one of the few tracks you get initially, on the first play through, and love even more the more you play it.
The dynamics. The sounds. Whew!
"I can see you sittin' eatin'
Apples in the evenin'"!
TALKING OLD SOLDIERS
Quiet, intimate, one of my two least favorite cuts on "Tumbleweed Connection," but it set up the piece de resistance, "Burn Down The Mission."
BURN DOWN THE MISSION
The intro is almost as subtle and powerful as that to "Stairway To Heaven." You have no idea what's coming, that "Burn Down The Mission" will be a tour de force.
And that it was and still is. The triumphant point of Elton's live show. Only we did not know this yet, "11/17/70" had not yet been released.
It's six plus minutes long but could lose not a note, it's neither bloated nor boring, it's just...right. The way it goes from slow to fast and back again (a trick Zeppelin also employed so well!)
There's exquisite piano playing, and whenever Elton returns you swoon. Ooh!
BALLAD OF A WELL-KNOWN GUN
The opening cut and my least favorite on the album.
Elton broke the Stones' rule, which was to lead with the killer single.
But when the album immediately quieted down with "Come Down In Time" it made no difference, but it's one of the reasons I started with the second side first.
So there you have it, one of the most classic of classic rock albums. So perfect, it's hiding in plain sight. Without the big hit single, it rarely gets noted, but those who know it can never forget it.
And then there was the packaging, with the tinted cover and inner booklet. You could truly listen and read the lyrics and credits at the same time, that was all the multi-tasking necessary.
And yes, we could talk about the western imagery and Bernie Taupin's infatuation with America, but that would be too twenty first century, wherein we focus on the penumbra as opposed to the music.
So fire up the big rig, drop the needle and get ready for a mind-blowing experience.
Or just listen to the MP3s, the essence is still there.
I've got other favorites, but no one is higher in my personal pantheon than Elton John. Because of his talent, because of the astounding frequency and quality of his production. Because listening to his music makes me happy, makes me feel good, makes me believe that music can enwrap me with all its goodness and solve all my problems.
Spotify link: http://spoti.fi/1n45P7F
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Friday, 1 August 2014
Thursday, 31 July 2014
Read This
"4 Reasons Why Music Careers Are Getting Trounced By Tech": http://onforb.es/XkFdtY
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
From: mabeckerlaw
Re: Hype
I like Jenny Lewis... I really liked Rilo Kiley... but everything here rings true. Sometimes I feel like you're railing at Niche players like her and my alt country fetish but really you're just railing at people who try to turn niche into hype and niche artists who think they are the next Dylan voice of a generation but the internet has killed their chances. I agree, those people should just die.
mab
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____________________________________________
____________________________________________
From: mabeckerlaw
Re: Hype
I like Jenny Lewis... I really liked Rilo Kiley... but everything here rings true. Sometimes I feel like you're railing at Niche players like her and my alt country fetish but really you're just railing at people who try to turn niche into hype and niche artists who think they are the next Dylan voice of a generation but the internet has killed their chances. I agree, those people should just die.
mab
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Wednesday, 30 July 2014
Hype
It's not news, it's an awareness campaign!
I gave up reading the "Arts & Leisure" section. Because every article contained therein was linked to a product. There was no story, just a desire to make me know a new movie, play or record was coming out and I should buy it.
Kind of like the Mick Jagger/James Brown movie hype. It's been in every publication known to man. What are the odds the flick will be good? About as high that I need to stop everything and check out Jenny Lewis's new album, which was featured in the "Times" Magazine. I could say I'm too old, but the truth is the entertainment industry is operating with a pre-Internet paradigm and those of us living in the twenty first century, which seems to be everybody but them, are burned out on it. It's as if they believe if they scream loud enough, they'll accomplish their goal.
Did you notice all the Weird Al publicity came after the fact? And that there was no run-up to last year's release of Beyonce's video album? How can these artists get it so right and others get it so wrong?
