“We have a piper down. I repeat – a piper is down!”

Well, not exactly a piper, but a drum major…

As further proof that everyone gets their fifteen minutes, John Coleman has popped up in headlines the last few days. Coleman has left the pipe and drum regiment of which he was a member because he waved to Barack Obama during the inaugural parade.

So, yeah, I suppose he violated the esprit de corps and broke ranks with his fellow pipers and drummers, but it’s an understandable, spontaneous lapse in decorum. It’s not like he molested a collie.

The article I read made me feel like this incident has left Coleman a broken man (“burned bridges” and “hurt feelings” are mentioned). Sure, it’s probably a bummer as he’s been with the band for 17 years and I suppose finding a pipe and drum band to join is probably in needle/haystack territory.

However, in the long run, I think he’s coming out ahead.

Thirty years from now, he’s retired and living in some condo enclave (though, he’s not entirely relaxed) in Florida (unless, due to a rise in the oceans, South Georgia is on the coast three decades from now).

Coleman will be the toast of the compound, though. He can regal them with embellished tales.

“Yeah, I was a drummer in a band…”

The women will swoon, their eyes glazing over (except for the ones who might once have dated a drummer), having spent decades married to bankers, plumbers, doctors, and others engaged in more mundane professions.

The men – most of who will have once aspired to be in a band – will take a jab to their egos (except for the ones who might once have had a drummer crash on their couch for more than a year).

The tale will conclude – each and every time – with him recounting getting kicked out of the band, how it was politically motivated by a controversial incident involving him and Barack Obama during his band’s gig on the day Obama was sworn in.

The chicks are going to dig John. I have no doubt.

He might even be able to put the band back together.

Todd Rundgren – Bang On The Drum All Day
Pound for pound, few artists over the past forty years have made as much wonderful music that has been as relatively ignored as Todd Rundgren. Sadly, Bang The Drum All Day, is probably one of his better-known songs as it seemed every radio station would play this song on Fridays.

The Beautiful South – You Play Glockenspiel, I’ll Play Drums
I can’t say I’m overly familiar with The Beautiful South (despite owning several albums), but what I have heard is consistently wonderful.

Peter Gabriel – A Different Drum
Peter Gabriel’s music for the movie The Last Temptation Of Christ is powerful stuff, drawing on Middle Eastern instrumentation. A Different Drum is certainly one of my favorite tracks from that album.

Bongwater – The Drum
Bongwater was a strange little duo (which is not surprising as they opted for the moniker Bongwater). Singer Ann Magnuson has popped up as an actress on a handful of mainstream movies and television shows, quite against type as Bongwater was as much avant garde performance art as music.

Bedouin Bait Shops And Giant Pumpkins

This global economic crunge has added a delightful extra layer of stress to the usual drudgery of working for a living. I’ve expressed a desire to Paloma of vamoosing from the rat race.

“We should open a bait shop.”

She nods.

“How do we become Bedouins?”

She reminds me that I like to say the word Bedouin.

(I wonder if the Bedouins fish)

Of course, if Paloma and I end up running a bait shop, we’d likely be living in a setting which would allow Paloma to assemble an ark-worthy menagerie.

I think that I might try to grow a giant pumpkin.

“We saw that show on giant pumpkins,” she says.

It’s true. We stumbled across a documentary one night on PBS about people who grow giant pumpkins. We had to watch.

After a grueling day working at the bait shop, trying to produce a pumpkin the size of a small car seems like it might be a good way to unwind.

I wouldn’t be entering the competition chronicled in that documentary. It seemed like it made things too much about the people when it really should have been about the pumpkins.

I feel more Zen already.

And tomorrow, if things should get stressful at work, I vow to take a moment to stare into space and think of giant pumpkins.

I have one song with pumpkin in the title, but I have numerous songs by Smashing Pumpkins. Paloma and I saw them in ’95. The show was more memorable to me for the tiny toy raygun Paloma found and wore in her hair as an accessory.

And, yes, Jackie Blue and Landslide are cover versions of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and Fleetwood Mac.

