Scratched Into Our Souls

Glen Campbell in Milwaukee: There Rides the Cowboy

(Originally published at BLURT.)

On Glen Campbell’s last two albums—his final ones, he says, as he’s been diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s—he covered songs by Paul Westerberg, Guided by Voices, Green Day, Foo Fighters, and a handful of other artists. And while those albums were universally well-reviewed in all the right hipster places, those reviews haven’t necessarily translated into a full embrace of his music by the Pitchfork set.

More’s the pity, but it explains why, at Campbell’s Milwaukee stop on his “Goodbye Tour,” I was one of the youngest people in the house. I’m 45, so that doesn’t happen much these days.  And while my initial response to that was disappointment—I’d really hoped that Meet Glen Campbell and Ghost on the Canvas would expose Campbell to a younger audience—I soon realized that it was just as well the crowd was made up mostly of people who remember hearing and seeing Campbell during his glory days.

The show itself was simply one of the most joyous I’ve ever seen, with both Campbell and the audience reveling not in nostalgia but in the hard-earned satisfaction of lives well-lived and music well-played and brilliantly sung. Backed by Campbell’s longtime musical director T.J. Kuenster and Instant People—a five-piece combo including three of Cambpell’s children: Ashley, Shannon, and Cal—Campbell covered the entire scope of his career in 90 minutes, from 1968’s “Gentle on My Mind” through 1977’s “Southern Nights” right up to “It’s Your Amazing Grace” and “A Better Place” from Ghost on the Canvas.

Campbell’s decision to do one final tour while he still can is a courageous one, and the effects of the Alzeheimer’s were evident on and off the entire evening. He was openly confused when he was handed Ashley’s guitar instead of his own, which was being repaired, and on-going sound problems on stage rattled him more than they would have in his younger days. But he handled those moments with grace and humor—when he realized what was going on with the guitar, he deadpanned “Pardon me. I’ll just be a moment.”

If anything, the show was one of the most flat-out joyful experiences I’ve ever witnessed. Campbell kept repeating “I’m just so happy today,” and for every well-rehearsed showbiz joke, there were twice as many moments of unedited, unbridled enthusiasm; after the line “the spirits make love in the wheat field with crows,” in “Ghost on the Canvas,” he blurted “boy, I love that line,” and more than once he looked down at his setlist and said “Oh, I like this one!”

Of course, Alzheimer’s has nothing to do with Campbell’s voice and guitar palying, which were, if not as strong as ever, then surely stronger than they’ve got a right to be at the age of 75. He showed terrific vocal range in “Lovesick Blues” and “It’s Your Amazing Grace,” and his guitar work was a marvel, from the improved solo in “Galveston” to the well-known, written parts in “Wichita Lineman.”

The latter was the highlight of the show, one of those bucket-list moments where time stands still and the world stops. Jimmy Webb’s song is one of the finest of the 20^th century, a masterpiece of direct lyric and elegant melody, and it’s forever going to be Campbell’s signature song. And when he sang the greatest line in that great song—“I need you more than want you/ And I want you for all time”—the effect was breathtaking, crystallizing into a single moment the complex, sometimes paradoxical emotions of the evening. Great art is eternal and immutable even if live performances are fleeting and our own lives are subject to both horrible twists of fate and moments of unexpected delight.  Against all odds, Glen Campbell’s “Goodbye Tour” captures all of that.

Below is a clip of "I Can't Stop Loving You" from the Milwaukee concert. It shows both the strength of Campbell's voice and his unpredictable humor.

 

Holler If Ya Hear Stewart Francke

I first met Stewart Francke back in 1999, at Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's Detroit stop during their reunion tour. I shared that evening with other friends, old and new, but Stewart left a deep impression on me, in no small part thanks to the fact that he'd just come out the other side of a stem cell treatment for leukemia, the same disease that killed my dad back when I was five. I knew Stew had two small kids of his own, and I felt a kinship with both him and the little ones who were lucky enough to still have them in their lives. His sweet smile and gentle voice—his demeanor has always reminded me of Jackson Browne's—didn't hurt, either. I had no idea then what that voice was capable of.

I'd met him in cyberspace before that; we were and are both members of a small email list of folks who share common bonds of politics, culture, and family. But I hadn't heard a note of his music until he sent me a copy of Swimming in Mercury, the first album he made after his illness and treatment. It was, not surprisingly, steeped in themes of mortality, family, and love, and it's still my favorite of all his albums. He'd made a half-dozen records before then, and he's made almost as many since—better ones, by most accounts, and ones that expanded his musical palette from singer-songwriter and California rock to blue-eyed soul. But Swimming in Mercury is still the one closest to my heart—the best record Brian Wilson and Todd Rundgren never made. It was also full of songs I could imagine my dad singing, if only he would have lived to sing "Keep Your Faith, Darling" to my mom, or written "Letter from Ten Green" to me and my sister.