Kind of like Tom Petty. There's not a publication I peruse that has not had a Tom Petty story. His album is poised to enter the chart next week at number one, whoop-de-doo, and then it will be instantly forgotten. Yup, after everybody slaps each other on the back they'll move on to selling something else. I dare you to list the films released two weeks ago. And that's what the music world has become, the inane film business where products most people will never see are promoted for a shelf life of a week. But at least there's DVD and streaming thereafter, but there's no second life for an album, either it triumphs or is relegated to the dustbin. And music, when done right, lasts. But the hype is momentary and we've seen the trick and no one writing about music is interested after the fact, they're so dazzled by the access at the advent that we've got antiquated marketers employing brain-dead writers to spread the word to a public that shrugs.
You want your effort to endure. There's no counter on YouTube or Spotify telling how many streams your track had in its initial week, it's about the cumulative effort, why is our whole industry focused on only the front end of the tail?
Is it the executives? Who are compensated on short term numbers and are fearful if they don't make noise their artists will be upset and disappear?
Is it the managers, who like the wannabes believe better to do something, even if it's a complete time and money-waster? Yup, every wannabe wants a tastemaker to take his CD, even though today's computers don't even have a disk drive, and every manager wants ink and late night television so they can tell their artists they've left no stone unturned, that the problem does not lie with them.
Everybody's buying fake insurance to make sure they get no blame. It's like the whole Internet revolution never happened. Every label is selling Palm, and you know what happened to that company. Yup, we all heard about it but it sank like a stone (the ultimate iteration, the tiny smartphone, not the Pilots of yore.)
Never has there been a disconnect so large between buyer and seller. Sellers in the music business believe in publicity and radio, when the buyers want to stream their heart's desire for eons and just don't care about everything else.
Having a new album is not a story. At this point, with a 24/7 news cycle online, what's happened in your life is not a story. The hard core already knows what's you're up to and the rest don't care. If you think a story in a magazine is going to energize the casual fan to buy your album/check it out online, you believe that Windows phones and BlackBerries are poised for a comeback, that they're going to dethrone Android and iOS.
Your only hope is to feed those already paying attention so that they will spread the word, so that they'll get their marginally interested friends to listen and discover you.
Weird Al's album sold because of virality, because fans told other people to check out the videos, which lived online. Where's the virality in the Tom Petty campaign, you're just beating me over the head!
And really, Jenny Lewis in the "New York Times" Magazine? It makes me laugh at that publication the same way I now do at "60 Minutes," manipulated by marketers like Amazon, you were really that hungry for a non-story, you really fell for the hype? I can't name one Jenny Lewis song and neither can you, because she's yet to cut one that exceeded the circle of her cult. And if this is the case, just let her publicity stay within her cult. And if she wants a larger audience she should put out a cut so good people tell me about it.
But I doubt she did this. Almost no one does this.
Isn't it interesting that which triumphs usually comes from left field, usually bubbles up from nowhere and then we all hear about it and embrace it, whether it be "Gangnam Style," "Wake Me Up" or even "Blurred Lines." But those people understand the new game. They know it begins with the track, and the key is to get listeners talking about it, not intermediaries in the challenged media business.
But change comes slowly in the arts.
It used to be the other way around, musicians and painters were at the bleeding edge, challenging our preconceptions, the story was the work. Today they're mostly complainers utilizing old paradigms to get us to check out their substandard efforts.
If it don't last, it ain't worth anything.
It's like the whole music industry is a beauty pageant, where you get to see the candidates from afar for an hour, really only their exterior, and then you're asked to marry them. Huh?
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I gave up reading the "Arts & Leisure" section. Because every article contained therein was linked to a product. There was no story, just a desire to make me know a new movie, play or record was coming out and I should buy it.
Kind of like the Mick Jagger/James Brown movie hype. It's been in every publication known to man. What are the odds the flick will be good? About as high that I need to stop everything and check out Jenny Lewis's new album, which was featured in the "Times" Magazine. I could say I'm too old, but the truth is the entertainment industry is operating with a pre-Internet paradigm and those of us living in the twenty first century, which seems to be everybody but them, are burned out on it. It's as if they believe if they scream loud enough, they'll accomplish their goal.
