Hmmmm….two masterful drummers born on the same day.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Mr. Richard Starkey, aka Ringo Starr, turns 70 today.  He’s still playing, and god love him for it.  He played for some group that was around in the sixties.

It’s also the birthday of The Long Afternoon’s very own beat-all, Greg Elliott.  He isn’t 70 yet, but is still playing.  And god love him for it!  (Full disclosure:  In addition to TLA, Greg plays with Cliff Turner’s Rock and Soul Revue.)

And if you’re in State College, be sure to come see Greg in action at Chronic Town on July 10.  Maybe we’ll even have some cake!

Here’s another poster promoting the show:

PDF version:

LongAfternoonJuly10

Television covered the 13th Floor Elevators’ “Fire Engine” on their live album The Blow-Up.  Probably about a million bands, including more than one that I’ve been in, have covered the Elevators’ one hit, “You’re Gonna Miss Me.”  But I’ve always thought “Slip Inside This House,” the first cut off the Elevators’ second album, Easter Everywhere, was their best moment.  Every time I hear it, I wish I’d written it.

There are so many things I love about this song, starting with the slippery Stacy Sutherland guitar riff that starts it off.  Then there’s the relentless chug of the Elevators’ rhythm section, and the otherworldly electric jug playing of Tommy Hall (here for once not sounding like a bizarre novelty but rather an integral part of the composition). At last, of course, you hear the inimitable wail of America’s own version of Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson.

But many of the Elevators’ songs combine those powerful elements.  What puts this one over the top — way, way over the top — are the lyrics.  As detailed extensively in Paul Drummond’s great biography Eye Mind, the band’s psychedelic shaman Tommy Hall tried to put his entire philosophy into this six-minute trip, and goddamn if he doesn’t almost pull it off.

(And by the way, if you haven’t already read Eye Mind, do yourself a favor and pick it up now.  Seriously, stop reading this and do it.  It’s not just a great rock book, it’s a great book period, full of unforgettable characters, unbelievable-yet-true happenings, and great insight into what psychedelia meant — and just how revolutionary and dangerous that was — in the middle of Texas circa 1966.  You don’t have to love or even like the Elevators to get a great deal of pleasure from this book.)

Of course, Tommy Hall’s philosophy was something of an acid-addled mess, and that certainly comes through loud and clear in the lyrics.  Especially at first listen, it almost seems like Erickson’s singing at random, throwing out words that barely connect.  But he throws them out with such passion, such undeniably honest belief, that you’re compelled to begin paying closer attention.

And when you do, you understand that when Roky, delivering Hall’s lyrics as Hall would never be able to himself, throws out references to Bedouin kings and four and twenty birds of Maya being baked into an atom that you polarize into existence it’s, remarkably, not as nonsensical as it would appear on the surface.

Drummond (and others) already did an excellent job of decoding the symbology that Hall incorporates in every line of the song, so I won’t rehash that here. Suffice it to say that there are layers upon layers of meaning and possible interpretations, all of which and none of which may really matter.

Maybe this song could be the centerpiece of the next Dan Brown novel.

But for all the mystery and portent and references to eastern tradition that Hall’s built into the verses, the chorus couldn’t be more clear:  “Slip into this house as you pass by,” Erickson exhorts us.  And yeah, it’s clear even without having read Eye Mind that he’s talking specifically about turning on as a shortcut to enlightenment, which is at this remove from 1967 a notion that’s, at best, quaint. Heard only in that light, “Slip Inside This House” is pure anachronism.

But “Slip Inside This House” is also talking, in more general terms, about being open to experience, about not shutting yourself down, about retaining curiosity.  About striving for a feeling of connection with others.  About finding a purpose.  About always moving forward.  About being aware that you’re alive and not just going through your days on fucking autopilot. About using your consciousness to differentiate yourself from all the other animals on the planet.

That’s a message that doesn’t get old.  So slip inside this house, and then decide.

Don’t pass it by.

