The Stooges - The Stooges (1969)

Even when played at a lower volume, these Stooges records are the loudest I have ever heard. I suppose that’s what happens when music this visceral and true is pressed into wax. Veracity becomes volume. These records leave scars and bite marks. Puncture wounds to the soul. I don’t remember the first time I heard The Stooges’ eponymous debut, but I seem to remember holding the cover in my hands for the first time. Four faces staring coldly back at me as if to say Come and get it. Or don’t. We don’t care. It affected me deeply. At that moment, I was the young child reaching for the flaming stove. Even after some time and countless spins, that sensation remains. Fresh danger.

George Harrison - Living In The Material World (1973)

My glass-half-full take of the year is that The Beatles’ tendency to neglect George Harrison’s writing was a blessing in disguise because he was obviously saving it all up for All Things Must Pass and its follow up, Living In The Material World. Not only do these two records alone make the rest of the solo Beatle output seem average at best, but they present some of the best music of the 70s all together. Living In The Material World proves that George’s sense of melody was just too good and too unique to be just an aspect of any group, much less The Beatles. Maybe it’s because I feel he and Dylan were truly kindred spirits, but I can say with considerable confidence that George Harrison is my favorite Beatle.

The B-52’s -The B-52’s (1979)

I used to feel The B-52’s were just too silly or too quirky for me. That was until fairly recently. There was a day back in July where I was driving up to San Francisco and I decided to pop one of their compilation CD’s into the stereo and something very wonderful happened: the stick fell out of my ass. The B-52’s are true originals in every sense of the word. I realized that the same X-factor that attracts me to The Cramps is also present in the B-52’s. They are two sides of the same coin. Part of being an artist is simply making the art you want to make and worrying about all the other bullshit later. Artists create to create. These two bands were clearly in it for the pure love of it and doing it because they needed to do it. Artistry of the highest level.

Jumpstarted Plowhards - Round Two (2024)

I had the pleasure of seeing Mike Watt at a brewery in San Pedro some years back. He came out using a walker and proceeded to absolutely crush a whole set of music. To this day, it’s among the most badass things I’ve ever witnessed. This is an equally badass little record from Watt’s band with Recess Records founder and musician Todd Congelliere. Play it loud or play it louder.

See ya later!

It was around this time last summer that I was reborn. A copy of Live/Dead had, as if the fates had willed it, found itself on my turntable. A neighbor needed help going through some old records and had graciously let me keep a handful, one of which was said copy of Live/Dead. Some unidentifiable voice had convinced me to include it in my pile. Maybe it was just good old curiosity. I still don’t know.

I gently set the needle down on the first side, which is taken up entirely by one song: “Dark Star.” Stepping back from the turntable and settling into the couch in a stoned daze, I was ready for lift-off. Phil Lesh’s rallying call leapt from the speakers, and off I went into that “transitive nightfall of diamonds”

Former Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten famously said that the song is “going on all the time.” It’s an energy, a spirit, a wavelength that the band and the audience fall in and out of. It’s an underlying perpetual force that guides the band through extended periods of improvisation. For the audience, it’s a chance to lose themselves in the great beyond and a plea to surrender to that awesome energy.

It changed everything for me

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Sometimes I think about what I’d keep if I (GODFUCKINGFORBID) had to get rid of the majority of my collection. Which records really mean the most to me? All the Coltrane, Miles, Dylan, Neil, Rush, and Zeppelin are keepers, obviously, but what else means that much to me? What could I simply not live without? Well, it changes nearly every day. I guess today I decided to document it. The following are the records that mean the most to me… today.

Black Flag - Damaged

TV PARTY TONIGHT!! TV PARTY TONIGHT!! WE’RE GONNA HAVE A TV PARTY TONIGHT!! ALRIGHT!!!!

Whenever I get down about the state of the world (often), I turn to this album. “Rise above! We’re gonna rise above!”

New Order - Substance

The popular music of the 80s is purposefully underrepresented in my collection. Obviously there are exceptions (Prince and Michael Jackson), but I think a lot of it is garbage. I’ve always loved New Order though. The songs are interesting, and there’s a clear artistry and honesty to their music. This collection of songs does a great job of presenting a group’s sonic thesis. To this day, nothing really sounds like this. I love Depeche Mode for the same reasons. Bottom line is the music has to be interesting, and a lot of electronic-heavy music from the 80s just isn’t, but I’ll always return to Substance.

Television - Marquee Moon

I think I discussed this record enough in a previous piece, but these songs have been stuck in my head since January when I first fell in love with this brilliant beacon of rock music. I hope they stay in there forever.

X - Los Angeles

As perfect a rock and roll record as there ever was. Lyrics, musicianship, energy; all there and turned up to eleven. I can’t think of a time this record wasn’t a part of my life, and I believe I’m better for it.

Albert Ayler Trio - Spiritual Unity

What could I possibly say about a record that changed everything about how I listen to music? I guess just that.

Well, that was a fun way to kill an hour or so. Maybe I’ll do another tomorrow. See you later. Stay cool.

I realized this year something that has probably been obvious to those who have known me long enough: I don’t lend my time and interest to many things, but when I find the right target, I go all in. I don’t approach passion casually. Fanaticism is a natural and exciting thing for me. My mantra, since the great drummer Dave King said it to me seven years ago, has been “Know every note of it.” King was responding to my love of Tony Williams and Philly Joe Jones when he delivered those life-changing words to me. Needless to say, I took the phrase to heart and immediately got to work.

When I got into Bob Dylan as a senior in high school, I had no idea how deep in the throes of obsession I’d end up. I put the needle down on Highway 61 Revisited, and the opening snare drum hit of “Like a Rolling Stone” leaped from the speakers. It was in that instant that Bob Dylan became the most important artist in my life. It was not long before I was only listening to Highway 61, Bringing It All Back Home, and Blonde on Blonde. I’ve since branched out and have a deep connection with the full Dylan canon, but the “Dylan goes electric” years (1965-1966) will always be the era for me.

Needing a break from jazz after the year I had and looking for something to fill the hours, I ordered this box set: The 1966 Live Recordings. I figured it was finally time to know every note.

I also figured it would make a great subject for a Substack piece, and that’s where I ran into some trouble. As I went through and listened to the shows, focusing mainly on the electric sets, I took copious notes on lyric changes, vocal phrasing, stand-out instrumental elements, and Dylan’s interactions with the audience. What I realized pretty quickly was that I had all these wonderful epiphanies, findings, etc., and not a damn thing to write about. I couldn’t find an angle or approach strong enough to constitute a stand-alone write-up. At first, I thought I could go show by show, comparing each performance to the one just prior or the one that follows it, but that felt like it would be boring for you, dear reader, and wholly unnecessary. There would be nothing particularly revelatory or insightful in that approach. Maybe I could’ve chosen to share one or two big lessons that I felt this collection of music taught me, but that too would’ve been useless. Everything felt too simple, too constricting, or too vacuous for this sizable document of some of the most important music ever created.

I gave it a rest for a few days and tried to focus on literally anything else, hoping that distance would provide some clarity - forest for the trees. Well, obsession is a stubborn state of mind. I could step away from ‘66 recordings, but I was still in full Dylan mode. My ears and mind, like helpless addicts, were constantly begging for their fix, and I happily obliged. Somehow, drugs of choice became 80s Dylan, a period I’ve always paid relatively little attention to, and Rolling Thunder, my second favorite Dylan era. Then the gears started turning.

“It used to go like that and now it goes like this…”

Consider “Man of Constant Sorrow.” An old traditional American tune with an unknown writer, the song has been covered ad nauseam by folkies worldwide (perhaps most famously by Dan Tyminski for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack). Bob Dylan covered it on his 1962 debut record. Each version of the song is meaningfully different; lyrics change slightly, arrangements convey different moods, and the title even changes in some cases. However, whatever the performer does with it, the song remains the same. The story and emotional content are still there regardless of specific lyrics/chords. The song is the forest, and the technical elements are the trees. Such is the case with many traditional folk songs that have worked their way into the collective American cultural consciousness.

Now consider Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings,” originally an acoustic number featured on the colossal The Times They Are A-Changin’. The original album cut is singularly solemn. Dylan’s voice is at once so sure and incredibly delicate, invoking this feeling that one cannot feel any lower than Dylan feels in that moment. It’s just depressing. Even so, it remains one of my favorite Dylan songs and performances.

