Past Present & Future & Peace In The Valley

A lot of people may be somewhat puzzled by the picturesque scene of a Hawaiian Valley I've posted here. But as always, there is a story behind it.

When I was a kid, some of the earliest and most vivid experiences I can remember revolve around my junior high years, which were spent in Hawaii.

My Mom's third husband, Chuck (who I despised as a kid, but who has become something like my real Father in my adult life), was in the Coast Guard Anyway, for two years in the late sixties, we were stationed In Hawaii.

I have a lot of mixed memories from that time, ranging from being locked in an underground bomb shelter by a group of school bullies, to the more pleasant ones like going to my first Jefferson Airplane concert, and the group of friends I hung out with back when I was thirteen years old, and was something of a junior high hippie. It is the latter that I choose to talk about here.

My best friend at the time was a guy named Pat Levy, and I was also good friends with his older brother Mike. Back then, me, Pat, and a group of other friends formed what we used to refer as "the group." One of the members of the "group," a girl named Pat Koory is someone I've often wondered about.

So. we would all gather beneath this big tree on the campus of Campbell High School (which at the time also housed the junior high school), smoke a lot of cigarettes, and talk about our common love of the psychedelic rock of the time by bands like the Jefferson Airplane.

A lot of who I eventually became as an adolescent and later as an adult -- my values and such -- were really forged during this time.

One of the other really cool things I remember from this period, was when "the Group" discovered "the Valley." It happened quite by accident really. We were skipping school one day (as we often did back then), and hanging out in the industrial park behind the high school, when we discovered this trail, which led down into this valley.

I have no idea of who owned or otherwise ran the place, but it was surrounded by dense groves of trees with a stream running through the middle. We also discovered, quite by accident, that pot was being grown there. We gathered a bunch of it up one day to start a fire, and all got stoned sitting around the fire. I also lost my virginity there, to a girl named Wendy (who, fortunately for me, never got pregnant).

To this day, I occasionally will have dreams about that place, as it represented a far more innocent and less complicated time and place. Like I said, a lot of the values I hold to this day were forged back then, skipping school, smoking pot, and listening to the psychedelic music of the day in that strange paradise we used to call "the Valley." If it doesn't quite make sense, all I can say is you had to be there.

So why do I bring all of this up now?

Well, for one thing beacuse the past couple of months (if not years) have been really strange for me. I haven't smoked pot for years by the way, just in case you were wondering.

But one of the things that has been happening with ever increasing frequency the past few years has been friends of mine from the long distant past reaching out to make contact all these years later.

Some of these meetings have proved to be very fruitful and satisfying (such as re-establishing my friendship with my old KCMU Rap Attack and Nastymix partner Nasty Nes).

While others that started out very promising basically just ended up fizzling out (the reunion with my old drummer Huey and the brief sort of reunion of our old band, which yielded some great new songs, a lot of memories, and then just kinda went flat).

In the past couple of weeks, a couple of other folks have emerged out of the shadows of my past.

One is a guy named Kim Murrell. When I was in high school, Kim was the guy I went through my glam-rock phase with, and who I went to my first Bowie, Alice Cooper, T. Rex, and Slade concerts with. Together with this third wheel sort of guy named Jim Hughes (who drove the '65 Mustang and had the tape deck), we fancied ourselves quite the trio and named ourselves the "Purple Marauders" (after our matching platform shoes). We also managed to get laid a lot. Or at least thats what we led everyone else to believe. The truth is that while the stories about getting laid were somewhat exagerated, we did meet and party with a lot of rock stars.

Unfortunately , our third wheel "Jim" also proved to be quite nuts, and ended up quite literally terrorizing the shit out of us for a few years, before dying in prison either of AIDS or suicide, depending on whose story you believe.

From what I've been able to ascertain, Kim ended up doing okay for himself though, and lately he's been reaching out to me. I look very forward to that reunion if we are able to make it happen. Kim was always a really great guy.

But the other guy who's been reaching out lately is my old friend Pat Levy from those days in the Valley back in the sixties in Hawaii.