Sometimes, it’s not what you play, but what you choose NOT to play that makes a song or part interesting.

So I began thinking about the guitarists I love who, by design, very deliberately AVOID filling up the soundscape. The ones who create space and let the silences between their notes and chords say as much as what they choose to play.  The ones who aren’t afraid to play a single damn note and only one, if that’s what’s called for.  So here’s my list of five masters of the sparse guitar.

As always, just my opinion, you don’t have to share it, blah blah blah.  If you haven’t heard some of these players yet, though, perhaps they’ll interest you.  If you have heard them, perhaps my comments may focus your attention on aspects of their playing you hadn’t noticed before.  Or maybe not.

Let’s find out, shall we?

5.  Tommy and Billy Robertson, Polyrock.

Yeah, it’s a twofer.  I’m not sure which of the Robertson brothers played which guitar parts in Polyrock’s work, but it really doesn’t matter because they threw the standard rockist paradigm of lead and rhythm guitar serving different functions straight out the window.  Polyrock was frequently called “minimalist,” mainly because their association with producer Phillip Glass made this an easy tag to hang on them.  But it’s also fundamentally lazy — Polyrock were many things, but minimalist wasn’t one of them.  Yes, they made a virtue of repetition.  Yes, they avoided ornamentation just for ornamentation’s sake.  But that’s what made them — and their guitar work — so interesting:  there is NO WASTED NOTE on a Polyrock song.  Everything contributes to the momentum of the track; there’s no icing here — it’s all cake.  Delicious, rhythmic cake.  And in “Bucket Rider,” a nifty little instrumental named after an equally nifty little Kafka story, you can hear every guitar line is intended to move the song forward.  Nothing less — and nothing more.

4. Craig Scanlon, The Fall.

When it comes to Fall guitarists, Brix Smith usually gets the most prominent mentions.  But for my money, the Fall’s secret weapon for 17 years was Craig Scanlon, whose downright spidery guitar lines were like nothing else being played when he joined the band in 1979.  Consider a prime track from Dragnet, the first Fall album he appeared on, the ominous “A Figure Walks.”  A great example of how much Scanlon can do with remarkably few notes.

3.  Keith Levene, PiL.

Before I grabbed PiL’s “Metal Box,” I’d never heard guitar playing like this.  I haven’t since, either.  Inimitable.  Here’s Levene’s magnificence on display in the opening track of that set, “Death Disco” aka “Swan Lake.”

2.  Michael Rother, Neu!

All of Stereolab’s work, great as it is, stems directly from Neu!  And Michael Rother played the guitar that made Neu! move.  Just check out “Fur Immer,” if you would.  Hypnotic.  Or, as they say, mekkanik.   (Of course, you could also give a nod to the great Michael Karoli from Can, but he tended to play more traditional leads.  Rother?  Not so much.)

1. Bernard Albrecht (Sumner), Joy Division / New Order.

If there was a post-punk analog to Pink Floyd, Joy Division was it: their music, like no other post-Pistols era band, was about mapping the spaces of the interior.  And just like David Gilmour’s echoplexed Fender came to define the inner space that Floyd evoked, so did Bernard Albrecht (nee Sumner)’s reverb-drenched six-string define the alternately claustrophobic and all-too-wide-open spaces mapped out in Joy Division’s work.  You can’t find a better example of that than “Disorder,” the first cut from their first LP.

But lest you think Albrecht / Sumner was nothing but grim, remember also his work with New Order, which saw him applying the same economic approach to the guitar to much less sombre tunes, such as the buoyant “Age of Consent.”  The lyrics may still be downcast, but the tune moves in a downright happy direction.

All right, after yesterday’s utterly unprovoked salvo against commonly acknowledged guitar gods I don’t want to hear anymore, let’s do an about-face and accentuate the positive, shall we?  Here are five players whose work has just about KILLED me over the years, and who dismaying few people know about.

As usual, your mileage may vary, only my opinion, don’t take it personally, etc. etc. etc., and yes, you’re totally entitled to think these folks make shitty music.

