Issue Eight
Traffic Jam by Joe Sweeney
Energy. Emotion. Showmanship. A driving groove. A catchy lyric.
CD Reviews:
Little Richard
Get Down With It: The Okeh Sessions
Energy. Emotion. Showmanship. A driving groove. A catchy lyric. These are the universal ingredients of rock n’ roll music, and Little Richard essentially wrote the recipe in 1955 with his song “Tutti Frutti.” Richard Wayne Penniman of Macon, Georgia, had tapped into an undiscovered current of sonic electricity, and his early recordings present rock in its purest form, before it was co-opted and strangled by a hollow pretender called Elvis Presley.
The brand new compilation Get Down With It: The Okeh Sessions captures Richard at a turbulent time in his career: the mid-1960s. After retiring at the height of his popularity to become a preacher, he attempted a secular comeback, and it was an uphill battle. While out of the public eye, the British Invasion usurped Richard’s fans, but the artist didn’t mess with his formula, evidenced by the foot-stomping, adrenaline-pumping joy of the opening track, “I Don’t Want To Discuss It.” The performance is a jarring reminder of Richard’s immeasurable influence, his enduring strength and bottomless resources of energy. No career setback could dampen this vivid musical spirit.
Get Down With It is full of undeniable examples of Richard’s innate talents as a showman and performer–songs that have been beaten into the ground by oldies radio, film soundtracks and shameless TV commercials. In this artist’s hands, “Hound Dog,” “Land Of A Thousand Dances” and “Money” are completely revitalized. The chords are the same and the words are pretty much identical, but the performances are downright explosive. He obviously hadn’t lost any of his creative spark, as each and every song bursts with exuberance; each chorus is a celebration of rock music’s energy and spontaneity.
Elvis became “The King” by taking black music and depriving it of its soul and spirit, and as far as I’m concerned, he can have the name and its modern connotation–a figurehead with no real power. Little Richard is true rock n’ roll royalty, a leader with real sway over his audiences. Get Down With It is an incredibly entertaining tribute to his reign, spilling over with talent, vivacity and resilience.
Rock music has splintered into many directions since Richard’s heyday, with innovators and experimentalists pushing the music into new stratospheres. For all the amazing paths that rock has taken, there’s still nothing quite like the raw artistic power of Little Richard, pounding on his helpless piano and screaming towards the heavens in the heat of the moment-that young, glorious rock n’ roll sound pumping its gears behind him with the force of a locomotive.
Bob Dylan–Live 1964:
Concert at Philharmonic Hall
In 1964, America was standing on the brink of war and widespread cultural revolutions, the fear of buttoned-up conservatives and the reckless rise of young voices. At the age of 23, Bob Dylan was about to experience a sea change of his own. A few months after Live 1964: Concert At Philharmonic Hall was recorded, the precocious folk hero headed into the studio to record his first “plugged-in” album, Bringing It All Back Home, incensing folk traditionalists and astounding everybody else. It’s been almost 40 years since this time of gathering clouds and imminent social upheaval, and the recording of Dylan’s incredible Halloween performance documents the turbulence and excitement of the day with more poignancy and immediacy than any textbook I’ve ever read.
After decades of fame as a must-have bootleg for Dylan fanatics, this live album is being properly released for the very first time, presented on two beautifully mastered discs. Live 1964 is the sixth installment of Columbia/Legacy’s Dylan “Bootleg Series,” and it captures the artist at the peak of his creative powers. The singer/songwriter’s instincts must have been severe–after hearing these masterful renditions of the incendiary folk gems that littered his early records, it’s clear that the artist had done everything he could as a solitary troubadour. Plus, the sound quality is impeccable, capturing everything from the audience’s jubilant requests to the scraping of Dylan’s pick on the strings.
