Great fun at the Paul McCartney show last night. What a set list - a ton of Beatles tunes (something like twenty) for one thing, and not just the ones you might expect, but some from off the beaten track (although even lesser known Beatles songs are still famous by most standards), such as "I Got a Feeling" with its intricate inner-voice harmonies in the guitar parts, "Things We Said Today", an under-appreciated pop masterpiece, "The Night Before", "I Will" (ditto for both). A lot of great Wings stuff too, including one of my favourites, the mighty "Let Me Roll It". Also excellent versions of "A Day in the Life", "Give Peace a Chance", and "Something", tributes to John and George, of course. And he's still in terrific voice, as powerful versions of "Got to Get You into My Life", "Band on the Run" and "Golden Slumbers" demonstrated. He's got an excellent band too - lots of great guitar stuff (with many contributions from McCartney), excellent backing vocals, strong grooves, and just the right attitude in terms of how to back a legend. Here's a song that he didn't play last night, but which I find is sort of his quintessential statement regarding how he sees his place in the world, in which he has always shown, as Auden put it, "an affirming flame": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2udwmwNBwbs.

A little over a week until my first ex-Beatle concert, and I'm thinking about the songs that I'd really like to hear at the show. In the past, I've had good luck a few times with this kind of wishful thinking: Dylan doing probably my favourite of his tunes (it certainly was at the time, anyway), "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" early in a concert a few years back and Lindsey Buckingham doing "Trouble" second in a very memorable set at the Metropolis in 2007 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXTr3e0VPNc). Anyway, among the great McCartney tunes from his solo years, I'd really like to hear "Rock Show" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_UtHHS8xWM) and this one, which was co-written with Elvis Costello, if I'm not mistaken: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h85OGkCaKIg. And of course, anything from Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, which is up there with his greatest stuff in my opinion. I'll post some more requests in the days ahead, including a list of my favourite McCartney tunes from the Beatles.

A question: What exactly is a blues ballad? Can anyone out there help me with this? I first heard the term some years ago during the terrific video that Donald Fagen did about the influence of blues on his songwriting, when he compared his use of major seven chords in a blues form to "blues ballads done by Bobby 'Blue' Bland". I'll have to find the video (that's right - I have it on VHS) before I can double-check the accuracy of the quotation I just gave or provide the correct title of the video, but I think that was the gist of it. And the Wikipedia entry was OK, but not entirely convincing. However it did hip me to an amazing Fats Domino song that I hadn't heard before, called "Every Night About This Time", which you have to check out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZpJmHldX0s).

And the quandary also got me thinking about other possible examples, such as the hugely under-appreciated Stones tune, "I Got the Blues" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgF-PRY96Is&playnext=1&list=PLFCC93639C9A06912). The song is also a good example of what happens when Jagger and Richards really get down to working together. Here's hoping they do it again soon.

In retrospect, much as I enjoyed Keith's autobiography (Life), certain things about his thinking keep on bugging me, particularly the way he sort of treats Mick as if he was a by-stander while they were making their great albums of the early seventies. Of course, you know that there's an underlying respect there, but for whatever reason he does slag him pretty hard throughout the book. My point in this post is this: what Keith was to rock and roll guitar, Mick was to rock and roll singing, no more or less. And people that don't think that his contribution to the band (and music, in general) was the equivalent of Keith's (or Charlie's) are not hearing things accurately. Try singing along with "Ventilator Blues" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l0X1w8a7D8) or "Let It Loose" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrCiKD-cBvo) if you don't believe me. Mick's experience as a serious blues student and instrumentalist (Keith does give credit to his harmonica playing - but he's an excellent guitarist as well) allowed him to find melodic material and phrasings that were much more sophisticated than most people (including Keith, apparently) realize. Here are the lyrics to the album, arguably the greatest in rock 'n' roll history, that contains the classic tracks mentioned above: http://dougscripts.com/itunes/pdf/examplepdf.pdf. (You'll need them to sing along. Try it. Seriously.)

