Hell City Songs Blog

Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/obama-taps-fift.html

This being a blog about music, I was hoping to keep politics out. I'll try to keep it brief.

In case you don't know, the RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America. They have a history of buying legislation. Their business model is failing due to advances in technology. They work hard bribing congressmen to legislate special rules to preserve their failing industry.

Where are all the buggy-whip makers?

When there's a machine in your basement that creates any physical object from a template and costs
pennies to run, what will a coffee table be worth?

The vast majority of working  musicians - and I am one - wish they could make an honest living playing music and don't give a damn about the recording industry.

The Top Ten

One of my favorite ways to recommend a song to somebody is to say "It's in my Top Ten". I've been doing this for years without ever determining what exactly my Top Ten consists of. Seems like I ought to give it a shot.

Movies are easy. Here's my Top Five, in no particular order.

1. Seven Samurai
2. Mulholland Drive
3. The Searchers
4. Blade Runner
5. Chinatown

Music, though... that's a problem. I suspect that I've put several hundred songs in my Top Ten in my long career as an Opinionated Music Fan. These things usually happen in momentary bouts of enthusiasm, when I try to convey my appreciation of a song I'm momentarily taken with to someone who hasn't heard it.

There are problems. I have to exclude all Beatles songs, because otherwise my Top Ten would consist of only Beatles songs. Same for the Rolling Stones. So please take to for granted that I'm not ignoring those bands, their excellence just swamps the competition.

This moment's Musical Top Ten, in no particular order:

1. I Can See For Miles - The Who
2. Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks
3. All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix
4. Don't Worry Baby - The Beach Boys
5. Don't Bring Me Down - Eric Burdon & The Animals
6. Copperhead Road - Steve Earle
7. Eight Miles High- The Byrds
8. Tom Traubert's Blues - Tom Waits
9. Dimming of the Day - Richard Thompson
10. Tin Soldier - Small Faces

Of course you realize this list will be completely different next week - or this afternoon, for that matter.

Mellencamp on The Industry

John Cougar Mellencamp came to prominence in the late '70's as a member of the American roots rock Springsteen 'n Seger camp. If you were paying attention to him back then, you might not have been too impressed with his brain cell count or his musical abilities. While his tendency to authenticity was admirable (after all, years after his manager changed his name to John Cougar he changed it back), his interviews revealed that he seemed to be a bit dimwitted and his music seemed to mix awkward songwriting and phrasing with moments of real inspiration, which seemed to show up just in time to save the whole shebang from going down the tubes.

So I was never very impressed with him, regarding him as lucky but overrated and a bit simple.

Many years have gone by and things have changed, as they tend to do. I am quite surprised to find that John Mellencamp's article on the state of the music business is written at a post-first grade level, and that his opinion are more or less the same as mine - which of course makes me think much more of him as an intelligent and worthwhile human being and artist.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mellencamp/on-my-mind-the-state-of-t_b_177836.html

And remember - my taste is impeccable, and I'm always right and I never lie.

Bellrays

And if you need any more proof of just how badly the major record labels have screwed up their own industry, this band has been recording superb music for at least 17 years and they have never been signed to a major label... and probably never will be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpn7fjzLZD4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ZJVv8gq-A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc1Z5VMjZhc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtZtZoZ_Hn0&feature=related
http://www.thebellrays.com/

The Real Pirates

“They sold a quarter million copies! Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are:”
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

“…in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money.”
http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html

“We'd like to point out that a major label record contract is the only contract in existence of its kind today. It's akin to doing a deal with the bank when you take out a thirty year mortgage on a house, and, after it's paid for, they tell you that you have to move out -- that you don't own it.”
http://www.puremusic.com/shocked5.html

My suspicions were aroused years ago when I read, in an interview with an aging black blues musician, that he had recently toured Europe and gone in the record stores there. He found his own legitimate albums there that he had never heard of and never received royalties for.

Over the years I kept hearing other strange things. Why did I keep hearing about recording artists attempting to legally audit their own sales? Why were the Dixie Chicks suing to get out of their record contract after becoming massively famous? How is it possible that John Fogerty - leader and songwriter of Creedence Clearwater Revival - would quit playing his own songs, complaining that he didn‘t own them and refusing to work for his label any more? Why did both Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, early on in already very successful careers, find it necessary to stop recording for long periods while they fought their labels?

I eventually realized that regarding a recording career as the path to riches was a bit naïve. I spent some time researching the music business and the way contracts between artists and record companies are written and fulfilled. Now I believe that the record companies are dying because they deserve to die. They live by fraud and theft. Massively over-complicated contracts that favor the companies are the norm, and once an artist becomes famous and begins selling CD’s, every effort is made to defraud him or her, including falsifying sales quantities, writing off sales as “breakage”, or simply making up statements from scratch.

The record companies, represented by the RIAA, have been crusading against the pirates that illegally download and distribute their “property”. They have a point… sort of.

The real pirates are the record companies. Aside from stealing every cent they can from their artists, they have started a campaign of intimidation against their customers (the RIAA lawsuits), they are complicit with the movie industry and Disney to extend copyright durations by bribing congressmen, and they have ruined the musical culture of America and the world by refusing to support music that doesn’t sound just like the last bad hit record in order to ensure their own profits.

