No, you are not hallucinating. I am, indeed, lapping myself in terms of Friday Night Rock-Outs. No “real” posts last week. The reason is simple: I’ve been on vacation, visiting family in Pass Christian with my son, Connor. We had a great time, and I did some work on my new novel. But no blogging. Oh, well.
So, I am going to just post another FNRO. This time, I’ve decided to feature one of the best live performances by one of the greatest bands ever. Namely, their performance at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. This was in 1983, when the band was on tour for their landmark album War, which is when the band began to achieve true superstardom.
In later years (up to and including today), U2 got a lot of hate for becoming a bit pompous and self-important on certain records. But they were—and still are—a great rock band, with a new album climbing the charts.
Their performance at Red Rocks was probably their best. Already a band known for grand gestures and almost militant power, they found themselves playing their hearts out to a full stadium.
“Only the Young” is one of those great songs whose history is so complicated that even fans can’t quite keep it straight. Originally written by Jonathan Cain, Steve Perry and Neal Schon of Journey, it was first released by the great pop-rock band Scandal in 1984, when the band was fronted by Patty Smyth. Journey then released their own recording of the song in 1985, which was featured on the soundtrack of the Matthew Modine movie Vision Quest. Taylor Swift has since done her own cover of the song, which is, naturally, the one most young people know today (if they know the song at all).
I have featured Journey on my Friday Night Rock-Out Series before with “Any Way You Want It.” In that post, I expressed the somewhat novel opinion that “Any Way You Want It” is Journey’s only “good” song. In retrospect, I see that that statement was unfair. “Only the Young” is, also, a very good song indeed. It somehow gets at the heart of the yearning and frustration that young people feel whenever the previous generation is doing its best to keep them down.
Such was the case in 1984, when young Gen-Xers like myself were in high school or college and doing their best to make it in the wake of the Baby Boomers. And it’s even more the case now, when Gen-Z is coming of age in a United States that has, almost literally, been looted by the old people who control it. They face young adulthood in a denuded world, bankrupt and barren of opportunity. I bet the song resonates for them, too.
My favorite version of the song is still the first one, by Scandal. Patty Smyth was one of the most underrated rock singers of her generation, and this song found her at the height of her powers. (Fun fact: Van Halen offered her the lead singer job after David Lee Roth left; she declined due to her pregnancy.) Her voice positively soars on this song, and whenever I hear it, I am transported back to that long-ago time—which, alas, is looking better by the day.
“Will the Wolf Survive” by Los Lobos came out just a few years before I moved to Arizona for a few years. And so, finding myself living forty-five miles from the Mexican border, the song really resonated with me. I saw a lot of very poor immigrant people doing very hard menial jobs. I drove through countless immigration checkpoints in Texas. I saw the two Americas.
The real reason I love the song, though, is that…well…it rocks. East L.A. style. I love David Hidalgo’s soulful voice, and Cesar Rosas’s lead guitar work fires on all cylinders.
Also, the song seems particularly poignant at the moment, here in America, with all the persecution going on. Same old, same old. Just more of it.
Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, America’s birthday. So, for tonight’s Friday Night Rock-Out, I was going to share Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” which is my favorite “patriotic” song ever. I love it because the narrator seems genuinely proud to be an American while at the same time lamenting our country’s many, many flaws.
But, at the last minute, I decided to go with another great “heartland rock” singer—and one of my favorite artists of all time, generally—John Mellencamp, and his dark ode “Paper in Fire.” The song is about Mellencamp’s heritage, tracing back to a long line of tough, angry, and sometimes violent men. Which, in a way, describes America itself. Violence and anger are woven through our nation’s history, all 250 years of it. Maybe even further back than that.
Despite the song’s heavy themes, though, there is something thrilling and fun about it. Inspiring, even. I really like the way it evokes Kentucky as much as Kansas, with its blend of rock, bluegrass, and gospel.
Happy Juneteenth everyone! It’s a holiday about freedom. So, I am devoting this installment of my Friday Night Rock-Out series to one of the iconic songs of my youth, by one of my heroes, Lenny Kravitz, whose music feels like freedom.
In case you haven’t noticed, Paul McCartney is having a bit of a moment. He performed on Saturday Night Live a couple of weeks ago, as well as on the final episode of CBS’s Late Night with Steven Colbert. Somehow, the aging Beatle has re-entered the cultural zeitgeist.
He’s done it before, of course. After The Beatles broke up in 1970, he formed a new band, Wings, with his recent bride, Linda (nee Eastman), and enjoyed a huge success. I was a big fan of Wings, back in the day. I had a couple of their albums, but no record-player. I had to sneak into my parents’ bedroom in the afternoon and play them on my dad’s stereo.
In keeping with McCartney’s recent resurgence, I stumbled upon a fine oral history of the band, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, which he assembled with Ted Widmer. While reading the book, I discovered many things about some of their most famous songs. I was especially struck by the history of this one, “Jet”, which has always been one of my favorites.
For example, I learned that the beautiful, trippy Moog synthesizer featured on the song was played by Linda McCartney (she taught herself how to play it). And that the ending saxophone riff was actually two saxophones played in sequence—one for the high part, and then another one for the low part. And that the funky lyrics, whose meaning I and others have puzzled over for years, are absolutely meaningless. (McCartney chose them strictly for their feel; never let meaning get in the way of a good melody!)
It’s almost a cliché to state that, as you get older, you re-evaluate a lot of things you liked in your youth. Often (alas), you discover that the books you read, the music you listened to, and the movies you listened to when you were in high school really weren’t that great—with a few exceptions. Also, as you age, you sometimes discover that something you didn’t pay much attention to when you were young is actually pretty frickin awesome.
