Band of Gypsys

One of the Christmas presents that Jodi gave me this year was the Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys Live at the Fillmore East vinyl. I have the original Band of Gypsys but it is this document of their first show on December 31, 1969 that is really jaw-dropping.

You don't need me to tell you how good Jimi was. He was the personification of innovation. He feels like one of those guys who would have invented the electric guitar if it didn't already exist. His hands and his brain would simply know what to do.

It is a tragedy that he succumbed to fame's perils. The Band of Gypsys records show what direction he was going, where his muse was taking him. This record is very improvisational. He is also less a bandleader and more of another piece, fitting in with his bandmates. Buddy Miles and Billy Cox, which is a pretty damn good band.

It's interesting to hear on the first track Jimi making mistakes, trying to keep up. But when he hits it you can almost hear him say "There it is." Even Jimi didn't get everything right on the first try. And for much of this he is winging it with the other two guys. They hadn't rehearsed much. At the end of the set he mentions they will come back and do it right. Which makes it especially incredible.

The liner notes say these shows were not especially received. Over the course of several nights the band added more of the hits. 

He would be 75 if he had stayed alive. I don't claim to know where he would have gone with his talent. I don't think he'd have stopped. Music seemed ingrained in him. To remove it would be removing a limb. I don't think he would have been an oldies machine, that he would have become irrelevant in terms of creativity like The Rolling Stones. I can't see him playing "Foxey Lady" and "Purple Haze" 200 times year for 10 years. Maybe he would have. Man's got to eat. The mythos would be different with life. There'd be just Jimi Hendrix, not JIMI HENDRIX. The allure of what could have been never need rise from the tomb. The world would have been better with that music, with that life.

Heresy: Floyd over Zep?

Yesterday my wife was hanging out with me listening to records and she said I should put on some Zeppelin. The only vinyl copy I have is Led Zeppelin II (would have had the debut if I had gotten to the record store ten minutes earlier but that's another story...well, I guess the story is pretty much told). We put it on and she asked me who I liked better: Zeppelin or Pink Floyd. I response, without hesitation, Pink Floyd.

This shocked my wife, so much so she immediately went on Facebook and announced it. "Steve says he likes Pink Floyd better than Led Zeppelin. He's proud of it and not ashamed. What the hell?!???" Happily a number of people have risen to my defense.

Like many teenagers in the 80s/90s I was obsessed with Pink Floyd. I had the posters, I had the cassettes and then the CDs. I had the VHS vide tapes. I had a Floyd visual history book which breaks my heart that I can't find now. I was even tempted to buy a guitar (even though I couldn't play at the time) because it had the Gerald Scarfe artwork from The Wall on the body. On some subliminal level I appreciate the artsy-ness of Floyd. Mainly it was because I loved David Gilmour's guitar playing: "Time," "Money," "Wish You Were Here," "Have A Cigar," "Comfortably Numb," "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)," "Run Like Hell," "Hey You" were all in constant rotation on Q102 back in Dallas when I was growing up. And Gilmour has such a unique style of playing it just stuck.

Probably what sealed it for me was when Floyd released Momentary Lapse of Reason. It's pretty much a David Gilmour solo record, but as a Floyd record it's still really really good. It came out in 1987 when I was watching MTV constantly. MTV had a Pink Floyd weekend (imagine that today!) and they spent 3 days previewing the record, showing old clips, showing the movie The Wall, showing interviews with David Gilmour and Nick Mason promoting the album. Here was an old band that had classic music I heard all the time on the radio making a new record; something that was accessible to me as a 14 year old beginning to shape my own musical interests beyond that of my parents; something I could call mine that I couldn't necessarily say about Dark Side Of The Moon or Animals. And it had some great songs: "Learning To Fly," "Dogs Of War," "Sorrow". Even "One Slip" is a great little number.

From there it was buy every record, even stuff like Relics. I admit I didn't really get The Final Cut (though I now think it's amazing in it's way). I got all the posters to hang on the wall. I bought Delicate Sound Of Thunder on CD and VHS when it came out and played it into the ground. I played the Live at Pompeii video tape constantly.

It took a while for me to warm up to led Zeppelin. There is a sinister-ness to them that I didn't quite get. And they sang, unless it was about hobbits or misty mountains, about squeezing lemons till the juice ran down their legs. I wasn't against that, but for music I was far more interested in literateness (AC/DC being the outlier to that). Floyd and Rush, later Iron Maiden and Metallica and Qüeensryche. These bands were bringing great music AND great lyrics and ideas. They made me think.

