Simple

Outstanding in their field.

 

Some things are just so simple.

For instance, the following record is the best folk/country album I've heard in years. Better this year than Hooray for the Riff Raff(!) (by a bit) and Waxahatchee (by a bit more) and Jesse Winchester (a bit more than that). And nearly as good as Robbie Fulks. Too bad it's 25 years old.

How is this even possible? I was on my last pop legs for a bit there. (This isn't pop, but you get the point.) No jazz chords either. 

The Handsome Family: In the Air (2000)

The songs have the most basic of melodies, made fresh via the kind of genius John Prine possessed, and Neil Young occasionally still does. It makes me want to play guitar again. 

Brett Sparks' rich baritone is nearly as commanding as Johnny Cash's. He sounds ancient, yet I'm sure I'm twenty years older. I assumed the lyrics are profound. Or did the melodies and the voice make them so? Who knows? Who cares? 

But upon closer listen, I find most of them dark and kind of twisted - more than one involving family murder. It's probably the only off-putting element in the whole project. But I'm still listening anyway, especially since there are also a few with lyrics so open-hearted as to bring you to tears.

I'd have preferred to include another album here for comparison or contrast, but that would have just complicated things. This short, modest record is nearly as good as the sprawling Diamond Jubilee.

And it's as simple as that.

A

Oh, to be Young Again!

He was a child.

When I think of songwriting genius, names like Bob Dylan, Neil Young and John Prine come to mind first. And I use the word genius especially because they have managed to create brilliant music and lyrics over a sustained period of time, from a pretty limited set of chords/melodies/vocabulary/instrumentation.

When I think of powerful rock n roll, names like Neil Young, the Stones, the Clash are near the top.

As you can see, one name appears in both groups, so as you might imagine I find myself looking for newer artists who emulate artists like Neil Young, who, using a limited palette, somehow infuse their music with both great power and beauty nonetheless.

During the early 70s everyone was looking for the "New Dylan". Now we may be looking for a New Neil Young without even knowing it. We should have started a while ago, but here we are.

The following three artists have gotten me thinking of them as possible new Neil Youngs. Here are my thoughts on their latest albums:

MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks (2024)

I'd run into this guy a couple of years ago as part of Wednesday, which, if anything, sounds more like Neil Young than he does alone. And while their guitars delivered an overwhelming intensity, the melodies were less forthcoming. Neil wouldn't make that mistake. 

MJ himself has put out five solo records, and this is his latest. He's more laconic and more country than Wednesday. His singing style makes Neil seem like one of the Three Tenors. The lyrics pretend to be about nothing much, which makes them interesting. He almost dares you to not like him.

He plays a rudimentary style of lead guitar, much like Young, but doesn't make it a central part of his performance. The songs aren't as immediately catchy as Young's, either, but they do grow on you. 

Overall, less assaultive and more tuneful than Wednesday. Instead of a bunch of drunks in a bar fight, there's just one drunk minding his business. But he is still drunk.

B+

Wussy: Cincinnati Ohio (2024)

With both a male and female vocalist, Wussy covers Neil Young's vocal range. Their first album, Funeral Dress, was ragged, with electric guitars up front, interspersed with beautiful songs, and one of the best albums of the aughts. I thought of it as the Neil Young comeback album he never quite got around to making.

My next Wussy album was Attica! It was a bit more polished while simultaneously leaning even more heavily into droning guitar noise. Like Funeral Dress, it contained at least two or three masterpieces, but here they stand apart from the noise.

This time, the tone is hushed, in keeping with the sudden death of guitar player John Ernhart in 2020. Atmospheric and reverential, with vocals that no longer snarl, it captures the loss of a comrade in all its shock and confusion, and unlike certain other people they don't use it as an excuse to drown themselves in drugs and alcohol doing it, even if a better album came out of it.

Wussy now appears to have chosen a different path and is, thus,, less likely to be compared to Neil Young. And that's okay. Ultimately, it's about quality, and Wussy provides that in spades.

A-

Waxahatchee: Tiger's Blood (2024)

Meanwhile, this "band" (really just Kate Crutchfield and whoever she's playing with at the moment) doesn't have such aspirations or obvious similarities to Young. However, where she matches him most closely is her knack for tunes. I held off a while on getting this one, thinking, because I'd already loved Out in the Storm and liked the later St. Cloud, her songwriting might not keep up the pace she set for herself, especially since she's also done other records in addition to her solo stuff.

