Transformer: The Other Faces of Lou Reed

Ecstasy (Lou Reed album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Charles Fairchild

The plaudits have arrived very quickly for Lou Reed, who has died aged 71.

He is clearly regarded as a towering figure, credited with playing a central role in creating one of the most influential albums in rock history, 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico.

He also helped prepare the ground for the emergence of both glam and punk. Throughout his life, Reed always seemed to be the grumpy centre of a zeitgeist.

Oddly, my immediate memory of Lou Reed is of him sitting on a Honda scooter saying: “Hey. Don’t settle for walking.”

I saw him on television when I was a teenager, back when you couldn’t watch things over and over again on your phone. There he was on our suburban American television and then he was gone. It was almost like it didn’t happen at all.

It did happen.

Looking at the ad again on YouTube this morning, I was struck by how normal Reed looked, how outwardly healthy and considered he appeared when he was sitting on that red scooter as his immortal track Walk on the Wild Side hummed along underneath, accompanying jump cut scenes of New York at night.

One of the comments under the video was a simple, perplexed wail from “daveny1979”, posted a few months ago: “THIS HAPPENED????”

The Velvet Underground & Nico. oddsock

It did.

There seems to be a need among many of Reed’s obituarists to turn him into the Great Artist “we” always knew he was. His band was the most influential, his work the most daring, his feelings the most felt.

But it seems to me that Reed’s biography, the simple facts of his life alone, should complicate the attribution of any such simple superlatives. He was a much more interesting artist than most of these merely laudatory portraits suggest.

Coney Island Baby

In a recently reissued copy of Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story, there is a passage that seems to capture something important about Reed.

Was Lou Reed a Great Artist lionised in books, film and obituaries or a deft and adaptable shape-shifter? Steve Rhodes

The book is more or less just a very interesting collection of a lot of very long quotes from people who were there in New York when all those events we think we know so much about were happening.

There is one passage from Tony Conrad, now regarded by many as a very important artist, but who was then just a member of an almost entirely notional pseudo rock-and-roll band. Conrad catches something about Reed that seems crucial to explaining a lot of what followed.

Conrad describes how, when he and The Velvet Underground founding member John Cale lived together at 56 Ludlow Street in Manhattan:

[w]e had been working with LaMonte [Young] for some time doing very austere regimented things which were pretty intense.

Reed’s high-school yearbook. Wikimedia Commons

After a hard day’s work at the coalface of avant-garde aesthetics, Conrad says he used to like to come home and play Hank Williams and blast selections from his “huge 45 collection”. He says that he and Cale found “something very liberating about the whole rock thing”.

It just so happened their next door neighbour knew some guys who ran a record label out on Coney Island who said, “they were looking for some guys with long hair to form a rock band”. At one of his neighbour’s parties, they met the guys who ran the label, Pickwick Records.

In the course of what Conrad describes as an “interview”, they agreed to go:

out to this weird cinderblock warehouse … packed floor to ceiling with records and in the back these sleazeballs and weirdos wearing polyester suits had a little hole-in-the-wall room with a couple of Ampex tape recorders in it.

Conrad continues:

What had happened was they’d gone back there with one of their staff writers, gone crazy one night and recorded a couple of their songs. They’d decided they wanted to release them, but needed a band to cover, because the executives and creepos had made the record.

Conrad and his bandmates listened to the record, called The Ostrich, and agreed to “play some gigs to promote the record”.

The next weekend, he remembers, “they came around and picked us up in a station wagon and John Cale, Walter De Maria and I began going out to these gigs trying to break the record” (that’s the celebrated minimalist sculptor Walter De Maria; apparently he played drums).

When the car arrived, they discovered that their band had a fourth member, “the guy who’d actually written and recorded the song - that was Lou Reed. He was 22.”

Shape-shifter

Reading the multitude of memoirs and exegeses from New York in the 1960s, one too easily gets the sense of massive tectonic plates smashing into one another, forming new landmasses in the process. We lose a lot if we only rely on these received narratives.

Lou Reed was a complex character. He was just as able to work his way through a fly-by-night organisation like Pickwick Records as place himself at the heart of Andy Warhol’s complex and sometimes tough social and artistic world.