Got a ticket to Sir Paul's second Montreal show the other day, and am really surprised how much I'm already looking forward to it. For one thing, and I'm ashamed to say this, it'll be the first time that I've ever seen a Beatle in concert. I know. I can't believe it myself. How could this have happened? I guess living in either Montreal or Edmonton my entire life didn't help, but on the other hand, there are planes, boats, cars, trains in existence - so that argument isn't very good. In any event, I'm going to really enjoy not only the concert itself but also the build-up to it. What do I mean by that, you wonder? For one thing, I'm going to prepare for it by re-listening to all the McCartney I can - be it Beatles, solo, Wings, or Fireman - and I hope to write a few posts about it along the way as well.

Speaking of McCartney solo work, I'm going to mention an album that I think is just amazing, even though I've written about it in the past, the tragically under-appreciated Chaos and Creation in the Backyard from 2005. Produced by Nigel Godrich (of Radiohead fame), who may be the best producer he's had since George Martin, it's one of my favourite McCartney recordings (and I include the second side of Abbey Road in that assessment). Here's the wonderful "Jenny Wren": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9GvXFphCFc. The description under the video (i.e. the "Show More" thing) is worth checking out, too.

Gotta love the Google thing today - a very cool tribute to the great Les Paul. It'd be hard to think of a more influential twentieth century musician, if you think about it. I mean, overdubbing and the electric guitar, what more could someone be asked to contribute? Anyone who uses either (or in most cases, both), which means virtually everyone in popular music, owes him a tip of the cap - and a serious re-listening to his recordings. The place to start, for me, is obvious: his work with the astonishing vocalist, Mary Ford (talk about a singer who is in tune!). Without these two pioneers, would we have had The Beach Boys or Queen? Or Led Zeppelin? Props needed. Here's a cool clip of the duo doing one of their most famous numbers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0ffdwBUL78.

Another very cool thing about the Keith Richards' book, Life (2010), is the credit that he gives to other musicians for inspiring/helping him and the Stones. The sections that treat the early years of the band and their blues purist attitude are great, as are the tributes that he gives to Chuck Berry and Gram Parsons. The former name has been associated with the Stones since their inception. Not only did they record a whole whack of his songs, but Keith, by his own admission, stole (or is it borrowed?) virtually every lick that he played. Here's "Bye Bye Johnny", the first song on their first EP (from January, 1964): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdBKH4-6q1w. But Parsons' influence on the band wasn't as well known (before this book, to me, anyway), but now I hear it loud and clear. I hope that his charismatic style and true love of country music will inspire other rockers to keep that door to the past (and future) open as well. Here's "Dead Flowers" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YRdxHHFKvQ) and "Juanita" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvquxLSW64M&feature=related) for your consideration and enjoyment.

Finished Keith's book (Life), and even though I got a little bogged down in the heavy drug years, found it to be a remarkable read. I guess that, for me, honesty is the most important attribute for an autobiography, and this book has plenty of it. And it's also really well written, and both surprising and insightful, particularly about music. Speaking of which, I always find that I hear an artist's music a little more clearly after reading about them, and that was certainly the case here. Specifically, the book got me to give another listen to some of my early Stones LPs and have a better appreciation of the energy they contain. I realize that I've been one to undervalue their early work sometimes, mostly when it's compared to the glory years of 68-72, but that's not really fair for a couple of reasons: One, the glory years wouldn't have happened without the formative ones. Two, the four albums released in that period put almost every other rock and roll act in the rear-view mirror, as well. And don't get me wrong, I've always liked their early stuff, and I do even more now, with images of their early days in mind. Here's their great version of "Under the Boardwalk": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6A9zqRY-ME.

Of course, there's a bit of a downside to the book, and that's the realization that in some ways the group broke up a long time ago, that many of the albums from the late seventies on were not made with the same team spirit that had made them giants in the first place. Oh well. I, for one, am very glad that they stayed together anyway, and that I (and how many others) got the chance to see them a few times and that they kept on making music. Even though we never got another Exile, we did get some other really good stuff. You've also gotta love the fact that they stayed true to their original blues heroes, who also didn't retire, or let anyone tell them what to do. Inspiring. And they certainly were the originators of many more smiles than the dingdongs who spent their careers trying to imprison them. Hope they stay around for as long as they want to. ("Brown Sugar": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59K2kF6o9Tk)

