And there ain't nothing I can do about it

Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, the kid with the mustache playing keyboard above was me.

Today, I spent the afternoon with the lead singer (green jacket, red guitar: Dave Kellstrand) and the drummer (Hal Davis). The last time the 3 of us were all together was probably in '69, so I'd say the visit was long overdue. We were all great friends, but we just drifted due to family moves and the vagaries of normal life. But we had a fine time today, comparing memories and thoughts about our misspent youth. And music. Because at the end of the day, it's all about the music.

Interestingly, we know where the tall bass player (Jon Rooff) is, and we think we've located the guy playing the purple teardrop-shaped guitar (Mathew 'Mike' Peters).

We were what was called a cover band, but we were fairly unconventional. We played not just the current radio hits, but some fairly ambitious not-so-popular rock too. For example, we played 5 songs off the 1st Buffalo Springfield album, not just the radio singles. But we also did a couple of Vanilla Fudge tunes, songs I never heard another band attempt to cover.

Were we any good? I think so, audiences seemed to like us, and we played a lot during '67-'68. We even did our own Fudge-esque versions of a couple of songs. Toward the end of our existence, we even did one original song that I wrote call "Don't Turn Out The Light", that Dave & Mike sang and did the vocal arrangement on. We felt we were future stars.

A recording of us at the gig pictured did exist, but we have no idea if it's around anywhere.

Obviously I have no real idea what song this photo shows, but since I'm playing keys pretty intently, and not guitar, I have a feeling it might be our version of this:

'Cause I can play this here guitar, Pt. 29

To piggyback on a post I did recently on Bach for the guitar, here's another version of what is commonly called "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring". To all you hotshot guitarists out there, all I have to say is: Try. To. Play. This. Then fall down on your knees and worship true rock'n'roll guitar, as shown by fine classical guitarist Ronnie Wiesauer:



This guy has serious skills, and deserves a listen.

She blew my mind behind the wrecking machine

Pardon my obsession with the music of Bach, but since it really speaks to me, and the blog has my name on it, well, here's some more Bach.

A lot of what makes Baroque music so wondrous is the often insistent tempo. Just when you think you can't take it any more, it keeps on going with a new variation of the theme, which makes the relentless rhythm seem even more OK, as a driving force to take you to the mountain top. Like the Little Engine That Could, Bach was.

One of the better examples of this is the 10th movement of the cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, commonly called Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. The original first line, Jesus bleibet meine freude (Jesus remains my Joy) is perhaps a better rendition of the sense of the whole lyric.

Since I am a recovering guitarist, I naturally look for guitar interpretations of music I love. Christopher Parkening has been the greatest arranger and advocate of Bach for guitar: see Parkening Plays Bach.

But here's the problem for guitarists. While Segovia said "the guitar is a small orchestra", and while in theory it can play up to 5 voices at one time, the reality is that Bach's counterpoint can require many more voices than 5. So an arranger for solo instrument has to pick and choose which voices to present, and which to drop.

Parkening's arrangement of "Jesu" is wonderful, and his playing so smooth, yet still doesn't capture quite the essence of the insistent accompaniment underneath the main melody that never ever stops except in the first half of each 'verse'. Because there simply aren't enough fingers to do that.

But wait, other folks can rock some Bach too. Here's Koari Muraji, a young Japanese woman who, while not having Parkening's longer years of expression and performance, has a great sense of what Bach should sound like. And she nails the continuo in the 2nd half of each verse, while not letting the melody get lost. Sublime musical technique and taste. This is rock'n'roll:



(Title is a lyric from a Skid Row song called Sweet Little Sister. Skid Row was fronted by a guy who went by the stage name Sebastian Bach. Dumb, I know. But it still made sense to me.)

Sheep may safely graze . . .

This from the great star of Fox News, Glenn Beck:

Vancouver lost, how much was it? they lost a billion dollars when they had the Olympics.

Reality:

With the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games fast approaching, the Operations Engagement Team (OET) has been created to provide local businesses and residents with the tools and information necessary to prepare for a successful and rewarding Olympic and Paralympic experience.

It hasn't happened yet!

Fox News: We make shit up, you decide.