The Velvet Underground, and the larger enfolding spectacles of The Exploding Plastic Inevitable and The Factory, were not just places where art got made. They were a fashionable, high-profile, and exclusive milieu.

Whether hustling records at the margins of the music industry or working with some of the most celebrated artists of his time, Reed was always particularly capable at placing himself at the centre of things and making himself matter to them.

He will be missed.

Further reading:
The art of rock remembrance: RIP Lou Reed

Charles Fairchild does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.


This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

VIDEOS: Hear Newly-Released Material from the Lost Acetate Version of The Velvet Underground & Nico (1966)

by Colin Marshall, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2013/01/hear_newly_released_material_from_ithe_velvet_underground_nicosi_lost_acetate_version_1966.html

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on literature, film, cities, Asia, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.



While the first Velvet Underground album may only have sold 30,000 copies, everyone who bought one started a band.

You know, if you have even a faint acquaintance with rock history, that that well-worn observation comes from producer, artistic innovator, and “non-musician” musician Brian Eno.

And whether you could get into it or not, you’ve no doubt heard at least parts of that first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, the 1967 release that brought together such soon-to-be rock luminaries as Lou Reed, John Cale, and the titular German vocalist/ Warhol Superstar Nico.

The whole album, in fact, appeared under Warhol’s aegis, and like most works associated with him, it tends to push opinions far in one direction or the other.

The Velvet Undergound & Nico may still move you to found a rock band - or to scrap your interest in rock altogether - 45 years after its first release.



I refer to the record’s “first release” because it’s recently undergone a couple more, both of which originate in a version never even intended for market.

“In 2002, a fellow paid 75 cents at a New York City flea market for a curious acetate recording of the Velvet Underground,” reports Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz. “Turns out, the acetate contained early recorded takes and mixes of songs in different form.”

That man had stumbled upon the coveted Scepter Studios acetate version of the album that launched 30,000 bands, bootleg files of which soon began circulating on the net.

The acetate received a legitimate release last year as part of The Velvet Underground & Nico‘s “45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition,” and you can hear cuts from it, like “Heroin” at the top of this post and “All Tomorrow’s Parties” just above.

For Velvet Underground purists, of course, only hearing the acetate disc itself will do. They’ll have a hard time doing so - it last changed hands for $25,200 - but luckily they can now get at least one step closer with its brand new vinyl release.

VIDEOS: 50 Years On, Dylan's "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" Still Speaks Truth to Power

by Erika Lundahl, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/fifty-years-on-bob-dylan-s-lonesome-death-of-hattie-carroll-still-speaks-truth-to-power

Erika Lundahl wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Erika is an editorial intern at YES!


Fifty years ago today, a 22-year-old Bob Dylan sat down to record "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" at Studio A in New York City.

The song is a mostly factual account of the then-recent murder of African American barmaid Hattie Carroll by wealthy tobacco farmer William Zantzinger.

The song appeared on "The Times They Are A-Changing," an album full of remarkable works. But what makes "Hattie Carroll" special, from today's vantage point, is its topical nature and continuing relevance.

The song comments directly on the social problems of its time, and younger songwriters have adopted its melody and structure to talk about today's injustices.

The verses of the song - each of which consists of a single, detail-heavy sentence - lay out a slightly simplified version of the facts of the case, while the final chorus provides Dylan’s commentary on the immorality of the event:

But you who philosophize disgrace
And criticize all fears,
Bury the rag deep in your face,
For now is the time for your tears.

"The story I took out of a newspaper," Dylan told talk-show host Steve Allen. "I used it for something I wanted to say."

Songwriters have tended to leave that chorus intact while adjusting the verses to fit modern-day issues.

In 2006, British musician and activist Billy Bragg gave the Hattie Carroll treatment to Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist, who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003.

Like Dylan before him, Bragg uses the verses to weave together sharply reported details of Corrie's case with commentary on the political context:

Rachel Corrie had 23 years
She was born in the town of Olympia, Washington
A skinny, messy, list-making chain-smoker
Who volunteered to protect the Palestinian people
Who had become non-persons in the eyes of the media
So that people were suffering and no one was seeing
Or hearing or talking or caring or acting ...