Smashing Pumpkins – I Am One

Smashing Pumpkins – Disarm

Smashing Pumpkins – The End Is The Beginning Is The End

Smashing Pumpkins – Jackie Blue

Smashing Pumpkins – Landslide

Happy Birthday, Excitable Boy

That’s right. If it hadn’t been for a miserable little tumor, Warren Zevon might be having cake and wearing a silly hat today. Unfortunately, Mr. Bad Example couldn’t be with us today.

I suppose my interest in him began with his 1987 album Sentimental Hygiene. I was in college and the fact that the members of R.E.M. served as Zevon’s backing band legally mandated my curiosity.

The album left me slightly underwhelmed but intrigued enough to snag a copy of the compilation A Quiet, Normal Life: The Best Of Warren Zevon. It was a revelation as I discovered there was much, much more to the man than a single song about werewolves – beheaded mercenaries, diplomats, duplicitous waitresses, and innumerable other, colorful ne’er-do-wells populated the lyrics.

I was hooked.

Paloma gave me a copy of his biography, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, this past Christmas which I inhaled in about two days. Compiled by his ex-wife with instruction by Warren to leave nothing out, there’s not a dull moment, although it is so candid that it’s a bit exhausting at times.

The man did lead a full-grown life that would make for a good screenplay. If you can start a story with a sixteen year-old kid stealing a Corvette which his Russian father – who is a professional gambler – has won in a card game and taking off to New York to be a folk singer in the late ‘60s even though he aspires to be the next Igor Stravinsky (under whom he has studied)…

By the time I graduated from college, I had listened to a lot of Zevon and had seen him live at The Vogue in Indianapolis. I’d continue to listen to a lot of Zevon and I’d see two more of his shows.

I also once had a bizarre dream where Warren had been sentenced to some community service work. He was to take underprivileged kids camping.

Instead, this motley collection of kids ended up in sleeping bags on the floor of some posh hotel suite; the carnage of dozens of room service trays everywhere (certainly at least one pot roast).

And Warren? He was standing amidst the wreckage, cigarette in hand as he growled, “We’re roughing it now, aren’t we kids?”

Wherever he might be on this day, I hope he’s enjoying a sandwich.

Warren Zevon – Desparados Under The Eaves
Leave it to Zevon to make the hum of an air conditioner sound like a spiritual event.

Warren Zevon – Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner
Chris, one of my best friends in high school (and college), accompanied me the first time I saw Zevon live. As Chris liked to declare, “I’m part Norwegian” and I think he took particular pride in the exploits of “Norway’s bravest son.”

Warren Zevon – Play It All Night Long
Life is hard and apparently more so in the rural South. Possibly the only song in the history of mankind which mentions brucellosis.

Warren Zevon – Reconsider Me
Warren was a black-out alcoholic and could be a rather prickly fellow. I suspect he had to make the titular request more than a few times to the ones he loved.

Warren Zevon – Splendid Isolation
Warren had an eclectic group of fellow musicians who guested on his records, ranging from R.E.M. to Jerry Garcia and Bob Dylan to George Clinton. Neil Young makes an appearance on Splendid Isolation.

Warren Zevon – Heartache Spoke Here
Dwight Yoakam adds harmony vocals to this twangy track. Makes one wonder of the hijinks which might have ensued had Warren gone country and ended up at the Grand Ol’ Opry.

Warren Zevon – Searching For A Heart
“They say love conquers all. You can’t start it like a car. You can’t stop it with a gun.” Perfect.

Warren Zevon – Mutineer
Near the end of his life as he was dying from cancer, Warren made an appearance on long-time fan David Letterman’s show (the only time Letterman has devoted an entire show to one guest). Part of the interview and a rather poignant performance of Mutineer can be seen here

Butch, Barack And Bob’s Benefit Bash

So, it’s official. There’s a new point guard running the show – although, from what I’ve read, the president must have been a shooting guard – possibly a chucker :-).

During the primaries last spring (and early summer) and into the general election, I read and listened to endless commentary regarding Barack Obama and the parsing of his qualification to be president. The focus was often on what he had or, as his detractors pointed out, what he hadn’t accomplished during his brief time as a U.S. senator.