But that's not the case at all. I was pleasantly surprised that this one is a melodic rebound from St Cloud. The vocals are stronger, too, as is the production.

She did rock n' roll proud on Out in The Storm, and did the same for folk/country on St. Cloud. Now, with Tiger's Blood, which occupies a middle ground between those two records, she may have outdone herself. God only knows what I've missed on her other albums.

In songwriting, hooks, singing, simplicity, and most of all, consistency, she comes closest to Neil Young in spirit if not actual sound. 

And that's good enough for me.

A

David and Neil's Excellent Adventures

                                                                                                                

"Live Music is Better" Bumper Stickers Should Be Issued!

    Neil Young, "Union Man"                                                                                                                

They might be better off I think the way it seems to me, making up their own shows, which might be better than TV.                                                                

    David Byrne, "Found a Job"                                                                                                    

It takes a lot for me to buy a live album. They're usually a waste. If they do familiar songs faithfully, who needs it? If they do them poorly who needs it? New songs are a plus but it's only rare instances when an entire album is made up of new songs (Running on Empty, Time Fades Away).

If you're lucky you'll run across a well-made live album by a band you're not into yet, so even though there exist studio versions of many of the songs, you haven't heard them, so it's like getting a brand new album that happens to be live. A defacto Time Fades Empty, which is what happened to me when I got the Fleetwood Mac record last year. (and Europe 72, Live Dead, Allmans at Fillmore, etc.)

But there are also those sloppy-as-shit live albums like The Song Remains the Same. And, no, I don't own it but the parts I heard sucked and I'm not gonna sit thru a twenty-six-minute "Dazed and Confused" unless Jake Holmes gets a royalty, and even then.... (Fully expecting Stupid-LZ-Fan-Hate-Mail now.)

And even worse are the ones with perfect renditions of studio cuts like The Eagles Live. They even do a perfect rendition of someone else's cover version of a song! Pathetic. It may be the point of a live show for some people (and to some extent I am one of those people), but a live album?? Never.

The Jaybee Gold Standard For Live Albums (or TJGSFLA, for short(er)) is one with exciting/improved versions of familiar songs - so that it all stands on its own as an album and the document of a live event. It's achieved more often on live jazz albums than rock/pop ones. On one hand, this makes perfect sense, since the jazz ethos is to create something new every time and they have the chops to do it. On the other, you'd think rock n' roll would give one more leeway to be sloppy, but it's surprising what a drag it is to hear your hero sing off-key. The original version of Live at Leeds, with its short tough rockers, and long power-chord-powered classics, works brilliantly. The expanded edition is even better overall, but Roger's better at shouting in this setting than singing the more melodic pop songs that are included.

So it took a long time for me to get these two live albums, which - oddly enough - were recorded around the same time, with Neil at his peak and Talking Heads approaching theirs.

But First, a Major Digression about a Major Digression (That is Still In Progress):

In 1978, I was getting tired of tracking down every last Little Feat album to ever-diminishing returns. I was ripe for something new when Talking Heads caught my attention. They had a cool name, their new  - their second - album had a very cool cover, and their single "Take Me to the River" got played on WNEW FM, the station that defined my horizons (and limitations, it would seem: I had no idea it was a cover of an Al Green song) for the 1970s. Punk seemed like a bridge too far but New Wave was definitely doable. 

I read various music magazines throughout the seventies: classic-rockish Hit Parader, usually, but sometimes the glitter-leaning Circus, which had naughty words (My dad found it and banned it from the house), and occasionally Creem, or even Crawdaddy, but never the Village Voice, which was just asking for trouble, a tabloid being hard to hide between the mattresses. (I can just see my dad picking it up thinking for maybe three seconds it was the Daily News, and then my then-short life flashing before my eyes...)

But I kept hearing about this guy Robert Christgau, who wrote for them who had the gall to NOT like Jackson Browne (actually it was worse than that. He found him boring). This made me very uncomfortable since I was a JB true-believer who nonetheless harbored secret nagging doubts about The Pretender, which is where all my friends jumped on the bandwagon, a little late alas. 