The concert opens with “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” the song that cemented him as a hero amongst activists and peaceniks. While it proved to be an albatross when Dylan began expanding his musical horizons, he convincingly delivers its resilient themes of hope and revolution, to the audible delight of the 2,000-plus in attendance. Live 1964 features many more examples of Dylan’s snarling social commentary, from the biting McCarthyist critique “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” to the earth-shaking “Gates Of Eden,” which the singer introduces as “A Sacrilegeous Lullaby In D Minor.”
These songs, jammed with brilliant wordplay, desperate anger and slicing humor, may be his most enduring, if only as symbols of the rebellious nature of the time, but they don’t separate Bob Dylan from fellow protest singers like Phil Ochs or Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Early in his career, Dylan hid his love of The Beatles and their ability to craft ingenious, catchy love songs–it wouldn’t have been well-received on the anti-establishment, Greenwich Village scene. Thankfully, he didn’t hide it well enough on his records, as the joyful spirit of the Fab Four can be felt in his meditations on relationships. Along with his rabid sense of humor, Dylan’s love songs were underappreciated early on, and when looking back, they’re a crucial aspect of his catalog and a vivacious point of difference from the doom and gloom of “serious” singer/songwriters. Live 1964 contains several moments of true romance and uninhibited glee, where the artist is clearly having fun (when an audience member jokingly requests “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” Dylan responds by saying, “Did I record that? Is that a protest song?”). These lighthearted reprieves get listeners closer to Bob Dylan as a human being, simultaneously rounding out a complete, kaleidoscopic idea of life in America.
Five years after this performance, Dylan was lambasted for his album Nashville Skyline, a record full of cheerful love songs and country sing-a-longs. This iconic figure didn’t shock his followers by being confrontational or brash, but by sounding sensitive and silly, writing odes to lovers and ditties about country pie. For all of his invaluable contributions to popular music, the most memorable and touching are the songs laced with his special brand of sweet, hopeless romanticism. Live 1964 would be an inaccurate portrayal of an artist in transition without the cleansing humor of “If You Gotta Go, Go Now,” and the rollicking, euphoric number that was Dylan’s encore–“All I Really Wanna Do.” His enthusiastic yodeling of the song’s chorus incites a celebration in the crowd, and because of this album’s incredible production, listeners can feel like they are sitting there, singing their guts out along with a legend, feeling the electricity of a year filled with anticipatory wonder, like the gorgeous, quiet minute that precedes the most tumultuous storms.
Jolie Holland - Escondida
Anti
With the unexpected mainstream success of Alison Krauss, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and adult contemporary juggernaut Norah Jones, the stage seems to be set for the rise of Jolie Holland. The Texas-born singer/songwriter plays simple, polished folk songs that sound like direct descendants of Leadbelly and Hank Williams, delivered with the jazzy flair of a 1920s speakeasy diva.
Holland’s second album, Escondida, is filled with old-time mountain music–songs that wouldn’t be out of place in a Hooverville jam session–recorded with few flourishes. Most of the tracks offer nothing but Holland’s faint acoustic guitar and thin, mournful voice, trusting the lyrics and chords to carry all the weight. For the most part, they’re not up to the task. Holland’s not quite as comatose as Jones, whose albums work like horse tranquilizers, but Escondida is a basic landscape of sonic valleys; the peaks are few and far between. It’s like a trip through Iowa: occasionally pretty, but mostly dull, plodding and unsurprising.
Songs like “Goodbye California” and “Darlin Ukelele” suffer from rudimentary country structures and a total lack of dynamics. Holland has shown a knack for writing songs, which she displayed in her band the Be Good Tanyas, but here she’s caught in some stale, dreary headspace. There are a few bright spots, like “Tiny Idyll/Lil Missy,” which benefits from a jazz arrangement and a tasteful trumpet solo, and the closing “Faded Coat Of Blue,” a spirited rendition of a traditional Civil War song. Holland’s fascination with the resilient spirit of Americana is apparent here; it shows what she can do with a classic melody and lyrics full of 19th century pride.
On paper, Jolie Holland has the tools to sell records and win awards. Her inoffensive blend of roots music and smoky jazz has great potential, which makes Escondida all the more disappointing.