That personal connection means that Swimming in Mercury is unlikely to drop from the top spot in my own Stewart Francke canon, but his latest, Heartless World, has quickly moved into second place, and is (if I try to be objective) the best thing he's ever done. His singing—always strong—has never been better, nor has his songwriting. More importantly, the arrangements and the production are the best he's ever achieved, making for seamless transition among different sounds and textures. For instance, the slashing guitars on the roadhouse rocker "Born in a Fever" sit side-by-side with the sweet horns on the reflective soul ballad "Snowin' in Detroit," with its sophisticated chord changes, and the transition between the two is both seamless and natural.

And it may be the first album on which he's fully achieved his goal of "making music that sounds something like if Jackson and James Brown(e) were brothers."  Jackson is most clearly found in "Sidewalk Dimes"and "Givin' it Up;" James is all over "You Want What You Don't Got (And You Don't Want What You Got)" (which features Amp Fiddler on clavinet). I could be all circumspect and politically correct about it, but fuck it, let's call it what it is: the white and the black, the non-funky alongside the funky. But lack of funk isn't the same as d'voidoffunk, nor is the funky merely funky, you know? Francke understands, plays, and sings not so much as if there is no difference (which would be foolish), but as if there need not be any opposition (which is righteous).

But what do you expect from a cat from Detroit if not making sense of contradictions both real and assumed? Detroit is the home of Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Mitch Ryder, the MC5, the Stooges, P-Funk, Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Madonna (don't you tell me she's all New York, now), Eminem, Kid Rock, and about a zillion more, and Francke embraces and embodies and contains those multitudes as well as anybody. Which is to say he makes those multitudes, and more, his own. The breezy "Sam Cooke on the Radio" brings together everything from its inspiration's gospel soul to the best of Chicago's early 1970s jazz-rock, along with a bunch of sounds in between that I can feel but can't quite put my finger on. "Heart of a Heartless World" brings together the earnestness of mid-1980s Springsteen with the lightness of the Boss's later output, along with a subtle dose of arena rock (presuming that "subtle" and "arena rock" aren't mutually exclusive; if you hear this song, you'll realize they're not).

Speaking of subtle, Springsteen himself shows up on the album's opening track, "Summer Soldier (Holler If Ya Hear Me)," but you wouldn't notice unless you pay close attention. Francke and Springsteen's voices are so simpatico that you might not notice the difference, but once you do, the song—from the perspective of a dying soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan—takes on a weight it wouldn't without Bruce's presence. The Gulf and Afghan War soldier lives and breathes (and dies) in the the shadow of the Vietnam soldier; a "summer soldier" alongside the Winter Soldier of 40 years ago, and a song that would be plenty heavy without Springsteen's voice gains added impact, both historical and emotional, with it.

For my money, though, the best track here is "Boo Yah/Take My Mother Home," a roaring one-chord vamp featuring Amp Fiddler and the great Mitch Ryder that, as Francke writes in his liner notes, "condenses a couple years of pain and confusion into about 32 bars." It's a microcosm of the whole album: a white kid from Saginaw, who's lived in the Motor City for more than a decade, dives deep into the experience of losing his mom and dad over the course of a few years, swims in the funky stew of rock and soul, and embraces the whole messy, funky, painful, and joyous thing. Show me another song in which a man promises he's not gonna grieve his mother and father no more, with backup vocals hollering "if I had me some fuck you money, I wouldn't have to talk to you," and I'll show you a map of Detroit.

I'm hollerin' backatcha, Stew. Hope you can hear me.

Frank Turner and I Will Remain (or, Frank Turner and I, We'll Remain)

I bought Frank Turner's England Keep My Bones the day it came out, hoping against hope—but with a good feeling—that it would be the rock record I was waiting for. At the risk of sounding like Jon Landau in 1974, I'd been feeling old, and wondering not so much if rock and roll had passed me by, but if I'd passed it by.

To be specific, I just turned 45; not exactly senior citizen territory, and a whole 18 years past the age when Landau felt over-the-hill walking into Harvard Square to see Bruce Springsteen. Still, something about 45 slapped me down in a way that 40 didn't, maybe because it's halfway between there and 50. Or maybe it was just the fact that summer was arriving and I was spending more time dancing with toddlers than dancing—much less fighting—in the streets. Our almost-nightly dance parties are awesome, and sometimes I even get to throw in a little Springsteen or James Brown among my five-year-old's requests. She's actually got damned good taste, and shouts for classic Michael Jackson and Joan Jett at least as often as she does for Justin Bieber, so I shouldn't complain. Her two-year-old brother plays a helluva air guitar, too.

