A Gray Dreg Day

Gray, gray gray today. Reminds me of summers in Berkeley, CA when I lived there. Low overcast in the morning, followed by moderate overcast in the mid afternoon just in time to watch the sky's ceiling fall with denser overcast for every evening. 

Not that I got up much to face the fog in the mornings back then. I did a couple of late shows on KPFA each week and worked late nights at a small book store to pay the rent. KPFA was/remains one of those strange entities on the airwaves, a primarily volunteer run non-profit publicly supported by donations loose-knit radio spot on the dial. I fit in perfectly with the mad assembled political and musical extremists chopping up tape, moving potentiometers (pots) up and down the various boards and creating a sound mixture that was totally unique.

-Digression-
I didn't meet a person at KPFA who did not have a strong opinion on just about everything. This was just a couple of years after Patricia (Patty in those days) Hearst kidnapping, and the ensuing Symbionese Liberation Army fiasco/tragedy. The anarchy driven guerrilla group used KPFA to communicate its demands for the release of other SLA members in jail at the time, and  the Hearst family to feed the poor in California. KPFA broadcast edge cutting stuff, and tensions over the station's direction were constant. More talk/politics versus more music. And the music department under the direction of Charles Amirkhanian contained a mixture of elements only a guy like Charles could truly appreciate, running the gamut of roots Americana musics, extreme jazz, modern classical, synthesizers and ambient text-sonics from Harry Partch to Terry Riley and all parts in between. Charles was a marvel.  -End of Digression-

A gray day like any other trudging up the stairs into the station near the corner of Shattuck and University to work on a project. A friend of mine from my UC days met me in one of the tape editing rooms, and asked me if I could use some tickets to a show that evening. I'd never heard the of the group, and apparently neither had my pal. He got the comps because he worked at the auditorium and had other plans. I took the two, but I used only the one. The lady I was with at the time had studying to do, and the few friends I tried to track down were working. Gone solo.

This group had released a couple of albums on Capricorn Records. Capricorn was one of those great regional labels in the 1970s that had screamed southern rock bands, and was nationally distributed through Atlantic and the growing Warner family of labels.  The Allman Brothers had really gotten the label going in  1969 and other southern bands quickly signed on board. By the late 1970s through the tragedy of iconic losses in traffic and plane accidents southern rock was in a free fall, and Capricorn's prospects were not too good. I thought I was going to witness one more carnation of Grinderswitch meets Wet Willie, or just a night of escape into southern fried boogie.

The Dixie Dregs blew me away. No vocals. All instrumentals. From Bach fugue signatures to mind boggling bluegrass licks stacked up against fusion waves of Beck and McLaughlin inspiration into rock grit, all in too many time signatures to count with other worldly playing on guitar, violin, bass and keyboards. Truly a night to remember, and the following day Rather Ripped Records swapped me some Dregs vinyl for some greenbacks . Funny when you do a little research what you find.

Steve Morse is one of those players/musicians/writers for the ages. A true original in every sense, from his own inspirational design of his guitar to the signature flying licks and intricate instrumental opuses he creates, he is one of a kind. Give his bio a read here. But, only if you think you'll find it fascinating that a true wunderkind mind like this can go from the Dixie Dregs to Kansas to Deep Purple, and still crank out lots of just Steve Morse guitar driven magic, even after the record biz opted always for biz over the music when it came to this man.

Now more 33 full revolutions around the sun later since my first exposure, the music of Steve Morse remains fresh, vital and unique, and the memories of that concert still ring. Here is one of my favorite Dixie Dregs songs composed by Steve Morse.



Steve Morse always provided me with the best soundtracks for long drives around the Bay and through the Valley and into Los Angeles. Traveling Tunes, Road Expense, The Great Spectacular and General Lee are songs I remember making the drives a pleasure, a chance to crank up the surround sound  in a fine car and cruise through California. When you're looking for escape from the mundane check out Dregs of the Earth and Steve Morse The Introduction. Always satisfies.

Thanks for stopping by. Until next time.

The Politics of a Guitar List

 This song is is now over forty years old. The arrangement is faithful to the original version. Guitar genius still.