And through it all, his appeal was quite simple to me. I kept hearing an exchange of dialogue from the movie Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.

While The Kid was the steely-nerved gunslinger, Butch was the brains behind the partnership. After laying out one of his schemes, Butch is told by Sundance to “just keep thinkin’ Butch. That’s what you’re good at.”

To which Butch replies, nonchalantly, “I have vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.”

From the moment I saw him speak at the Democratic convention in 2004, Barack Obama struck me as someone who has vision.

And watching the mass of diverse people gathered to witness his inauguration today, I thought of Live Aid, and remembered Joan Baez greeting the globe that day as she opened the American portion of the show.

“Good morning, children of the 80s. This is your Woodstock, and it’s long overdue.”

As a child of the ‘80s, I remember a brief moment when we still had enough innocence to believe that we could save a continent simply with the help of some musicians we loved.

Has such a large portion of the humans come together to try and fix something since that July day in 1985?

And as I read online accounts of reactions from people around the world, from Kenya to Japan to Colombia and Indonesia, there was a lot of use of a word which has almost become pejorative when used by the naysayers to Obama.

Hope.

And I had to remind myself that, in the words Andy Dufresne wrote to Red in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, “Hope is a good thing.”

I have no idea if Obama can accomplish the lofty things he has proposed, but it does seem as though he has brought together a sizable amount of the humans, curious enough to believe.

And for however long that lasts, it is kind of cool.

Peter Gabriel – Of These, Hope

Bruce Springsteen – High Hopes

Toni Childs – House Of Hope

Spirits – Hope

Ah Hey Oh Ma Ma Ma…

I’ve mentioned how lately I have discovered that I possess a previously unknown interest in the music of Bob Seger. And in the last few days, I’ve rediscovered a band which I had loved and forgotten (despite owning all three of their albums).

That band would be The Dream Academy; few bands are more aptly named. Paisley as could be, pictures of the classically-schooled trio on the album sleeve for Remembrance Days make me think of the early ‘70s television series The Mod Squad (barely walking in tadpole pajamas, I vaguely remember being somewhat transfixed by Peggy Lipton).

And if the name The Dream Academy is unfamiliar…if you were listening to radio in the autumn of 1985, you likely know their song Life In A Northern Town (see here for a very cool performance by them on Saturday Night Live).

That song was pretty much all that most listeners ever heard from The Dream Academy which is unfortunate. I’ve always considered them to be a sadly overlooked act of the ‘80s and felt that, under different circumstances, they could have been much bigger (what those circumstances might be, I don’t know).

The group split after releasing their third album, A Different Kind Of Weather, in 1991 and for years their catalog was unavailable aside from pricey Japanese imports (of course, all Japanese imports tend to be pricey). I believe there is a compilation that has been issued domestically.

Curious about what lead singer Nick Laird-Clowes had been up to during the past decade and a half, I did a bit of research. He has been doing music, but another detail caused me to take notice. Supposedly, he had fallen into serious drug addiction and, to become sober, he had sequestered himself in a monastery in the Himalayas.

Whether it is true or not, I have no idea. I do know that given their music and their style, if one band would have a member that would seek respite from drug addiction with Tibetan monks, it would certainly have been The Dream Academy.

It was just their vibe.

The Dream Academy – Life In A Northern Town
I remember hearing this song on 97X amidst Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, and The Suburbs. It was so striking, I immediately took notice. By the time they chanted the first ah-hey-oh, ma-ma-ma….I was hooked. The song heavily references the late Nick Drake and, twenty years later, I never tire of it.

The Dream Academy – The Edge Of Forever
Aside from Life In A Northern Town, The Dream Academy has a measure of immortality for this song as it plays during the kiss between Ferris and Sloan at the end of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The do upbeat rather well.

The Dream Academy – This World
This World is a song as dark as it is pretty (it is very pretty). Lost innocence is a recurring theme in much of The Dream Academy’s lyrics and the music captures it well.

The Dream Academy – Here
As the members were classically trained musicians, there are a lot of flutes and things accenting much of their music. Here is simple and lush, building to a crescendo.