And people who get their news from Fox? You're getting what you deserve.

Some palette cleansing music:



I really don't think you'll find a better performance of this piece. The modern guitar wasn't yet invented when this was written, yet much of Bach's work finds a happy home on the guitar.

I take issue with many interpretations of Bach, by otherwise really talented folks. Yo-yo Ma, a nice fellow and gifted player, does a major disservice to this piece in his interpretation. He plays it in a romantic style, all emotions and rubato tempi, with vibrato up the wazoo.

Dude, this is Baroque! It needs to be played almost to a metronome, that's part of the delicious tension that finally releases at the end. This swings and rocks as hard as Bird & Dizzy at their best, this is Clapton playing Crossroads live with Cream. This isn't Liberace or Lawrence Welk. The incessant tempo makes it rock, it drives it hard down the tracks.

Here's another player who gets it:



Because he only has 4 strings to work with, we miss many of the sustained notes available on the guitar, making it more true to the original Cello setting. Thing is, this type of solo baroque music depends on our brains to hear the chords, not the instrument to create them. the 1st 3 notes: G, D, B, define a GMajor triad, yet they are played as 3 separate notes. Our brain connects them into a G chord.

That's some of the mysterious beauty of this music, and of Bach's writing for solo instruments. You never have any doubt what the underlying chord is, yet you hear a stream of individual notes.

Hey kids, rock'n'roll . . .

Heard anything as interesting lately? Innovation, creativity, and uniqueness used to be valued.

Maybe Justin Timberlake will cover this now, if he's done playing with Andy Samberg.

It's gotta be rock'n'roll music

Just because:

Yeah you shook me all night long

In blogger trivia, many fine blogs (and this one too!) use Haloscan as a comment engine, for a bunch of reasons: editing, managing etc., far better than standard Blogger comments.

Unfortunately, Haloscan blows up occasionally, and no comments can be made. That happened tonight. Thankfully, the clever folks over there managed to subdue and tame the ornery code, and all is once again well.

Also, in other behind-the-scenes stuff, we, like other bloggers, make use of a great website & service called Blogrolling to, you know, maintain the blogroll. Without that, one has to hand-code each entry into the blogroll in the Blogger template. Not hard, but tedious. Blogrolling places a bit of code in our template that, when you load our page, calls the blogroll from their database, and places it on the page. Unfortunately, they got hacked and severely damaged a while back, and are only now ready to go back live in a few days. When that happens, we can add some fine new additions to the blogroll.

People blog, as well as build these great utility sites like this for fun, for free, out of passion. How cool is that! Blogging has changed the world. Well, a little bit.

Now, since you've read this far, you deserve a treat: music.

There are some songs and recordings that are perfect, regardless of genre. This is one of them:



I did some work for these guy on their 1983 (Flick of the Switch) tour, and worked with this drummer, Chris Slade, a bit earlier in '82 when he was touring with Gary Numan. All nice folks.

Of course, several other groups recorded their own version of Willie Dixon's song "You Shook Me", which were very different than Acca Dacca's.

Here's Jeff Beck with Rod Stewart, back when Rod mattered:



And here are some guys called Zed Leppelin(?)



Addendum by The Sailor: And here, as far as I can tell, is the original. From Wikipedia:"You Shook Me" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon and J. B. Lenoir. Earl Hooker first recorded it as an instrumental which was then overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters in 1962.

The single featured Muddy Waters on vocals, J.T Brown Ernest Cotton on tenor saxophone, Johnny "Big Moose" Walker on organ, Earl Hooker on guitar, Willie Dixon on bass, and Casey Jones on drums.

If you don't know how to do it, I'll show you how the walk the dog.

Believe it or not, this looks like the first band I was in, in '65. The song, "Walkin' The Dog", was mandatory repertoire for a Top 40 band of the time, having been covered by the Rolling Stones. Of course, critics tried to find sexual innuendo in every line. The reality is that, unless I'm really naive and probably stupid, the lyrics are just nonsense, perhaps meant to tittilate. And the clothing is completely period-appropriate, sadly. Only thing we didn't have is the fantastic Rufus Thomas:



Update: Here are the Rolling Stones doing "Walkin' the Dog":