OK, Michael Jackson is weirder, but Tom Waits is a more interesting sort of weird. I thought so before I read Barney Hoskyns' "Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits," but now I know it.
Thing is, Tom Waits is his own genre; there's no other songwriter or musician that does what Waits does. No one ever tagged Waits a folkie or rock musician, or even all that much of a musician. Waits is Waits, and that's all he has to be.
Hoskyns tries to nail down exactly who Waits is, but never really succeeds. We learn that in the early 1970s Waits was a beatnik poet of sorts, but somehow his tunes were covered by mainstream acts like the Eagles ("Ol' 55") and Bruce Springsteen ("Jersey Girl"). During his early days he was based in Los Angeles, but Waits wasn't really part of the radio-friendly LA singer/songwriter pack led by Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon. His early heavily textured, noir-romantic records were populated with stellar jazz players.
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I still remember this Loudon Wainwright show at the Bottom Line club in NYC thirty years ago.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)Let's face it: Musicians' income from CDs and downloads is on the wane, so they have to make a buck where they can.
Ticket prices for local venues in New York City can be pretty steep. Small jazz clubs can easily run $30, plus a two-drink minimum.
Steve Knopper's "High Ticket Prices Could Hurt Concert Business" article in Rolling Stone at least pointed to relative "bargains" among the big summer tours. Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen's shows have ticket prices under $100; Dave Matthews Band's seats go for $32 to $75; Pearl Jam's range between $42 and $77. Metallica, $50 to $76; Phish, $50; and if you can't miss U2, prices range from $32 to $256.
Those are the big shows, but here in New York City, jazz great Chuck Mangione will play at the Blue Note in July, and tickets are $20 to sit at the bar, $35 at a table. Over at BB King Blues Club and Grill in Times Square you'll pay $32.50 to see the Neville Brothers on August 8. They're great.
I still think prices are too high overall, but if you love the artists it's worth it. You gotta support the ones you love.
What do you think?
Are prices way out of line?
Or are they about right?
Can you tell us about any bargains?
The worst sounding recording of 2007, so far.
Iffy sound quality isn't a new problem. Bad sound can't directly be blamed on digital, analog, vinyl, CD, or even MP3. Those are release formats; the quality of the recording itself is what I'm talking about.
Granted, personal taste plays a big part in defining good or bad sound. For every person who says the sound is clear and detailed, there's another who thinks it's ragged and harsh.
That said, the trend of late is toward spitty distortion, the kind that obscures the sound of the vocals and instruments, and buries them in grunge. I'm not opposed to grit that adds an edge to music, but I can't stand recordings made by people who either don't know what they're doing or are too deaf to notice the error of their ways.
Bob Dylan, of all people, agrees with me.
"You listen to these modern records--they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like--static," Dylan said in a Rolling Stone interview with Jonathan Lethem in September 2006.
He's not just referring to other people's records; he included his own record, "Modern Times," in his rant: "Even these songs probably sounded 10 times better in the studio when we recorded 'em." I believe Dylan. That album was a blurry wall of sound. You can hardly hear individual instruments.
The worst recording of 2009 so far--it's still early--is the Heartless Bastards' "The Mountain" CD. It's too bad because I really like the music. It rocks hard, and I love Erika Wennerstrom's strange voice, but there's severe distortion whenever she sings loud.
The distortion was so incredibly annoying that my speakers' tweeters sounded broken. If the distortion just appeared on the hard-edged, bluesier numbers, I might have thought that it was intentional, but the sound was just as ragged on "So Quiet," in which Wennerstrom is accompanied by violin.
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The Boss' new CD costs about the same as two large Cinnamon Dolce Frappuccinos?
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)You could down a $5 Cinnamon Dolce Frappuccino in ten minutes, and it's gone forever. How many Cafe Mochas do you buy in a week? Tasty as these frothy concoctions can be, it's a fleeting satisfaction, isn't it? An album's worth of music is a repeatable pleasure, something you may enjoy dozens of times over the years. A CD is still a lot cheaper than a week's worth of Starbucks.
Sure, it's a matter of how you want to spend your disposable income, and whatever puts a smile on your face. But when I hear people going on about music being too expensive I'm mystified. Compared to what?
Oh, and by the way I noted that Springsteen's latest, Working on a Dream, goes for $9.99 for an Amazon MP3 download, but my local record store is selling the Springsteen CD for $7.99 (and the LP, which includes a free MP3 version for $14.99!). Hey, I'm still playing LPs I bought more than 40 years ago. Music is a repeatable pleasure--what you eat/drink turns to, well, you know...
So for the price of a couple of Frappuccinos you could own an actual CD, with cover art and liner notes. Oh, remember too that if you have any sort of decent hi-fi or headphones, the CD will sound better than the MP3.
Why pay more for music and get something that doesn't sound as good?
The CD may be on its way out, but music and concert DVDs are doing just fine, thank you very much! Late last year I wrote a feature for Home Entertainment magazine running down some of my favorite music DVDs of all time. They were all "live" recordings--there wasn't a single MTV style "music video" in the bunch. This is an abridged version of the article, check the Home Entertainment website to check out the complete article. Oh, and I've added a few DVDs that didn't make the article.