Eventually, my curiosity got the best of me and I bought a copy of The Voice and found a rave review for Talking Heads More Songs About Buildings and Food, by Christgau. His capsule review was - as I would learn - typically dense with ideas, but the phrase that stuck with me was "...so much beautiful (and funky) music...". How about that? I thought. Enthusiasm! (I'd come back for the ideas later.)

It was the push I needed, and hearing MSABAF was life-changing (if you consider music a big part of your life). The first listen was daunting. The first and last songs were fantastic, and each subsequent listen would shake loose another gem until I was a complete convert. (Yet, to this day I warn folks about David Byrne's vocals before giving my blessing.)

Like Little Feat, it wasn't their first album that was my first exposure. And that was a good thing, although I do think Talking Heads:77 is damn near as good as MSABAF, like how Little Feat was almost as good as Feets Don't Fail Me Now.

Fear of Music was a bit too much, though. Too much weird, not enough sweet. "Electric Guitar" and "Animals" were particularly annoying.

Remain in Light was a rebirth that I may only now be fully appreciating. 

This year is the 40th Anniversary of Stop Making Sense. Unless I can see it in a theater without a screaming baby, I'm not interested. When it came out, there was a screaming baby in the theater. Or at least I think it was in the theater. Maybe it was in the movie. (Interesting touch.)

Live and Let Live:

And as good as the movie was I had no desire to buy the accompanying live album. Especially since they had already put one out a couple of years before.

This one:

Talking Heads: The Name of this Band is Talking Heads Expanded (2004)

The earliest TH music, when they were a threesome, captured on video circa 1975 or so, is spare, tuneful, and a bit eerie. Imagine seeing David Byrne for the first time. Certainly interesting but maybe not built to last.

This set picks things up in 1977, after multi-instrumentalist Jerry Harrison (formerly with The Modern Lovers), has joined. His contributions both on guitar and keyboards add a crucial breadth to their sound. This is also the year their first album was released.

The original version of this record was 2 LPs and had 17 tracks. This expanded 2-CD edition has 33! It still covers the same 1977-81 time frame and includes about 75% of their catalog at that point. And the ommissions make sense.

With my vinyl versions of those albums gathering dust in the basement, and their old songs popping up in cover versions all over the place, I was, yes, nostalgic for what originally mesmerized me. So I caved and got this record. It is wonderful.

First, the band - especially the original foursome is tight, and Tina's bass is tuneful as hell. The later 10-piece incarnation is a little sloppier, and I'll admit SMS may have superior versions of the Remain in Light songs.

In those old videos, David Byrne/his character was tentative. But here, he leans into the weirdness and is a monster. (In a good way.)

The songs from Fear of Music (The Pretender of their albums) are an improvement. The music is, well, funkier and David Byrne sings his balls off. And quite a trick for someone who sounded like he had already done that.

So this is a far more comprehensive set than the single CD Stop Making Sense soundtrack. The only thing SMS has that TNOTBITH doesn't is a few songs from Speaking in Tongues. 

A-

"Love ---> Building On Fire"

Neil Young: Live Rust (1979)

This one is less successful than TNOTBITH because of the issues I cited above. Neil's singing is not always on the mark, which matters less as you get to the rock and roll part, but it's still an annoyance. 

Plus what I'd call "unnecessary" songs, like "Comes a Time" and "Lotta Love" which were just fine on the great Comes a Time, and the live versions of songs that were live to begin with just a few months prior on Rust Never Sleeps: "My My Hey Hey" (and vice versa), "Sedan Delivery", "Powderfinger".

I'm glad I have a live version of "Tonight's the Night", "I Am A Child" and "Sugar Mountain", but to be honest, none are superior to their prior versions.

Another issue is that a lot of these songs are staples of Classic Rock Radio so many are overplayed as it is. So it's not surprising that on my first play, I was meh. 

But the 2nd listen, when I was in the mood for Neil, (and Mrs Jaybee was in the mood for a murder show) I put on my headphones and settled in. Pretty soon Mrs. Jaybee is telling me to stop stomping my foot. It was getting in the way of the murders I think. Go Figure.

Which all goes to show how f*ckin' great these songs are. 

But I'm playing Talking Heads more.

B+

"Tonight's the Night"

Live and Let Die:

Christgau was right about something else, too: Running On Empty is better than The Pretender.

The Notorious LVB: 1808

The Fifth Symphony:

Okay, he started writing it in 1805, continuing on it all the way through to 1808, where he then got stuck. So he went ahead and wrote another Symphony. As one does. If you're Neil Young, that is.

