Either/Or, Episode 8: The Money Edition
In Either/Or, we take two people in similar pursuits, and you choose between them. It can be based on any criteria: professional ability, personality, intellectual prowess, physical pulchritude, or who you’d want backing you up in a knife fight. It really doesn’t matter: just choose Either/Or.
Either CNBC’s Erin Burnett…
Or CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo…
Either CNBC “Squawk Box”’s Carl Quintanilla…
Or CNN’s Ali Velshi…
Video of the Day: Antony and the Johnsons, “Another World”
I still maintain that Antony sounds like a cross between Bryan Ferry and a Dyson, but many of you are beguiled so here it is, the title track from the Another World EP.
Random 10 for September 30, 2008
1. Charlotte Gainsbourg, “5:55.” Serge’s daughter collaborates with Air, with predictably seductive results. Anyone who’s seen the problematic but difficult-to-shake “I’m Not There” knows that despite Blanchett overshadowing almost everything else, Gainsbourg was one of the best things going in the film.
2. McLusky, “Dave, Stop Killing Prostitutes.”
3. Club 8, “This is the Morning.”
4. Fountains of Wayne, ‘Little Red Light.”
5. The Gossip, “Jealous Girls.” Beth Ditto might be an unlikely frontwoman in this image-conscious era, but that and her powerful vocals make her even more valuable.
6. Chris Walla, “St. Modesto.”
7. Radiohead, “Just.”
8. Tim Finn, “Midnight Coma.”
9. We Are Scientists, “After Hours.”
10. Difford and Tilbrook, “Love’s Crashing Waves.” During Squeeze’s brief, post-Sweets From a Stranger breakup, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook released the Tony Visconti-produced Difford and Tilbrook disc, which was essentially an ultra-slick Squeeze disc. It was hardly a hit, but being the ultra-Squeeze geek at that time, I bought it on vinyl. While it wasn’t nearly as jam-packed with extraneous sound, it set the stage for Squeeze’s 1985 disc, Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti, an extremely baroque work featuring the dense and frankly annoying production of Laurie Latham, who also produced Paul Young and Echo and the Bunnymen and never met a sound effect he didn’t want to shoehorn into a mix.
Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on “SNL,” Part Two
“From Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan or Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq, or Bono, the King of Ireland.” Tina Fey is raising this to an art.
Robert Plant Alison Krauss Photo Spectacular
Our illustrious photo editor, Doug Hoke, took these great photos of the Robert Plant-Alison Krauss show Friday night at the Zoo Amphitheatre. As I wrote, a magnificent concert.
Video of the Day: Wye Oak, “Please Concrete”
Any child that can create cracks in the pavement like that is an obvious threat to national security.
Random 10 for September 29, 2008
1. Ra Ra Riot, “Dying is Fine.” This violin-drenched beauty from The Rhumb Line is perfectly accentuated by this clip that looks like children’s storybook. I mean, a dreadfully sad one that you’d read to your child if you wanted him to cry, but a storybook nevertheless.
2. Beck, “Readymade.”
3. Turin Brakes, “Red Moon.”
4. Parliament, “Testify.”
5. LCD Soundsystem, “Daft Punk Is Playing in My House.” And all the furniture is in the garage.
6. The Postmarks, “End of the Story.”
7. Steely Dan, “Daddy Don’t Live In That New York City No More.”
8. Miles Davis, “Rocker.”
9. Hot Chip, “The Beach Party.”
10. Supergrass, “Richard III.” One of the best and most tragically underrated bands of our time. This clip would be much better if Gaz Coombes were stalking around wearing a cape and a hunchback, but then again, most things would be, right? Presidential debates? Summer’s Eve commercials? Family reunions? All would be better with Gaz Coombes stalking around wearing a cape and a hunchback.
Concert Review: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Zoo Amphitheatre, Friday Sept. 26, Oklahoma City
Some concerts simply do justice to the artist’s work, but others achieve transcendence. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, performing a hastily arranged benefit concert for Hurricane Ike victims that attracted an unconditionally loving capacity crowd Friday night at the Zoo Amphitheatre, found that extraordinary place where the event becomes more than anyone could have hoped. It was the summit of the “golden god” and the bluegrass goddess, and the two singers achieved
an uncommon alchemy.