The Dream Academy – Love
There are some folks who might consider covering John Lennon to be sacrilege, but his music has made for some inspired covers over the years (Marianne Faithfull’s take on Working Class Hero springs to mind). The Dream Academy do a well more than admirable version of Love, making it a joyous, trip-hop tinged, chant-filled romp.

Reconsidering Bob (But I'm Still Not Buying A #@&%! Ford Truck)

I’ve never really been one of those music fans who take offense to artists who license their songs for use in commercials. I wouldn’t consider myself such a purist, believing Melt With You helping to entice me to want a burger devalues the song.

I’ve also been blessed with a superhuman ability to, for the most part, tune out commercials (working in record stores during one’s formative years will nurture skills in selective listening).

And, recently, I’ve been strangely, unexpectedly compelled to snag half a dozen albums by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band. They were in excellent condition and none was more than a dollar – not even the double, live album Nine Tonight.

Purchasing them was surprising (or maybe not) as I’ve never owned anything by Seger in my life on any format despite growing up in the Midwest where he was staple. I knew his hits and even some album tracks from radio and the bowling alley jukebox.

(you know, I wonder if in some parallel universe I was a better bowler and ended up The Dude)

So, I was familiar with a chunk of Seger’s work. My best friend in junior high played his older brother’s eight tracks of the stuff relentlessly. There were songs of Seger’s which I thought were good, but I kind of shelved him with Johnny Hoosier as likable and workman-like but not having the spiritual, transcendent kick of Springsteen.

As I’ve listened to my trove of Seger the past few weeks, I’ve been surprised to realize how much of it I do like. I’m still not elevating him to Springsteen status, but he does now occupy a zone for me as slightly more than erstwhile heartland rocker. And I was puzzled as to why I’d been rather ambivalent toward him (familiarity breeding…disinterest?).

Then, I remembered that damned truck commercial with Like A Rock playing and the incalculable number of times I must have been subjected to it, particularly during football season. And I had to wonder if, somehow, subconsciously, the use of that song had caused me to dismiss Seger’s entire catalog.

I still have no issue with an artist making some coin through licensing their songs but maybe such a move is a bit more insidious that I’ve believed.

So, here’s some Bob Seger. I imagine that some longtime fans might howl that I’m bypassing, for now, his ‘70s albums, but I’m working my way back and I’m more familiar with his early ‘80s output.

Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band – Understanding
Understanding was never on a Seger studio album (though I’m sure it’s ended up on a compilation). Instead, the song appeared on the soundtrack for the movie Teachers. My friends and I caught the flick while skipping school one day.

Ironically, the movie was about the poor state of the American educational system. Of course, the fictional school in Teachers did hire Nick Nolte as a teacher and enroll Ralph Macchio and Crispin Glover as students, so what did they expect?

Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band – Roll Me Away
The lure of the open road is a recurring theme in much of Seger’s music and Roll Me Away is a wonderful example.

Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band – No Man’s Land
Wistful and resigned, there are not a lot of happy endings in Bob Seger songs. Rather, there are a lot of people who seem to have made peace with their lot in life no matter how bruised, battered, or maligned they might be, and No Man’s Land would be one of my more favorite album tracks of Seger’s.

Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band – Her Strut
Not everything is somber in the world of Bob Seger. If he’s not reflecting on the past with a bit of regret, he’s locked into the present with songs that possess barroom swagger as on Her Strut. Like No Man’s Land, Her Strut was on 1980’s Against The Wind and I must have heard every track from that album on the radio growing up.

That’s Right, The King Is Going To Have Us All Fat And Happy

Rejoice remote Thai villagers, Inuits of Greenland, and all other begrimed peoples who have yet to smell the bright lights of civilization. W was correct and freedom is on the march. But it won’t be any god, government or game show which will bring you the riches we in the modern world take for granted.

It will be a king. Specifically, The King.

I long ago declared allegiance to Burger King. Actually, fast food wasn’t often on the menu growing up, but once I got to college and occasionally opted for a burger from under a sunlamp, it was the flame-broiled goodness I would usually crave.