Watched the opening of Saturday Night Live last night, including the opening song (a funny one about not singing a song) from Justin Timberlake, and was struck again by a fact that I haven't written about nearly enough. I think there's no doubt about it: Stevie Wonder is the most influential musician in pop, rock or r&b music in the last fifty years. Turn on the radio (or TV, as in the case above) and you'll hear him in almost everything. His singing, harmonic innovations, tremendous attention to detail in building rhythms (the episode from the Classic Albums series about Songs in the Key of Life provides some cool stuff about his process), and his hugely under-rated accomplishments as a lyricist, all of it grounded in the Motown school of music - well, it's no wonder that his influence is up there with anyone you could name (Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, James Brown, like that). And amazingly, he's equally great as a singles artist (example:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkQKk2ukiyw) or album artist (the five released between 1972 and 1976, all masterpieces - here's the discography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Wonder_discography, and here's "Saturn" from Songs in the Key of Life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3KpUO6t9qQ).

I'm about two thirds of the way through Keith Richards' Life (2010), and I'm finding it to be quite simply terrific. Some of the descriptive bits are so vivid you'd think the guy was a novelist rather than a rock 'n' roller - I nearly wrote "rocker" there, which would have been a mistake, because one of the really big deals to him is the importance of the swing element in music. He comes back to the point several times in fact, and one of the criticisms that he has for a lot of rock is that the roll part has been forgotten (but I don't agree with him in thinking that the charge can be applied to the Beatles - just listen to "Eight Days a Week": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtuybFrq7Rw, in comparison to "Something Happened to Me Yesterday": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=banNjTF6qEI, if you want evidence. However the Stones did learn to swing much harder later on, like on this one for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geQ_SmCZWjE). The book has a lot of very insightful stuff on music from the various perspectives that he's assumed (fan, student, performer, composer, band leader), including some things I'd never seen written about before, really important for musicians and fans to think about. It's not only a great and fun autobiography, it's an essential book on music.

One of the many musicians originally inspired by the Stones, David Johansen, had a similar comment recently about how vital swing rhythms are to rock, pointing out that without it, rock becomes militaristic - which was the case with a lot of punk. It's also the case with techno and any other style of music played (largely) by machines. The human element necessary in trying to figure out how the triplet and the eighth note co-exist (playing swing eighth notes is one of the most difficult things a jazz musician has to learn) is crucial to the excitement generated and will never be replicated or replaced. The best swing music - be it jazz, country, rock, r&b - has the power to draw in the listener in a very subtle and seductive way, and I'm not sure that music that doesn't understand this is destined to last. Which won't be the case with the work of any of the names above.

Came across an interesting thought from the great detective writer Raymond Chandler the other day. I'm not sure of its original context (it was quoted in a book review), but I imagine it was somehow or other in defense of his genre, which is usually under-rated. Anyway, the words went this way: "There are not vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that." Upon reading this I understood my rather eclectic musical listening tastes, which run from the Sex Pistols to Stravinsky, and which I've tried to explain on this blog in the past, much more clearly. Chandler said it all, and with his usual concision (one of the main reasons that Lou Reed is a big admirer): it's either art or it isn't. Therefore the task of people who write about music, or play it, or even quite simply only care about it, is to differentiate between the two categories, and to understand their reasons for doing so.

I listened to Fleetwood Mac's Tusk several times the other day, and found that it's stood up really well to the test of time. I mentioned it during a recent post on the Beatles' White Album, which sent me through my collection to find it, and was glad I did. Like the Fabs, the group is centered around three distinguished and distinctive songwriters, who are all splendid lead vocalists but who also have the ability to blend for ensemble singing. Also, the two groups have outstanding rhythm sections who are able to bring a wide variety of material to life. It's hard to pick specific highlights on an album as well-balanced as this one, so here's a link to the first track, Christine McVie's "Over and Over": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhUsXxdAkbg. I hope it'll make you want to listen to the whole thing.