It’s ludicrously difficult to define what it is I respond to in a guitar player.  I admire technique, sure, but not too much of it, or it just becomes clinical.  I likes me some noise, but not without a degree of control.  I like to hear a guitar player who sounds excited to be playing, as if at any moment the entire thing could just come crashing down around his ears — and ours.

All right, let’s count ‘em down.

5. Elliott Easton. Lead guitarist for a little-known group named The Cars.  Lots of folks loved the Cars back in the day, and some still do.  Elliott was their secret weapon, the kind of guitarist who knows how to play to the strengths of the frontperson, but totally commands the soundscape when it’s his turn to be in focus.  His playing invariably boasts fluidity, speed, melody, and surprises.  If you only listen to one Elliott Easton solo, make it the one after the second chorus of “Touch and Go,” the first single off the Cars’ “Panorama” album (their edgiest and best, by the way).  Sweet, like candy.  Listen to that long, serpentine run he throws in 2/3 of the way through the solo.  Good lord, it’s showy — but’s also tasty.  It’s not widdly-wah for widdly-wah’s sake.

4.  Ira Kaplan.   Listen to Yo La Tengo’s first album, on which Dave Schramm handled most of the heavy guitar lifting, and you’d be forgiven for thinking not much would ever come of Ira Kaplan’s guitar playing.  Wrong. Somewhere in between “President Yo La Tengo” and “May I Sing With Me,” Kaplan absolutely bloomed as a guitarist, and ever since he’s mined rich veins of melodic noise that no one else seems to be able to touch.  He’s not a particularly fast or showy player, but he’s amazingly expressive, which is so much more important.   Check out “From a Motel 6” from their great Painful album for a lil’ taste of how deftly Kaplan is able to balance both delicate melody and jaw-droppingly noisy SKRONK.  Now THAT’s what I call music!

3.  Roger Miller. No, not “King of the Road” Roger Miller — we’re talking about the Roger Miller who plays guitar for Mission of Burma, the great Boston band that helped inspire, for example, U2.  I learned to play guitar by figuring out as best I could what Miller was doing on the first two MoB albums.  I never did figure it out, but just trying and failing taught me more about how to make magic out of limitations and constraints.  Lots of folks on the indie circuit recognize Miller’s genius, but that’s not enough.  He should be a household name.  Or at least as well-known as Thurston and Lee.   A sonic mindfuck like “Trem Two” only begins to hint at the explorations Miller’s conducted over the years.

2.  Robert Poss. The head honcho of late, lamented Band of Susans understands a thing or two about the pure beauty of an overdriven guitar amp.  Thankfully, he’s still composing.  Here’s “Now Is Now” “Blind” from the great Veil album.

1.  Karl Precoda. The first time I heard the peals of feedback that start off “When You Smile”, the first song on side two of the Dream Syndicate’s Days of Wine and Roses album, I was with my best friend Dejan at Eide’s in Pittsburgh.  Cosmo had put it on the store’s record player and turned the fucker up.  Way up.  I owe him for that.

I remember Dejan covering his ears and complaining about the noise. I bought the album and never looked back.

Karl Precoda’s guitar work tends to be slow, noisy, riddled with feedback, and droning.  You can hear all of that on “Halloween,” a song Precoda wrote that appears on Days of Wine and Roses.

Creem’s brilliant rock critic Rick Johnson, I believe, once called his guitar sound “The Thing That Can’t Be Stopped.”  That’s pretty damned accurate.  It’s slow and inevitable and full of menace and it will get you.  I won’t say Precoda’s the best guitar player I ever heard, but on many, many days he’s still my favorite.

The great philosopher David Lee Roth once quipped, “Music is like girlfriends–I’ll never understand the choices some people make!”