Stealing from these creeps is like lifting a wallet from Blackbeard.

Following the Trail

Listen to these recordings, in this order and you will learn something interesting:

1. All Your Love by Otis Rush
2. All Your Love by John Mayall and Eric Clapton
3. Black Magic Woman by Fleetwood Mac
4. Black Magic Woman by Santana

The Otis Rush version of All Your Love may be hard to find. He recorded it many times, but in my opinion his best version was done in 1957 with Ike Turner’s band, and can be found on a Chess compilation of Otis Rush and Albert King cuts, Door to Door (still available on CD, according to Amazon). It’s a terrific song, alternating between a blues rumba and a shuffle, with impassioned vocals and well-thought-out guitar parts that are more composed than improvised. The first guitar break consists of a beautiful set of minor-chord arpeggios, and I’ll stop right there because reducing fine blues guitar playing to a phrase like that is a musical crime. If you don’t know about this record, you’re missing out. Note the time changes - they will be become important as we follow this trail. The composition is attributed to Otis Rush and Willie Dixon - and it’s not unlikely that in reality Rush was the sole songwriter, and Dixon was the first of many to profit from his effort.

The first recorded instance of a Les Paul played through a Marshall amplifier - THAT SOUND - is the John Mayall and Eric Clapton album, recorded in London and released in 1966. The first cut on the album is a cover of All Your Love. It’s practically a copy of the Otis Rush version, although the beat has been slowed down and simplified, and the vocals miss the original’s quality by a country mile. The guitar sound is stunning - thick and fluid, it will be possibly the single biggest influence on guitar sound from the ‘60’s up until the present day. The notes played are an almost slavish copy of what Otis Rush played. Note the time changes - still there in this version. This is another must-have record, so go find a copy if you’ve never heard it.

By the time the John Mayall and Eric Clapton album came out, Eric Clapton was no longer with the band, having gone on to bigger and better things with Cream. He had been replaced by Peter Green - a guitar player who some think matched if not bettered Clapton’s guitar prowess. It’s not much of a stretch here to assume that he knew All Your Love and played it live many times - it was the first track on his band’s current album. After playing on the next Mayall album (A Hard Road) he quit the band to create Fleetwood Mac, which in its early form was probably the best blues band to come out of England.

Now here’s the only item in our musical trail that requires a little creative analysis. In 1968 Peter Green wrote and recorded (with Fleetwood Mac) his composition, Black Magic Woman. It’s a different song, but the similarities to All Your Love are many - the latin-sounding beat, some of the melody, the overall feel, which is very like the Mayall recording, and the time change, in the form of a coda which turns into a shuffle. This song is All Your Love rewritten. As with all the songs we’ve mentioned so far, if you haven’t heard this, go find it. It’s on the Pious Bird of Good Omen CD.

Last, we come to the Santana version of Peter Green’s Black Magic Woman. If you haven’t heard this you’ve been living in a cave since the late ‘60’s. Probably the most recognizable Santana song, it was a massive hit single and made somebody (probably Columbia Records) quite a bit of change. Few people know who wrote it. Even fewer know where the song ultimately derived from - Otis Rush’s All Your Love. This version too includes a time change - in the place of Green’s shuffle we get a fast instrumental coda.

So there’s the trail, laid out for anyone to see who’s interested. A burst of creativity in 1957 leads to a series of fine records and an enormous amount of money. With any luck Otis Rush continues to receive royalties for his half of a composer’s credit on one song on the John Mayall and Eric Clapton album, which has sold somewhat steadily since its release. Other than that… not much.

Extra credit - play The Supernatural from John Mayall’s Hard Road album. It’s a Peter Green instrumental that sounds like the prototype for Santana - latin groove and a Les Paul with infinite sustain playing beautiful melodic lines.

Moonie

First, a little disclaimer - of all the rock star deaths that have occurred since I began to care about such things, there was only one that made me want to weep like a girl, and that was the death of Keith Moon. I've read everything I could find about the man, including several passes through Tony Fletcher's huge biography, Moon. Yes, I am a fan. And I confess that I still viewed him as a brilliant drunk, a buffoon that made an amazing and delightful racket as he fell over into the drum kit.

That changed the other night when I watched the film of The Who's superb performance in 1969 at the London Coliseum, included as a bonus disk in the new DVD The Who at Kilburn, 1977.  It's amazing that after playing a selection of old hits, then a complete performance of Tommy, he still had the energy to steam into Summertime Blues with the spirit and enthusiasm that no one else in rock and roll has ever seemed to match. But it's also amazing that in those shots where we see close-ups of Keith's face, we see a clear-eyed, fully-functioning musician, who seemed to know exactly what he was doing at all times.

This show is the video version of Live At Leeds, and was filmed two months before that album. If you're a Who fan, don't miss it. If you're not a Who fan, this show may convert you.

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Testing... Testing... 1... 2... 3... Check... Check... CHECK'S IN THE MAIL!