And why not? He'd been writing all sorts of stuff over the last few years so what's another symphony? In fact, it helped him work out the problem he was having with the Fifth, so he finished that one, too.

In case you don't already know, this is the one that starts with dah dah dah dah!

The first thing I had to learn about this was that it wasn't dah-dah-dah! and it wasn't dah-dah-dah-dah!. It was deh-DAH-deh-DAH, and even that's a pretty shaky description of it.

But my point is, it wasn't an announcement of "serious intent" as I've always thought. It was an off-kilter, "on the two", attempt to tell everyone not only has the show started but you're already behind so hurry up. It was intensity. It was - if I may use an overused analogy - punk rock. It's Neil Young inspired by the Sex Pistols doing "Sedan Delivery" for forty minutes. It's Elvis Costello upping his game after his comparatively singer-songwriterly My Aim is True to This Year's Model.

Of course, this could just be him further adjusting to his worsening deafness and abandoning nuance for impact. Who could blame him?

In a way, it's funny because LVB usually comes at you with all kinds of melodic motifs that glide and flow into each other like, say Sufjan Stevens, but here he's more or less just hammering away on a single riff, like ACDC. I mean, he's messing with it, but he keeps coming back to it.

He turns back into Haydn for the second movement if only to assure you he hasn't lost his mind completely. (Funny how he always feels the need to do that...) But then halfway through it's very Napoleonic for a minute as if the two were friends again. Nappy would soon have Vienna surrounded, so it was no time to piss him off.

It seems like it's going to take the mellow route, like a CSNY acoustic set but then the horns come in loud and martial. The woodwinds and violins try to calm them down, but the brass isn't having it. So the tone sways gently back and forth between the two.

The third movement takes that martial theme and combines it with the Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah (well, you know what I mean). The violins are getting fidgety and keeping the pot on a steady simmer, which is a nice setup for the finale when everyone's caffeine kicks in. Kids, that's why Kiss did "Beth" - the better to rock your ass when the time came.

And it's kitchen sink time! In its own way, like "Rosalita" after "Incident on 57th Street". It starts off with a bang and for ten minutes he hits you with everything, one after the other. He really bashes at you to within an inch of your life.

And like "Rosalita", it pauses halfway through if only to catch his breath and pummel away again. And for the last minute, in double time, as if the horses are charging. 

And. It's. Just. Great.

A

And here's Lenny - with the beard, looking suspiciously like Kevin Kline - (I just miss the messy hair) to demonstrate.

The Sixth Symphony:

He calls it "Pastoral", which is what you do when you've forgotten your electric guitar, or went completely overboard last time out. Here it's the difference between the second and third Velvet Underground records or Comes a Time after riding in the ditch for years.

But on a more serious note, I suspect he got laid. And good for him! And us. After all, as great as the Fifth was, how much of that can you take at one time? Well...

This is his first five-parter - with two Allegros! (wow!) - which is bullshit because when you listen to it, it all flows together but maybe he was getting paid by the movement. (There is a scatological joke here that I'll leave for you to work out. I have a reputation to maintain.)

The first movement has some very familiar themes that most would recognize. (But of course don't count on me to say "Ahh, Beethoven's Sixth!".) About three minutes in, it sounds like there's a man on a trapeze. It might be the sweetest piece he's ever done. Trapeze man comes back in at about eight minutes in and, thankfully, lands gracefully.

Then in the second movement, he decides to take a stroll and look around. He takes his time and manages to sustain this mellow mood for twelve minutes!

The third movement starts off with some themes most of us cultivated folks would recognize, starting off easy but then ending up at the horse races. 

The fourth starts out like Phantom of the Opera (or do I mean that Phantom sounds like this...) except there is some actual drama, and then sounds like Muggsorgsky's/ELP's Picture's at an Exhibition before calming down and being its own self. 

And three minutes into the fifth he hits on a theme/chord progression that works universally. And here is where he shocks me. I'm expecting the old gallop to the finale ending, when in fact he stays within the boundaries he set at the beginning, and ends with mellow.

My conclusion is that he's high, in the best possible way. If the fifth was bourbon, this one is weed.

And it's a full forty minutes, so we're in Thick As A Brick territory.

A-

Here's Lenny again, this time sans beard but with the messy hair, showing how it's done.

