Of all the great songs on Little Feat's 1972 masterpiece, Sailin' Shoes, the one that keeps coming to the front (for me) is Bill Payne's "Got No Shadow". There are several reasons for this. For one thing, the song requires many hearings before it can be truly appreciated. The melody is elaborate and beautiful (the opening two words - "Take yourself" - require an astonishing ten seconds for the melodic material they contain to unfold); the band plays with the kind of freedom that can only arrive after much disciplined effort (their rhythmic interplay deserves its own listen); the recently deceased Richie Hayward's drumming can only be described as wonderful; and Lowell George's singing and slide guitar playing are at their glittering best. Also, the song seems to point the way that this unique group was going to be heading for the next thirty-eight years: creating American music that is both deeply rooted and entirely original. Here's hoping for many more.

Radiohead have been very impressive in their ability to interact seamlessly with the 21st century zeitgeist. Since OK Computer (1997), they've understood that the current age was going to concern interchange between mind and machine, and their work has rendered this fact in fascinating ways. This includes their live performances. Their recent tours of 2008 and 2009 dealt with this concept in a very interesting manner: Giant video images of the band at work were screened at the back, while what looked like stalactites of crystal lit up in numerous ways. In fact, it was often the case that the only things on stage that were not pulsating with light and colour were the band members themselves. To me, it symbolized the idea that it was not the band, but rather their emanations (as Blake might have put it) that were the objects of attention - the part of themselves that technology can capture, in other words. The song "How to Disappear Completely" from Kid A treats the same concept with the memorable and factual line: "I'm not here/ This isn't happening". Because, when we listen to a recording - he isn't here and it isn't happening.

The new DVD, Live in Praha (i.e. Prague) was recorded by some fifty cellphone-toting fans on August 23, 2009, and the band, impressed, approved the project and let them use the soundboard recording. It is now available as a free download: http://radiohead-prague.nataly.fr/ - or individual songs can be viewed on YouTube. (I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but my favourite number so far is the third - "Weird Fishes" from In Rainbows - which features all three guitarists playing interlocking parts and contributing to an extraordinary texture that, appropriately, brings to mind a sub-marine setting.) The entire project raises many questions of a philosophical nature regarding cooperation between artist and audience and the technology involved with each. If this is the future, count me in.

Little Feat's "Feats Don't Fail Me Now" (1974) may have the strongest opening three songs I've heard on any album, and the coolest thing is that each one was written by a different member of the band. "Rock and Roll Doctor", co-written by Lowell George and Fred Martin, is astonishing in its complexity. Its form, rhythms and harmonic content are all at very high levels of sophistication - the song quite literally doesn't repeat itself in any way, and yet it remains a unified, coherent whole. My theory on what George was trying to achieve with the piece is that he wanted to show that rock and roll can be as multi-faceted as jazz, classical or any other type of music - and it makes you want to dance on top of it. He might as well have been writing about himself when he wrote: "Two degrees in bebop/ A Ph.D. in swing/ He's a master of rhythm/ He's a rock and roll king."

Bill Payne's "Oh Atlanta!" and Paul Barrere's "Skin it Back" are two more brilliant rockers that repay multiple hearings. Listen for the combination of surprise and inevitability in the chord changes alone, for example. Of course, the band's performance on these songs (and the rest of the album) deserves close listening as well. Every member of this group had his own style and yet knew how to make it work for the collective. The great bassist Kenny Gradney, in discussing this quality, once called Little Feat a "baseball team band". To which I would add that there aren't many groups, to this day, that could go nine innings with them.

Little Feat recently lost one of its founding members: the great drummer Richie Hayward died on August 12, 2010 of pneumonia and complications from lung disease. To really appreciate his artistry, its important to understand his group. Little Feat's early leader - its singer and main songwriter - was Lowell George, one of the greatest of rock musicians. His talent, work ethic and democratic leadership allowed the band to grow at an incredible rate. Along the way they seem to have amalgamated virtually every form of American music into their style. They released an excellent self-titled first album in 1971, but their second, Sailin' Shoes (1972) was the first of many masterpieces to come. Over the years the lineup changed to include Paul Barrere (guitar), Sam Clayton (percussion), and Ken Gradney (bass), while the original core of Hayward, George and pianist Bill Payne remained intact. (Other important contributions to the Little Feat legacy have been made by Roy Estrada, Shaun Murphy, Craig Fuller and Fred Tackett.) I'm going to write about them for the next few days, but for today, I'm going to recommend you give a listen to the opening track to Sailin' Shoes, "Easy to Slip". It puts many of Richie's greatest attributes on display - his touch, his funk, his use of space, his technical ability. He'll be missed.

Among his many qualities, Elvis Costello has great taste in music. In fact, this attribute is not talked about enough when discussing musicians - how serious listening and discernment are important in building the other skills. Anyway, he once stated that in his opinion the three greatest American rock bands (I don't remember the order, or if he gave one) were Steely Dan, The Band and Little Feat. I've written about the first two several times, but I don't believe I've mentioned Little Feat yet. I'll correct that tomorrow.

Trying to determine the complexity of a song by counting the number of chords it contains is a mistake. For example, you sometimes hear people complain about "three-chord rock" and so on. First, it's important to remember that chords are resting places and not starting points. Therefore all music will tend to gravitate towards a small number of chords - often three, because all seven notes of a scale can be harmonized in that manner. Second, chords can be used in all kinds of ways - they can provide energy (dissonance) or rest (consonance). "Beyond Belief", the opening track on Elvis Costello's brilliant Imperial Bedroom album from 1982, is an example of both of these points. Check it out.

I hope that empathy doesn't disappear from rock music lyrics. It might be the most important function of art, if you think about it - the way that it can help us to enter imaginatively into another person's situation and emotional/psychological state. Because as life goes by, we realize that most of us will never encounter all the types of people that make up a world. There isn't the time for one thing. But with the help of literature, music, the visual arts, etc. we can go to many places and meet many people. (I always liked the title of William Blake's poem "The Mental Traveller".)

Over the last couple of posts, I've written about two great Robbie Robertson songs that require empathy to be fully appreciated. Here's another. "The Shape I'm In" from Stage Fright (1970) is one of the most powerful lyrics I've ever come across. It presents a series of rough experiences, unadorned. And it raises more questions than it answers - it's comparable to Hemingway in some regards - but once you've heard it, just try to forget it. The crux of the song comes at the end with the following line: "Save your neck/ Or save your brother/ Looks like it's/ One or the other". And it's all made more poignant by the fact that its singer, the great Richard Manuel, died by his own hand in 1986 at the age of forty-two.