Pat's brother Mike (who was also a really great friend back then) has a form of bone cancer, and Pat is going to be donating here in Seattle very soon.

I look very forward to reuniting with him after something like forty years.

You never know these sort of things are going to turn out, and the fact that so many of them have seemed to crop up the past couple of years probably only proves that I'm getiing old.

I'm also going to be rejoining the ranks of the employed later this week, as I've accepted a job as a field promotions manager for a satellite TV provider. Wish me luck, but I have both high hopes and very good feelings about this.

And of course as always, I thank God and my lord and saviour Jesus Christ for looking out for me during the tough times, and seeing me through to what I hope are the good ones ahead. I'm looking quite forward to tipping a few with Pat and Kim too.

Marillion Rocks The Prog-Rock On Somewhere In London

Music DVD Review: Marillion - Somewhere In London

For those unfamiliar, Marillion is a band that happened across the "new wave of British heavy metal" (or NWOBHM) scene in the mid-eighties. What made Marillion stand out from the rest of that pack was that they were in fact not a heavy metal band at all, but rather a prog-rock band, and a damned good one at that.

Albeit a latecomer to the prog-rock wars, Marillion's music was nonetheless much in the tradition of seventies prog-rock bands like Yes, and particularly Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, whom they were quite often likened to. Which means that there were lots of synthesisers and mellotrons, and that the singer dressed up in a lot of goofy looking costumes.

But this was no accident. At the time led by a theatrically inclined vocalist who called himself Fish, Marillion indeed seemed to quite purposely fashion themselves after Genesis. On albums like Script For A Jesters Tear and Misplaced Childhood, which yielded the band their only American hit in the song "Kayleigh," Marillion seemed to take their cues straight from Genesis playbook.





It was great stuff for those who had nostalgic yearnings for seventies prog-rock, but at least in America it was soon enough forgotten once Fish left the band.

Not so in Europe. In fact, not only did Marillion soldier on, they also gained something of a new life. They also developed their own unique and distinct identidy with the addition of new vocalist Steve Hogarth on albums like Anoraknophobia and especially on the quite brilliant 2004 concept album Marbles. The fact is, Marillion remained as hot as ever on the other side of the pond.

For my own part, I rediscovered the band last year and found myself quite amazed at how much different they sounded from the Genesis wannabes I remembered from the eighties. The Marillion of today sound absolutely nothing like the band of the Fish years, and with Hogarth have in fact come into their own quite nicely. The guys always been great musicians -- particularly guitarist Steve Rothery who rather effortlessly threads the line between Pink Floyd's David Gilmour and Genesis' Steve Hackett.

In fact, with the addition of Hogarth they seem to have found that one missing piece that now makes them complete as a band with a unique identidy of its own. As a frontman, Hogarth is every bit as dramatic as Fish once was, but is also engaging and personal in a way that Fish could never begin to approach. As complex as much of this music remains, with Hogarth at the helm, the connection with the audience that this band previously lacked is an effortless one. All of the pretensions just fall away.

For the uninitiated, Somewhere In London is just about as good of an introduction to the music of the present day Marillion as one could hope for. Filmed on tour behind last year's Somewhere Else album, the setlist covers not only that release, but contains generous portions of albums like the unrecognized (at least in America) prog-rock classic Marbles.

For Marillion purists who already own the Marbles On The Road DVD, this is nonetheless quite essential stuff. The camera work here doesn't feel nearly as forced, and the overall feel of the performance comes off a whole lot warmer.



Besides, in addition to letter perfect versions of the Marbles tracks like "You're Gone," "Neverland," and Fantastic Place," you get the live versions of songs from Somewhere Else like "The Wound," which features particularly tasty guitar work from Rothery. On the second disc you also get the rarely heard epic "Ocean Cloud" which is worth the price of admission in and of itself.



As is the case with modern day prog-rock bands like Porcupine Tree, it's a shame that the market for this type of stuff seems to have all but dried up in America. But for those in the know, this DVD is just about as good as it gets.

Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band At The Super Bowl?