Did you notice all the Weird Al publicity came after the fact? And that there was no run-up to last year's release of Beyonce's video album? How can these artists get it so right and others get it so wrong?
Kind of like Tom Petty. There's not a publication I peruse that has not had a Tom Petty story. His album is poised to enter the chart next week at number one, whoop-de-doo, and then it will be instantly forgotten. Yup, after everybody slaps each other on the back they'll move on to selling something else. I dare you to list the films released two weeks ago. And that's what the music world has become, the inane film business where products most people will never see are promoted for a shelf life of a week. But at least there's DVD and streaming thereafter, but there's no second life for an album, either it triumphs or is relegated to the dustbin. And music, when done right, lasts. But the hype is momentary and we've seen the trick and no one writing about music is interested after the fact, they're so dazzled by the access at the advent that we've got antiquated marketers employing brain-dead writers to spread the word to a public that shrugs.
You want your effort to endure. There's no counter on YouTube or Spotify telling how many streams your track had in its initial week, it's about the cumulative effort, why is our whole industry focused on only the front end of the tail?
Is it the executives? Who are compensated on short term numbers and are fearful if they don't make noise their artists will be upset and disappear?
Is it the managers, who like the wannabes believe better to do something, even if it's a complete time and money-waster? Yup, every wannabe wants a tastemaker to take his CD, even though today's computers don't even have a disk drive, and every manager wants ink and late night television so they can tell their artists they've left no stone unturned, that the problem does not lie with them.
Everybody's buying fake insurance to make sure they get no blame. It's like the whole Internet revolution never happened. Every label is selling Palm, and you know what happened to that company. Yup, we all heard about it but it sank like a stone (the ultimate iteration, the tiny smartphone, not the Pilots of yore.)
Never has there been a disconnect so large between buyer and seller. Sellers in the music business believe in publicity and radio, when the buyers want to stream their heart's desire for eons and just don't care about everything else.
Having a new album is not a story. At this point, with a 24/7 news cycle online, what's happened in your life is not a story. The hard core already knows what's you're up to and the rest don't care. If you think a story in a magazine is going to energize the casual fan to buy your album/check it out online, you believe that Windows phones and BlackBerries are poised for a comeback, that they're going to dethrone Android and iOS.
Your only hope is to feed those already paying attention so that they will spread the word, so that they'll get their marginally interested friends to listen and discover you.
Weird Al's album sold because of virality, because fans told other people to check out the videos, which lived online. Where's the virality in the Tom Petty campaign, you're just beating me over the head!
And really, Jenny Lewis in the "New York Times" Magazine? It makes me laugh at that publication the same way I now do at "60 Minutes," manipulated by marketers like Amazon, you were really that hungry for a non-story, you really fell for the hype? I can't name one Jenny Lewis song and neither can you, because she's yet to cut one that exceeded the circle of her cult. And if this is the case, just let her publicity stay within her cult. And if she wants a larger audience she should put out a cut so good people tell me about it.
But I doubt she did this. Almost no one does this.
Isn't it interesting that which triumphs usually comes from left field, usually bubbles up from nowhere and then we all hear about it and embrace it, whether it be "Gangnam Style," "Wake Me Up" or even "Blurred Lines." But those people understand the new game. They know it begins with the track, and the key is to get listeners talking about it, not intermediaries in the challenged media business.
But change comes slowly in the arts.
It used to be the other way around, musicians and painters were at the bleeding edge, challenging our preconceptions, the story was the work. Today they're mostly complainers utilizing old paradigms to get us to check out their substandard efforts.
If it don't last, it ain't worth anything.
It's like the whole music industry is a beauty pageant, where you get to see the candidates from afar for an hour, really only their exterior, and then you're asked to marry them. Huh?
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Tuesday, 29 July 2014
The Little Diner
He made the onion rings from scratch!
I don't know about you, but I'm confused by modern life. I grew up in the sixties, when the middle class ruled, when we'd never heard of private jets and the mantra of my generation was to be all you could be, yes, the army ripped us off.
You went to college to learn, not to get a profession. Our parents didn't fret over our job prospects, then again, higher education was relatively inexpensive.