Led Zeppelin
With a combined running time of five plus hours over this two-disc set, with shows ranging from Royal Albert Hall, 1970 to Knebworth, 1979, it's the mother lode of filmed 'Zeppelin concerts. Jimmy Page presided over the film transfers and audio mixes, and considering most of them are more than 30 years old the Dolby and DTS sound is truly awesome. Led Zeppelin is also one the rare DVDs I've seen that starts to play as soon as it's loaded! You don't have to slog through FBI warning, coming attractions or menus. Why can't all DVDs and Blu-rays work like that?
The Rolling Stones: Four Flicks
I haven't seen the new Martin Scorsese 'Stone film, Shine a Light, but this four-disc set features three complete concerts from the 2002/2003 tour. My favorite is my hometown show at New York City's Madison Square Garden. The band is in great shape and Jagger's vocals sound stronger than they had in decades. The DVD looks and sounds great.
Bruce Springsteen: Live in Dublin
These shows from late 2006 when Springsteen was touring to support his Seeger Sessions CD are a hoot! The Boss is clearly having a ball and his large band, fleshed out with strings and horns sound fabulous. Fans will be happy to hear the song list features a large helping of tunes from Springsteen's back catalog, and includes "Highway Patrolman," "Atlantic City," and "Growin Up."
The White Stripes: Under Blackpool Lights
If the 'Zep isn't your bag, maybe this White Stripes DVD will rock your world. Recorded in the Empress Ballroom in England in 2004 with 8mm cameras, the look perfectly mirrors the Stripes aesthetic. The duo's live sound is even more stripped down than their records, and the sound of this DVD captures the Jack and Meg's onstage synergy. The energy is astounding. Clearly, Jack White has studied at the feet of 'Zeppelin and learned his lessons well.
My Morning Jacket: Okonokos
If you dig their records, you love the DVD from 2006. Lead singer Jim James' vocals are outstanding. To me the guy sounds halfway between Neil Young and Roger Daltrey, which makes him the best of his generation. The band rocks plenty hard, and the extended jams have a nice jazzy feel. The sound is extremely dynamic, so on a great home theater it can approach the sound of a live concert.
James Brown: Live at Montreux 1981
If the sound of the Live at Montreux 1981 DVD doesn't get your mojo working, the sheer spectacle of a sweat soaked James Brown and his 14 piece funk band will. The DTS and Dolby 5.1 tracks' sound absolutely nails the music's "live" energy. The horns' sound is brassy and the rhythm section's heavyweight grooves will keep your subwoofer busy. I'm not sure why, but this one only sounds best fully cranked up. It's a remarkably punchy, powerful sounding recording, so if your system is lacking in the oomph department you're going to miss half the fun. The band is staggeringly tight and impeccably arranged, but it's Brown's vocal pleading on "Try Me" that elicits gasps from the audience. The DVD is packaged with a CD of the same show.
Larry Coryell: A Retrospective
Larry Coryell first grabbed my attention almost 40 years ago when he was the first jazz guitarist to use distortion and feedback like a rock musician. Coryall was clearly inspired my Miles Davis' In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, but possibly because Coryell's music was guitar based it was more accessible to rock audiences. The Jimi Hendrix comparisons are also obvious, and there were times watching this DVD where I imagined this is what Hendrix would have sounded like if he lived. On "Spaces" Larry's son Julian plays guitarist John McLaughlin part from the original 1970 Coryell recording.
I just heard a guy on the radio refer to Fountains of Wayne's "Traffic and Weather" CD as a lo-fi wonder. What's up with that? Most of the lo-fi recordings I've bought from street musicians sound like the band I heard on the street, which is definitely a good thing. Which is more than you can say about most of today's slickly produced pop and rock music CDs. They sound awful--voices never sound remotely human, guitars don't sound like guitars, and drums, forget about it, they bear absolutely no relationship to the actual sound of wood sticks hitting skins or plastic or brass cymbals. Then again, even if a recording started out sounding halfway hi-fi by the time it gets squeezed into a download and played over $3 earbuds, what could possibly be left of the sound? There's no there there, no wonder people don't connect with music like they used to.
It's not a lack of production values I'm knocking in today's music, far from it. Sky high budgets are squandered on sessions that drag on for months, and the engineers apply Pro Tools fixes to correct sloppy players' mistakes and out-of-tune singers. But after all that digital tweaking what's left of the music? Quick and dirty lo-fi recordings put out my major labels can sound great, the Cowboy Junkies' "The Trinity Session" CD, recorded in one day in a church twenty years ago still sounds amazing. The first few White Stripes CDs ain't too shabby either. PJ Harvey's "Rid of Me" is startlingly good. What these recordings all have in common is that they sound like they were made by people playing music in a room. What a concept!
But Bruce Springteen's latest, "Magic," sounds awful--an unmusical, soulless, digitized, dynamically compressed mess. I'm not alone in that opinion, somebody on Amazon said, "The sound quality on your (Springsteen's) earliest recordings was vastly superior to this latest effort. Phil Spector had his "wall of sound." I guess we can call this your "sinkhole of sound." I literally checked all the connections on my CD player, amp, and speakers to see why the sound was so bad."I threw on Springsteen's "Born To Run," hardly an audiophile classic, to hear the E Street Band charging through the tunes as if their lives depended on it. And in a way, they did. The Boss is still coasting on the fumes from that one.
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