But none of that's the same as being in a sweaty club, one that's a good twenty degrees hotter than the summer night outside, hearing a band that makes you feel like everything is still possible, like you can somehow escape all the shitty compromises that make up adult life. I don't get to many live shows these days, and it seemed like forever since a rock album shook me by the shoulders and said "This is what it's all about."

I've still not seen Frank Turner live, but when I first listened to England Keep My Bones on a late-night drive on a dark highway in rural Wisconsin (on the way home from a ballgame with my other son, a 22-year-old who's responsible for turning me on to Turner three years ago), it gave me the same thrill of a great club show, and it turned out to be exactly the rock record I was waiting for. And that's because—surprise—it reminded me that not all those compromises are shitty, and even the ones that are don't change who we are unless we let them.

Thematically, England Keep My Bones is like Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and The River all rolled into one, by which I mean it runs the gamut from wide-eyed romanticism to deep despair to some sense of consolation, though not necessarily in that order. By the time Turner name-checks Bruce Springsteen in "Redemption," the album's 11th song, it only makes explicit what's been implicit all along: ain't no such thing as freedom without consequence. Pete Townshend once wrote: "Did you ever wonder why music hurts / When someone plays it aloof of sin?" The best rock music does make you feel like anything is possible, but not by way of mere escapism. The last rock albums that grabbed me and wouldn't let go—the Hold Steady's Stay Positive, Gaslight Anthem's The '59 Sound, Against Me!'s New Wave, The Frames' Set List, Springsteen's Magic and The Rising, and before then maybe all the way back to Marah's Kids in Philly—did so because their moments of release and exaltation came among, and even right in the middle of, equally extreme moments of misfortune and burden.

"Redemption" alternates between a hopeful acoustic strumming and roiling, fatalistic piano as the song's narrator mulls over a relationship he sabotaged. He's defeated, The Boss's "pertinent question" of "is love really real" hangs over his head like a guillotine, and he ends the tune with the realization that each of us "can be redeemed with the courage with which he confesses," followed by a defeated  "I don't think I can do this."It's all there in that one song—the hope and the hopelessness, the realization that if living with your sins can bring redemption, it still hurts like hell.

"Redemption" offers up the smallest tableau on the album, in that it's a simple tale of a man and a woman, but it's by no means the most personal. Even though the album has as its primary subject an entire country—anchored not only in its title but in the a capella "English Curse," which tells the tale of England's New Forest and the curse brought down by William the Conqueror upon it—the lion's share of its songs are about the intersection of personal and communal identity, and the tension between the joy of being grounded in community and place ("Rivers," "Wessex Boy," and "One Foot Before the Other") and the desperate need for individual freedom (most notably in "I Am Disappeared"). Indeed, the trilogy of "I Am Disappeared," "English Curse," and "One Foot Before the Other" provides the album's linchpin. "I Am Disappeared" begins with the narrator dreaming of "pioneers and pirate ships and Bob Dylan" and ends with him taking off at sunrise after thumbing a ride with Dylan driving—but the car takes them down the "rivers of tarmac like arteries across the country—that is, they've no illusions about escaping the land that gives them part of their identity." And "One Foot Before the Other," the song that most clearly reveals Turner's punk roots, has him fantasizing about his own post-mortem, with his ashes thrown into London's reservoirs and drunk down "seven million throats and into seven million veins."

"I remain...we remain" ends that song, forever tying the one to the many, the now to the forevermore, in an explosion of guitar and drum fury. But the rest of the album—before and after that trio—is positively joyous. And it's all thrilling, and—and this is fucking important—a whole lot of fun; Turner's smile in his videos is as infectious and irresistible as what he calls his "campfire punkrock" sound. I shared "I Still Believe"—the greatest testament to the power of rock and roll since...well, I can't remember—with friends on Facebook, and at least one of them said he couldn't stop playing it for days. "Peggy Sang the Blues" had a similar effect, and I'm thankful my friend didn't send the bill to me when she immediately went out and bought Frank Turner's entire catalog.

Then there's "Glory Hallelujah," a rejection of religion miles more convincing than anything Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins ever wrote, and a damned sight more fun. A true atheist doesn't proselytize, so says a good friend of mine, but if one were looking to create converts, "Glory Hallelujah" is simply the best argument I've ever heard, kick ass rock and roll in excelsis.

You've got to hear it for yourself, all of it. I haven't been able to take it out of heavy rotation for a month, and I don't foresee it falling out of favor any time soon. And dammit, that's what I needed—an album that would be the soundtrack to my life for a while. I don't feel young again, but feelin' old don't feel so bad, neither.

 

Check out the Video in Practice Contest on OnlineVideo.net

Haven't posted here in forever, and plan on changing that soon. In the meantime...here's a video about a very cool contest sponsored by a website I co-edit, OnlineVideo.net. Check it out...and check out that new Jason Isbell album, too (which I hope to write about at length soon).

21st Century Breakdown: Better Than American Idiot?