Maybe you caught my last post on Rolling Stone Magazine's top 100 rock guitarists. I can only say the list is the list for the year 2011. And is/was created solely for the people who voted on the large talent pool of guitar wielding professionals who made rock music the interesting diverse string-driven sound-scape it became over all these decades. The combined votes and editing missed on Roy Buchanan. Well, a lot people missed Roy Buchanan over the years.

I also mentioned the Rolling Stone top 100 rock guitarist list started in the brain of David Fricke back in 2003, and Rolling Stone has his list archived, which you can check out by hitting the link in my previous post. Fricke's, and the current guitar top 100 differ quite a bit. Fricke includes a host of San Francisco Bay area guitar talent on his top 100, but only Carlos Santana and Jerry Garcia make the 100 cut this time around. And apart from Jeff Beck and John Mclaughlin no progressive jazz-rock player gets mentioned. Brian May and Robert Fripp are the only dudes I find who get included with real progressive post 1960s pedigrees. 

I find the end result disappointing, but not altogether unexpected. Ever notice an underlying disdain from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Nashville, Bakersfield, Kansas City, New Orleans, Detroit, Philadelphia, Austin, Boston, Miami and Anyotherplace, USA -except Seattle- for all things San Francisco over the years?

Maybe it's the culmination of thirty years shitting daily on the words liberal and progressive by hosts of conservative radio to people who ever scanned a dial on AM radio and could not escape a few seconds of lockstep right-wing spew. Too many Bill O'Reilly barf downs on San Francisco over the years. Add up all those seconds over a multitude of years for car bound commuters everywhere and you might associate the words liberal and progressive with every worst excess and depravity that has hit the world from hippie environmental terrorism and drug addiction to gay lifestyle and its supposed threats against the sanctity of marriage and the viral spread of disease.

The saddest part of this ever enduring daily aural brainwash bath has been to equate all progressive venues from socio-economic-political to cultural idioms as worthless to the listeners, who are routinely exalted for their ability to call and mimic, like myna birds, the ever repeated hypnotic messages extolling the eradication of all social liberalism.

And so by decades of cultural beat-down comes a new Rolling Stone Magazine guitarist list where we have very few players who stretched the guitar boundaries in a progressive and liberal feel flow manner, whether from San Francisco, London, Berlin or Liberalbasement, USA.

I cannot figure out why Andy Powell (with first Ted Turner & then Laurie Wisefield) of Wishbone Ash, who defined the twin lead guitar sound that so many bands adopted throughout the 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s, gets excluded. How does Steve Howe of Yes not get included? Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna cannot wriggle by Lou Reed, or Steve Jones or Willie Nelson? John Cippolina is not one of the top 100 guitarists, but Leslie West is? Robin Trower with Procol Harum and his own bands over 40 years could not garner votes, but Kurt Cobain's in this list?

Understand, I'm not in any way suggesting Kurt Cobain was not an important guy in the annals of rock. Many could/would say he was the last rock star. The Nirvanna recorded statements were vital shit. Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols was an important figure in the band and the Punk movement. I believe his guitar skills, and guitar impact were way less than both Brian Setzer or Rick Nielson, and I would not put them into a top 100. When I think of Lindsey Buckingham I think of Jeff Lynne. Great writer, instrumentalist and producer, not a guitar god, and though I really dug a lot of Buckingham tunes his place on this list seems weird.

But all of this just affirms that the tight tunes contain far more value today than the extended and spacious instrumental tracks that give a person time and opportunity to expand his/her horizons. The message of conservatism- limits and reductions is always at odds with the liberal message of boundless and limitless. Think of it another way. How does anyone define a liberal portion? How does anyone define a conservative portion? One is generous, one is smallish. One is vast, one is confined.

I like headroom when I listen to music, and I take my time. When I listen I'm not in a hurry to get anywhere, but into my head. I don't sense most people listen that way much anymore. It seems the act of the download is more important than what is on the download.