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are playing the Super Bowl? The reports are flying, but so far at least, the NFL's denying.

According to several published reports circulating on the Internet today, including the New York Post (who apparently first broke the story, quoting mysterious and unnamed "spies"), Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band have signed on to play the halftime show at next year's Super Bowl on February 1 in Tampa, FL.

However, spokespeople for the NFL are refusing to confirm the reports.

"We don't talk about our talent discussions," league spokesman Brian McCarthy told Variety.com, adding "We don't have any talent confirmed for the Super Bowl."

It should be noted however, that it is no secret that the NFL has long been interested in securing the services of the Boss and his E Street Band for its biggest show of the year.

Meanwhile Backstreets Magazine, who usually tends to get any news about the Boss right, is also reporting that nothing has been confirmed. For its own part Springsteen's official website has thus far posted nothing which even acknowledges the Super Bowl reports.

If it does turn out that there is any validity to the story, as reported today by media outlets ranging from Fox News (who are also reporting that Steve Van Zandt has rented Tampa's Hard Rock Cafe for a party) to Newsday, Springsteen joins the ranks of rock legends like Paul McCartney, Prince, U2, and The Rolling Stones, who have all played the event, which traditionally draws the biggest television audience of the year.

Springsteen and the E Street Band are currently wrapping up their year long world tour behind the 2007 release Magic, which is certified platinum for sales exceeding one million copies. The tour has U.S. shows remaining in Jacksonville FL, Charleston SC, Richmond VA, Hershey PA, Nashville TN, St. Louis MO, and Kansas City MO, before playing its final date at the Harley Davidson Festival in Milwaukee at the end of the month.

Issac Hayes 1942 - 2008: Rest In Peace Black Moses

Legendary soul man Issac Hayes passed away this past Sunday. He was 65.

I wrote an obituary piece for Cinema Blend about Hayes which you can read by going here.

Donald Gibson also has a very nice piece over at Blogcritics which you can check out by going here.

From his early days as Black Moses right up through his role as "Chef" on South Park, Issac Hayes was an icon who left an undeniable mark on pop culture. On his best known hit, the "Theme From Shaft" Hayes set the bar for blaxploitation soundtrack records, laying down the blueprint for subsequent records such as Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly." The soundtrack earned Hayes a pair of Grammys, as well as an Academy Award for best original song.

Hayes is an inductee in both the Rock & Roll and the Songwriters Hall Of Fame.

Black Moses will be both remembered and missed.

The Rockologist: Show Your Bootlegs A Little Love

So here's the thing. If you are a diehard music fanatic as I am, bootlegs are a fact of life.

I mean how else are you going to get your hands on that rare Dylan song, or that even rarer soundboard recording from the current Radiohead tour? As a music fan, you've gotta do what ya' gotta do.

My own lifelong love affair with bootlegs began back when I was a kid. The first time I heard that there were actual "unauthorized" recordings of unreleased recordings by artists like Dylan ("The Great White Wonder") and The Rolling Stones ("Liver Than You'll Ever Be") was from the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. What I also knew, as the diehard music junkie that I was, is that I absolutely had to have them.

The way Rolling Stone described these mysterious recordings back then was that they came in plain white sleeves with a stamped label on them. The Who themselves even mimicked this with their Live At Leeds album.

As I grew older, and my knowledge of where to find such treasure increased, I can remember taking bus rides out to Seattle's University District to find such recordings. In the U-District, there was this entire row of record shops, with names like "2nd Time Around" and "Roxy Music" that specialized in such things.

It was basically a goldmine, and I was like a kid let loose in the proverbial candy store.

By this time, I already had my own gig working at my local record store in West Seattle (Penny Lane). But to get what I really wanted these weekend bus rides were absolutely essential.

I mean how else could I find the sort of gold I found there like David Bowie's original "1980 Floor Show," with songs that never showed up on Diamond Dogs like "Man In The Middle?" Or the Pink Floyd songs like "Raving And Drooling" and "Ya' Gotta be Crazy" that eventually morphed into what became the Wish You Were Here album?