Life was about experiences and fulfillment.
And now we've lost our way.
The poor are struggling to survive, as the rich keep telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
And the rich are nearly invisible, except in the media. They don't shop where we do, they don't fly commercial, and they utilize their money and power to keep their way of life in place, brainwashing those beneath them that they're job creators and if people just worked harder, put their nose to the grindstone, they could have everything they do.
You couldn't work harder than Brian Little. And he employs almost ten people. But he's not getting rich. Because Mr. Little realizes it's all about passion, that life is long, and if you're not having fun, it's going to be dreary and depressing.
The Little Diner has the worst location in Vail.
It does no advertising.
But it's the number one rated eating establishment on Yelp. Because we're all searching for a bit of authenticity, as well as good food.
At McDonald's you have it their way, every burger is exactly the same. But in a mechanized world where our computers never crash and automobile breakdowns are a thing of the past, we're looking for some rough edges, some uniqueness. You see life is about individuals, and in truth they're rare. You've got girls following nitwit Kim Kardashian, trying to look just like her. And guys believing if they wear hoodies, they can be Mark Zuckerberg. Everybody's focusing on their "brand" and few are doing the work. Because the truth is the work is hard, and it rarely makes you famous.
Brian Little is not a movie star. His establishment is tiny. But we had to wait forty minutes today for a seat in the off-season, because people just want more of what he's got.
Sure the food is good, as a matter of fact it's phenomenal! But the show is even better. You can't take your eyes off Brian Little not because he's beautiful, not because he's rich, but because he never leaves the zone, he seems to be hypnotized as he creates his dishes.
It's kind of like how it used to be in music. You went to see Eric Clapton and Duane Allman extract mellifluous notes from their instruments. It wasn't about clothing or backdrops, not theatrics or production. To see a master at work was enough.
So I discovered the Little Diner via Yelp. Every city I go to, I pull up the app. Sure, it's imperfect, but in the twenty first century we crave data, we can never get enough.
And I was stunned to see the Little Diner atop the ratings. I'd been going to Vail for years and never heard of it! I didn't see it advertised in the "Vail Daily," there was no social media campaign, it had to be a fraud.
And then we went.
It was the last day of the season. When the snow was so sticky it was like skiing in molasses. We quit early, with our bodies still intact, and took the bus to Lionshead. So far, it was nearly beyond the commercial district.
Yes, the Little Diner is two shops from the end of the line.
And when we got there it was unimpressive. A U-shaped counter with a kitchen inside. Kind of like the Apple Pan, but smaller.
And I'm not much of a breakfast eater, and it was after noon, so I went for the Philly Cheese Steak.
The amount of TLC involved in the production was astounding. The squirting of oil, the chopping with utensils, the baking of the bread, the putting of the whole thing under a cap. It would be so much easier to do a half-assed job.
But then it wouldn't taste quite as good.
And that's what the Little Diner's reputation is based upon, the taste of the food.
No one cares anymore, whether it be Comcast that refuses to let you disconnect or the low level workers stealing from the underpaying employer. America too often is about the shrug. The belief that since the game is rigged, you might as well bend the rules to your own satisfaction. So when someone does it right, it's astounding.
The Little Diner opens every day at 7 and closes at 2. Brian used to work 7 days a week.
Because he loves it.
Don't ask me about money, I still haven't figured it out.
But I do know that most of the jobs that pay so well I don't want to do. And so many of those doing them hate them. They're only in it for the paycheck. Believing if they drive a nice enough car, live in a fancy enough house, they'll win.
But this is untrue.
We're just animals, here on the planet for a short while. We're in search of pleasure and sustenance, we need fuel for our bodies and our brains. And the food revolution is taking care of our bodies, but what is going to take care of our souls?
That's the challenge.
Brian Little has it all figured out.
Good luck to you!
http://thelittlediner.com
http://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=restaurants&find_loc=Vail%2C+CO&ns=1
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I don't know about you, but I'm confused by modern life. I grew up in the sixties, when the middle class ruled, when we'd never heard of private jets and the mantra of my generation was to be all you could be, yes, the army ripped us off.
