Fantasy Rock Band

Just stare at that chart in all its trivial rock’n’roll glory.

As arbitrary as the chosen musicians and their corresponding “salaries” might be, and countless arguments can be made about who’s missing and who’s under/overpriced, I’m still fascinated by this! [We could make 5 or 10 different salary charts based on this same concept, but as you can see, @MattNorlander made this one, so credit to him and send him any of your complaints.]

A few things are keeping me from making a final decision on a line up. Should I just try to make the salary work under the $25 cap, or also consider how the styles/playing fits together? Just like in sports, perhaps more so, chemistry can be as important as talent. But, this is fantasy. I think it’s safe to assume we are getting each of these guys at their peak, and not current (and in some cases, dead) state. Is it a requirement of this pointless fictional game to spend the full $25? What about getting credit/points for spending less?

My day is shot.

One inherent flaw is the idea of strictly defining the guitarists as either “Lead” or “Rhythm” guitarists. Sure, guys like Keith Richards and Neil Young are more known for riffage than shredding, but that’s not all they can do. Jimmy Page is listed as Rhythm but I’m pretty sure he’s capable of playing Lead. On the flipside, the top Lead Guitarist is Jimi Hendrix, but he’s more than capable of playing a Rhythm role as well. Same for George Harrison (listed as the cheapest “Lead” option, perhaps because we often think of him as a peaceful strum-along type).

So that leads (LEADS, see what I did there?) to more questions: should I pick 2 very versatile guitarists so they each fill both rhythm and lead duties? Or go for a more defined rhythm-lead combo? We’ll play with some lineup options later, but thought it should be noted that the guitar slots are tougher to define than Drums or Bass.

“Frontman” seems easily defined, but there’s some basic flaws with that slot too. Are women eligible? (In fact, there are no women anywhere on this chart, so that’s another general complaint to be launched elsewhere on behalf of Janis Joplin, Kim Gordon, Chrissie Hynde, and Ann & Nancy Wilson.) And are we judging/choosing our Frontman on vocal abilities alone or does stage presence play into it? Again, chemistry comes into play, how will a given Frontman’s voice sound with a given supergroup of musicians? If you choose some hard-rockin metal-leaning musicians, then Axl Rose might be a better choice than, say, Bono or Mick Jagger. But I’d trust Bono and Jagger to actually show up to the gigs and perform on time, and in general I don’t think I’d want Axl Rose in any band I was putting together.

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Lefties

I am right-handed. I throw a ball right-handed, when I used to actually use a pen and paper I wrote right-handed, I kick right-handed, punch right-handed, and play drums right-handed. But I play guitar left-handed. It’s odd, I know. When I was 13 years old and just beginning my excursion into learning the instrument the most common advice I received from other players was “practice” and “learn how to play right-handed.” I did the first, never bothered with the second.

At the time I didn’t understand why anyone would actually care if I played lefty or righty. Now I realize why: do you know how hard it is to find a left-handed guitar and/or accessory options? They are out there, of course, and I have obviously been able to purchase quite a few in my day. But walk into most any music store and you will undoubtedly see dozens upon dozens of guitars, 97% of which are right-handed (you might find a few lefties in the mix; usually shitty, low-level Strat and Les Paul knock-offs). You would think, considering some of the all-time great players have been left-handed, we wouldn’t be so ‘discriminated’ against. Is it wrong that I find some pleasurable ironic humor in situations where right-handed players are in my midst without their guitars and they can’t play mine because it’s “backwards”? Call it cosmic payback, musician karma, whatever. Come on, I can at least pick up a righty and throw together some chords. Probably because I have spent my entire playing life surrounded by you backward-ass right-handed players.

Which leads me to the reason I am even writing this post: to celebrate the influence that some of rock and rolls lefties have brought us. I bring you, what I feel is, a list of some of the most-influential guitar players of all time. And guess what? They are all lefties!

The Grammys: Don’t Believe The Hype

It’s been almost a quarter century since Public Enemy famously asked “Who gives a fuck about a goddamn Grammy?” on their classic album It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, and we’re still referencing that line every year when we write these reminders that the Grammys are garbage.