When things got really crazy was when I worked in a record store in Bremerton, Washington in 1978, and I could walk right next door, and get boxed sets of soundboard recordings of Bruce Springsteen shows with names like Piece De La Resistence and Live In The Promised Land: Winterland '78. It was pretty much all over for me at that point.

These days, of course, things are much easier.

In fact, you can go online and pretty much get anything you want -- from last night's Radiohead show, to next week's Nine Inch Nails studio outtakes. Since Blogcritics doesn't condone such things, I won't tell you where to find them, other than to say that these things come a dime a dozen (and that is, honest to God, the last hint that you will get from me).

They've even upgraded Springsteen's '78 Winterland show with a bootleg remastered Winterland 30 edition.

Now that's some love.

CSN&Y Rock Righteously To Neil Young's Beat On Deja Vu Live

Music Review: Crosby Stills Nash & Young - CSNY/Deja Vu Live

Crosby Stills Nash & Young's second official live recording ever -- and their first since 1970's Four Way Street -- is pretty much Neil Young's deal. That much needs to be said upfront.

The songs, with few exceptions, are mostly Neil Young songs, taken from his blistering 2006 anti-Bush themed album Living With War. The album also serves as a soundtrack to the Neil Young directed (in his alter-ego as Bernard Shakey) film document of CSN&Y's 2006 Freedom Of Speech tour, also in support of Young's Living With War.

So this is really more of an extension of Living With War if you get right down to brass tacks -- with the rest of the guys mainly along for the ride. Once that is established, and it is likewise understood that this isn't going to be a nostalgic greatest hits sort of deal replete with "Suite Judy Blue Eyes," or for that matter, "Ohio" and "Helpless," only then can CSNY/Deja Vu Live really be taken in and appreciated for the really good, if not quite great, live album it is.

Speaking of the film, I haven't seen it yet. But from what I've heard, one of the things it zeroes in on is the fact that some live audiences failed to grasp the very thing I just spent a couple of paragraphs trying to explain here. There are scenes of confused concertgoers complaining about being preached to, and how "we just wanna hear the music, man." Shades of the Dixie Chicks, and the whole Shut Up And Sing thing, right?

Of course if these same fans knew anything about CSN&Y's history, they'd know that this is a group of musicians who've never really shied away from expressing their political views in song, from the "tin soldiers and Nixon's coming" of Young's "Ohio" to Graham Nash's plea to "please come to Chicago" where "we can change the world."

To that end, it should be no surprise that the setlist found on CSNY/Deja Vu Live follows a very specific antiwar theme. Sandwiched in between the incendiary songs of Young's Living With War such as "Looking For A Leader," and of course "Lets Impeach The President," you'll also find songs like Graham Nash's "Military Madness," Crosby's "Deja Vu," and Stills great protest anthem "For What Its Worth," which sounds just as fresh and relevant here as it did back then.

For it's part, the band also sounds great here. Not surprisingly these are all pretty much Neil Young's guys too, including regular collaborators like bassist Rick Rosas, drummer Chad Cromwell, keyboardist Spooner Oldham, and pedal steel player Ben Keith. In the live setting, the songs from Young's Living With War sound much looser too.

The band locks into a particularly muscular sounding groove on "Shock And Awe," allowing for Neil to really crank on the guitar solo. On "Wooden Ships" they even get into some of that tasty guitar interplay that so characterized the great jams found on Four Way Street, although they don't take it to quite the same epic sort of levels found on that albums versions of "Carry On" or "Southern Man" for example. What is clear though, is that Stills and Young still maintain chemistry all these years later.

What is also clear is that these guys can still rock -- especially when they are galvanized by a common cause. While no one is ever going to mistake songs like Young's "Lets Impeach The President" or "Roger And Out" as classics on the order of say "Ohio" (although the new instrumental arrangement of the title track found here is really quite lovely sounding), they are still played here for all of the passion they are worth. Neil Young in particular just shreds on his guitar solos. There is never once the sense that any of these guys are simply phoning it in here.