(You can download a free copy of the song at the Guardian, and listen to it in the video below).


Then, just last year, Massachusetts songwriter Jonah Mantranga became the latest singer to borrow Dylan's melody and chorus, this time applying it to the case of Trayvon Martin.

His song puts George Zimmerman in the role of William Zantzinger, showing an eerie set of parallels between the two cases.

George Zimmerman, who had 28 years
Has a dad who's a judge who keeps speaking for him
And over the years he's tried to protect him
With his high-court relations in the politics of Florida

Matranga says he was inspired to write the song by his "radically inclusive" Methodist church where he sings in the choir. In an email, Mantranga wrote that "the whole community addressed [the Trayvon case] head-on, speaking out against profiling."


Taken together, the three stories - of Hattie Carroll, Rachel Corrie, and Trayvon Martin - build a story that transcends lines of race, gender, and identity, illuminating structural injustice and appealing to a higher conscience.

The legacy of "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" points to the lasting power of music to bring meaning to senseless tragedies.

Jimi Hendrix's Shy Genius Explored in New Documentary

(Pic: GF Page, EMP Museum/Authentic Hendrix LLC)

by Marco della Cava, USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2013/10/25/jimi-hendrix-pbs-american-masters-miami-pop-festival/3182409/ 

 

A new PBS documentary unearths early friends and paints a portrait of a guy who just wanted to play his guitar.

In the waning hours of his young life, Jimi Hendrix was photographed in London sitting outdoors at a table set for tea for two.

Only the guest resting in the other chair wasn't a friend, musician or lover. It was a guitar.

That image, taken not long before Hendrix's death at age 27 on Sept. 18, 1970, of drug-related asphyxiation, encapsulates the thrust of Jimi Hendrix - Hear My Train A Comin', a new two-hour documentary.

After a short theatrical run that starts tonight in Philadelphia, the rock doc will air as part of PBS' American Masters series on Nov. 5 (9 p.m. ET, check local listings).

Also out Nov. 5 from Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings are an expanded version of the film on DVD and Blu-ray ($13.98-$24.98), as well as a recording of previously unreleased live tracks from Hendrix's gig at the Miami Pop Festival in 1968 ($11.98 CD, $27.98 audiophile vinyl), rare footage of which is included in the documentary.

"Everyone talks about the women or the drugs, but the most important thing to this man was his music," says director Bob Smeaton, whose rock-doc credits include Festival Express and The Beatles Anthology.

"He was a shy guy, but as (Paul) McCartney says (in the film), when Jimi was on stage, 'it's like he was let out of jail.' "

Smeaton scored not only the enthusiastic Beatle, who gave him more than twice the promised time ("you could tell he really loved Jimi - they were both left-handed, and Jimi did Sgt. Pepper in concert the week after that album came out") but also colleagues (Steve Winwood), admirers (Dweezil Zappa) and a number of friends and lovers who haven't appeared on film before, including his pre-fame, Harlem-era paramour Faye Pridgeon.

"A lot of documentaries tend to feature famous people who didn't really know the person, so we wanted to make sure we had people who really knew Jimi," says Janie Hendrix, the Seattle guitarist's stepsister and president of Experience Hendrix, which oversees the legend's ever-expanding catalog.

Adds Smeaton: "These people were attracted to him before he was a rock star, when he was struggling but still had that magnetism."

The result is an intimate portrait of a shy genius who was never without his guitar, strapping it on first thing in the morning and often falling asleep with it at night.

Such dedication yielded a searing, blues-based sound that was heading in new directions when Hendrix took the stage in Florida in 1968. The release includes 11 songs from that gig, which was recorded live by Hendrix's engineer Eddie Kramer.

"It's a little bit of history," Janie says of Jimi Hendrix Experience: Miami Pop Festival, a concert that was put on by Michael Lang, whose next big production was called Woodstock.

"Songs start out one way and start morphing into other songs," best exemplified in a version of Foxy Lady that quickly abandons the radio hit for a psychedelic flight of fancy.

The Jimi train will keep rolling: Next up are DVD releases of famous concert dates, and Janie is in talks with Hollywood producers about a long-awaited biopic about her brother. "It's really happening," she says. "But it'll be done right."