Plant and Krauss’ “Raising Sand” disc was the jumping off point, providing the set’s stylistic framework of smoky, after-midnight mood music, but the duo’s powerful set extended well into Krauss’ classic bluegrass repertoire, the deeper elements of Led Zeppelin and Plant’s classic solo work. And by the time Krauss and Plant launched into Zeppelin’s “Ballad of Evermore,” any subdued, pops concert behavior from the crowd was replaced by a kind of rapture.
People were losing their minds, screaming as if it were the mid-’70s and Plant was still the Dionysian rock conqueror instead of the leonine elder statesman holding court with Krauss, whose crystalline voice was in perfect form throughout. Beginning with “Rich Woman” from
“Raising Sand,” the two singers’ voices blended beautifully as bandleader T-Bone Burnett powered the band through the set and drummer Jay Bellerose beat his kit mercilessly with timpani mallets.
Burnett has crafted a swamp-rock sound that finds the sweet spot between Plant’s otherworldly wail and Krauss’ rural sweetness, and while it works beautifully on record, the live experience is a whole other animal. This was especially true when Krauss executed a flawless reading of Sam Phillips’ “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us,” with Plant, who until recently was unaccustomed to singing background harmony, giving perfect support in the shadows, or when they came together for a surprising, down-home rendition of Plant’s synth-heavy early ’80s
hit, “In the Mood.” The audience seemed equally rapt by new songs such as “Fortune Teller” and Zeppelin favorites such as “Black Dog” or their astounding version of “Black Country Woman.” Plant still sounded like the great howler of yore — it didn’t matter that it was roots-music great Buddy Miller pulling the strings instead of Jimmy Page. He was in his element, and the nearly constant smile on his weathered face told the tale.
There were hints long ago that Plant could go this route, like when he performed Doc Pomus’ “Little Sister” with Rockpile in 1979 at the Concert for Kampuchea. While there is always a certain hope that Led Zeppelin will rise again for a full-scale tour, his current pairing with Krauss is clearly a labor of love, and an appreciative Oklahoma City audience returned that love in full.
Real Savage-Like: Lindsey Buckingham Live in Tulsa
It’s not that funny, is it?
When Lindsey Buckingham discusses his life, both inside Fleetwood Mac and in the free zone of his solo career, his descriptors take on political airs. The guitarist describes music he makes on his own being “far to the left,” and the deliberations determining what parts of his solo work the band could absorb sound like what diplomatic correspondents often call “high-level talks.”
“Trouble”
Buckingham, who performs tonight at Tulsa’s Brady Theater, released his fifth solo disc, “Gift of Screws,” last week. It is an album that has existed in various forms for about 13 years, but great swaths of it were harvested twice: when Fleetwood Mac reunited in the late ’90s for its live disc, “The Dance,” and for 2003’s studio return, “Say You Will.”
“Those two are not the only times, but those are probably the most prime examples of what might be called ‘interventions’ on solo work,” Buckingham said in a recent phone interview. An earlier run of solo endeavor in the mid-’80s got sidelined when Mac asked Buckingham to record what was to be his final album with the band, 1987’s “Tango In the Night.”
“Big Love”
There are two camps, or parties, who see this pattern from starkly different perspectives. There are Fleetwood Mac loyalists who still go pale recalling the stark blandness of 1990’s Buckingham-free “Behind the Mask.” They believe that their favorite band cannot exist without its oddest component, the inventive string man who orchestrated the 1977 pop classic “Rumours” and then brilliantly detonated all that heartbreak and beauty with the messy and magnificent “Tusk.” And then there is a smaller group of Buckingham-loyal insurrectionists — fans who believe “Go Insane” and “Gift of Screws” offer their troubled genius in his best, undiluted state.
“Go Insane”
After “Say You Will,” Buckingham laid down the law, telling Stevie Nicks, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood that there would be a moratorium on picking over his work for future Mac projects.