Everyone knows it’s an industry-insider’s popularity contest; an annual pat on the backs for the big boys; a reason to roll out a red carpet and sell TV ads. So I won’t waste too much time rehashing and chronicling all the reasons to ignore the Grammys. If you still need evidence, this is a great list of some of the all-time snubs at the Grammys. There are countless great artists who’ve never won or been nominated, but I’ll simply rest my case with this list of just some of the most famous musicians who never took home a statue:

Beach Boys
Bjork
Bob Marley
Chuck Berry
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Curtis Mayfield
Diana Ross
Gram Parsons
Grateful Dead
Janis Joplin
Jimi Hendrix
Led Zeppelin
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Parliament and/or Funkadelic
Nas
Notorious B.I.G.
Queen
Run DMC
Rush
Sam Cooke
Sly and the Family Stone
Talking Heads
The Byrds
The Doors
The Kinks
The Sex Pistols
The Who
Tupac Shakur

Meanwhile, Phil Collins has won 8 times. Oh, and Public Enemy never won one either…

NFL to Exhume Hendrix for Next Super Bowl Halftime

The NFL is looking to partner with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and other groups to fund a billion-dollar project to exhume Jimi Hendrix and bring him back to life to perform at next year’s Super Bowl halftime show.

After the horrifying debacle that was the Black Eyed Peas attempt at a musical performance, the league has set aside large sums of money freed up following their off-season revenue dispute with the players in hopes that they could make next year’s show better.

Coming back from the dead to play halftime?

“We looked into the idea of trying to get John Lennon,” one league source told us, “and we actually spoke to Yoko Ono, but she said something about getting a million people to stand in a straight line from some sacred Scandinavian territory to Iceland or something. I had no clue what she was talking about. We checked some maps, it can’t be done.”

The catalyst for this expensive and first-of-its-kind project was the abominable showing by the pop group Black Eyed Peas at Super Bowl XLV. ACME Entertainment Solutions, a group that measures this kinda stuff with ratings and surveys and something called Aggregate Blog Reaction, came out with its findings recently and rated the Black Eyed Peas performance “Fucking Horrible.”

With a Lennon deal unlikely, the committee contacted Janie Hendrix, the sister of the late guitarist and executor of his estate. “She was great,” according to the league source. “I mean she just started giving us a routing number and asking where to sign. Although there’s not much in the way of new unreleased songs in Jimi’s vault, Janie’s promised that they’d be able to come up with a release to coincide with the Super Bowl. And of course if everything works out with the science part of bringing him back to life, we all look forward to meeting Jimi. We’re big fans.”

What Ever Happened To The Guitar Solo?

Guitar Face

The other day, fellow future BumsLogic blogger Mike Eddy and I were having one of our many conversations about music. Over time, the topic turned to the lack of the great “Guitar God” in modern music. Don’t get us wrong, there are dozens of incredible, capable, groundbreaking guitars players around today–too many to list here–it’s just that at some point it ceased to be cool to play a guitar solo and/or be considered a “Guitar God.” In mainstream/classic rock the last undisputed leader was Eddie Van Halen. And that was back in the 80’s! Slash, Tom Morello, and more recently, Jack White, have seemed to inherit the role since. Those players are all rooted in classic rock styles, and while technically and creatively proficient in their playing, they don’t carry the declaration of “God” such as Clapton, Page, Hendrix, Santana, Eddie, etc. once did before them.

I played a house party gig in Washington, DC a couple of years ago and after we finished our set I had a quick conversation with a younger kid who had just watched us play. It went something like this:

NiceGuyDC: Hey man, really enjoyed your band. Cool songs.
Jaded: Thanks. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening.
NiceGuyDC: I’ll tell you what, it was kinda interesting watching you play guitar.
Jaded: Oh yea? Why’s that?
NiceGuyDC: You are definitely the first guitar player I’ve ever seen in a DC rock band that bends notes while playing.
Jaded: Ha, yea…guess so.
NiceGuyDC: You just don’t hear much of that anymore.
Jaded: No you don’t. Maybe it’s cause I’m not ashamed to admit how much I bite off Jimmy Page.