Short answer: No. But Green Day's latest, 21st Century Breakdown is every bit as good as American Idiot was, even if it lacks the element of surprise that made that album one of the all-time "I knew they were good, but didn't think they were THIS good" moments in pop history. If anything, 21st Century Breakdown is more ambitious, more melodic, and even more aggressive than its predecessor, evoking the Beatles as much as it does The Who. Check out my full review on Blurt.

David Shuster, You Said a Mouthful!

Happy tax day! MSNBC's David Shuster provides some tasty commentary on teabagging. Juvenile? Refreshingly so.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Rage Positive With The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady's new one came out yesterday, and I haven't had a chance to listen to it. As much as I wish it were a new studio recording—last year's Stay Positive was that rare kind of album that, once I put it on, everything stops and the music simply takes over my world—there are few things in this world more awe-inspiring than a Hold Steady show, and so the live set A Positive Rage (Vagrant) is something to be excited about indeed. Here's an excerpt from the DVD that comes with the album, courtesy of Stereogum. Like the dude says in the clip, "Most people don't believe that rock and roll can save your soul. I don't think any one of those people has ever seen the Hold Steady."

Bruce Cockburn's Slice O Life

I've been a Bruce Cockburn fan since I first heard "Wondering Where the Lions Are" back in 1979, and it's hard to believe that he'd never released a solo acoustic album until now. But with Slice O Life: Bruce Cockburn Live Solo he makes up for lost time; it's a two-disc set that highlights pretty much all of his best work and showcases his terrific guitar work better than anything else he's ever done. I reviewed it today for Blurt; you can check out a video of "Pacing the Cage" here on Amazon.

Even better, check out this great version of "If I Had A Rocket Launcher" from the Montreal Jazz Festival a while back. Sad to say, hardly a week goes by I don't read the news and have this song pop into my head as a response.

Sowing "Seeds" in Austin

I think about Bruce Springsteen more than is probably healthy (just ask my wife), and we've ALL been thinking about the economy more than is probably healthy. So a few weeks back, the two obsessions converged and I started wondering if Bruce would pull out "Seeds" on his upcoming tour. He hasn't played it live since 1988 or so, but it's always been one of my favorites -- a tale of hard times set to a hard-edged blues riff. Well, a worried man sings worried songs, and sure enough, he's been playing it, and it's (sadly) perfect for these days. Check out this kick-ass excerpt from his show in Austin last night:

The Music Teacher

I just finished reading The Music Teacher, the terrific new book by Barbara Hall, who's written a number of novels (several of them young adult titles) but is best known as the creator of Joan of Arcadia and Judging Amy. She was also a regular contributor to I'll Fly Away and Northern Exposure. So it's no surprise that the book is peppered with biting bon mots about California in general and Los Angeles in particular (where "you're exposed to yoga against your will. It's everywhere, like smog."), the kind that only someone who's lived and worked in that particular paradise/hell could deliver convincingly.

But if you didn't know her CV, you'd guess from The Music Teacher that she's a musician first and a writer second, and you might be right. She's a helluva singer and has a pretty fine band (The Enablers), and she writes about music like, well, only someone who's lived and worked in that particular paradise/hell can do.

Full disclosure: I know Barbara a little bit through an email list I'm on and a group blog, Holler If Ya Hear Me, that we both write for -- here's some of her stuff. So I've had the pleasure of reading Barbara's more casual writing, where she's always witty and insightful and big-hearted in the kind of seemingly effortless way that you adore and are insanely jealous of at the same time. The Music Teacher has all of that going on and then some.

It's the story of Pearl Swain, a frustrated coulda-been-a-contender violinist who teaches lessons at an L.A. music store called McCoy's, and her relationship with Hallie, the kind of natural musician that comes along only once in a lifetime. We see Pearl see herself in Hallie, see the potential that she herself once had before she sacrificed music for marriage, and we see Pearl slowly invest too much of herself in her student. Sure, the notion of a teacher living vicariously through her student is nothing new, but Hall writes both Pearl and Hallie with such empathy and insight that she breathes new life into stock characters—they're both irresistably likable because they're flawed and tragic and wonderful in the very real ways that we're all flawed and tragic and wonderful.

The cast of secondary characters that surround Pearl—the rest of the crew at McCoy's—are equally well-drawn; the back-cover blurb from Brock Clarke (author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England) says the book "does to, and with, music teachers what Nick Hornby's High Fidelity does to, and with, record store geeks," and he's right. Anyone who's hung around musicians will instantly recognize Franklin, Patrick, Ernest, and Clive and their self-justifying takes on what "real" music and "real" musicians are.

And, as we watch Pearl make her way among all of them, and finally come to some degree of acceptance of her strengths and shortcomings, we learn a whole lot about how to accept our own. In other words, it does exactly what the best music does.