And so this clip ends this post, a post really more about why certain artists are or not included. Here is the brilliant Bill Nelson, of Be Bop Deluxe, and so much more. Dude is on my list of most influential and in my top 20, but then again I'm a liberal.



Thanks for the taking the time, and stopping by. Until next time.

Lists on a Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving! Nice holiday with food and family gathered to say thanks to one another for hanging in there with each other for one more year. Thanksgiving like every other holiday is about tradition, and one tradition we all see at this time of the year is the various lists of top what-evers which pop up to let us know what was best, or worst, about the year/decade/millennium in virtually every conceivable category.   

Today I was perusing the news and caught the latest list of the top 100 guitarists put together by Rolling Stone Magazine. Lists intrigue. Good lists (even when you vehemently disagree with the results) fuel interest and comments. As for for this list you'll find it here (Rolling Stone Top 100 Guitarist this year's version). David Fricke, one of my all-time favorite music journalists, started this guitarist list venture back in 2003 for Rolling Stone (here is his list).

The just-out new Rolling Stone list contains worthy musicians. Some omissions from the latest top 100 bug me. And so, one more blog post for posterity.

Not to see Roy Buchanan mentioned anywhere among the new100 truly stuns me. No man ever defined an instrument as eloquently or as forcefully as Roy defined Leo Fender's Telecaster. Fricke put him in at #57 on his list. Bless him.

I guess time fades away many things. Neil Young comments on that over and over in many of his songs, and I believe it to be true. If I could unlock Mr. Peabody's time machine with his trusted boy, Sherman, I would take you back to the thumb slice of fresh plastic on a record album released in 1972 and plucked from a White Front aisle. I'd just read the Robert Hilburn review. He's another critic I trusted for finding my pet musical sounds.

Aside:
By 1972 many of the top guys in the current Rolling Stone list of 100 greats, were either prematurely dead, or very busy doing there frets frescoes in late youth. The bloom of newness over the blues, and the various permutations the 1960s wrung out of ears who caught the blues fever phenomenon were just about over. Original British and American bands into pure blues like the Rolling Stones, the Paul Butterfield Band, Savoy Brown, John Mayall, the Yardbirds, Fleetwood Mac all were gravitating, or had moved to more pop or jazz sensibilities and made the various band personnel changes that sealed the transition.

The trends of the early 1970s were more folk derived-singer songwriter stuff of Paul Simon, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Neil Young, CSN, Bread, Carol King meets orchestral progressive rock of Yes, the Moody Blues and individual Beatles sprinkled in with lots of Motown, Memphis and Philadelphia soul. Country music was all on its own, and bands like the Burrito Brothers and the Byrds had a very difficult time selling any records trying to put country into rock, but the Eagles had no such problem with a much more pop driven focus sprinkled with country-lite. - Aside ended


The black and white photo of a bearded man holding an electric guitar on the Polydor record jacket, PD 5033, gives no indication of the forces squeezed into the grooves held between the glued cardboard. The black and white back-jacket photo of four skinny longhairs looking into the camera in an archway while a resigned looking anti-pop figure in sandals (who really looks a lot Stonewall Jackson with those sad faraway eyes) stands just in front of the archway also offers no clue to the contents. 

From the opening harmonic intonations on the Don Gibson classic "Sweet Dreams" that Chet Atkins and Patsy Cline both previously made so memorable, which Roy and his Snakestretchers have just redefined through sheer country and other worldly harmonic blisters of stretched/bent notes and rifle burst fills to the two lengthy blues instrumentals, demonstrating a mastery of the idiom and the instrument in a way no other guitar had sounded up to that point in time, through the four other county song covers and the majestic soul searching ballad where the guitar wrenches tears and cries of plaintive pleas cascading above the slow rhythm, this was an amazing earful of no compromise artistry.

Lots of crossovers in rock music where rock meets classical, or rock meets jazz, or rock meets blues, or rock meets country. This album was country, and this album was blues. There was no crossover- just guitar virtuosity in both genres alone. What made the record, and Roy Buchanan, so unique was the no compromise rule. Play them straight and true.