Before I move on, let me just say that there are plenty of bands/guitar players from DC that “bend notes.” I think what NiceGuyDC was trying to say was that the guitar players in today’s popular rock bands don’t play solos.  It’s not that they lack the skills or ability, it’s that they just choose not to. The guitar solo has become a sign of self-indulgence and should only be used when adding swashing effects to a two note repetitive wail.  Don’t even dare take on an extended improvisational solo outside of the jam band circuit these days, that is, unless you want to be called a jam band (Sonic Youth notwithstanding).

An Open Letter To Mr. Classic Rock Radio Programmer Guy

This logo is as unimaginative as the playlist.

Since your station announces that it’s family owned and locally operated (with the tag line bragging “Programmed IN Baltimore, FOR Baltimore”), I figured you’re not some computer-generated playlist mandated from a corporate office and you’d enjoy some feedback.

It seems you have a borderline-obsessive fascination with The Eagles, Steve Miller Band, and Bob Seger. It’s not healthy, and it’s starting to hurt my ears. They’re not the absolute worst bands in the world, and I realize that as a Classic Rock Radio station you should offer them on your menu. But playing them each twice an hour is a bit much. I don’t care what your records and logs might say, I swear every time I get in my car, the next song is the goddamn Eagles. Hey, I like a bunch of Seger’s tunes, but jeez, do people really want to hear him that often? Can you please start giving some of his carries to John Mellencamp and Tom Petty instead? And most of Steve Miller Band’s stuff is just way overplayed considering it was never really that great.

Also, I wanted to let you know that both the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin have more than 5 songs each. Seriously. You should really check out their whole catalog, you’re gonna love it. Again, I realize that the Stones and Zeppelin are your bread and butter (and rightfully so) but can we go a bit deeper than Stairway and Satisfaction? I know you already murdered Led Zeppelin years ago, but it’s not too late to breathe some life back into them.

I do need to thank you for reminding me how good some of those songs by Heart in the 70s were. And I forgot how bad their mid-80s stuff was, so please stop playing “What About Love,”  “Never,” and “These Dreams,” and stick to the “Baracuda” and the one about the guy with the magic hands. Oh, and I really appreciate you letting me know that Journey and Lynyrd Skynyrd had a baby named .38 Special. Congrats.

The Top 10 Best Live Albums

These Top 10 Lists are impossible. I don’t know why we subject ourselves to doing them, but we do. And picking the Top 10 Best Live Albums is a particularly tough one, as easy as it might seem on the surface.

It’s hard enough just to get the performance/recording of actual live albums right, let alone properly assessing them in some form of a list. There’s always that impossible tightrope walk between the best performances and the hit songs; between the idea of releasing one complete show and mixing together the best sounding tracks from different nights. Depending on the band, and the expectations of their listeners, there are a myriad of stumbling blocks and inevitable drawbacks to the pursuit of a good live album.

How did this guy not make the list?

It’s an oxymoron within itself, the live album. Truly LIVE music isn’t really live when you listen back to it later. At its worst, it’s simply the songs you know but with canned crowd noise. But at its best, it can actually convey the energy and joy of the original performance (just as a “studio album” can capture a great take, that was technically played “live,” even if just in front of 3 engineers and not 3,000 screaming fans).

The difficult thing in identifying what I would deem the Top 10 Best Live Albums, for me, is the fact that it could be argued that the bands I most admire as live acts haven’t really made a truly great live album. Prince, The Roots, Radiohead, The Who, Black Crowes, and Led Zeppelin have all made attempts, but for some reason they haven’t quite nailed it yet on an official live release. (Maybe The Who and Zeppelin have come close, but for some reason they lack a flawless go-to set). U2, while they’ll make the honorable mentions list with Under a Blood Red Sky, I still feel like they are missing a career-spanning (but not too monstrous) live set.