Politics aside, and taken on purely musical terms, CSNY/Deja Vu Live is about as satisfying a live release as you good hope for from a band of old warhorses like these. The fact that even at this late stage of the game, they are still waving their collective freak flags for causes they passionately believe in just makes it that much more appealing.

The Rockologist Remembers Early U2 With Those New Reissues

I think the thing that most immediately struck me the first time I heard U2 was the sound. The drums were huge, leaping out of the speakers and into your face right out of the gate on "I Will Follow," the opening track of their 1980 debut album Boy. The jangling yet edgy guitars likewise cut across the big boom of the drums like a razor.

But what really got my attention were those cool sounding bells, which I assumed at the time were made by a xylophone. Those damned bells just really grabbed me at the time, and they didn't stop at "I Will Follow." By the time you were halfway through the first side of Boy (back when vinyl albums came in two sides), the bells were back on "An Cat Dubh" and "Into The Heart," providing a lighter sort of counterpoint to the dark minor chords of the appropriately named Edge's guitar, and the higher register of Bono's achingly passionate vocals.

As much as U2's sound may have -- initially at least -- resembled many of the other darker sounding neo-psychedelic alternative rock bands of its day (at the time I likened them most to Echo & The Bunnymen), there was still that sort of intangible quality that made them really stand out from the pack.

Maybe it was Steve Lillywhite's bottom-up, drum heavy production. Maybe it was those damned bells. I don't really know. But from the get-go, it was clear that these young Irish upstarts were a band to be reckoned with. Just how much so would become apparent enough in the years to come.

Above all else though, U2 was a rock band first and foremost. At least on those first three glorious records they were. By the time of their third album, 1983's War, they had also honed their chops to the point of being a damned formidable one. I saw U2 that year for the first time on back to back nights, in two venues that couldn't have been more different in size, shape, and scope.

The first of these was a blistering show before a capacity crowd at Seattle's 3000 seat Paramount Theatre. This was also where I first became aware of Bono's unique ability to connect with a crowd on a personal level, with that same sort of magical alchemy that comes as second nature to all the great rock performers -- from James Brown to Iggy Pop to Bruce Springsteen.

That night, Bono effectively erased any barriers between audience and performer, allowing the crowd to carry him through on their collective backs. There was absolutely no fear or distance in that performance, and right there I knew instinctively that I was witnessing the sort of greatness that would be around for years, if not decades. In a rather famous story, someone also stole Bono's lyrics that night, and the band would not play Seattle again until years later during the Zoo TV tour.

Later that night, I hopped a plane to catch U2 the next day at California's 1983 US Festival, where the young band stole the show on a day where no less than David Bowie, The Pretenders, and Stevie Nicks also performed before something like half a million people. The set was much the same as the one they had performed the previous night at the Paramount, although they threw in cover versions of the Beatles' "Dear Prudence" and Echo & The Bunnymen's "The Cutter" in the encores.

Bono didn't steal his way into the audience for any crowd-surfing on this night. Instead, he chose to scale the huge lighting towers on the massive festival stage all the way to the very top, waving a victory flag once he made it. It was an amazing, death-defying sort of sight to behold. I've also heard that it scared the living shit out of his fellow band members, especially the Edge.

The bottom line is that U2 was, above all things, a rock band back then. One that in fact was staking its claim, even that far back, to be one of the great ones. Long before the Eno/Lanois-produced atmospheres and anthems of albums like Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree, and years before Bono had any political designs on ruling the world through his various philanthropic endeavours, what U2 did at its core was make a populist connection through the power of rock music.

It can even be argued that in the process of becoming the biggest band on earth, U2 have never really managed to reconnect with the inner rock band of those first three albums, although I give them credit for giving it a hell of a try on 2004's How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.

Last month, Universal Music reissued those first three landmark U2 albums, Boy (1980), October (1981), and War (1983) in deluxe double disc packages. There is also a box set of all three records available exclusively through Amazon.com. All three of the packages are for the most part beautifully done, although you can also expect to pay through the nose for them with a suggested retail price of $29.98 each.