The first Zeppelin tape I ever bought was The Song Remains The Same. It's amazing I went on to like Zepplein after that, because that is probably the worst live record ever made. I think I got it because it was a double cassette and had a lot of songs I knew on it. That was the only Zep tape I ever had. The first CD boxed set I ever bought was the 4-disc Led Zeppelin box. Again there was a bit of a hullabaloo about the release of that. It might have been one of the first big box sets released..it might have been Zeppelin's debut on CD. But I remember going to Sound Warehouse on Josey Lane in Carrolton at 10am on Tuesday to buy it when it came out.

Music is all about connection. Be it MTV hyping a new Floyd record or rock mags heralding the debut of Zeppelin on CD. I was a bit older with Zeppelin...that box probably came out in 90 or 91. So I was just a bit more advanced but my musical foundation had already formed. And Floyd were a huge piece of it. Zeppelin was built on top of what came before.

Barnstorming the Vinyl Shops

Over the Christmas holiday Jodi enabled my belly-aching about setting up my old stereo system by buying me a bunch of vinyl records. Needless to say this started a frenzy of activity. I immediately dug out my old receiver, CD player, turntable and speakers and got everything working again.

With that inspiration I attacked the train-wreck that my attic office had become. From a mess of dust and boxes and storage bins and tables with junk all over the place, it has been clean, set-up and re-organized into the sanctuary I have always wanted. On one side is my desk, from where I type this. In one corner is my guitar gear organized around a table with recording gear and tools. In another is my hi-fi system. In between will go a futon from downstairs, just need Tom's help in getting that moved. Once that arrives I might never come down. Just kiddin, sweetie!!

Then I went into the attic and retrieved my 1500+ CDs. The only CD rack that survived the purge (a gift from my first girlfriend in college) only holds about 400. So the rest remain in bins but readily accessible. My vinyl collection has grown from 0 to about 50 in a little over one week. Before you scoff, that is mainly through two trips to Record and Tape Exchange in Fairfax VA where I have found pure gold for as little as $1. The most I paid was a beautiful copy of Led Zeppelin II for $15.

The internet has also been helpful. Hopefully you read my Top 10 Albums of 2012 series (start here). I am halfway in the receiving of being able to change that to Top 10 RECORDS of 2012. I also picked up Peter Buck's new solo record and will talk about that tomorrow maybe.

Vinyl is just so much more cool than CDs. Not just in the presentation aspect but I am one of those nerds that thinks vinyl just sounds better. It is definitely better than digital, especially when it comes through real speakers. . The first record is listened to after hooking everything up was Barnstorm, Joe Walsh's first record (which I found for $3). The production on that record is just stunning; it sounds like it was recorded in the barn that graces the cover:

When the first notes of "Here We Go" came softly through, then built up into the chug it has, it was magic. Magic I tell you!! I hesitate to say but it was a revelation. This is the way music is supposed to be heard, not from a hard-drive through computer speakers but through Infinity's (or even better good headphones) on a good turntable. That said, my CDs sound glorious to.

Back to Barnstorm. It's one of my desert-island-discs. The melodies are just beautiful. This is before Joe got overtly goofy with his "Life's Been Good To Me" schtick, when he had been making The James Gang great but felt too restricted and confined by that band to remain there. There isn't a bad track on the record, but the highlights are "Mother Says," album opener "Here We Go", acoustic beauty "Birdcall Morning," and the brilliantly heavy "Turn To Stone" which is 1000 times better here than the redo he did a couple years later. Joe is one of those terribly under-rated guitarists, a real true innovator. This record is the one that shows all that in one stop.

Here's "Turn To Stone" and I promise you it sounds nowhere near as good on your computer as it does cranked through the speakers. It isn't the album version but it's from 1973 and it shows why Joe is so freakin great.

RIP Tommy Bolin

I saw a tweet from Glenn Hughes today. He is the bass player for Black Country Communion and spent some time in Deep Purple in the mid-to-late 1970s. His tweet was about his friend Tommy Bolin, who passed away 36 years ago today.

Tommy Bolin is one of those great guitarists who died way too soon (drug overdose) and only gets talked about in guitar magazines. He spent some time in bands like Zephyr before replacing the guy who replaced Joe Walsh in The James Gang. He only stuck around for two records before replacing Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple for the only non-RB record of Deep Purple that matters (that would be Come Taste The Band). Meanwhile he made two very cool solo records, Teaser and Private Eyes. Then in 1976 while on tour with Jeff Beck he was found dead in his hotel room. Drug overdose. He was 25.

That's "The Grind" from Teaser. If you listen to enough of his playing you appreciate what a great guitarist he was. You can't really shoe-horn him into a particular style. There's straight-ahead rock naturally but then there is a lot of jazzy stuff, some Spanish-style stuff.

He was a real talent who like many went away too soon. I was struck by Glenn Hughes' tweet because it seemed so heartfelt.