For the ‘66 shows, the set list remains mostly consistent night to night. Except for “To Ramona” appearing in the acoustic set in White Plains (2/15/66) and “Positively 4th Street” appearing during the electric sets in Pittsburgh (2/6/66) and Sydney (4/13/66), the songs featured consistently are:

Acoustic Set

She Belongs To Me - Bringing It All Back Home

Visions of Johanna - Blonde on Blonde

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue - Bringing It All Back Home

Desolation Row - Highway 61 Revisited

Love Minus Zero/No Limit - Bringing It All Back Home

Mr. Tambourine Man - Bringing It All Back Home

Just Like A Woman - Blonde on Blonde

Fourth Time Around - Blonde on Blonde

Electric Set

Tell Me, Momma - debuted during this tour

I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) - Another Side of Bob Dylan

Baby, Let Me Follow You Down - traditional song covered on Dylan’s debut record

Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues - Highway 61 Revisited

Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat - Blonde on Blonde

One Too Many Mornings - The Times They Are A-Changin’

Ballad Of A Thin Man - Highway 61 Revisited

Like A Rolling Stone - Highway 61 Revisited

Notice that “One Too Many Mornings,” previously an acoustic tear-jerker, is featured during the electric set. In fact, savvy readers will notice that the only old - meaning previously acoustic songs from his earlier records - material appears recontextualized and rearranged during the electric set. The electric arrangement of “One Too Many Mornings” makes the song sound more like a plea to a lover who’s up and left than an acceptance of fate. However, the anchoring emotion of longing remains intact and clear. The song would receive its next notable makeover in the aftermath of Dylan’s estrangement from his wife, Sara Lownds. The separation clearly broke Dylan, as is evident from Blood On The Tracks, the 1975 album it inspired. 1975 also marked the beginning of Dylan’s greatest live feat to date, The Rolling Thunder Revue. Similar to the ‘66 tour, Rolling Thunder’s electric sets featured several arrangements of previously acoustic songs, including “One Too Many Mornings.” The Rolling Thunder arrangement is technically sort of similar to the ‘66 arrangement, but the song yet again takes on a different role. This time, Dylan seems to be looking inward, perhaps blaming himself for the end of his marriage. In this way, he’s combining the readings of the original acoustic version and the‘66 version and, in turn, getting closer to the truth of the song

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Take the song “Tangled Up In Blue” for another example. The opening cut of Blood On The Tracks, the song is an incredible feat of musical storytelling. I feel it’s not entirely clear whether or not the man in the song is supposed to be Dylan, but just like he did with “Man of Constant Sorrow”, the singer assumes the role of the song’s I, me, and mine. With that assumption comes the responsibility of delivering an honest and confident telling of the story, which Dylan proves he’s more than capable of on the album cut. Because it’s his story (or at least one that he wrote), Dylan’s live performances of the song often feature lyric changes that shed new light on Dylan’s current state. The featured performance on 1984’s Real Live is by far the most radical performance of the song that I’ve heard. Despite an almost entirely new set of lyrics and a noticeably different melodic statement, the Real Live version solidifies the song’s place among the timeless American folk music canon. What makes those old songs so meaningful still is their elasticity. They can be bent and stretched every which way, but the integrity of the song is never lost, and the core emotion still gets through. Many of them seem to have been written in some unknown, mystical place that exists outside of time, where universal truths are distilled into poems, stories, and songs. Dylan knows that place. It’s where he writes from. He may be the last son of that land

Dylan abstracts common phrases, images, and sentiments until all that remains is their bare essence. When we, as listeners, let our guards down and allow ourselves to fall into his world, everything becomes so clear. No one really knows who or what “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” is about, but everyone gets it. Almost all of Dylan’s songs share this ethereal, universal sense of understanding. It’s this quality that has kept and will keep his songs alive forever

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The next piece we looked at was by a contemporary jazz artist who, too, shall remain nameless. Though not as difficult as the previous piece, it still had some shifting elements that required some breaking down to understand. After listening to the piece a few times, the professor (who, I should mention, I quite like and respect) turns and says, “How does it feel, Joe?” I think he was joking, but at the moment it felt kind of like a needless dig. To tell the truth, I was a little shaken. Is feel not an incredibly important aspect of music? Should I be disregarding feel in the music I make and/or consume? How fucking preposterous!? I don’t think my professor meant any of that, but it got me thinking; why is it that I don’t really love music - jazz or otherwise - being made today?

Obviously, my music taste leans heavily toward music of decades past. Most of my favorite music was made fifty to sixty years ago. This is news to no one. Granted, there’s a good amount of music being made today that I enjoy quite a bit. I love MJ Lenderman and Cameron Winter, and I believe deeply that artists like those two are building an exciting future for rock music. Bands like The Lemon Twigs and Starcrawler are also very much on my radar. I’m also aware that those groups are drawing a lot from music from the sixties and seventies.

I’ve realized that my main issue with a lot of the music being made today is perfect angularity. Everything is so worked out, and everybody moves perfectly between ludicrous time signatures and rhythmic figures. From a technical standpoint, it’s all incredibly impressive. Many musicians today have unprecedented levels of facility on their instruments. What I’m finding, though, is that while the number of notes being played is at an all-time high, there’s relatively little music being played.

Because the focus is on making sure every technical aspect is being executed, there’s very little room for real improvisation or group interaction. This makes for shallow, hollow music with no sense of grounding. If one person screws up even slightly, the whole thing falls apart. The music involves so much thought. This, to me, is no way to create.

I used to believe that all musicians were right-brained. What I’ve come to realize is that even if that’s true, some musicians still exhibit left-brained behaviors. Some musicians are more interested in the numbers and notes than in the feeling or emotion. That’s all fine and dandy, I guess. As I’ve discussed on here before, I couldn’t really give less of a shit about that part. When I’m listening and playing music, I don’t want to think about numbers. In fact, I don’t want to think about anything! Sure, I can keep track of an odd time signature and the form, but those are just considerations in making sure that the music feels good. As an audience member, I want to feel the music in the moment, then maybe later I can think about it.

Returning to my first point about complexity vs. difficulty, I despise difficult music because once you decode it, you don’t discover anything. All you get is a set of numbers that tells you how the music happens. Where’s the mystery? It’s a big fat nothing burger. Once it’s figured out, there’s no reason to return to it. Listen to the piece again, and the most you can do is congratulate yourself on being able to count. The whole thing is very masturbatory. Pair difficult rhythmic material with difficult harmony, and it’s information overload. Personally, with music like that, there’s too much being thrown at me for me to actually feel anything. Nothing changes when my perspective shifts because there are no plausible alternate angles. Nothing is up to perception; there’s a definite right and wrong. How dreary is that? I’m getting tired just thinking about it. Mind you, it’s occurred to me that I might just be too simple a person for music like that. I think I’m one of those people who can be read like a book upon an initial meeting. That might have something to do with it, but also maybe not.

I believe complexity in music means difficulty masked in simplicity, and that’s what I find in the music I love most. Layers; I like musical onions. Give me something to search for. Hide some crazy shit that I won’t even be able to pick up on until I’ve experienced a certain something. Make it so that something is revealed to me only through great pain or joy. Give me an album of pictures of Dorian Gray. Let me grow with the music and vice versa. Give me something that I can carry with me for life. Infect me and cure me at once. I’m drawn to music and art that changes with me. It’s what makes my life worth living.

Of course, it’s arguably impossible to say in the moment, but timelessness is what I feel is missing from today’s music, and part of what makes something timeless is mystery. Popular music today is so cleanly produced, and lyrics are more explicit than ever, so there’s not much to explore beyond what’s being presented on an initial listen. There’s nothing mysterious about it. Every aspect of the music is so “perfect” and “right,” forever pairing it with the age of computers and programmed precision. It’s the same thing with forgotten music from the sixties, for example. Over-produced albums, drenched in strings and horn sections, are forever tied to that time because the record company thought that’s what was popular. Really, what was popular was the exploration of what pop and rock music could sound like. Strings and horns just happened to be a product of that exploration. A similar thing is happening now with pop music. Producers are drawing from more or less the same bank of sounds, and there are a gazillion songwriters per tune. Music is being made only with the goal of becoming popular or keeping up appearances.