Maybe once in your lifetime you've sat in a bar and heard a band take on all songs the patrons could shout. Each song rang true, thanks to the vibe in the room, and thanks maybe to that 3rd scotch you were sipping through the second set. Roy Buchanan gives the listener the very rare small-crowd-held-in-awe testament to a great bar band held together by one virtuoso.

Other Roy records always teased. Some great moments or songs, but undone by either too much production, which was the case on the three Atlantic albums, or just not enough strong material to make the album stand as a singular statement. The Alligator Records release, When A Guitar Plays The Blues,  is essential, and very rewarding. In The Beginning also offers a great total album with strong tunes and incredible performances throughout, which display s versatile mastery of the guitar and genres Roy Buchanan totally owns.  

Part of my appreciation of Roy Buchanan comes from having met and talked with the man several times and from concert dates, and sweaty small club shows on many occasions. The concert he gave at the Berkeley Community Theater in the mid-1970s I still remember being one of the most riveting and awe inspiring shows of guitar wizardry, and all done without the many pedals or sonic devices so in vogue today, that I have ever seen. He was always so cordial, but by the mid 1980s so dispirited by the number of shows and the lack of money to show for it, he had begun his efforts to drown his frustrations.

I can remember reading his obituary in my office in West Sacramento, CA in 1988 and being gripped with such a sadness. To have one of the greatest guitarists in the world hang himself in a Fairfax County jail cell after being arrested on charges of public drunkenness seemed cosmically malicious.

Time has moved more than 23 years since that morning, and the fade continues to blur the memory of this sweet soul with magical powers on a fretboard with strings. I'll blame the power of the fade for this omission. Enjoy the Roy.




Thanks for stopping by. Next up some other guitarists who should have gotten more love from the Rolling Stone voters.
 

 

Catching Up WithTrucks

Long time since the keypad hit the blog page. Seven months.

Why no blogging, commenting or musings here? Busy learning a new trade made stopping by here tough to regularly accomplish for me. Also, I can say some shit never changes. Rants, pleas, statistics, preaching, cajoling, anecdotes and the like just wore out after awhile.

Need affordable health care? Want jobs with benefits? Want clean water? Like music, books and art but wonder why all things culture got packaged into a phone? Me, too!

Another thing, Facebook knocked and I answered. Stories that cropped up eventually popped up on my status posts. Quick comments or a brief explanation as to why I felt an issue should be addressed one way gobbled up some time and staying in touch with friends for brief moments in a day seemed enough.

My new trade is booking hauls for trucks as an independent agent for a national logistics/freight company. Very interesting days, and opens up a whole new world dialog on what passes for life in the slow lanes. Driving 10 to 12 hours a day making a living exacts a hefty toll for those who connect American commerce. Most people just take for granted what's  on the shelves of the WalMarts, Targets, Costcos, Krogers, Safeways and Trader Joe's of America, and never think of the long hours of hauling all those products across the battered and bruised highways and byways of this big country.

Once upon a time, in a stranger and more archaic version of this country when things were just as shitty, but the gap between the rich and poor was not quite so great, truck drivers used citizen band radios to communicate with each other on the roads. CB radios became the rage for the gullible and fad driven masses of this country. I worked at an electronics shop in the mid seventies for awhile, and high fidelity components were a very small drop in the corporate bucket compared to what CB radios and all the paraphernalia that went with them poured in. CB radios gave the world a glimpse of what social networking would become on the Internet and all its little devices. Shocking newness meets rude, profane and eventual turnoff.

Trucks and truckers were cool by the mid to late seventies. They even had a bunch of pop tunes and movies made to celebrate the trade and the people living the nomadic anti-corporate independent lifestyle. The bad guys menaced in very different garb and from very different backgrounds in the fictional world when trucks flashed briefly on the pop scene. Bad guys were commies and the mob back then.

When I think of it now, maybe the mob just won the war. We know what happened to the commies, and they did not win. By the 1980s all the anti-trust rules were being tossed, and this just after the big Bell phone monopoly breakup of the 1970s. Trucks and their drivers were yesterdays big thing. By the 1990s the kings of the freight lanes were being forced to pee into little testing pots by the roadside for the privilege to drive all those marvelous low priced WalMart goods across the country. Can't trust 'em, can't trust anybody became the rule in America.  The unions, even the mighty Teamsters, possessed all the clout of an aged emphysema patient trying to protect jobs and benefits turf. 