He was talking, of course, about his former bandmate Eddie Van Halen, with a succinct triple-gainer that simultaneously threw sand at Eddie, Eddie’s (now-ex-)wife Valerie Bertinelli, and Eddie’s then-singer Sammy Hagar.  The quote has always stuck with me, and as I’ve seen friends and bandmates mate and change bands, well, the truth of Mr. Roth’s words have certainly become apparent.

Forget about bandmates, though:  I’ve never understood the choices some people make about their guitar gods, either.  And since I haven’t gored any sacred cows of rock and roll recently, I thought I’d just namecheck five guitarists whom the world generally seems to acknowledge as “great,” and whom I have no use for.  Whatsoever.

So, without further ado, here are the five guitar “gods” I never want to hear another note from.  Ever.  I’ll do everything I can to avoid hearing them in the future, and I urge you to do the same.

Do it for the kids.  They’re counting on you.

5.  Eric Clapton. My loathing for Clapton’s solo, um, oeuvre is no secret, so I won’t expound on it again here.  However, since I didn’t mention it in my earlier screed against The Clap, may I just take a moment to point out that “Rock and Roll Heart” is even worse than “Lay Down Sally,” and don’t even get me started on anything he’s done since, oh, hell, since ever.

4. The Edge. Once upon a time, Dave Evans was a pretty groundbreaking guitarist.  That’s because, for at least the first three U2 records, the guy could barely play.  He made the best of it, though, and combined his passion and his echo pedals to create a bold, original sound.  Bold and original for a while, anyway.  Maybe he’s just a victim of his own success.  He’s still got an original sound — I mean, his playing is instantly recognizable — but where it used to invigorate and inspire (see, oh, “Wire” from the Unforgettable Fire, for example) — in recent years it’s just become, well, sonic wallpaper.  It’s functional and it covers the space all right, but it’s mighty hard to pay any attention to.

3.  Eddie Van Halen. Everyone should hear one Eddie Van Halen guitar solo.  Just one.  His virtuosity is undeniable, his sound unique, and his chops enviable.  But holy shit is he boring, and ultimately kinda monochromatic. Moreover, as his post-Roth work demonstrates, he’s willing to spew his chops all over some of the most insipid cock-schlock imaginable.  I mean, “Poundcake”?  Jesus.  How low can you go?

2. Billy Corgan. “Cherub Rock”:  great.  Everything else:  Not.   Period.  And that goes quadruple for Zeitgeist.

1.  Jerry Garcia. There’s one, just one, Grateful Dead song that I’d rate (“Box of Rain,” for what it’s worth).  People have tried over the years to prove to me that Garcia’s status as a guitar hero is justified, but I’ve never gotten it.  Where some seem to hear the music of the spheres, I just hear wet noodling.

So in the turnabout is fair play department, I guess I’ll have to list five guitarists whom I’m always willing and eager to hear more from.  Stay tuned.

The film is currently circulating on the indie film festival scene, and we’ll keep you posted about distribution and availability.  Good film-making from an up-and-comer, and well worth your time.

We’ll give a special shout-out here to the film’s music director, Max Spiegel, of mudcat.org fame.  We’re honored that he selected our work and that the director deploys it at a crucial moment in the film.

But hey, don’t take our word that it’s good — here’s an unbiased review:

http://smashortrashindiefilmmaking.com/?page_id=658

And here’s the obligatory photo of the film’s female star, Erin Mulgrew.  She’s excellent in the film, as is her colleague Jay William Robin.

This is the cover of Chad and Jeremy’s 1967 album, “Of Cabbages and Kings.”  The title references Lewis Carroll, but when I was four years old I didn’t know that.  My dad, who bought the album because of the title (despite it being by Chad and Jeremy), did know this.  But he didn’t like the album, and so it wound up as one of the earliest entries in my early album collection, along with Abbey Road, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, and The Partridge Family’s Second Album.  As I child, I listened to it a lot.

Is it a great record?  Um, no.  As much as I’d like to say it’s a forgotten psych-era classic you really ought to add to your collection, it just ain’t so.  It bears a lot of the scars of its time, as you might infer from its cover.  Sgt. Pepper it ain’t, and Sgt. Pepper’s is about as overrated as you can get.  (Yeah, I said it.)