What any big screen version of Hendrix's comet-like life would have to capture is the musician's "incredible sense of mystery," says Smeaton.

"Going into this (documentary), I always felt Hendrix was a bit of a mystery to me. And now after learning so much about him, I still feel he's a mystery. Which is what makes him forever interesting."

VIDEOS: William S. Burroughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Original Bands

by Josh Jones, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/william-s-burroughs-sings-r-e-m-and-the-doors-backed-by-the-original-bands.html

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness



The nineties saw a lot of alternative bands not only wear their influences on their sleeves, but also bring them up on stage and into the studio.

William S. Burroughs was one such luminary, appearing on Tom Waits’ 1993 The Black Rider, a collaboration with Kurt Cobain titled “Priest They Called Him,” and September Songs, a 1997 Kurt Weill tribute album featuring the likes of PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, and Lou Reed.

In 1996, Burroughs got together with R.E.M. for a cover of their “Star Me Kitten” from ‘92’s Automatic for the People. In the track above, hear Burroughs recite Michael Stipe’s lyrics over the band’s instrumentation.

The recording comes from an album called Songs in the Key of X: Music From and Inspired By the X-Files, which included Frank Black, Soul Coughing, Foo Fighters, and PM Dawn.

Burroughs introduces his rendition by citing a much more classical source for his cabaret approach to the song: Marlene Dietrich. “Not one of my favorite people,” he mumbles, dourly. See perhaps why.



Burroughs didn’t only work musically with contemporary alt bands in the ’90s, and he had a long, illustrious recording career several decades prior.

In a mash-up that brings together a band closer to Burroughs’ prime, hear the beat writer’s rhythmic deadpan of Jim Morrison’s “Is Everybody In?,” backed by the surviving Doors.

Despite the original players, it’s still a very ‘90s production (though released in 2000).

From a Doors tribute album called Stoned Immaculate, the song sits, somewhat uncomfortably, next to covers and interpretations by Stone Temple Pilots, The Cult, Creed, Smash Mouth, Days of the New, and Train, and a bit cozier next to stalwarts like John Lee Hooker, Exene Cervenka, and Bo Diddley.

Burroughs’ is the stand-out track among many that also feature the Doors as a backing band, although in an acid-jazz production - with samples of soul music and Morrison himself - that may sound a bit dated.

But Burroughs is as dry as ever, underlining the sheer creepiness of Morrison’s poetry in a tribute that also highlights the debt Morrison owed him.

VIDEO: Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beatnik Film Stars Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, Shot by Robert Frank

by Colin Marshall, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2012/10/ipull_my_daisyi_improvisational_beatnik_film_stars_jack_kerouac_and_allen_ginsberg_shot_by_robert_frank.html

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.



Sure, you could experience the Beat sensibility on film by watching The Beat Generation. But why settle for that high-gloss Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature treatment when you can get an unadulterated half-hour chunk of the real thing above, in Pull My Daisy?

Both films came out in 1959, but only the latter comes from the lens of photographer Robert Frank, he of the famous photobook The Americans. And only the latter features the unconventional performing talents of Allen Ginsberg, David Amram, Delphine Seyrig, and Jack Kerouac.

That Kerouac himself provides all the narration assures us we’re watching a movie fully committed to the Beat mindset.

“Early morning in the universe,” he says to set the opening scene. “The wife is gettin’ up, openin’ up the windows, in this loft that’s in the Bowery of the Lower East Side of New York. She’s a painter, and her husband’s a railroad brakeman, and he’s comin’ home in a couple hours, about five hours, from the local.”

Kerouac’s ambling words seem at first like one improvisational element of many.

In fact, they provided the production’s only element of improvisation: Frank and company took pains to light, shoot, script, and rehearse with great deliberateness, albeit the kind of deliberateness meant to create the impression of thrown-together, ramshackle spontaneity.

But if the kind of careful craft that made Pull My Daisy seems not to fit within the anarchic subcultural collective persona of the Beats, surely the premises of its story and the consequences thereof do.

The aforementioned brakeman brings a bishop home for dinner, but his exuberantly low-living buddies decide they want in on the fun.