You went to college to learn, not to get a profession. Our parents didn't fret over our job prospects, then again, higher education was relatively inexpensive.
Life was about experiences and fulfillment.
And now we've lost our way.
The poor are struggling to survive, as the rich keep telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
And the rich are nearly invisible, except in the media. They don't shop where we do, they don't fly commercial, and they utilize their money and power to keep their way of life in place, brainwashing those beneath them that they're job creators and if people just worked harder, put their nose to the grindstone, they could have everything they do.
You couldn't work harder than Brian Little. And he employs almost ten people. But he's not getting rich. Because Mr. Little realizes it's all about passion, that life is long, and if you're not having fun, it's going to be dreary and depressing.
The Little Diner has the worst location in Vail.
It does no advertising.
But it's the number one rated eating establishment on Yelp. Because we're all searching for a bit of authenticity, as well as good food.
At McDonald's you have it their way, every burger is exactly the same. But in a mechanized world where our computers never crash and automobile breakdowns are a thing of the past, we're looking for some rough edges, some uniqueness. You see life is about individuals, and in truth they're rare. You've got girls following nitwit Kim Kardashian, trying to look just like her. And guys believing if they wear hoodies, they can be Mark Zuckerberg. Everybody's focusing on their "brand" and few are doing the work. Because the truth is the work is hard, and it rarely makes you famous.
Brian Little is not a movie star. His establishment is tiny. But we had to wait forty minutes today for a seat in the off-season, because people just want more of what he's got.
Sure the food is good, as a matter of fact it's phenomenal! But the show is even better. You can't take your eyes off Brian Little not because he's beautiful, not because he's rich, but because he never leaves the zone, he seems to be hypnotized as he creates his dishes.
It's kind of like how it used to be in music. You went to see Eric Clapton and Duane Allman extract mellifluous notes from their instruments. It wasn't about clothing or backdrops, not theatrics or production. To see a master at work was enough.
So I discovered the Little Diner via Yelp. Every city I go to, I pull up the app. Sure, it's imperfect, but in the twenty first century we crave data, we can never get enough.
And I was stunned to see the Little Diner atop the ratings. I'd been going to Vail for years and never heard of it! I didn't see it advertised in the "Vail Daily," there was no social media campaign, it had to be a fraud.
And then we went.
It was the last day of the season. When the snow was so sticky it was like skiing in molasses. We quit early, with our bodies still intact, and took the bus to Lionshead. So far, it was nearly beyond the commercial district.
Yes, the Little Diner is two shops from the end of the line.
And when we got there it was unimpressive. A U-shaped counter with a kitchen inside. Kind of like the Apple Pan, but smaller.
And I'm not much of a breakfast eater, and it was after noon, so I went for the Philly Cheese Steak.
The amount of TLC involved in the production was astounding. The squirting of oil, the chopping with utensils, the baking of the bread, the putting of the whole thing under a cap. It would be so much easier to do a half-assed job.
But then it wouldn't taste quite as good.
And that's what the Little Diner's reputation is based upon, the taste of the food.
No one cares anymore, whether it be Comcast that refuses to let you disconnect or the low level workers stealing from the underpaying employer. America too often is about the shrug. The belief that since the game is rigged, you might as well bend the rules to your own satisfaction. So when someone does it right, it's astounding.
The Little Diner opens every day at 7 and closes at 2. Brian used to work 7 days a week.
Because he loves it.
Don't ask me about money, I still haven't figured it out.
But I do know that most of the jobs that pay so well I don't want to do. And so many of those doing them hate them. They're only in it for the paycheck. Believing if they drive a nice enough car, live in a fancy enough house, they'll win.
But this is untrue.
We're just animals, here on the planet for a short while. We're in search of pleasure and sustenance, we need fuel for our bodies and our brains. And the food revolution is taking care of our bodies, but what is going to take care of our souls?
That's the challenge.
Brian Little has it all figured out.
Good luck to you!
http://thelittlediner.com
http://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=restaurants&find_loc=Vail%2C+CO&ns=1
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