The Year Rock Dies

If your age is 28 or older and you are reading this then you are probably not a rock star.

So you are obviously not dead.

I am going to be the umpteenth person to write about this subject: The Long List of Musicians Who Die At The Age of 27. I do so because there was a time when I thought to myself: “If you ever ‘make it’ in music then you will die at the age of 27.”

It was because of the Hendrix/Joplin/Morrison triage that I actually thought like this, like it was somehow an honor, or a rite of passage into rock legend status. You should die a young, usually substance abuse related, death.

At the age of 27 of course.

Then came along ol Kurt and his suicide which brought a more modern member to the list. It had been a while since any rock star that famous had died the 27 death. Almost 20 years later Amy Winehouse joins the group. What each have in common is obvious, but it does make you wonder if these artists were thinking something similar themselves? Like, man, I gotta take advantage of everything all of the time. Full indulgence. Because it’s either expected from me, available, part of the lifestyle, or a serious issue I have to deal with in the public eye. I’m not saying this isn’t pressure that 98% of musicians trying to make it wouldn’t want to have. It’s like a baseball fan saying how much they would love an athletes lifestyle, to get paid that much for just playing a game.

What If Jimi Hendrix Didn’t Die?

An awesome painting by David Choe

It’s always fun to think about various “what ifs?” in both pop culture and history. What if The Beatles didn’t break up? What if someone went back to 1931 Germany and killed Hitler? What if…

In an ode to Chuck Klosterman’s “What If Kurt Cobain Didn’t Die?” piece I am inclined to offer a timeline of events (mostly musical) that would have occurred if Jimi Hendrix didn’t die in 1970.

APRIL 1971
After the release of Cry of Love, in which Hendrix tried his best to fuse the Band of Gypsies with The Experience, Jimi’s manager Chas Chandler is contacted by Miles Davis. The two schedule a summer jam session at Electric Ladyland in New York City. The recording is never officially released but becomes a popular bootleg that shows Jimi moving into more toned down, yet improvisational-based funk style of playing guitar. There are talks of future sessions that would include Sly Stone, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Eddie Hazel.

JANUARY 1972
Jimi officially declares the end of The Experience after forgoing the release of First Rays of the New Rising Sun in favor of releasing an album and touring with Miles Davis. The album, Onyx, reaches #8 on the charts with a sound that Robert Christgau reported as, “a perfect blend of each virtuoso’s best elements: Jimi’s raw yet fluent guitar playing mixed with Mile’s sparse and moody tones.” Their back up band, consisting of Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Elvin Jones, and Stevie Winwood, tour America with Sly & The Family Stone as the opening act. Their single, “Broken Windows,” reaches the top ten in both America and England.

Top 10 Best 3-Consecutive Album Runs

I think the title is clear enough: these are the 10 best 3-consecutive album runs. The only general guidelines were: no live albums, no ep’s, no greatest hits/collections, and of course they had to be 3 in a row by the same artist. here’s the list, in no particular order:

1. Bob Dylan
Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde. If you don’t automatically nod your head in knowing concurrence with the greatness of these three releases, stop wasting time on the computer and go buy these CD’s. And to think that 40 years later he posted Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times. A solid run that late in a career, but not great enough to make this list.

2. Rolling Stones
Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street. Steven Van Zandt (Silvio Dante, E Street guitarist, and underground garage rock DJ extraordinaire) once said, “Beggars Banquet to Exile on Main Street make up the greatest run of albums in history—all done in three and a half years.” Sorry Little Steven, we only have room for three on this list.

3. The Beatles
Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Or: Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, and the white album. Or: Help!, Rubber Soul, and Revolver… or… you get the idea.

4. Jimi Hendrix
Are You Experienced?, Axis Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland. Wow. Three amazing albums that each stand on their own as bonafide “desert island classics” on their own. Not bad considering this was almost his whole studio output during his lifetime. Incredible considering this was done within about two years.

5. Neil Young
Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, and Harvest. Once again, with an artist this good you could pick a different three. I picked these.