Finished reading Stephen Sondheim's Finishing the Hat (2010), thoroughly enjoyed it, learned a lot from it, and now I'm recommending it to anyone interested in participating and/or better understanding the craft of songwriting. The book is filled with highly detailed, insightful and honest observations about his own work as well as that of others. One particularly cool thing for me is how it provides the context needed to appreciate the lyrics to the songs. For example, I don't know how many times I've heard "Send In the Clowns" or "Losing My Mind" without knowing where they fit into the larger works that they came from - not having seen A Little Night Music or Follies. This lacking, among others, has now been corrected thanks to this terrific book. Here's Sinatra doing the first one listed above, before it became a standard apparently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJvUCDP9u0I. And here's Peggy Lee doing the latter in a way I hadn't heard before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeUvNoWyfQk&feature=related. Two great singers interpreting a songwriter appropriate to their level.

I've read a great many knuckleheaded comments lately about The King of Limbs, Radiohead's new album, which is too bad because it means that a lot of people are not appreciating it for what it is: a deepening of their musical concept and process (which do overlap, but are not precisely the same thing). And it seems like the band are getting it from both sides - either the record is too experimental or not experimental enough... It's neither actually. In fact, it's simply further exploration of a way of making music, which they invented, by the way, and which produces results that are unlike those of any other artist. Think of that: after all these years, there's still no one that sounds like them. Of course, this means that there might not be as much of a change between this one and In Rainbows as there was between, say, The Bends and OK Computer, but that's as it should be. It means that they're honing their process. And it's important to keep in mind that these guys are a great and unique rock band, not trend-followers. They'll be remembered among the greatest musicians of our time, of any, in fact. And the best thing I've heard about them recently came in an interview with Jonny Greenwood, in which he said (and I'm paraphrasing) that the band has learned a lot about how to speed up their process. My hope is that this means that we're going to get new music from them more frequently. Here are links to their most recent release (a two-sided single for Record Store Day). For maximum enjoyment, listen to them with the right mindset: "Supercollider"- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ii-FumszIg. "The Butcher": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w19ZlO_JEJ0&feature=related.

I listened to the the Beatles' White Album from cover to cover the other day and was as amazed as I was the first time I heard it. It's well-known now that the album was considered by the members of the band to be a record of their early work as solo artists (listening to the lyrics to "Blackbird" from that perspective says it all), and that the accompanying photos are made up entirely of individual shots, and so forth. But, for me, it still sounds like perhaps the most representative Beatles album, because it contains so much breathing room and thus allows them to be heard both as individuals and as a collective. In retrospect, it's also clear that it was a template for some of the best large-scale ambitions of later rock artists (The Clash's Sandanista! and Fleetwood Mac's Tusk come to mind), and that its individual tracks have remained inspirations for songwriters up to the present moment. An example? Compare "Good Night" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIKugx1sToY) with Radiohead's closing track from Kid A, "Motion Picture Soundtrack" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ju8xO_Zvfo).

The album's MVP is Starr, in my opinion, and not only for his unforgettable vocal contributions (such as the one linked above), but his near-infallibility in the studio and his heart full of soul playing and placement made the record possible despite the tensions present at its making. Check him out on this one, Lennon's "I'm So Tired": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy-gOf-_3f4&feature=related.

And just to round things off, here's a highlight from Harrison, "Savoy Truffle": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBJqPxpWD5w, and one from McCartney, "Martha My Dear": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogwO9V9wIHg.

Kierkegaard's dictum, "Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards", can also be related to music, and particularly composition, in a very important way. The reason for this is that music theory is very largely an after-the-fact activity. Because the composing process is centered on finding connections to a central idea or two and chasing them down as well as possible, there isn't the time to analyze each musical moment in terms of theory. But, the more experience that a composer has, the more likely that they will be able to work backwards from an envisioned whole, and thus infuse logic and inevitability into every gesture. Mozart was this type of composer, and his String Quartet No. 19 in C Major (K. 465), an example of this type of composition. The first movement is what gave the piece its nickname (the Dissonance Quartet), and it gives, very clearly I think, evidence of this kind of very advanced thinking. Have a listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7dv2-bxhE8.

Note to regular readers of this blog: Because I'll be working on some other writing projects for the next little while, I'm going to be updating weekly, rather than daily, for a bit. This applies my Shakespeare blog (Star of England, linked on the right) as well.