The Vienna Concert:

You'd think after cranking out two symphonies he'd relax a bit, but no! 

So he ends the year with a concert premiering both of these Symphonies, and then plays lead on his Fourth Piano Concerto No. 4 and, for good measure, a Choral Fantasia (we all know how those are). 

All in all, a four-hour show. Very Sprinsteenian/Allmans-at-Fillmore of him.

The Notorious LVB 1806-07

So what's the old charmer been up to these days, you ask? In 1806, his brother, of street fighting fame, gets married, so LVB would have to find someone else to wrestle with. Instead, he writes his Fourth Symphony and a Violin Concerto because that's what one does. In 1807 he had the hots for a young widow who turned him down. So he finishes writing his Fifth Symphony. (But that'll have to wait until next time.) Wow. All that redirected sexual energy!

Violin Concerto  1806

When I got all nine of Beethoven’s Symphonies from MHS, they threw in a bonus record. And damn if it didn't work its way into my brain and end up being my favorite bit of classical music!

 

I guess when I was feeling daunted by the sheer amount of music in the Symphonies, I’d put this one, feeling I'd at least be accomplishing something, and, by golly, it snuck up on me.

This is a really lovely album.

And now that I've (accidentally) gotten a CD version of it, I've become the Classical Music Asshole I always hated. You know who I mean. I can now say something like I prefer the 1991 Itszhak Perlman-Carlo Maria Guilini version with the Philharmonic Orchestra to the 1981 Christian Ferras-Herbert von Karajan version with the Berliner Philharmoniker due to some esoteric reason when we both know my fave was the video version because the (Irish?) violinist sweat his ass off.

So let me tell you about it.

Well, in typical classical music "let's piss off the plebes" fashion it goes on for three and a half minutes before any violins show up. Or, at least becomes prominent. Lesson: soloists are always late, so always invite them earlier than everyone else.

The first movement is by far the longest - twenty-four minutes! - single movement of anything I have by LVB. By the time it's done you're like, hey that was great! and then you realize there are two more movements!

The second movement is a bit calmer and there's a nice mellow chord progression at around 3:45 that would be at home in any mellow-bluesy rock n' roll song. Speaking of which the whole thing clocks in at about 44 minutes, a very respectable mid-70s album length and the longest piece so far.

The third movement picks things up a bit and ties it all together in a very graceful energetic way.

So why do I like it? Well, it comes down to this. The violin sounds like an electric guitar. Not exactly in actual sound, and not exactly in what is being played. But in the verve and passion of it all.

There's even a degree of improvisation here but I'll be damned if I can figure out where it is. Suffice to say there are what appear to be "fills" along with the written down parts, and in its own classical way, it rocks. And that's Beethoven for you right there.

When I look for a video with Itzhak Perlman I'm irritated to see him sitting. I get it, he's wearing classy duds and - like the Winchester family, doesn't sweat/perspire. The video below is more rocking, with Ms. Hahn swaying like a guitar god. The audience reaction is pure rock n' roll, too, and completely appropriate.

My point is there's energy and passion here I can fully relate to. 

Funny thing, at its first public performance the public turned up its nose, and it took another dozen years for someone to dust it off and try it again - by a twelve-year-old violinist! It took someone at a rock n roll age to bring all that energy out. At which point everyone said you see I told you it was great (see the Hitler/Ramones Syndrome).  

Even better than my other fave, Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto.

A

BEETHOVEN Concerto for Violin and Orchestra - Hilary Hahn, violin; Leonard Slatkin, conductor

Fourth Symphony:

As I mentioned before, the general rule for the Symphonies is to go for the odd-numbered ones, and this is a good illustration of that.

Number Three changed the ((classical (music)) world so the next one was bound to be a bit of a letdown. But then you're run into the people who go on to say that well, this is one of the most underrated blah blah blah. You get the idea.

And, alas, here, the paradigm holds up. Harvest Moon after  Ragged Glory? Not quality-wise, but definitely mood-wise.

He’s back to his opening Dah-Dah!-themed approach. But you can tell his heart's not fully in it. After having blown everything up, he’s taking a bit of a break. Wouldn't you?

After the bounce and hop of the last one, this one is almost comical that it takes over two minutes before it really kicks off. But then watch out! He's still Beethoven, after all.

The third movement may sound very familiar, and it's where things pick up.