My aversion to perfection has also crept into my record acquisitions. I brought a bunch of audiophile records to work the other day and traded them for an original pressing of Blue Mitchell’s The Thing To Do, an exquisite late hard bop outing that kind of changed my life the first time I heard it eight or so years ago. As cool as the idea of an audiophile record is, with the exquisite all-analog mastering on dead-silent vinyl, there’s something kind of soulless about it. When discussing whether a CD’s lack of surface noise makes it a superior format to a record, the great John Peel said, “Life has surface noise.” What an incredibly profound statement about what it means to listen to music. Originals might have a little more surface noise than a nice reissue, but the fact remains that they are true primary sources; they’re artifacts. Originals present actual living beings, audiophile reissues present ghosts.

A lot of audiophiles will fawn over a release because it “sounds like the band is in the room with you,” but most of these people have never been to a concert before. Music doesn’t sound like that. Sometimes music sounds like a memory - blurry, distorted by perspective, and colored by time. That’s what makes bootlegs so special. This Grateful Dead boot from their 1971 Fillmore run (I think) sounds like I’m breathing the hazy auditorium air and experiencing the same unique atmosphere as everyone who was there. There’s an ambience that disappears when the technical fidelity of the music is prioritized.

For an even better example, take Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes. Originally compiled and released on bootlegs such as the one pictured below, the Basement Tapes are famously low-fidelity home recordings, but that’s part of what makes them special. It feels like something you weren’t supposed to hear, like you’ve got your ear to the ground listening to a meeting you’re not supposed to know about. Also, the poor recording quality makes it easier to place Bob Dylan in the mythical pantheon of real American folk music. If that sounds like a conversation that interests you, then I highly suggest reading Greil Marcus’ marvelous Invisible Republic. He’s got a great Substack, too.

*A short aside about the state of straight ahead jazz: There are certain popular straight ahead players today who are adding nothing to the music. They’re doing the artistic equivalent of a shitty singer-songwriter getting on stage and saying, “This is a song about this thing that happened to me” and then proceeding to sing lyrics that explain exactly what happened to them. Whatever the straight ahead version of that is, that’s what they’re doing. No music, no improvisation, no fucking mystery. No, thank you.

Anyway, blah blah blah. I think that’s enough rambling for today.

It’s Saturday night, just past 1:00. Sunday. I’m here sitting on my bedroom floor sat next to my turntable, listening to my 2002 pressing of Elliott Smith’s either/or through my headphones. Sublime and sultry as always. Logic Pro is listening along with me. Just as the music flows from the needle to my pre-amp to the headphone amp and finally into my headphones, my pre-amp is also sending the signal to be digitized in Logic. Once the side is complete, I’ll separate the Logic track into the individual songs and bounce each one over to my iTunes/Apple Music library. From there, I’ll add the individual songs in album order to a playlist, which shall bear the title “Elliott Smith - either/or”, upload a scan of my physical album cover as the playlist graphic, and just like that, I’ve got a vinyl rip of the record on my phone to be listened to whenever I please. I’ve done this for two other albums tonight (a 1990 EU pressing of Goo and the exquisite Speakers Corner reissue of Transformer).

So why am I doing all of this just to get a digital version of an album that already has one? I don’t know - why do we do anything? Obviously, I’m a crazy person who thought that digitizing a record collection would be awesome. I was right; it is awesome. I’m having a grand ol’ time.

I’m sick of streaming. Too many options and a shitty algorithm feeding me shit that it thinks I’d like. My reasoning for keeping it around has been that there’s only so much in my record collection. Well, that reasoning seems a little silly now that I’ve got over a thousand records (!!!!!) that span several genres and eras. It’s beginning to dawn on me that if my record collection were to be my only source of music, I’d be pretty fucking well off. That being the case, the overwhelming volume of library music available on streaming services no longer feels like a draw. All I have to do is play every record in my collection so that I can have a digital copy of it. Though, as described above, the process of getting a physical record into my digital library is a little laborious. I don’t particularly mind, as it kind of forces me to listen to each record all the way through - something I’ve been admittedly slacking on recently.

Part of why I’m so enthusiastic about this new endeavour is the idea that it’ll make me slow down with the record collecting and spend more time getting to know the music already in my collection. And if I’m gonna buy something, it better be pretty damn clean because I’d like as little surface noise in these digitizations as possible if I can help it. I’ll also have an opportunity to really evaluate each record’s role in the collection. What itch is this record scratching? If I come across something that I don’t feel would be worth the work of digitizing, chances are it won’t be worth owning either. See what I’m getting at? This is ultimately an excuse to spend even more time with my records.

Sonically, there’s obviously nothing like listening to the record through my headphone amp/setup or my stereo system, but I’m quite pleased with the sonics of the digitized records. The main bonus is getting to hear the LP mastering instead of the mastering on the normal streaming version. In the case of jazz records in particular, this is huge. In the case of jazz records that were recorded and mastered by Rudy Van Gelder, it’s night and day.

My copy of The John Coltrane Quartet Plays is a Rudy-cut reissue from the late 60’s, and it sounds unbelievable. No one knew how to capture the fire and vitality of Elvin Jones like Rudy Van Gelder. Something about the way he recorded and mastered Elvin’s drums makes you feel as if you’re sitting right next to or in front of them. They’re so present and alive that it can almost be scary at times. Truly thrilling. To be able to access that on my phone whenever I want is pretty fucking cool to me. Again, I’m not getting the fullest picture when compared to all analog listening, but it’s similar enough since the source (a vinyl record played on a turntable) is the same.

Anyway, this is how I’m killing time until the world ends, I guess.

The first cut on the band’s 1969 debut is aptly titled “1969,” and it perfectly captures the sensation of boredom turning sour and becoming rage. “Another year for me and you / Another year with nothing to do,” sings Iggy Pop, not as the seasoned professional front man but as a twenty-year-old kid who desperately wants more from his life and from the world.

Anger is such a strange emotion because it manifests itself in so many ways. It’s just as much a nuclear explosion as it is a tiny spark. A flood and a dripping faucet. Anger isn’t always loud and outwardly aggressive. It can simmer and never reach a boil, as on “We Will Fall,” the ten-ish minute side-stealer featuring producer John Cale with some avant-garde viola playing. The song is a quietly brutal meditation on anger and hopelessness that stays at a single volume throughout. An emotional cage, a trance, and a masterpiece if ever I’ve heard one

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Angry or intense music seems to be my craving these days. Music to watch the world burn by. When intense human emotions are transmitted through screeching guitars, pounding drums, wailing saxophones, and various other instruments, it makes life worth living. The sonic vibrations resonate within my subconscious, taking over my entire being. A hug of sorts.

Patti Smith’s sprawling “Birdland,” where the lush piano acts as a canvas for sharp guitar feedback and Smith’s poetic musings, shakes me to my core. Television’s “Marquee Moon” builds and builds and builds until its blinding darkness suddenly shatters into a million stars, guiding me through this endless night. Both are grand opuses that transcend all genre confinements.

The Sex Pistols, Circle Jerks, X, Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Minutemen, Public Image, Buzzcocks, Husker Du, The Clash, The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Patti Smith, and Television. Music that resonates as deeply today as it did when it was new. Music that will be remembered because it’s real

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This snow day was spent mostly in my room doing nothing of substance and pondering death. To be very clear, I was not romanticizing, wishing, or hoping for death. I was, however, considering what death is and what it means to die.

In the most literal sense, to die is to have your body enter a state of complete stasis: no blood flowing, no oxygen coming, nor carbon dioxide going. Death is the universal inevitability that all currently living creatures face. No matter how much work one puts into stretching their body’s functioning time span, the clock runs out eventually. There’s nothing to mourn when a body dies. Mourning is reserved for the person, or more specifically, the spirit and soul. I’m well aware that this concept of separating the spirit from the physical form it embodies is not something I just stumbled upon, but I do think that it’s helped me come to my own conclusions about what death really is.

You see, I’ve been thinking about the implications of death since we lost Ozzy in July. I couldn’t conceive of someone whom I always imagined as so full of life being so lifeless. It was something I couldn’t fathom. At the time, I thought I must have just been in shock and that eventually I would accept that he’s truly gone. In reaction to his passing, I went back and revisited his albums, some of which I hadn’t heard in a long time (or at all). The result of that is a seemingly endless appetite for Ozzy’s voice/songs, with Sabbath or otherwise, that has lasted since July. I just can’t get enough of it.