I was too young to see the original rockabilly singers. And although I was never in the presence of Elvis Presley or Gene Vincent, I did get to see quite a few of the artists who kept that crucial flame alive for those of us who weren't there at the beginning. From among that group, Robert Gordon was the greatest. He had the voice, the understated charisma, the sense of drama and the taste to convey all of the original excitement to the next generation of gone cats. A great example of his taste, by the way, is the fact that he nearly always plays with a rock 'n' roll trio of guitar, bass and drums, which is just as it should be. He's one of the few rockers who (truly) understands that less is more. Here's a great clip of him doing Conway Twitty's "It's Only Make Believe": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwB7itzYIMo. And here's a link to his website: http://www.robertgordon.dk/.

Having mentioned Elvis Presley's ballad singing yesterday, I thought I would find an example for you today, and "Love Me Tender" is as good as any. What's immediately striking to me, whenever I listen to Elvis now, is the control he had over his instrument, seemingly from the very beginning, and the astonishing resonance that it was capable of producing. It was no doubt largely informed by his knowledge of gospel singing (another example of taste being the most important attribute for a musician). Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZBUb0ElnNY.

And now have a listen to the same song (in a medley with "Witchcraft") sung by Presley and Frank Sinatra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVfXCYk0xSA. How many rock and roll singers could have done that? I think Frank speaks for all of us with his final comment in the clip: "Thank you, Elvis".

Vincent Eugene Craddock, better known as Gene Vincent, is one of the greatest rock and roll singers, up there with Elvis Presley. I think that, along with his sense of swing and dramatic timing, it was his natural quality, the sense that what he was singing about was actually happening to him, that made him so great. Like Presley, he was equally convincing on ballads and rockers, and like John Lennon, the greatest rock and roll singer of the following decade, he had the gift of always making the listener feel like part of the action (and fun). You can clearly hear how much Lennon learned from him by comparing their versions of "Be-Bop-a-Lula". Vincent's was recorded in 1956 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7trV_-mSyE), and Lennon's in 1975. It's the first and best track on his Rock 'n' Roll album of that year (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKQB0ezWGOE).

As I hope you've noticed, I try to avoid getting negative on this blog. One of my guiding principles in writing it has been Auden's comment on how criticism should concern itself with opening up an audience to things of which they are unaware, and thus, there shouldn't really be time left over for deriding anything, considering how much good stuff is almost entirely neglected. That being said, there is one era and/or style of music upon the terribleness of which I can't remain silent: the eighties. I'm sorry, but the scars of that horrible time are still in my psyche. On the bright side, I am forever in the debt of the relatively few great bands that kept rock alive during those dark days. The best of that small bunch, for me, were the Replacements, whose career was perhaps best summarized in a blurb written by Nick Hornby, which can be found on the cover of Jim Walsh's highly recommended 2007 book, The Replacements: All Over but the Shouting: "The Replacements were superheroes: They rescued a whole planet from '80s music." Well said.

Another group from that time deserving of recognition is the Style Council, the r&b influenced group fronted by the former leader of the Jam, Paul Weller, that were in operation from 1983-1989. I think of them as a singles band (like most of their ancestors, I suppose), and their releases had a sort of street art quality to them, tied in with particular moments and social scenes. I think my favourite among them is this one, "How She Threw It All Away" from 1988:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG80bEinXNk. By the way, Weller has remained active, and terrific, in the years since. He released his tenth solo album, Wake Up the Nation, in 2010.

I'd be remiss if I were to write about Gene Bertoncini, as I did yesterday, without doing the same about Charlie Byrd, who, as the popularizer of finger-style jazz guitar, was an influence on Bertoncini, and virtually every other jazz guitarist. He was an influence on all of jazz, in fact, because of his work in bringing Brazilian music and the Bossa Nova style into its current mainstream status. Byrd's 1962 collaboration with the saxophone giant, Stan Getz, Jazz Samba, remains a cornerstone in the field, and a must-hear for every jazz fan. Here's a link to the opening track, "Desafinado", which features tremendous solo work, by both Byrd and Getz, that proved that Bossa Nova could provide a framework for a jazz musician's abilities that would be every bit as solid and challenging as those found in standards: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGfiAzPiYG4). This cut was a pop hit at the time, by the way, reaching #15 on the Billboard charts. Those were the days.