And just when you think, man this guy just loves his fast endings, he pauses. And then blasts past you and it's over! 4th And okay he catches you in the 4th movement with the trick ending but let's face it, it's more cute than climactic. End of Sailin Shoes? No, the end of Abbey Road.

Verdict: Quite good, but not revolutionary. Perfectly fine for anyone else, but slightly subpar for the mad (not really) genius (yes really) that he is.

B+

But if anyone can perk things up, it's Lenny:

Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Op. 60 (Leonard Bernstein)

The Notorious LVB: 1801

So our boy is filling out! Looking good and not "scowly" yet. But he is a bit Lennon-y in that this next work was barely done and he starts bitching about it, saying things like "do-over!" So it's all kind of muddy when exactly this was written but I'm going with 1801.

Piano Concerto 1:

Boy, for a piano concerto, there’s a whole lot of everything else going on in it, too. I’m listening for a kazoo right now…

 

So it takes a few minutes before AN ACTUAL PIANO shows up. (Maybe he was late? Okay, piano guy, you're getting an alarm clock for Christmas. Are you happy? Oh, and after the show, you're buying the first round.)

But once there, it goes right to his head and, from then on it's all about him. It's Jerry Lee Lewis before the actual Jerry Lee. He practically gets into a fistfight with the rest of the orchestra. (Doesn't anyone have the guts to fire the guy?? Well, no, because, well, the guy is old Ludvig van.)

So it turns out if all you want to hear is a piano, then you should check out the sonatas, which I have yet to do, so you're on your own.

Anyway, we've lucked out here, because there isn't too much of that fancy pinkie-twinkling they all like to when playing piano and drinking tea. It drives me nuts. If I were the conductor I'd spend the whole time walking around the orchestra like Al Capone, looking for anyone who was doing that, and rapping their knuckles with my baton.

Did you want to hear about the actual music? Well. All. Right.

It’s full to the brim with melody and tempo changes, okay? Ludvig van was most renowned as a piano player when he wrote this, and you can tell he’s already bursting out of that role.

And overall it’s all short and fast - about thirty minutes - so you're not looking at your watch or wishing to burn down the theater. So the rock and roll comparisons, I'd say the first Ramones album, but with a slower start.

And speaking of a cure for getting restless, please check out this performance. If this doesn't make our red-blooded American males fans of classical music nothing will. It will work for lesbians, too I assume. Possibly dead people.

But seriously, the real revelation here is that the pianist is having fun, which up to then was against the law in the Classical music world. There are a couple of parts where she actually shimmies. Watching it made the music more enjoyable and pushed my grade up from a B+.

I guess Neil Young was right. "Live Music is Better" bumper stickers really should be issued. Works for classical music, too!

Maybe especially.

A-

The collection

"My Music":

So what do I mean by this? I don't create music, I only consume it, so when I say "my music" I'm referring to any album, EP, or single I've purchased or received as a gift (or borrowed and never gave back. Sorry, about Pearl and After the Goldrush late Friend Billy Mac!). 

But, as I get older, it’s getting harder and harder to determine what "my music" is. 

In case you didn't know, when you buy an album you don't own the music. The record company or whoever still owns the publishing rights does. (In a perfect world that would be the artist but here we are.) Without getting into the legal terms, the record you bought is just the means by which you can hear the music when you please. So at the risk of nitpicking, you own a single copy of the record, but not the music itself.

But it was still something. 

Books/Records/Space/Time, or The Sanctity of the Collection:

When reading books, I tell people that the ones I buy are too hard to get to because I'm busy reading the ones I got from the library - the ones I have to give back.

With music, it's kind of the opposite - mainly because you only need to read a book once. With music, you should be able to listen to it over and over. In order to do that you probably shouldn't have too much (a relative term, I admit) of it. Just enough to listen to enough.

And I like it that way. That's the type of relationship I want to have with music. I don't want to date it, I want to marry it. I want to take it home and get to know it. So the act of buying it implies a level of commitment - of money and time - you can't have when there's a whole world of music right at your fingertips. 

Some people own a few records. Others have complete, encyclopedic Collections. I occupy the middle ground of having more records than the average person but less than the fanatics. My collection has a small c. I don't just Hoover up anything I see. It's not about size. It's about quality. Or that's at least what men keep telling themselves.

But in this case, it's true. I'd rather have one excellent record than five pretty good ones. I don't need every Neil Young album. Just the great ones. That's plenty.