The new millennium is past ten now, and trucks are the fragile glue holding commerce together in this broke-down palace of a nation. The guys and gals I talk to on a daily basis are some of America's last independents. They drive or find and post freight across America as independent contractors. Some are incorporated. Some are sole proprietors. All struggle, and many without basic health coverage with little to no retirement savings. You can't raise rates if too few in the general public can afford the hike. It's where we hobble today. Thanks for stopping by.

"Turn Out The Lights The Party's Over"

From time to time sports strikes a nerve. Today's the day, even though tumultuous and terrible events in the world have dominated the news of late.

Earthquakes, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan.  This disaster should give the world pause, and maybe purpose in helping to rebuild this battered nation.

Conflicts in Northern Africa, which unfold with startling speed and battle long time despots one by one in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen with possibly more to follow. These uprisings should give the world even more pause, and wake up those who still think its business as usual to reward a few families at the expense of an entire region's population.

Collective bargaining for most public union employees gone in Wisconsin, with other states and their Republican governors throwing down the same gauntlet. These actions should make everyone in America pay attention to the plight of federal, state and local governments when revenues disappear due to economic downturns, and taxes are considered criminal. This in a nation where the tax burden is one of the very lowest among all major nations in the world.

But today I turn to the sports section and the NFL showdown between owners and players.

Everyone I speak with regarding the events in Northern Africa seems supportive of the little people overthrowing the dictators, even though the regimes toppled all were aligned with US government policy in the Middle East.

This is not the same thing I hear when the chat focuses on collective bargaining disputes between public employee unions in Wisconsin and Ohio where those states' newly elected Republican governors appear intent on curbing public union influence. On this topic, friends offer staunch support for the unions, or view unions as having too much influence over public policy, or flatly state there should be no unions in government. 

When I chat with friends about the potential NFL shutdown I hear comments ranging from, "Billionaires fighting with millionaires is pathetic" to "Who cares who wins as long as I have my football this season?" This is pretty much the same response regarding the NBA, only with many more, "Who Cares?"

Granted union support in America would appear to be at an all time low, and the players today seem to all be making vast sums of money in both sports so I understand the quandary in taking a side on the issues over potential game stoppages. In the NFL, curiously from my perspective, it is the owners who have decided the players make too much and moved at this juncture to demand a much larger slice of each industry's total revenue by opting out of their last agreement. 

The NFL today, by all accounts I have read, is a  $9 billion to $9.5 billion a year industry. Faye Vincent, writing for Scrippsnews, gives an interesting take on what a prolonged lockout could mean. As a former Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Mr. Vincent, has a unique view point on the matter.

The major sticking point on the surface is money, and how to share it. Currently owners take a billion dollars off the top from all the money generated for themselves and the League office, and then split the remaining pie with the players on a 60% to 40% arrangement. The players receive 60% of all the remaining revenue and the League/owners get 40% based on the Collective Bargaining Agreement made in 2006. This works out to basically 53.3% share for the players and a 46.7% share for the owners.

It is a players game. Nobody watches the televisions or attends the games to see the owners. The NFL, and its owners, determined that the union representing the players would not see the ledger books on what the costs of upkeep and improvements are while negotiating. The League has determined the NFLPA, the players union, has all the information it needs to negotiate. This showdown has been in the works for about three years now.

An added layer to the negotiations began to take shape after the 2008 season when owners were planning to vote on an expanded season of 17 to 18 games. This announcement occurred at an NFL owners meeting in March of 2009 as reported by the New York Times. The 18 game season issue began to really heat up in September, 2010 when the Indianapolis Colts president, Bill Polian, announced to the world that the 18 game season was a "fait accompli" on his weekly radio show.