Or if there’s no fun to be had, then, in keeping with what we might identify as Beat principles, they’ll create some of their own. Or at least they’ll create a disturbance, and where could a Beat possibly draw the line between disturbance and fun?

VIDEO: "Working Class Hero" by John Lennon

by jigowatts



As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and class less and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me

VIDEO: Jimmy Page, 13, Plays Guitar on BBC Talent Show (1957)

by Dan Colman, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2010/07/jimmy_page_13_plays_guitar_on_bbc_talent_show_1957.html


Let’s rewind the video tape to 1957. A very young Jimmy Page appears on a BBC children’s talent show to play some skiffle.

Mixing together strands of American blues, jazz, country and folk music, this style of music became all the rage in the UK during the 1950s. Lonnie Donegan got the craze going.

And it wasn’t long before John Lennon formed his own skiffle band - The Quarry Men (photo here) … later to become The Beatles.

Heading into the 60s, a maturing Jimmy Page took his music in entirely new directions, which brings us to our post last week: The Strange Tale of Dazed and Confused.

Video via LaughingSquid

VIDEO: ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’: Neil Young Plays Two Songs on The Johnny Cash Show, 1971

by Mike Springer, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/the_needle_and_the_damage_done_neil_young_plays_two_songs_on_ithe_johnny_cash_showi_in_nashville_1971.html



Here’s a scene from a classic episode of The Johnny Cash Show, with Neil Young singing a pair of deeply personal songs that he had only recently written.

“Johnny Cash on Campus” was a special edition that aired on February 17, 1971. Cash and his crew visited Vanderbilt University in Nashville to talk with students.

In the program, one of them raises the subject of drugs in the music industry, and Cash speaks briefly about his own problem with drugs before introducing Young, who sings “The Needle and the Damage Done” in front of an all-student audience at the Ryman Auditorium.

Young then puts down his guitar and moves to a piano to play “Journey Through the Past.”

It was a busy time for Young. While he was in Nashville to appear on the show he was persuaded by a local record producer to record his next album there. He began work almost immediately on what would become his masterpiece, Harvest.

On the night of the Johnny Cash Show Young invited two other guests that night, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, to go back to the studio with him afterward.

Together the three sang the backing vocals on “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man,” and Taylor played the distinctive banjo guitar part on “Old Man.”

The February 17, 1971 episode of The Johnny Cash Show is also notable for being the first time Cash performed “Man in Black.”

He got the idea for the song from his discussions with the students at Vanderbilt, and finished writing the lyrics on the day of the show. The song was so new he needed cue cards to sing the words.

Great Story: How Neil Young Introduced his Classic 1972 Album "Harvest" to Graham Nash

by Dan Colman, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/great-story-how-neil-young-introduced-his-classic-1972-album-harvest-to-graham-nash.html

Graham Nash, of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, has a new book out, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life. And that means he’s doing interviews, many interviews.

A couple of weeks ago, he spent an excellent hour on The Howard Stern Show (seriously). Next, it was off to chat with the more cerebral Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air.

In the midst of the interview (listen online here), Gross asked Nash to talk about his friendship with Neil Young, a man Nash has called “the strangest of my friends.” Just what makes him strange? Nash explains:

The man is totally committed to the muse of music. And he’ll do anything for good music. And sometimes it’s very strange. I was at Neil’s ranch one day just south of San Francisco, and he has a beautiful lake with red-wing blackbirds. And he asked me if I wanted to hear his new album, “Harvest.” And I said sure, let’s go into the studio and listen.
Oh, no. That’s not what Neil had in mind. He said get into the rowboat.
I said get into the rowboat? He said, yeah, we’re going to go out into the middle of the lake. Now, I think he’s got a little cassette player with him or a little, you know, early digital format player. So I’m thinking I’m going to wear headphones and listen in the relative peace in the middle of Neil’s lake.
Oh, no. He has his entire house as the left speaker and his entire barn as the right speaker. And I heard “Harvest” coming out of these two incredibly large loud speakers louder than hell. It was unbelievable. Elliot Mazer, who produced Neil, produced “Harvest,” came down to the shore of the lake and he shouted out to Neil: How was that, Neil?
And I swear to god, Neil Young shouted back: More barn!

To that we say, more Neil Young!