After Ozzy, we lost the great Jack DeJohnette, one of my personal heroes. Jack is a drummer whom I didn’t really understand until one day I did, and he immediately became one of my favorite jazz musicians of all time. Again, someone who brought so much vitality and energy to everything he was involved in, somehow just gone. Again, I found myself wondering what death meant because with both Ozzy and Jack, I just couldn’t picture them as “dead and gone” when I listened to their music.

On January 10th, I’d just gotten back to New York after three weeks at home in California. That night, I sat in my living room with my roommates, catching up and listening to a bunch of records I’d bought from home. They eventually went back to their rooms, and I stayed in front of the stereo, spinning tunes and relaxing after a long travel day. My final selection for the night was Europe ‘72, one of the Dead’s most popular releases and one I hadn’t heard in about a month or so (despite spending a lot of my break deep-diving into the Dead). I turned off all the lights, lowered the needle, and relaxed into the couch. “Sugar Magnolia,” one of Bob’s, opens the side. A strangely beautiful sensation came over me, like a blanket of stars sent straight from the universe. I passed it off as the usual cool catharsis that listening to the Dead brings me, but there was certainly something different about it.

Sometime during the second song of the side, my phone lit up with a headline. We’d lost Bobby Weir. Now I’ve only been a Dead fan for a short time, but in that short time, the band’s music has brought immense joy and light into my life. I didn’t realize just how much joy and light until I found Bob’s passing affecting me greatly. What a bummer, man. I took a moment, then focused again on the music, listening intently for Bob’s unique rhythm guitar playing. Since that night, I’ve thought a lot about what death means for artists.

The conclusion that I’ve come to is that when someone dies, it’s only their body that’s really gone. Souls and spirits are still present, just not in the physical realm; they return to the universe. I don’t believe in heaven or hell or any of that kinda crap. It’s those constructs that keep people living in constant fear. Instead, I believe that our spirits are called back up to the universe, and through what we’ve created during our time in the physical realm, we are often called back down and kept alive. Those who create nothing in their lives are forgotten since they leave nothing behind. We have no way to call them.

With artists, when we observe their creations, we call upon their spirits to visit and converse with us. These creations are alive because the spirit is infinite. The body is temporary; the spirit is forever and inexhaustible. It’s why a song hits you one way today and another way tomorrow. Spirits speak to you differently at different times. I couldn’t fathom Ozzy Osbourne and Jack DeJohnette as gone because they weren’t. Sure, we no longer share the physical realm, but they’re alive as ever through their music.

With vinyl, it’s even deeper. The artist is literally in those grooves, and as a stylus tracks it sends a signal not to the amp but to the universe to send spirits through the grooves and into the air. It’s a truly beautiful thing. I’m thinking of John Coltrane’s entrance after Elvin Jones’ brilliant drum intro on “Vigil,” off of Kulu Se Mama. There’s a presence there that can only be described as a spirit appearing in front of you. You can’t see it, but it’s undoubtedly there. A record is a universe teeming with stardust and spirit. You’re never alone when a record is on the turntable. Perhaps the feeling I got when listening to “Sugar Magnolia” was part of Bob Weir’s spirit being welcomed back to the cosmos.

Anyway, sorry if this got too hippie-dippie. I needed something to kill time on this bitterly cold day. Stay warm and kill your local Nazi.

P.S.

Check this out. It’s this kind of ephemera that makes record collecting so interesting. This was found in my copy of The Ultimate Sin.

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Think back to about a month ago, when everyone was champing at the bit to share their Apple Music Replay/Spotify Wrapped. By the looks of things, people were practically begging for a display of data to prove their personality to themselves and others, to affirm some image that they have of themselves. How fucking depressing is that, right? Anyone who couldn’t wait to see what their top songs were isn’t yet suited for a more “analog” life, at least not when it comes to music.

Fear not, though. There are ways to bring physical habits to the digital music stream. For starters, never rely on the algorithm and prioritize albums over playlists. If you’re just looking for one song, go to the artist’s discography, go through their albums until you find the song you’re looking for, then instead of adding that song to a playlist, save the album and go back to it whenever you wanna hear the song. “Sounds like a lot of work!” Yeah, that’s the point. If one wants to truly detach themselves from the so-called conveniences of digital media consumption, there’s a certain amount of work they’ve got to take on to get what they want, even within the digital realm. Once you move into the physical realm, for-fucking-get it! Curating a CD and/or record collection is pretty much all work. At the very least (and this is just for the music itself), the process includes going to a store, browsing shelves and bins, narrowing down your selections, and checking the condition. It’s a lot of work. It’s also incredibly rewarding, as I’ve discussed several times before.

Part of my own digital fatigue has come from the onslaught of AI. It’s here, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, it’s frightening, and it’s depressing. Nothing causes me to spiral like a conversation about advances in AI technology. In response, my soul has been craving the two least calculated, least technology-dependent genres of music: blues and ‘60s free jazz.

Lightnin’ Hopkins, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker. Elemental music. Music that seems to come straight from this planet’s core. Frequencies not disturbed by technological interference resonate deeply, seeping into my blood and bones until their hold on me is absolute. It’s this music that reminds me that only humans are capable of connecting with other humans and that computers will forever be nothing but machines. A program cannot create anything.

Happy New Year, love and light, yada yada…

The late 1970s three-album run of 2112, A Farewell to Kings, and Hemispheres is the prog-rock equivalent of the original Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings trilogies. It’s that epic. From the opening synth swirls of the “2112: Overture” to the final notes of the sprawling instrumental “La Villa Strangiato” that closes the whole saga, listeners are introduced to dystopian authoritarians (“The Temples of Syrinx”), prophets (“Oracle: The Dream”), and all kinds of eccentric characters in between (“The Twilight Zone,” “Cinderella Man,” etc.). We’re taken on a journey that stretches from exotic earthly locations (“A Passage To Bangkok”) to classic literary fantasy-lands (“Xanadu”) until we hit the apex of the trilogy, books I and II of “Cygnus X-1.”

Book I closes out A Farewell to Kings by introducing us to a crazed space captain who’s convinced that he can be the first to sail his ship, The Rocinante, through the heart of Cygnus X-1, a supermassive black hole. What ensues is an epic adventure through time and space in which we are separated from our physical forms, have encounters with ancient mythological figures, and see all kinds of crazy shit. To spoil the rest of the Cygnus X-1 journey would be like traveling back to 1977 and telling everyone who Luke Skywalker’s father is. Nerdy enough for you?

After the conclusion of their prog-yssey, 1980 rolled around and brought Permanent Waves, a more commercial turn for the band. Gone were the days of side-long, multi-part musical epics, and here were the days of songs that sounded more like what one would hear on the radio. Rush is one of those magical groups that can morph into something more palatable (for lack of a better term) while retaining an incredibly high level of musicianship and lyricism. Permanent Waves is one of those records that turns a bad day good and a good day great. It’s so bright and shimmering, so full of life and hope, that I can’t help but be carried away into a state of pure bliss. Every time it’s on (which is very frequently), I go into full air-guitar/air-drumming/lip-sync mode. Every. Single. Note. It’s exciting, thought-provoking, charming, and nostalgic—a very special record for me. The same can be said for all the other Rush records, from their 1975 eponymous debut to 1984’s Grace Under Pressure. That’s ten records. After that, I get a little less familiar with their catalog as they delve further into their synth-heavy era (Power Windows, Hold Your Fire, Presto, Roll The Bones, I hardly know at all). Counterparts from 1993 is one of my favorites, as is a more recent development, Snakes & Arrows from 2007.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me. I hope you stopped reading a while ago and dove headfirst into 2112. If you’re still with me, what are you waiting for?

Elliott Smith’s Either/Or from 1997 is far from underground, so I’m not making an earth-shattering discovery in saying that it’s the perfect November album. Its sonic atmosphere can be best described by comparing it to the most comfortable sweater you’ve ever worn. Smith’s lyrics, in ways that seem to be unique to him, touch on several key aspects of the human condition. There’s anger turned inward, anger turned outward, longing, love lost and gained, and self-deprecation, balanced out with moments of hope and light. Sometimes the hope comes not from his lyrics, but from Smith’s brilliant chordal and melodic choices. This album doesn’t hit like a ton of bricks because it’s depressing; it hits because it’s validating. Either/Or reminds us that it’s okay, natural, and most importantly, normal to be down. Either/Or refuses to let you feel alone.

