Let it roll!

Well, I just got up because I couldn't sleep -- a not-infrequent occurrence these days, since I tend to consume coffee and Diet Dr. Pepper to keep me going all day, then find it keeps me awake at night -- and I turned on the T.V., just to see what there might be, not expecting much at 11:30 on a Saturday night.  And there, on Maine PBS's Front Row Center, were the vestiges of the old Canadian rock group from the '70s,  Bachman-Turner Overdrive, i.e., [Randy] Bachman and [Fred] Turner, singing and playing their aging hearts out.  It was terrific!  I stood there, bobbing up and down, while these two old guys and the rest of their re-invented band sang, full-throttle, LET IT ROLL...DOWN THE HIGHWAY...LET IT ROLL...DOWN THE HIGHWAY!  Then they sang another of their old hits, Takin' Care of Business, and the audience, all on their feet, were bouncing up and down and singing along.  Great fun.

I've gotten sort of jaded about aging rock stars continuing to tour, or trying to tour again, after a silence of many years.  We get a lot of such acts up here in Maine, unable, apparently, to attract more current acts.  For example, the Beach Boys 50th Reunion Concert (which has received scathing reviews) is coming to Bangor on June 22nd (tickets are being offered at 50 % off, I notice).  As Brian Wilson himself has said, "We're fucking 70 years old, man!" Exactly.  Time for rock stars to be (or stay) retired.

But Bachman & Turner showed me tonight that you can be at least pushing 70, and still have what it takes, in the world of rock music.  They had energy, high spirits, voice, and great guitar playing.  I've talked before about the allure of the guitar for my generation (see Note of Nov. 29, 2008), and here it was again: the guitar, in all its pulsating glory; I loved watching Randy Bachman's fingers fly up and down those frets.  As Lionel's father is always saying in As Time Goes By, "Rock on!"

By the way, I recently discovered that I had done a draft of my review of HBO'S version of Game of Thrones, but had failed to post it.  It is now posted, but at the date when it was originally done, April 26, 2012.  So take a look, if you're interested.

Play that thing

I think it’s interesting the way the guitar became the musical instrument of my generation. For previous generations, if there was an instrument it was the piano, but for the most part singers just sang. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, et al. – they had orchestras or large bands backing them up, but they themselves just sang.

And indeed, many early rock and rollers “just sang.” Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darin (and all the other Bobbys – Vee, Vinton, Rydell, Sherman), Barry Manilow (who actually played the piano), the various singing groups – the Drifters, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Four Seasons – all of these people were more or less carrying on the tradition of the singers from the 30s, 40s and early 50s. They were just singing a different kind of song.

But beginning with Bill Haley and the Comets, and continuing through people like Elvis, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson, the folk singers of the 60s, British Invasion groups of the mid-60s, the psychedelic groups of the late 60s and early 70s, holding a guitar while you sang was de rigueur, and I’m wondering why. Perhaps, in the case of early rockers, because so many of them were influenced by black blues singers, who generally played a guitar while they sang. So did country and western singers, who were also, no doubt, an influence.

Whatever the reason, the music of my generation became defined by the guitar. Females could swoon over Eric Clapton as he sang; males could admire the way he played the guitar. Indeed, in some way I think playing the guitar made being a singer more manly! I suppose we could get all Freudian and point out how much like an extension of the infamous male “member,” as they say in discreet novels, a guitar can seem. Especially the way some men hold it, wrestle with it, lead with it. In her rather tepid autobiography, Wonderful Tonight, Patty Boyd mentions the time that her then-husband George Harrison in effect challenged her soon-to-be husband Eric Clapton to a guitar duel. The two men tried to play one another into the ground – “I’m better at this than you!” That, of course, is the age-old competitiveness that comes out in men no matter what they do...like skate boarding! Can you remember when skate boarding was just a silly thing young boys did for fun? Now there are extreme skate board competitions. And dueling guitars.

The other night I watched the 30th anniversary concert of Tom Petty on the late night program Sound Stage. Petty has a sort of whiny, nasally voice and perpetually stoned manner that do not particularly appeal to me, but he’s a pretty good guitarist, when he’s not strutting around, and he had a really great lead guitarist playing with him, whom he introduced as Mike Campbell. Often these “other guys in the band” are fantastic musicians, who are a real pleasure to listen to when they get their minute and a half of solo time. Both when both men were playing solos, and when they were engaged in intense “duets”, I got the sense that this was when they felt most successful, most like Big Men.

To my mind, a better arena for proving oneself than the football field. And the music they produced really rocked.

Not long ago I caught a rerun of the Eric Clapton Crossroads concert that was held in Chicago in July, 2007. While the big emphasis was on blues, of which I am not a huge fan (another thing I’ve occasionally wondered is why both blues and jazz are so much more popular with men than with women), there were all these guitars, and terrific guitarists, and the audience was absolutely loving it. As the concert went on, it became more rock oriented. Wimpy rocker John Mayer, whose singing has never done anything for me, proved himself a really excellent guitarist. I was also really impressed by the playing of Derek Trucks (and how’s that for an unlikely name). This guy looks and acts like one of the “other guys in the band,” even though he has his own group. But I was just knocked out by his playing, as was the audience.

That’s what it all comes down to in the end, the music, the rhythmic, wailing sounds that lots of love and lots of practice produce. No different from a great violinist or classical pianist, but this was “our music.” Our instrument.