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“Record companies.” It’s become an epithet: institutions, most often managed by white males, reviled by musicians and consumers and now, it seems, the primary example of the capital enterprise so proud or blind that it can’t adapt to changing conditions to save its life. It’s hard to conceive of a time when a record company inspired fan mail, critical and business-press encomiums and credit as a significant motor of culture change.
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After some fits and starts (B-sides for the Turtles, a bandleader gig with the warring Everly Brothers), Warren Zevon’s attempt at a music career had fizzled. He had to be lured back from Hemingway-esque exile in Spain by his friend Jackson Browne to make this debut releas...
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I'll admit to being a sentimental fool, especially when it comes to seasonal long-players. Which is to say, many among this list comprised the soundtrack to my own, probably re-colored adolescence, when the world sparkled with the light of a lot of folks and situations that just aren't around anymore. But the music is neither age- nor era-specific. Listen.
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Forget John, Paul, George and Ringo. Forget Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono. Forget George Martin and his creative son Giles. Forget Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté and his team of mental (and physical) acrobats.
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This is a mess. It's an entertaining, often infuriating read and it dead-ends just as any ideological manifesto must. The idea that rock music dies in 1976 is as random and dull as saying it died in 1972, 1983, 1994, 2000. Yeah, ok?
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In an early 1967 article on the San Francisco scene, Village Voice critic Richard Goldstein remarked that the Grateful Dead "sound like live thunder." Fair enough. In those days, live Dead did rumble and roar, shaking windows and rattling walls like few other groups. But what about thunder's white-hot, cut-and-run companion?
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Jimmy Hughes' name doesn't turn up in too many discussions of Southern soul these days, but he was there at the beginning. In fact, his "Steal Away," the second hit for producer-engineer Rick Hall after Arthur Alexander's "You Better Move On," was the beginning of the Muscle Shoals sound.
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It should go without saying that Hank Williams was a genius. An absolute master. What Miles Davis is to jazz. What Bob Dylan is to songwriting. What Bruce Springsteen is to live performance.
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When compiling any list of favorites, more worthy items are left off than put on. Unless it is something like "ten favorite squash casseroles." The cowardly way to get around this sin of omission is by casually mentioning some of the items you are unable to list.
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On The Corner