In the same way that Rothko paintings morph into one shade when stared at for not too long, all the sentiments expressed on Either/Or morph into one singular emotional state that wraps around you like a warm blanket. That’s what it does for me, at least. My copy is an early repress from 2002, purchased from a very nice seller at the WFMU Record Fair. The sound is rich, full, and at the risk of sounding cliché, warm. I usually see “warm” as a cop-out adjective when discussing vinyl, so I try to never use it. In this case, however, the warmth is a trademark of the music, so it’s fair game. If you’re a fan of the album, this is the pressing I’d seek out.

My first exposure to Donovan was through Goodfellas. As Tommy (Joe Pesci) and Jimmy (Robert De Niro) brutally beat Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) to death, Donovan’s dreamy “Atlantis” soars in a perfect moment of cinematic juxtaposition. Every time I watch the film, I think to myself, Damn, this is a great song, but it’s never made me want to listen any further until just recently.

Listening to The Hurdy Gurdy Man now and remembering a rather unenjoyable class I had earlier today, I’ve realized that I prefer to be affected by music rather than amazed. Don’t impress me; move me. Of course, some acts do both - Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Rush - and some acts, like Kiss, do neither. In general, though, I’m drawn to music that alters the weight of my being. As much as I can enjoy listening to Johnny Griffin and his rapid-fire lines, I more often elect to listen to Joe Henderson. Joe Henderson and players of that ilk break through a barrier that players who demonstrate far more technical facility or instrumental perfection can’t seem to get through.

Take the third track on The Hurdy Gurdy Man, “The Entertaining of a Shy Girl.” The melody is simple, the form is basic, and the arrangement is somewhat sparse, at least in comparison to other psychedelic music from the late sixties. From a technical standpoint, there is nothing impressive going on here, yet it’s recently become one of my favorite pieces of music of all time. So much beauty and heart. I couldn’t give less of a fuck about how many notes a musician can play or about the complexity of their harmonic/melodic choices. If it doesn’t move me, I can live without it.

Anyway, I think I paid $4 for this original US pressing. The cover has seen better days, but the art is preserved, and you can’t play the cover. After a cleaning, the disc is in great shape and sounds unbelievable; so well balanced and everything is perfectly present. To think I was considering buying a recent audiophile reissue of The Hurdy Gurdy Man for ten times what I paid for this one gives me a bit of a laugh.

There’s a lot of great stuff in here. Ozzy, ECM, Miles, Muddy Waters, west coast jazz, contemporary hard rock, classic psych and prog, folk heroes, and more. Pretty much everything I love is represented in this stack of records. It’s been a good month.

First up is Billy Squier’s sophomore record from 1981, Don’t Say No. I remember the first time I heard “Lonely Is The Night.” This must have been about ten years ago, but for some reason, I have such a vivid memory of the moment. I was in the car with my family, and we were in New Jersey. A song came on the radio that sounded just like Led Zeppelin. I was particularly convinced that I was hearing Bonham’s thunderous drums and Page’s slick riffage. When I asked my dad if this was indeed my beloved Zep, and he told me it was “Lonely Is The Night” by this guy Billy Squier, whom I’d never heard of, I was shocked but intrigued. I added the song to my first Spotify playlist, and not long after that, it was in constant rotation. Ten-year-old me was obsessed with the song for all of about two weeks, I think, before moving on to something else.

Fast forward to this summer. I was on a solo road trip to San Francisco, which meant six hours of listening to whatever the hell I wanted. Somewhat inexplicably, I put Don’t Say No on first. I don’t remember this choice being prompted by anything in particular other than waking up with “Lonely Is The Night” in my head on the day of the trip. Regardless, Don’t Say No kicked off the drive on a high note. Firstly, I was hit with what I like to refer to as the Rumours Effect: You wouldn’t know the songs by the title, but you know every word. By growing up on rock radio stations and through the use of songs in various pieces of media, you know every song by heart, whether or not you paid them any special mind. That’s what happened to me a few years back when I listened to Rumours all the way through for the first time. Billy Squier’s Don’t Say So starts with “In The Dark,” then “The Stroke,” and then “My Kinda Lover.” I was singing along and air drumming to each one like they were old favorites, even though I couldn’t (and still can’t) remember ever electing to listen to any of them. It was a strange but pretty awesome sensation.

What I realized next had to do with my initial Zep association. It occurred to me that the music on Don’t Say No sounds kind of like what Zeppelin would’ve sounded like had they continued into the 1980s. Please note that I’m not saying Billy Squier sounds exactly like Led Zeppelin, only that the two are clearly related. I don’t know how to explain it quite yet, and I’m sure some people are gonna read this and ask what I’m smoking. To me, Don’t Say No just has that thing. It’s a criminally underrated rock record. I got this original copy for $3 at a record store sidewalk sale, and I’d say I more than got my money’s worth

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Tonight, I finally decided, would be the night that I sit down and brainstorm different names for this publication that I’d like to start taking more seriously. I came up with fifteen names ranging from horrendous to silly to acceptable before landing on the new name for this thing: Dead Wax Diaries.

Dead wax is the space on records between the grooves and the label. It’s where you might find mastering engineer signatures, pressing plant stamps, matrix codes, and various other pressing indicators. Some records have messages in the dead wax, such as my original US pressing of Iron Maiden’s Somewhere In Time which has “EVEN QUIET BITS WERE LOUD” etched just like that in all caps. In addition to keeping the needle from skating onto the label and thus preventing major damage, the dead wax also provides one of the most crucial elements of the record listening experience, the element you only get from listening to the physical LP: silence.

It’s in the silence after side one that you decide whether to flip to side two or play another record. The silence after the final side gives you the opportunity to sit with what you just heard, to really digest and process it before getting up to put the record back (or flip back to the first side and hear the whole this again). It’s paramount to the whole record “thing”. Forgetting about sound, or tactility, or any of the other things people like about collecting records, the silence within the dead wax is what separates records most from all other mediums.

That’s that. I don’t know when my next (or first, I guess) diary entry will come out but I know it’ll be soon and I hope you’ll enjoy it. Until then, peace and love.

This was my general sentiment towards all jam bands until I heard The Allman Brothers Band. At Fillmore East (1970) was unlike anything I’d ever heard. I still believe the live rendition of “Whipping Post” with its masterful mix of intensity and experimentalism to be one of the greatest pieces of music of the twentieth century. Shortly after my first meeting with At Fillmore East, I was struck with a deep infatuation with The Allman Brothers. I had to hear every note the group played between 1969 and 1971. My own obsession with The Allman Brothers Band made it clear to me why Deadheads are as fanatical as they are. When the music is different every night, it’s exciting whenever there’s a new live recording released from the vault. It’s the same reason us jazz heads start foaming at the mouth whenever an archived live set from one of the greats gets released. With The Allman Brothers Band, the jam band seed was planted, but I was still a ways off from embracing the Grateful Dead. In fact, my love of The ABB almost made me even less interested in the Dead. I didn’t think it was possible, but I found them even more boring now that I’d heard how fierce a jam band could be.

In 1970, the Dead took a turn towards folk/country rock with American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead. Inspired by their friends Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the Dead adopted more structured songs that centered less around their instrumental facility and more around three-part vocal harmonies. It could be argued that this shift was foreshadowed in “St. Stephen,” the opening track of their 1969 album Aoxomoxoa, which features an extended harmonized vocal interlude somewhere near the middle of the tune. Before hearing “St. Stephen”, though, my first positive feelings towards the Dead appeared when I heard American Beauty. This must have been about half a year after I became an Allman Bros. fan. American Beauty is one of those records that I feel is impossible to dislike. It’s some of the warmest, most welcoming music to come out of the classic rock era. Right from the get-go, “Box of Rain” sets the calm, easy-going, relaxed mood that would later evolve into the West Coast soft rock years (think Eagles and Fleetwood Mac). I knew I’d love American Beauty because it evoked the same initial feelings that CSN/CSNY evoked in me when I first got into them (and my love of CSN(Y) is well documented at this point). Tunes like “Ripple” and “Friend of the Devil”, which have since become classics, feature Jerry Garcia’s softer, folkier side that hadn’t been nearly as prominent in the band’s previous work. You can hear Jerry, Bob Weir, and Phil Lesh flex their vocal capabilities on tracks like “Brokedown Palace,” “Candyman,” “Sugar Magnolia,” and especially on “Till The Morning Comes,” which is the closest the band ever got to the CSN sound. Though the album is more vocal-based, the instrumentalism on display is still magnificent. “Friend of the Devil” wouldn’t be the song it is without the late Phil Lesh’s colorful bass fills. I’d actually argue that Lesh’s bass is the instrumental star of the whole record, as the mix has him right up front. On the topic of the mix and overall sound, American Beauty is wonderfully clear and dynamic. The acoustic moments make you feel like you’re sitting around a campfire with Jerry and Co., and the more rocking moments put you right in front of the stage at some cosmic dive bar. It’s a uniquely intimate record that has had a profound impact on American rock music. American Beauty is one of the few records that I’m always in the mood for. No matter what kind of day I’m having, American Beauty is a worthy companion.