VIDEO: Jimmy Page Tells the Story of “Kashmir”

by Mike Springer, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2011/09/jimmy_page_tells_the_story_of_kashmir.html

One of the most original and distinctive songs Led Zeppelin ever recorded was the exotic, eight-and-a-half minute “Kashmir,” from the 1975 album Physical Graffiti.

In this clip from Davis Guggenheim’s film It Might Get Loud (2009), Jimmy Page explains the origins of the song to fellow guitarists Jack White and The Edge.

Then Page demonstrates it by picking up an old modified Danelectro 59DC Double Cutaway Standard guitar that he played the song with on some of Led Zeppelin’s tours (watch Kashmir live here).

In 1973, Page had been experimenting with an alternative D modal, or DADGAD, tuning often used on stringed instruments in the Middle East, when he hit upon the hypnotic, rising and falling riff.

The song came together over a period of a couple of years. John Bonham added his distinctive, overpowering drums during a two-man recording session with Page at Headley Grange.

Singer Robert Plant wrote the lyrics while he and Page were driving through the Sahara Desert in Southern Morocco (neither Page nor Plant had ever visited Kashmir, in the Himalayas).

Bassist and keyboard player John Paul Jones added the string and horn arrangements the following year.

In a 1995 radio interview with Australian journalist Richard Kingsmill, Plant recalled his experience with “Kashmir”:

It was an amazing piece of music to write to, and an incredible challenge for me. Because of the time signature, the whole deal of the song is … not grandiose, but powerful. It required some kind of epithet, or abstract lyrical setting about the whole idea of life being an adventure and being a series of illuminated moments. But everything is not what you see. It was quite a task, because I couldn’t sing it. It was like the song was bigger than me.

NEWS: Rock Hall Nominations to Yes, Zombies, Deep Purple

by abel, Psychedelic Sight: http://psychedelicsight.com/9565-rock-hall-2014/

Yes, Deep Purple and the Zombies bring a healthy dose of psychedelia to the 2014 nominees list for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Also nominated are the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, whose sonic explorations of the 1960s include the raga-rock mindblower “East-West,” and genre-spanning art rocker Peter Gabriel.

Other acts identified with the 1960s are Linda Ronstadt, the Meters, Link Wray and Cat Stevens. Yes, Gabriel and the Zombies are first-time nominees.

Yes has been a notable and puzzling omission to the Rock Hall, perceived, perhaps, as a genre snub. Last year’s induction ceremony saw Rush make the cut, though, bringing the first taste of prog rock to the institution.

Other nominees are Hall and Oates, Nirvana, the Replacements, Chic, KISS, N.W.A. and LL Cool J. Fans once again are offered a voice, however small, via a Rock Hall online poll. Yes and Deep Purple were among the top early vote getters.

Procol Harum disappeared from the Rock Hall’s shortlist after first appearing in 2012. Yes, the Rock Hall noted, fused “the cinematic soundscapes of King Crimson with the hard rock edge of the Who and the soaring harmonies and melodies of Simon and Garfunkel. … Album-side length epics like ‘Close to the Edge’ and ‘The Gates Of Delirium’ represent the (prog) genre at its absolute finest.”

Deep Purple’s “onslaught of sound along with such contemporaries as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, led rock critics to coin a new musical genre: heavy metal. … Epic chart singles ‘Smoke on the Water’ and ‘Woman From Tokyo’ sold Gibson Les Paul and Fender Stratocaster guitars in numbers that stagger the imagination.”

The Zombies’ “second and final album ‘Odessey And Oracle’ has earned its reputation … alongside such masterworks as the Beatles’ White Album and the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds.’” The Rock Hall noted the English band’s “studied, sophisticated, intricately arranged atmospherics” as well as its “triad of career-defining hits”: “She’s Not There,” “Tell Her No” and “Time Of the Season.”

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band “turned on the Fillmore generation to the pleasures of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Willie Dixon and Elmore James.” Its Eastern-influenced epic “East-West” stands high on this web site’s list of the top psychedelic songs.

Peter Gabriel, as a solo artist, “blended synthesizers and a signature gated drum sound with an emotional honesty learned from soul music to create a sensibility that would influence artists from U2 and Arcade Fire to Depeche Mode.” Genesis was inducted in 2010.