 
I first realized the importance of this when I sent in for an offer of 25 albums for $15 (plus shipping!). And it was almost exclusively garbage. I threw away all but three. But why throw away anything, you might ask? Isn't it better to have them than not? Won't I get to know and like these records more? I, who previously would have answered Yes, now realized it wasn't true. Bad music takes up too much time, and bad music on vinyl or CD takes up too much space.

Thus you might think I'd welcome downloads. Well...

The Thing:

For the longest time, in order to deliberately play specific music - ie. avoiding the happenstance of the radio - you would use a physical object to do so. And whatever you may hear these days, those things were cool. A vinyl album has liner notes and cover art. The former for us nerds who love the music enough to want to know who contributed to it in some way. The latter for everyone, which itself could be a work of art. (And yes, CDs have them as well, but have you ever tried to read those 6-pt font liner notes? Or hung a CD cover on your wall? Not bloody likely.)

And you had to take care of the physical object. Protect it from harm. But as long as you did you could play it whenever you wanted.

The thing itself has changed over the years. Wax cylinder, Vinyl, reel-to-reel, cassette, 8 track tape, DAT, CD. 

And each medium pulled us further and further away from the physical action of music creation and re-creation. There was a time when artists would record a performance directly onto vinyl. And when you played it, if you listen without the speaker on, you could hear the needle extracting the music from the grooves. 

I remember once hearing a song from a record that was rotating on a portable turntable but without the needle on it. And the song I was hearing wasn't even on the side that was facing up! Turns out a piece of plastic with a sharp (enough) point was rubbing it from below. It wasn't playing through the speaker but I could hear it very well.

With cassettes, the action took place between the tape and the tape head. You could see the tape move over the head but there was nothing you could hear without a speaker. Same with 8 Tracks, although if it was poorly made, much like my record above, you could hear phantom music from a track that wasn't supposed to be playing.

And forget about CDs. You popped those in a magic box and out came the music. And when they skipped good luck finding the smudge that caused it.

Not THE Thing, Exactly:

Even home taping or CD burning still involved having a copy of the thing. I won't go into the differences between the original vs. the copy because you still had a thing, if not the thing. Not great but it would do in a pinch. And you could dry out your ink cartridges for the privilege of printing out a crappy version of the cover art. 

But these copies never make it to my record shelves - because I never really believed I had them - and end up gathering dust in my basement.

Not A Thing, Exactly:

Then came downloading and just playing it from your hard drive.

Then take the next step of buying an album and not bothering to download it at all. It's just up there in the cloud, at the mercy of an old iTunes account whose ID you forgot. Do you own it or don't you? Sorry Mr. Jaybee but that account is no longer active. 

Thanks, Amazon?

On the other hand, I am finding albums by Lightning Hopkins, Nina Simone, Lester Young, and many others that I don't remember ever buying. 

One might this that was cool, too. Just ending up with a bunch of records without even asking for them.

And even though my "research" indicates that the Lester Young record I didn't buy is probably the best one to get by, I'm not playing it, because I haven't (yet) embraced it as "mine"! After all, what if it's a mistake? Will Amazon - which gives itself the power to control and define what is"my music" now - delete all these records when they realize they made an error?

Then where will I be? Yes, I know I could just buy the ones I liked but the whole thing makes me feel less in control, which is important when you're blogging about the sanctity of your collection.

Not A Thing, a Service:

With services such as Amazon Music and Apple Music, for a low monthly fee, you can listen to just about anything you want. And Youtube where you can just look an album up and play it. Sounds great, doesn't it? 

I want no part of it. 

I like knowing what's in the collection and what's not, and having an opinion on it. And I don't want to merge it into a larger Matrix-like musical universe where everything is kind of okay and I don't really know any of it.

If you can hear almost everything, are you really listening to anything? You would hear something once and decide it's boring, never knowing that another listen was all it would take for it to click with you.
When you get to that point you become that despised (by me) person who gets to say such edgy things like "I like all kinds of music", when I know what you really mean is that you don't love any of it.

In the seventies, Philip Roth compared Checkoslovakia to America, saying that in the former nothing is allowed and everything matters, and in the latter, everything is allowed and nothing matters.

I want my music to matter. To me, at least.