Even with my newfound love of American Beauty, I didn’t consider myself a fan of the Grateful Dead. I thought that American Beauty was a fluke, a one-off. There was still nothing else in their studio output that spoke to me, and you certainly wouldn’t find me listening to anything from their vast live catalog. I even bought a copy of Aoxomoxoa, thinking it might speak to me at least a little more now that I knew it was possible to enjoy the Dead. I was wrong. As mentioned above, I kind of liked “St. Stephen” but was entirely put off by the rest of the record. American Beauty remained the only Grateful Dead work that meant anything to me until about a month and a half ago, when I came into possession of a copy of Live/Dead, the group’s live record from 1969.

Taken from shows at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore West and spanning two LPs, Live/Dead was the Dead’s first official live release and second Dead album to have a strong effect on me. It was mid-August when I first dropped the needle on side one, which is taken up entirely by the twenty-three-minute “Dark Star.” As the crackling faded and the music crept in (and my edible started to kick in*), I began to feel like I was taking the first steps on a journey through the universe and back. It was a completely revelatory experience, a great epiphany. I had been listening to the wrong Grateful Dead. Live/Dead had all the fire, grit, risk, and energy that I wasn’t getting from the rest of the band’s discography. I had finally found my Dead. Since that fateful August night, I’ve gone all in on the Dead’s material from 1967-1971. Everything before that window is a little too primal for me, and anything past is straight-up boring. I’ve picked up a copy of Anthem of the Sun (1968) as well as an archived live recording from 1968 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles called Two from the Vault. Those two, along with my copy of Live/Dead, have been getting consistent play in my living room (which I’ve just upgraded with new speakers).

Had you asked me two years ago if I’d ever be a Grateful Dead fan, I would have thought about it for about ten seconds and said “No,” but here we are. I guess college really does change you. What I’ve realized is that the idea that music finds you when you’re ready is true and that I should never completely dismiss something just because it doesn’t speak to me in the moment. Music isn’t a series of parallel lines; it’s a grid. Things overlap and intertwine in ways that you might never expect, so if you stay open to new things, the music you love now may lead you to music that you had no idea you could love. It never occurred to me that my love for Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young and The Allman Brothers Band would lead me to the Grateful Dead, but I’m sure happy it worked out that way. The more music that brings me happiness, the better. I still wouldn’t go as far as to call myself a Deadhead, but I can certainly see the appeal now.

*For those curious, I’ve since listened to Live/Dead many times sober, and it still rules

And your death will come soon

I'll follow your casket

By the pale afternoon

And I'll watch while you're lowered

Down to your deathbed

And I'll stand over your grave

'Til I'm sure that you're dead

That’s how Bob Dylan concludes “Masters Of War,” the third song off of his second record, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The song is arguably the most matter-of-fact in Dylan’s vast catalog of protest music. There are no metaphors, no riddles, and no opportunities to misconstrue his words. “Masters Of War” isn’t just a song, it’s a promise.

That was 1963. By the end of 1964, The Beatles had appeared on Ed Sullivan, and rock music was officially in. Even Dylan found himself under its spell (although he grew up loving the rock and roll of the 1950s). After The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, and the rest of the British Invasion came The Byrds, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Hendrix, Buffalo Springfield, and all the other great psychedelic rock groups. Protest music no longer meant praying for the quick death of those who pull the strings. The new protest music was about free love and all that hippy-dippy schlock.* “Masters Of War” was forgone for “Get Together.”

Then the 60s ended, and flower power proved to be unsuccessful. The Vietnam War raged on, and the civil unrest showed no signs of slowing because politicians refused to hear the cries of the people who elected them. The world was in a dark place, and the music reflected it. Heavier, darker music took over almost immediately at the turn of the decade. Black Sabbath's eponymous debut landed on turntables in February of 1970 and changed the course of rock music forever. When Ozzy Osbourne sang, “My name is Lucifer/please take my hand,” that was the end of the age of innocence.

Paranoid, Black Sabbath’s second record, came out later in September of 1970 and opened with the nearly eight-minute “War Pigs/Luke’s Wall,” Sabbath’s own “Masters Of War.” It’s not too far-fetched to say that of the two songs, “War Pigs” is the more damning piece of protest music. “War Pigs” isn’t one man’s sentiment towards the warmongers. There’s seemingly no personal bias or emotional statements in the whole piece. The lyrics read more like a sentence delivered in a hearing where the citizens of the world are the jury and a higher power is the judge. It’s important to recognize that Black Sabbath had no musical footprint in the peace-and-love, everything-is-groovy 60s. This lack of background meant that people couldn’t dismiss them for just going darker like everyone else from the time of peace, love, and music. The band wasn’t following the pack; they were blazing a trail. Black Sabbath were the new messengers, and eternal, merciless damnation for those who start meaningless wars for profit was the message.

Generals gathered in their masses

Just like witches at black masses

Evil minds that plot destruction

Sorcerer of death′s construction

In the fields, the bodies burning

As the war machine keeps turning

Death and hatred to mankind

Poisoning their brainwashed minds

Oh, Lord, yeah

Politicians hide themselves away

They only started the war

Why should they go out to fight?

They leave that role to the poor, yeah

Time will tell on their power minds

Making war just for fun

Treating people just like pawns in chess

Wait 'til their judgement day comes, yeah

Now in darkness, world stops turning

Ashes where their bodies burning

No more war pigs have the power

Hand of God has struck the hour

Day of judgment, God is calling

On their knees, the war pigs crawling

Begging mercy for their sins

Satan laughing, spreads his wings

Oh, Lord, yeah

“War Pigs/Luke’s Wall” wr. Iommi/Osbourne/Butler/Ward

*I’m all for positivity and hope and free love and pot and gettin’ together and feelin’ groovy, man.

I look at most of these people and see nothing worth liking or taking an interest in. I’m there to provide these fine folks with all the music and movies they could ever want, not to do character analysis or make friends. The people who never fail to grab my attention, though, are the young couples who make our shop part of their date. Two twenty-somethings will come in on what is clearly the second or third date, and I’ll eavesdrop the whole time.

Usually, what ensues is a playful competition to see who can impress the other more. “Have you seen this movie? You gotta see this movie.” “Oh my God, they have Rachmaninoff; I love him!” “This is my favorite Frank Sinatra album.” DING! ROUND TWO! “I wonder if they have any Isaac Hayes.” “This is the best Steely Dan album.” “I really like what’s playing right now.” DING! ROUND THREE! “Their Italian film selection is awesome.” “This is a fucking wild movie that no one talks about.” “I wish they had more Talking Heads on CD.” DING! And so on…

The culmination of this competition is almost always in the jazz LP section, the final battleground. The competitor with the least elementary jazz knowledge is the victor, the chosen one. I don’t dare get involved. “I hope they have some John Coltrane.” DING DING DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!

These interactions never get any less fascinating. The race to out-hip the other person is apparently the most exciting part of their outing. The exchange of knowledge is a time-tested gauge of your compatibility with another person, regardless of whether or not your intentions are romantic. When you’re getting to know someone, getting a sense of their taste in music and movies is a must, especially if you’re considering being more than friendly. Our taste is a direct result of everything we are. Our biases, beliefs, upbringings, quirks, past experiences, and the extent of our open-mindedness all dictate our preferences and choices. It’s for these reasons that the record store is a perfect place for an early date. Seeing what excites someone and gauging their willingness to share it with you is a surefire way to figure out if a person is worth your time or not.

Usually, these people don’t end up buying anything, but that doesn’t bother me. They’re leaving with something more meaningful than any piece of wax or plastic: a deeper understanding of a prospective significant other. Instead of getting a $5 Benny Goodman record that they don’t actually want but would just buy to prove their dedication to music, they’re getting priceless insight into someone they most likely met on an app.

Anyway, these are all just observations, interpretations, and estimations. I can’t speak to or substantiate my claims, nor can I regale you with any personal tales. Do whatever works for you. I just calls 'em as I sees 'em.

Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys (Capitol, 1966)

“That’s not the Pet Sounds cover!” I’m aware. I posted a video about this specific pressing and edition on my Instagram counterpart to this publication, @TuneageMintz. It’s in that video that you’ll hear the rather interesting story of this later mono pressing.

Pet Sounds is one of those records, like Sgt. Pepper’s or Axis: Bold As Love, that nerds (such as myself) get in arguments over whether mono or stereo is the superior way to listen. I believe that in all three cases, the mono and stereo editions are apples and oranges. Essentially, two different albums, and it comes down to personal preference and mood.

After listening to this mono Pet Sounds several times over the past couple of weeks, the most striking thing about it is how much deeper the emotional impact becomes when the music isn’t panned and spread between two channels. There’s no doubt that a good stereo mix of the album is a great way of putting your hi-fi to the test. This seminal LP is one of the most sonically dense albums ever produced, so with a stereo mix, you can easily pick out each little percussion instrument, horn line, etc. As cool as that experience is, it can end up being overwhelming because, as sonically/musically dense as the record is, it’s twice as dense emotionally. With everything consolidated into one channel, I find that my ears don’t wander as much, I’m not as distracted, and the emotional aspect of the music is enhanced.

It’s also worth mentioning that the late, great Brian Wilson originally cut and preferred the mono edition of Pet Sounds as he felt the stereo mix was unbalanced.

Axis: Bold As Love - The Jimi Hendrix Experience (Track/Reprise, 1967)

Axis is a stereo album, plain and simple. The mono mix is simply a novelty to me. Axis is a timeless record and is by far my favorite of the Experience’s output. Listen to “Spanish Castle Magic” and tell me it doesn’t sound like something that could’ve been recorded yesterday. The fidelity, the intensity, and the playing (duh) are all unlike anything else that happened in 1967. I feel that the fiery magic of this album comes through better in a stereo mix.

The mono mix of Axis sounds dated. Musically, it’s still all there, but sonically, it comes across as something from 1967. Mono Axis brings Jimi’s vocals forward at the expense of the clarity and hardness of the instruments. These aren’t necessarily negative traits, but I won’t find myself reaching for this mono copy as frequently as I reach for my stereo copy. Again, Axis in mono is novel. Axis in stereo is a mind melter. I’ll happily keep both, as “too much Hendrix” isn’t a phrase that exists in my vernacular.

The Blues And The Abstract Truth - Oliver Nelson (Impulse!, 1961)

If I were to look at a shade of blue and a shade of green separately, I could tell you that together they would create turquoise, but I couldn’t envision the exact shade. The shade and hue of a color dictate the feeling it evokes, and the intensity of said feeling. Whether it’s blue and green creating turquoise, red and blue creating purple, or any other combo, the feeling of the composite color is diminished when the base colors are too separate.

As is evident from the text on the cover, Oliver Nelson’s genre-defining The Blues and The Abstract Truth is an album of turquoises and purples. When the genius horn arrangements are separated into two channels, so are the reds, blues, and greens. As a listener, I have to piece the colors together, and I’m left with vague amalgamations that evoke equally dull feelings. In contrast, when everything is in one channel with the mono mix, a definite shade of turquoise or purple is presented immediately. All of a sudden, I’m entranced. It’s a sensation not too dissimilar from being up close to a Rothko and staring for a long while. The separation disappears, and the colors morph into a monochromatic vessel for a strong, deep emotional reaction. That is The Blues and The Abstract Truth in mono. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the only way to hear Oliver Nelson’s landmark masterpiece.

Having A Rave Up With The Yardbirds - The Yardbirds (Epic, 1965)

Unlike Axis: Bold As Love, everything on Rave Up was recorded and mixed specifically for mono, making mono the best way to hear these tunes. This record rocks in mono. There’s more punch, depth, and clarity to these tunes on this copy than on stereo editions of this record. The volume is visceral here. The same can be said for my mono copy of Over Under Sideways Down, the follow-up LP from 1967. The vocals are better defined, the bass is fuller, and everything grooves a little harder. These records are cut so hot that I usually find myself getting up to turn them down, something I very rarely do. The stereo editions are softer and less exciting.

The benefits of mono become especially evident on “The Train Kept A-Rollin’,” which ends up sounding more like punk rock than your standard mid-sixties British fare.

If there’s one adjective I’d use to describe all of these mono editions, it would have to be focus. There’s a precise, centered, focused sound to all of these records. Whether that brings out the best in the music is up for debate and depends greatly on the record itself. Something to note is that if you’d like to try these mono mixes for yourself, you may have to do some extra digging on your streaming service or look on YouTube. Some “deluxe editions” of albums feature mono mixes, but it’s not a guaranteed thing. It’s a little extra work, but I’d say it’s worth it if you’re interested in experiencing an album differently. As always, happy listening.

I’ve been in a song mood lately. Why? Couldn’t tell you. As much as I appreciate the album experience, there’s something uniquely incredible about a good song. When a mood is captured in four and a half minutes as opposed to forty-five minutes, it especially moves you. At least it especially moves me. I think it goes back to my early days of being obsessed with music, a time I’ve discussed briefly on here. Before I was able to choose what I was listening to, the majority of the music I would hear came from the radio stations my parents would have on in the car. Obviously, radio is a singles-based listening experience. Back in the sixties and seventies, FM DJs would kill time on their overnight slots by playing full sides of albums, hence the term “album-oriented rock,” but that’s another thing. My early exposure to music came from singles on the radio. When I got what was essentially a glorified iPod (an iPhone 4 with no cellular service, thank you, Mom and Dad), the thing that excited me most was the ability to choose music for myself. At the time, I was on my family’s Spotify plan, so I started a personal playlist. The first song on that playlist was Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love”, followed by “Stairway To Heaven” and “Immigrant Song.” I was eight.

Sidebar: Cancel your Spotify subscription and move to another service. You can do it; I believe in you. Your ears will thank you, and you won’t be supporting CEO Daniel Ek, a world-class jerk off who just made a $690 million investment in an AI defense company. Try Tidal or Qobuz. Thank you.

I just kept adding song after song to the playlist for years until I started using Apple Music and fell in love with listening to full albums. I don’t think the former was entirely responsible for the latter, but I do believe that the Apple format is better suited for album listening. Anyway, one day last month, I came home from my job at the record store with a two-record set called Nuggets: (Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968). Conceived by Lenny Kaye (of Patti Smith Group fame) and originally released on Elektra in 1972, Nuggets is a compilation album of early garage/psych-rock singles that had largely been lost in the void as rock music took a turn for the hard and heavy at the turn of the decade. Basically, Nuggets is an early psychedelic rock playlist. I believe Nuggets sparked my renewed love of the song because as soon as I got through the whole thing, I only really wanted to hear a handful of the selections again.

The highlights of Nuggets for me, in order of appearance, are as follows:

1. “I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)” - The Electric Prunes

A certified psychedelic anthem with fuzzed-out everything and beautiful use of stereo imaging.

2. “Night Time” - The Strangeloves

Good, clean, rockin’ fun. This thing is catchy as shit. George Thorogood has a nice live version that’s worth checking out after you listen to the original.

3. “You’re Gonna Miss Me” - The Thirteenth Floor Elevators

Legendary psych group out of Austin, TX, who only ever put out four full-length albums, all of which are quite rare and fairly expensive. This track is from their first LP, The Psychedelic Sounds Of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, from 1966. A groovier cover you’d be hard pressed to find.

4. “Psychotic Reaction” - Count Five

Early Northern California psych-punk at its loudest, wildest, and finest.

5. “Let’s Talk About Girls” - Chocolate Watch Band

See: title of this piece

6. “Open My Eyes” - Nazz

Todd Rundgren’s first group, Nazz, opened their 1968 debut record with this banging cut. Also featured on that record is an early, trippy version of “Hello It’s Me,” a song Rungren would end up having greater success with on his solo record Something/Anything? from 1972.

7. “Farmer John” - The Premiers

This one I liked because I was under the impression that Neil Young had written this tune. As it turns out, it had The Premiers were playing it a good two decades before he and Crazy Horse added it to their repertoire on Ragged Glory. I still like the way he plays it better, but this version is a lot of fun.