Inductees are expected to be announced in December. The ceremony will be in April, this time in New York.

VIDEOS: Deconstructing Led Zeppelin’s Classic Song ‘Ramble On’ Track by Track: Guitars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

by Mike Springer, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/deconstructing-led-zeppelins-classic-song-ramble-on-track-by-track.html

Jimmy Page’s acoustic guitar


The beauty of isolated tracks is that they allow us to hear an old piece of music in a completely new way. They give us a fresh perspective on something we thought we already knew.

Today we bring you a series of isolated tracks showing how Led Zeppelin pieced together one of its classic early songs: “Ramble On.”

The song was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and recorded in New York in the spring of 1969. Led Zeppelin was on its second tour of North America. Along the way, the band popped into various studios to lay down tracks for Led Zeppelin II.

The remainder of the album was recorded in the same fashion, between shows in Europe. “We were touring a lot,” bassist John Paul Jones wrote in the liner notes to the Led Zeppelin boxed set.

“Jimmy’s riffs were coming fast and furious. A lot of them came from onstage especially during the long improvised section of ‘Dazed and Confused.’ We’d remember the good stuff and dart into a studio along the way.”

John Paul Jones’s bass guitar


“Ramble On” is an early example of the Zeppelin hallmark of using a wide dynamic range within a single song. As the band goes back and forth between soft and loud, acoustic and electric, bassist John Paul Jones lays down a crisp outline of the song’s structure.

John Bonham’s drums


The pitter-patter drumbeat by John Bonham during the quiet parts of “Ramble On” has sparked considerable debate among drummers. Some have theorized that Bonham was hitting the sole of his shoe with drum sticks. Others say it was a plastic garbage can lid.

According to Chris Welch and Geoff Nicholls in John Bonham: A Thunder of Drums, Bonzo used his bare hands to tap out those 16th notes on an empty guitar case.

Robert Plant’s main vocals


The lyrics of “Ramble On” reflect Robert Plant’s fascination with characters and events in The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien: “‘Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor/I met a girl so fair./But Gollum and the evil one crept up/And slipped away with her.”

Led Zeppelin would include more references to Tolkien later, in songs like “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Stairway to Heaven.”

Jimmy Page’s electric rhythm guitar


Jimmy Page’s explosive electric guitar playing kicks in at about the 1:14 mark. The exact guitar used by Page on the recording is a matter of controversy.

He reportedly switched to his trademark Gibson Les Paul while recording Led Zeppelin II, but this track may have been played on the thinner-sounding Fender Telecaster he had been using since his days with the Yardbirds.

Jimmy Page’s electric lead guitar


Like all the band’s albums, Led Zeppelin II was produced by Page. Although he eventually became known for building up complex layers of guitar tracks, Page kept the lead guitar overdubs for “Ramble On” fairly simple.

Robert Plant’s backup vocals


Plant’s supplementary vocals begin at about the 1:14 mark. Plant would later say that the recording of the second album was when he began to feel sure of himself within the band. “Led Zeppelin II was very virile,” Plant told Nigel Williamson, author of The Rough Guide to Led Zeppelin.

“That was the album that was going to dictate whether or not we had the staying power and the capacity to stimulate.”

Led Zeppelin II was released in October of 1969 and rose to number one in Great Britain and America. In the four decades since, the album has sold over 12 million copies.

Though it was never released as a single, “Ramble On” was ranked #444 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

VIDEO: The Evolution of the Rock Guitar Solo: 28 Solos, Spanning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Minutes

by Mike Springer, Open Culture: 


In this fun new video from CDZA, guitarist Mark Sidney Johnson takes us on an entertaining romp through more than fifty years of the rock guitar solo, from Chuck Berry to John Mayer.

Along the way Johnson rips through a succession of famous riffs and solos by Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen, Slash ... and those are only a few from the first half of the video.

Johnson is an English multi-instrumentalist and songwriter based in New York. He works regularly as a session guitarist and plays with The Brit Pack as well as the experimental music video group CDZA, short for Collective Cadenza.

For more examples of their offbeat and innovative work, visit the CDZA Web site.
via That Eric Alper