As collector's sets though, all three of these are very nice pieces. Each is housed in a hardbound box, with a removable, fold-out cover that reveals a nice booklet with loads of pictures, and newly written liner notes. What will be of interest to collectors who already own the original albums are the bonus discs, each of which feature rarities, B-sides, and live tracks. The actual value of these bonus tracks varies on each disc, but we'll get to more about that in a minute.

Of the three albums, the one I was most excited to get my hands on was Boy, as my own copy of the original, environmentally correct digi-pak CD has gotten a bit dog-eared over the years. Boy also remains one of my favorite U2 records to this day, because what you hear on this album is a band of young bucks hungry to make their mark on the world.

The digital remastering job on the deluxe version is also strictly top-shelf. Although vinyl purists will inevitably complain (and justifiably so) that the transfer process tends to lose some of the original warmth, the sound here is crisp and clear. Steve Lillywhite's big, booming production -- especially when it comes to Larry Mullen's drums -- loses little of its original power here, and Edge's guitar sounds as razor sharp as ever. Most of all, those damn bells ring as sweet as I remember when I first heard this great album.

The bonus tracks here are also, for my money, the best of those found on the three reissued albums. You've got the alternate take of "I Will Follow," some vintage early live versions of songs like "Out Of Control" and "11 O'Clock Tick Tock," and a couple of previously unreleased tracks like "Saturday Night" and "Speed Of Life." For my money, Boy ranks as the best of the three deluxe reissues.

1981's October is widely viewed as something of the weakest link in the original trilogy of U2's early albums, and for the most part I'd have to agree with that assessment.

Still, when reconsidered on this new remaster, it becomes apparent that maybe October should have gotten a fairer shake. For one thing, "Gloria" is nearly as powerful an opening track as "I Will Follow" was for Boy. A deeper listen reveals that songs like "I Threw A Brick Through A Window," "Rejoice," and "I Fall Down" all hold up remarkably well.

For the bonus tracks on October, they wisely focus on the live stuff, as this was the period where U2 began to really gel as a live band with some very powerful performances. So you've got some great concert stuff here, including "I Will Follow," "Gloria," "The Cry/Electric Co.," and "11 O'Clock Tick Tock." There's also some rarities like "J.Swallo" and "Trash, Trampoline, and The Party Girl."

Surprisingly, the deluxe treatment of 1983's War is the least satisfying of the three U2 reissues. I say surprising, because in my opinion War was really U2's first big breakout record. No, it didn't have quite the same impact as the mega-selling Joshua Tree did, but it certainly helped to pave the way for that breakthrough, being responsible for first moving the band out of theatres and into arenas as it was. Of the entire U2 catalog, War is also arguably the band's best out and out rock album.

If Boy introduced the world to these angry and hungry young men, and October seemed to be a somewhat tentative sounding follow-up, War showed U2 as a newly energized band armed and ready to take on the world. The first time I heard "New Years Day" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday," there was absolutely no question in my mind that U2 was here to stay.

The band hadn't just polished its sound, but refined its message as well. On this album, U2 was, for the first time really, operating as a finely tuned, well greased machine, with a little something extra in the engine.

Where the deluxe edition falters is in the extras. More than half of the bonus disc is taken up by the 12" dance remixes of songs like "New Years Day" and "Two Hearts Beat As One." Extended dance versions were of course all the rage at the time. Hearing them now, it's easy to see how they would have worked in an eighties New Wave sort of disco setting, but for that same reason they just sound terribly dated here.

For anyone who misses what eighties remix king Arthur Baker did to Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark," you might appreciate these. The only thing that really saves the bonus disc is the inclusion of live versions of "Fire" and "I Threw A Brick Through A Window/A Day Without Me" and a couple of rarities like "Treasure (Whatever Happened To Pete The Chop)" and "Endless Deep."

Taken as a complete set however, the U2 reissues are a great way of remembering U2 when they were, above all else, a great rock band. For that reason, I'd recommend the Amazon deal on the boxed set (if you can afford it at least). If I were to pick a single disc however, I'd say Boy is your best bet here.