The End of the Collection:

And yet it will go away. It will survive me by a little bit but then it'll be gone, too. Yes, a record collection was not only finite but temporary. 

When I'm gone this large and varied set of music that reflects the Uniqueness of Jaybee - is just another person's pile of crap. I mean, Mrs. Jaybee does her best to put up with a lot of it, but when I'm gone, we (well, you) will know what she really thinks of Pere Ubu and Captain Beefheart!

I used to think about this when it wasn’t a real thing. I fantasized about who would get dibs on these amazing records. It went something like this:
Mrs. Jaybee
Brother Pat
Friend Mike

But now that I'm 63, and it is a real thing, I'd have to add a few more names, like my kids.

And each person would take what they wanted and then pass on the rest. I'm SURE there'd be none left after all that, right?

But let's say, no one goes for that Joanna Newsom record (or two or three hundred others). I guess it becomes the stuff of garage sales and used record stores, where a record hopefully becomes part of someone else’s collection.

I've heard it said that everyone dies three times: First, when you physically die, second when your name is uttered for the last time, and then third when someone has the very last memory of you.

For the record collection, it's pretty similar, One is still when you die, but two is when your family, friends, and record collectors take what they want. Three is when the record dealer tosses what he can't sell.

So after I - and my collection - die, do we disperse into the universe like Caesar's last breath? Maybe it doesn't matter. Thanks to mass production, it's not like I have the single, existing copy of anything. Those same records are out there somewhere, part of other people's collections, and live on.

Unlike me.

Corona-chles II

Working from home, continued:
Well, it wasn't great that first day (3/17). It took forever to do things on my laptop that I could do in seconds on my desktop at work. So I decided to go into work, and spent the rest of the week there.

Subways:

Unlike just a couple of days before, the trains were now almost empty. And those of us who were on them were aggressively avoiding each other.

Masks:
I don't wear a mask, even when on the train. Am I stupid? I don't know. I just heard it wouldn't help. Now all those folks who wear them at the drop of a hat look like prophets. Next Step, fashion versions. Get ready. After all, we need something to distinguish the elite from the rabble. Me, I'm not shaving. That keeps people away.

Gloves:
I honestly don't know how to use them without not only touching my face but likely swallowing them whole. I may have inadvertently started that condom-up-the-nose trend a couple of years back...


Working From Work:
Ah, but for those three days (3/18-20) I was very productive! Which is the important thing, right?

Working From Work, Reconsidered:
But by Thursday night Mrs. Jaybee - a cancer survivor - was getting a bit nervous I'd pick up something and drop it right on her questionable immune system.
And it hit me. What. The. Fuck. Am. I. Doing??  How could I run when I knew?
So Friday I brought home my docking station, keyboard and mouse, to see if I could unflatten the curve of my lesser productivity as home.

Music:
Playing Decade got me back to practicing guitar using Neil Young music. I mean, he just kept hitting the right notes. Random lines pop up with a new relevance, like:

See the sky about to rain

The subways are empty, and so are the cafes...

In the stands
The home crowd scatters
For the turnstiles...

If you see him in the subway, He'll be down at the end of the car.
Watching you move Until he knows he knows who you are.

And here's another - completely un-pandemic unrelated one - for good measure:

You're watching your TV, and it's watching you. 
From 1975 no less!

But I guess your favorite artist has lyrics that will suddenly take on a whole new meaning now.

By Sunday (3/22) Mrs. Jaybee was pretty sad and wanted to hear something upbeat, so we tried Alvvays and the New Pornographers which worked well. Neil was on point, but we just didn't want to feel that way anymore.

Looking Human:
I haven't shaved since my one day working from home last week And Mrs. Jaybee likes it!
She said I should continue to grow it for the duration of the pandemic. And with the barbershops closed, I'll end up looking like old Neil himself up top there.
Who am I kidding? I'm 62, it'll probably come in white, which, if I wasn't before, I will surely now be the whitest man in America. So, who am I kidding? I'll look like Leon Russell. (Time to dig out my old white communion suit...)
I did figure out why Mrs. Jaybee likes it, though. It's just her way of being quarantined with someone else. Clever girl!

Fails:
During Mrs. Jaybee's first day of teaching from home, I stood behind her and dropped an f-bomb - a real doozy, too - behind her while her students were signing in. They really behaved themselves that day.

It could have been worse. 

Anyway, stay well - and stay the fuck back - okay?