That happened to me recently with this song, “Still the Same,” by Bob Seger. For some mysterious reason, the song popped into my head about a week ago and wouldn’t leave. Maybe I heard it on the speakers at the grocery store; I don’t know. But for some reason, I kept hearing it, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
This was even more strange considering that, as a kid, I didn’t really groove to much of Seger’s music. I mean, I liked his stuff, especially “Night Moves.” And his songs were all over the classic rock station that me and my friends listened to, so I knew all of them by heart, almost, and I admired them. Ironically, though, the one Seger-hit that didn’t register on me at all was “Still the Same.”
Until now. I found myself looking it up on Youtube, playing it, then playing it again. I really listened to the lyrics for the first time, and I was totally blown away by them. On the surface, it’s another one of those mythopoetic songs about dark, conflicted hipsters in the 1970s (Steely Dan wrote some great ones, too). In this case, the narrator sings about a gambler—who could be a man or a woman—with whom he was friends but now rejects because they’re “still the same.” That is, despite enormous talent, intelligence, and self-control, the gambler is essentially dead, emotionally and spiritually. They’ve achieved the kind of life they always wanted, but they are basically at a dead-end. A corpse.
Of course, the mere act of describing the song makes me want to hear it again. After all, Seger says everything I just did, but in poetry. Take the first verse:
You always won every time you placed a bet You’re still damn good, no one’s gotten to you yet Every time they were sure they had you caught You were quicker than they thought You’d just turn your back and walk
Imagine how many more words a bad writer would need to say the same thing with much less effect. “You were consistent in your skill and ability, winning all the time. And you have maintained that skill, somehow, despite the fact that you are a lot older now. Both in the past and now, your rivals always underestimated you. On each occasion when they thought you were beaten, you managed to simply get up and leave as if nothing had happened.”
Blech!
As a writer, I find myself in awe of the economy and density of Seger’s lyrics. There is one line in particular—“You still aim high”—that I find heartbreaking, even though it’s only four words (four beats) long. Somehow, it encapsulates all the admiration, even love, that the narrator still feels for the “gambler.” (I put it in quotes here because I believe that “gambler” is really just a metaphor for some kind of hustler, male or female, who gets by on their smarts, charm, looks, and daring. E.g., almost everyone in Hollywood.) The narrator still loves the gambler (perhaps they were lovers, once?), even though he now sees the gambler as a bit pathetic. “Still the same,” but no better. Stuck. Stagnant. In another of Seger’s hits, he describes a “beautiful loser.” In this song, he describes a beautiful winner—who wins the world but loses their soul.
In other words, the song is a great 70s rock tragedy, in the same vein as “Layla”, “Dreams”, and “Free Bird”.
Maybe I should go back and re-listen to those songs, too.
If you were a software developer in the late 1990s (which I was), and if you spent many an evening working overtime (which I did), and if you needed some heavy electronic music to go along with your Nth cup coffee to get you going (which I still do), then your go-to groups were probably The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers.
I still love both bands (and not just when I need waking up). In fact, I love Big Beat in general. Just as the second generation of great grunge bands like Bush and Stone Temple Pilots began to taper-off, the electronic barrage of Big Beat pumped new energy into the music scene. Like, a million volts of energy.
I’ve already devoted one Friday-Night rock out to The Prodigy, so I am overdue to do one on The Chemical Brothers. Here it is, my favorite song of theirs, “Setting Sun.”
A few days ago, I saw a tweet (yes, damn it, a tweet) pointing out that the iconic song “Feel Good Inc” is now twenty years old. It’s amazing how much that song has permeated popular culture in those two decades. I first heard it in the excellent film The Big Short, where it featured prominently on the soundtrack. It’s one of those songs that, once heard, one never forgets.
However, there are a couple of things people might not know about the electronic band Gorillaz, who, with some help from De La Soul, created the song. First, they are a virtual band, meaning that the members seldom meet in person. Instead, they compose and record via the internet. One could write a whole book on the way the internet has changed music—and many already have—but the rise of virtual bands is a seldom-discussed sub-topic.
Another thing people might not know is that lead singer and founder Damon Albarn is also the mastermind behind the (even older) British band Blur, which blew people’s minds back in the 1990s. This song, especially, was hugely popular and influential. Entitled “Song 2” but almost universally known as the “Woo-Hoo Song,” it came out way back in 1997. And, for a few months, it was all you heard streaming out of people’s car radios (yes, we still had car radios, back then).
If there is one song that can instantly evoke memories of the early 1980s, when me and friends stayed up all night watching MTV, it’s this one, “Mexican Radio.” It’s a very strange little song by a very strange little band, Wall of Voodoo, but it perfectly captures the “collapsed-time” vibe of the Reagan era. The suppressed but inescapable feeling that American culture had somehow degraded (“de-evolved,” as the band Devo put it) to a state where it was totally insane, vulgar, and incomprehensible.
The same sort of black humor, satirical zeitgeist was immortalized in film two years later, in 1984, when Alex Cox’s Repo Man came out. That movie’s soundtrack included many fine punk and post-punk bands like Wall of Voodoo—but without Wall of Voodoo. Oh, well. The movie could have given the band some much-needed exposure. They never did get the respect they deserved.
But for a while, they really did shine.
(Fun fact: I always thought the band’s name was a reference to a spell in Dungeons & Dragons, but I was wrong. It was, in fact, inspired by the brilliant madman Phil Spector and his famous Wall of Sound effect on the songs he produced in the 1960s. Go, figure.)
Ash Clifton, Writer 