“What I did was, I said to the band, ‘Look. I want to take about a three-year period and I don’t want anyone knocking on my door,” he said. “My intention is to try to get two albums out in a relatively short period of time for me and to tour behind both of those albums. And when I’m done, we can talk about Fleetwood Mac again.”
When the band last knocked on his door, the resulting “Say You Will” sounded a lot like Buckingham and Nicks solo discs sandwiched together. But that meant that some odd-duck Buckingham tracks such as “Red Rover” and “Murrow Turning Over in His Grave” made the cut, and few purists would think of such songs as bedrock Fleetwood Mac material.
“Not That Funny”
“The last time stuff that was that far to the left made it onto a Fleetwood Mac album was probably ‘Tusk.’ So in a way I was happy about that,” Buckingham said. “But it’s not always easy to know. More often than not, what defines it as a Fleetwood Mac song is as much dictated by the politics of the band and what they are receptive to.”
As the Buckingham-free years reinforced, the guitarist’s musical eccentricity is the fire that keeps that band alive. When he discusses the music he considers most pivotal in his artistic development, it is the work that most threatened Fleetwood Mac’s standing in the ‘70s California “mellow mafia.”
“Tusk”
“In the post-‘Rumours’ environment, when we were poised to follow everyone’s expectations and make ‘Rumours II,’ shall we say, and to fall back on the formulas that were spontaneously created during the process of ‘Rumours,’ I made the choice to make a complete left turn and to open up whole new areas of my process and bring them back to the band and take more chances and to present an album that was certainly more challenging and confounded people’s expectations certainly,” he said.
“And that was the ‘Tusk’ album. I kind of drew a line in the sand in terms of what was important and what wasn’t, and (‘Tusk’ is) the one that I always look back on as the beginning of me, you know, trying to maintain a road in which I’m making choices for the reasons that I think are important.”
In the mid-‘80s, when Buckingham, Nicks, and former singer and keyboardist Christine McVie all enjoyed high-profile solo careers, it seemed Fleetwood Mac was a necessary evil, a beast that none of them particularly liked to feed anymore. This doesn’t seem to be the case 25 years later. Christine McVie is retired, but the rest of the band seems more committed to the idea of Fleetwood Mac than at any time since “Rumours.”
A recent story involving Sheryl Crow and the band is a solid sign of this commitment. Earlier this year, Crow announced to Spinner.com that she and Fleetwood Mac “definitely have plans for collaborating in the future, and we’ll see what happens.” Crow’s forwardness — a breach of political protocol — sent the rest of the band into a defensive posture and, eventually, an offensive posture.
“Go Your Own Way” featuring Carrie Underwood (!)
“That has come and gone,” Buckingham said. “I think Stevie put out the feelers and asked if she would be interested in doing that, and that was as far as it got. It was a hypothetical. And then, you know, when Sheryl was doing press for her album that was out a few months ago, she took it upon herself to announce to the world that she was joining Fleetwood Mac. And that’s where all of this comes from: she made a choice to announce something which had not been even decided. The manner in which she did it was inappropriate in everyone’s eyes, that if you’re going to do that, you sit down as a band and announce it with everyone there.
“I know it bothered Stevie a great deal — and Mick, I think,” he said. “And I certainly thought it was off the wall. Stevie and Sheryl had some rather harsh words about it, and she was basically given her marching orders — not that she had even been in the group in the first place.”
So unless the band takes a shine to Colbie Caillat or at least someone who understands the band’s modus operandi, it looks as though a four-member Fleetwood Mac will reconvene next year.
“Yeah, I think probably in January the band will start rehearsing,” Buckingham said before ironically echoing Sheryl Crow’s fatal statement. “And then we’ll see what happens.”
ROCK SHOW
Lindsey Buckingham
When: 7 tonight.
Where: Brady Theater, 105 W Brady, Tulsa.
Information: (866) 443-8849.
Neil Diamond Teleconference
I’m on the phone with several other journalists talking to Neil Diamond, who will perform Oct. 19 at the Ford Center, and I just heard Neil say the name “Smokey Hormel.”
I think I’ll turn it into a ringtone.