Most of the other tracks on Nuggets are either good-not-great or a little too corny for my liking. Mouse’s “A Public Execution” features a Bob Dylan impression that gives Gerry Rafferty’s on “Stuck In The Middle With You” a run for its money. “Lies” by The Kickerbockers could pass as a Beatles B-side. It’s a lot of stuff like that. The highlights, however, have become some of my new favorite cuts of all time and have sent me down various rabbit holes.

Anyway, what a time to be alive. I don’t wish to shift the attention away from the various issues we currently face, nor am I trying to diminish their severity. Get informed and involved. I decided to write this piece because I needed a distraction from the outside world. Life is short and youth seems to be its shortest phase. Writing these little blurbs helps me be in the moment. I thank you for your readership, as it inspires me to keep going. As I sit here in my quaint Manhattan room, embers of some freshly lit recreational slowly populating my ashtray, I wish inner and outer peace to us all.

Sexless, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll

Think of the great rock and roll frontmen. I don’t mean all the singers of the classic bands; I mean the greats, the ones whose images are forever going to be associated with the '60s and '70s. I’m picturing Jim Morrison, Robert Plant, Hendrix, and others on that level (Beatles exempt). These men are more than singers; they’re true icons. We are Abraham, and they are our idols. Why do we hold them in such high regard? What transforms them from musicians to gods? Why is it that whenever they take the stage, we can’t look away? Deciphering the mystery of the legendary frontman is not a new task. It’s one that many critics, fans, and aspiring rockers have taken on in an attempt to better understand (or copy) their musical overlords. Examining the clothes, the hair, the moves, and such is important and certainly aids in the understanding of exactly what they're doing, but it doesn’t get to the more important, deeper questions about their presence. Those questions are: Why are they doing what they’re doing, and why does it affect us so deeply?

I believe I’ve found a way of looking at these frontmen that makes their whole thing make sense. To understand these legends, we must look to Virginia Woolf and Leonardo da Vinci, in that order. Stay with me. In Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” from 1929, she writes about how the mind of a great artist is androgynous. A male artist with a “man-womanly” mind is bound for greatness as their art is not impeded by the limits of gender-based thinking. She gives Shakespeare as an example. The same goes for women artists with woman-manly minds. Woolf states that “the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.” The androgynous mind creates art that all can relate to because it doesn’t play solely on male or female desires, emotions, etc. The art, whether it be a story, a painting, etc., speaks to things deeper than surface-level stimulants, and therefore holds our attention for longer. We can’t look away. Part of the reason for that is in the detail and lack thereof. That’s where da Vinci comes in.

Take da Vinci’s Saint John the Baptist from the early sixteenth century. When we first look at the painting, we believe we see a man emerging from a dark void. Seems simple enough, no? Look harder. Notice the soft features of the skin, the long hair, the smirk, the look in those eyes. Is Saint John a woman? Well, all of those features seem almost womanly, but there’s still something keeping us from being sure. All we see is this figure with one arm holding a cross in the dark abyss and the other with a hand pointing towards the heavens. This is not a man, nor is it a woman; this is an enigma. This portrayal is strange, but not off-putting. It’s quite the opposite; it lures us in and commands that we stare at it until we believe we’ve seen everything. The Mona Lisa does the same things and thus has the same effect. Even upon first glance, something seems off about the whole painting. The background behind the subject is completely incoherent, with a strange rocky/desert-like terrain leading to an ethereal river that looks like it would be right at home in a fantasy story. Focusing on the subject, Mona Lisa has the same soft features as John the Baptist - the soft skin, the strange smile, that look in the eyes. With Mona Lisa, however, it could be concluded that her features are a little more masculine. These features aren’t pronounced enough to make anything clear, which is kind of the point, but they give us enough to bring the gender into question. It’s this ambiguity and androgyny that has made these paintings so legendary. Had they been picture-perfect portraits, no one would care; there’d be nothing to look at and nothing to ponder. With da Vinci, we cannot look away.

So what does any of this have to do with the great frontmen of classic rock? Androgyny is the magic ingredient in their hypnotic potion. You’ll notice that a great frontman commands the attention of all audience members regardless of gender. Just like da Vinci straddling the line between male and female figures in his paintings, the great frontmen appear as almost hybrid beings - not entirely male and not entirely female, but with enough features on both sides to attract and hold the minds of their audiences. To Woolf, the great frontmen would be among the greatest artists as they can relate to their audiences in a way that’s deeper than just the women wanting them and the men wanting to be them (although that certainly plays a part). I’ll begin with the frontman who first came to mind when I stumbled upon this connection.

While I believe Roger Daltrey of The Who could also be part of this conversation, I believe Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant is the better subject. Take Plant’s performance in the concert film The Song Remains the Same from 1976, for example. Speaking first of Plant’s outfit, it’s fair to say that it doesn’t leave much to the imagination, certainly in and around the groin area. The top half of his outfit, however, is made up only of a too-small button-down shirt that he wears open, revealing his somewhat bear and unremarkable upper body. He’s not jacked or covered in hair; he’s far from the “ideal male body type.” His upper body build, paired with his garment choice, brings an air of femininity to his whole persona. All this, paired with his subtle, seductive, flirtatious stage moves and his long, lush blonde hair, makes Plant a great example of how androgyny turns a frontman from a singer to a legend. Not to mention his singular voice and his tendency to use moans and cries in his vocal performances. Robert Plant is, without a doubt, among the greatest frontmen of all time. However, I don’t believe that he reached the same degree of mysteriousness as the other two frontmen that came to mind.

Peter Gabriel has a bit of an intrinsic advantage in the sense that progressive rock is fairly showy and whimsical. It doesn’t strive for a certain level of machismo like other kinds of rock from the era about which I’m writing. Gabriel really leaned into that theatrical aspect of prog. He wore elaborate costumes, put on a full face of makeup, and acted out sequences of songs every night with Genesis. Every song was a scene, and every concert a play. I believe it can be said that he had a hand in the rise of glam rock, but that’ll be touched on in my final point. While Gabriel’s Genesis era had its moments of corniness that sometimes broke the illusion, his stage presence was largely responsible for the band’s popularity and was hugely influential on the genre. Genesis’ music and lyrics were always centered around very well-thought-out stories that often included several characters. To play/voice these characters with any authenticity or believability, he truly had to transform himself. He was only able to successfully become his characters by tapping into this androgynous mind that Woolf wrote of. Peter Gabriel’s androgyny was what sold the story of each song and/or album. Listen to the very beginning of “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight”, the first track off of Selling England By the Pound. It’s immediately clear that we’re being placed into a story as Gabriel brilliantly voices three characters: the narrator, the unifaun, and the Queen of Maybe. We don’t know who these characters are, but we believe they exist. Because Peter Gabriel didn’t fret about “sounding like a man,” he was able to pull the whole thing off.

One frontman reigns supreme above all in the field of androgynous performance. This person was able to defy all boundaries of sex appeal, gender, physicality, sound, image, and all the other aspects that go into creating a lead singer. The person of whom I’m speaking is, of course, none other than David Bowie. No one transformed like Bowie. In the same way that da Vinci was able to paint Mona Lisa and John the Baptist as more than just regular people, David Bowie was able to decorate himself in a way that made him disappear. He wasn’t David Bowie anymore; he was Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane. David Bowie was the androgynous mind incarnate. His androgyny was what made him so popular. People didn’t look to Bowie to see their gender norms reflected or fed to them; they looked to see themselves. Bowie is without a doubt what Woolf was referring to when she wrote of great artists having androgynous minds. There were truly none better than David Bowie.

Certainly, there are other examples of eccentric frontmen exhibiting androgynous traits (Lou Reed, David Byrne, Iggy Pop, etc.), but I believe that the examples I have provided are the most interesting and notable. These frontmen changed everything in their respective subgenres. Classic rock was never the same after Robert Plant took the stage with his flowing hair and those tight jeans. Progressive rock changed forever after audiences became enthralled with the elaborate stories starring Peter Gabriel in every role. David Bowie practically invented glam rock and forever altered the image of the rock and roll frontman. Not to sound like an old man screaming about the damn kids today, but unfortunately, it seems as though the days of the androgynous frontman are gone. Surely, there are some contemporary examples of musicians challenging the gender norms, but for some reason, it doesn’t feel like an artistic statement. It often seems more like a publicity stunt than an attempt to tap into their subconscious. It doesn’t relate in the same way. If nothing else, at least it invites us to better appreciate the true artistry of the rock and roll innovators that came before, and to remember that Virginia Woolf was always right on the money.