But it’s got its moments.  There’s a little ditty about teen pregnancy called “The Family Way,” which is really catchy.  It’s got a sidelong piece called “The Progress Suite” which is predictably overblown, catchy in parts, and feels a little like being hit about the head and face by a well-meaning person with a manifesto that only states the obvious.  It’s worth hearing once, and it’s kind of impressive given that it was created by the same guys who did “A Summer Song” a short three years earlier.  But on the whole, this album ain’t the kind of thing you’re going to keep coming back to again and again.

Except for the opening track, “Rest in Peace,” which is brilliant.  Really.  Listen:

We start out with what sounds like a droning harmonium, as a grave voice — presumably the trained-actor Jeremy Clyde — solemnly quotes Carroll’s droll verse:

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax…of cabbages and kings…

We next hear the random clink of a chisel hitting stone, which quickly settles into a steady rhythm.  A flute, guitar, and woodwinds soon chime in, and then Chad Stuart begins singing, with his sweet voice:

My name it is Matthews, and I’ve got it made
A memorial maker…it’s a profitable trade.

“A Summer Song” this is not.  The melody’s just as catchy, yes, and the orchestration is lush and effective.  But the cynicism and bitterness on display come from a different world, as Chad relates the tale of one of his clients and concludes, “his gravestone should have read, ‘Here lies Fred, he’s better off dead.’”

Then the chorus kicks in, and it’s magnificent — Chad and Jeremy coiling their voices together as they implore, with equal parts enthusiasm and mockery, “Rest in peace, sir! Rest in peace!”

The second verse relates the tale of another client, slightly different but no less cynical than the first.  Here Chad assumes two roles, singing first in angelic tones, in mockery of the bereaved who come to ask him to make another tombstone:

“Here lies John, run over by a bus.  He was loved by all of us.”

He then shifts back into his Matthews character, asking:

His time on earth, what was it worth when all is said and done?
“Here lies John.  We’re rather glad he’s gone.”

And then we’re back into the chorus, no less celebratory yet insulting than the first.

As I mentioned, the song has the scars of its time, and so immediately after the chorus comes an inexplicable and inappropriate sitar and tabla duet.  Far out, man.  It’s silly and out of place, but the rest of the song is so good this misstep’s easy to forgive.

Coming out of the sitar solo we get a little break that neatly presages the anti-suburban sentiments expressed so memorably in XTC’s “Respectable Street.”

They come to me and spend all they’ve got, ’cause it costs quite a lot to be remembered.
They think it is the only way.  “What would the neighbors say, anyway?”
It’s so prestigious, even though you’re not religious.

Ouch.

From there we move into the final verse, which if anything ups the ante in terms of cynicism as Stuart imagines carving a stone for the entire world, one that simply says we were all born to die. A final majestic run through the chorus, and we’re out.

“A Summer Song” this is not.  Not by a longshot.

Stuart seems clearly to have been influenced by Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One in writing this song,  (or perhaps the inferior but still scabrous film adaptation made of it).  And what makes it work so well is how damned sweet the music is; I mean, the melody and the harmonies and orchestration are all just gorgeous…ultimately underscoring, I think, the ultimate subject of Stuart’s withering criticism, which is the memorial maker himself.

Because in the end, it’s not the deaths of Matthews’ clients who have no meaning, although it’s easy to take that as the song’s message.  Instead, Stuart is pretty clearly attacking the self-absorbed, greedy, careerist inclinations of his narrator, and damning Matthews’ lack of sympathy or empathy as well as his cynicism.  Making this song a pretty complex piece of work, and one that I’ve admired and wished I’d written for 35 years now.

Please listen now, listen often, and recommend us to all your Pandora-listening friends.  As the traditional music biz continues its relentless, lemming-like journey into oblivion, word of mouth from good people like you is the only way new music will spread…so share the word!

Peace!
Eston