A big wrinkle surfaced this season over the plans to expand the number of regular season games when the amount of ferocious helmet to helmet hits became too ferocious, and knocked out too many star players. The fact that we have had two high profile former players, Andre Waters and Dave Duerson, commit suicide over head trauma issues these past three years serves as a compelling statement that adding games to an already very dangerous sport is not in the best interests of the players.

The players already know the risks of injuries, and how they linger long after they have left the game. I had a good friend many years ago in San Francisco who worked for a former 49er star, Charlie Krueger, who in the early 1980s owned a liquor store with a great wine selection. Paul, my friend, came to know Charlie pretty well over the years while he worked perfecting his wine tasting skills. One thing Paul knew from the outset of his employment there was that Charlie Krueger endured extensive pain every day and could barely walk.

At the time I was working in San Francisco, and Paul was doing double duty between Tower Records and Charlie's liquor store, Mr. Krueger was suing the NFL and the San Francisco 49ers for failing to let him know the severity of the injuries he suffered while playing. Charlie actually won a judgment with a decent settlement for his day in court, and is still alive. The guy has always been one of the toughest men on the planet. He should never have had to go through what his organization put him through. Click on my little link to get the full details of what this 49er great went through. It is quite a story, but certainly not rare you can look across the Bay at what Jim Otto endures, or in Pittsburgh and what Mike Webster endured, and so on.

Another factor in these the negotiations over lengthening the NFL season, and trimming the amounts of money the players receive, is how long the average NFL player lives. It might surprise some of you who do not follow the sporting world to know that the life expectancy for the average NFL player is only 55 years. The St. Peterburg Times reported back in 2006 that for every year in the NFL a player can subtract three years off his life expectancy. Fortunately for the NFL, and its players, the average career stay in the League is only three and a half years. Not even long enough to get a pension and medical coverage after you retire. I might add, with injury preconditions health insurance for the already afflicted is very expensive, and difficult to find in America.

There are other issues at play in the standoff, such as rookie pay scales and better benefits to former players who are strapped by a pension that does not pay enough to cover costs of living and medical care. Most fans are in the same boat as the retired NFL players these days.   

The NFL owners opted out of the last collective bargaining agreement in 2008. Many of them felt they made a big mistake in signing the last bargaining agreement, which was done with Paul Tagliabue as Commissioner, and the late Gene Upshaw as the head of the NFLPA.

The game of professional football has never been more popular. Television ratings for the past two Super Bowls are the highest for any television show ever broadcast. The majority of the owners are worth at least one billion dollars, and the game has certainly been financially rewarding to each and every family who owned a team. With all that money, and with all the perks that go with all the prestige of NFL ownership, why are billionaires so upset over the current financial arrangement with the players who have performed so well in the near two decades since the first honest collective bargaining agreement was struck?

This work stoppage for all the talk about the money, or at least the near term money, is strictly about power. The owners demand they be recognized as the sole authority on everything that has to do with professional football in America. The ownership group certainly knows the work story on the street. Union membership in the USA now stands at under 12%. There are now more union workers in government than in the private sector, even though the private sector roughly employs a little more than five times than does the government. According to the US Government  Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) only 6.9% of the private sector workforce was unionized and the highest age group of membership was for people aged 55-64. The lowest total was found in the youngest age demographic 16-24.

Although it will be very difficult for the owners to cry over lost profits at this stage, and none of them will be moving from their palatial estates into more modest quarters anytime soon, the anti-union stance we have seen throughout the country with public unions and their pensions being hammered by conservatives everywhere  has the NFL owners smelling blood on this issue in my opinion.

The players to avoid a lockout must decertify their union. All teams voted on this procedural move over the course of the last season, and unanimously voted to go through this process should collective bargaining breakdown. A lockout forces restraint of trade and lawsuits will follow. It is where we are today with papers filed and awaiting court dates, and ultimately, which court will decide the matter.

If public opinion had any influence it would be hard to bet against the players. They can always wheel out former stars like Willie Wood who can no longer walk, or John Mackey the first head of the NFLPA, who now no longer knows who he is.  But, public opinion does not count for much these days, because public opinion is always determined by what questions get asked.

Are you in favor of taxes?

Are you in favor of the best public education for your children?