Burger Kings were plentiful in Southeast Asia when I had the opportunity to trek through that part of the world. I still cannot hear Def Leppard’s Rocket without picturing the girl at the counter in a Singapore BK Lounge. She sang along with that song (not quite at the top of her lungs) as she took an order from me and my friend Simon.

In one recent commercial, The King appears in a man’s yard. The man looks away and when he looks back, The King is right in front of him, standing on the porch offering a delicious breakfast sandwich.

Paloma finds it to be creepy. Yes, perhaps it is a bit creepy, but it’s also a wonderful thing.

In another series of ads, people from more isolated places around the world get to enjoy a Whopper. As you can imagine, the footage reveals it to be quite possibly the most amazing moments of their lives except for one Inuit fellow who declares that he still prefers seal meat.

(I hope this ungrateful bastard’s next encounter with Western culture involves a visit from PETA)

I also read the other day that obesity among most of the world’s population is skyrocketing (for various reasons). Finally, a global consensus on something.

So those of you dismayed by the state of the human race, take heart, because a glorious new age of peace and harmony, love and understanding, is coming – a portly new world order and we will all bow to The King.

Marillion – The King Of Sunset Town
I suppose it was never cool to admit liking Marillion, yes? But there is a chunk of their catalog which I do love and their album Season’s End would be on the list. I stumbled across it, not even knowing they had a new album, while in Thailand. Less rigidly progressive and looser conceptually, it was their first record with new singer Steve Hogarth, who immediately reminded me of Peter Gabriel.

Jellyfish – The King Is Half-Undressed
There’s little I could say in praise of Jellyfish which wasn’t covered quite nicely over at My Humps – here.

R.E.M. – The King Of Comedy
1994’s Monster was the last time I truly cared about R.E.M. and I’d been with them most of the way up ‘til then (I was in college in the ‘80s; it was the law). I did like Monster and I thought that the King Of Comedy, a shimmering slab of ear candy, was an overlooked gem.

The Rave-Ups – Respectfully King Of Rain
I didn’t know the Rave-Ups were from Pittsburgh but apparently they were. I did know that Molly Ringwald was a friend of the band which led to them appearing in Pretty In Pink (performing the stellar Positively Lost Me). Respectfully King Of Rain is pretty wonderful, too.

The Polar Bears Are Not Having A Good Time

There’s an ASPCA commercial that’s run for quite some time that has been unofficially banned in our household. You’ve likely seen it – a series of heartbreaking footage of neglected dogs and cats as a Sarah McLachlan song plays. It is rather affective.

I’d rather not see it, but Paloma was positively inconsolable the first time we saw it (of course, I probably now have a reputation as the heartless bastard that has threatened to FedEx a kitten to Gary Busey, yes?).

So tonight, I look up from reading ESPN online, expecting to see The Family Guy and, instead, seeing footage of gaunt polar bears and undernourished polar bear cubs, struggling to cross the ice melting beneath their feet. It was a commercial for the World Wildlife Fund and it must have lasted two minutes – if not quite as potent as the ASPCA’s pitch, it certainly held a greater sense of dread.

I’ve already made a note to send them a donation (no doubt my twenty-five dollars or whatnot will get things back in order).

I immediately thought of a fellow who works in my office building, wondering if he had possibly seen the commercial. Occasionally, he will be outside smoking when I happen to also be enjoying tobacco. Invariably, he will announce some arcane fact about the weather.

“The past seventy-two hours have been the coldest seventy-two hours over those three calendar days since the dinosaurs roamed the earth,” he proclaims to all in his vicinity.

I’ve gotten the impression that he suspects the whole climate change thing to be bogus and he’s on a one-man mission to spread the word.

I get the vibe that he’d sign on to hunt polar bears from a helicopter with high-powered artillery.

I’m not a scientist and I’d wager that neither is this fellow smoker. But, it does seem as though the weather has been off kilter and there do seem to be an awful lot of, you know, actual scientists – people who devote all of their time to pondering such matters – who seem to be concerned.

All I know is that those were some miserable looking polar bears.

Here are some lions and tigers and bears…

Bob Marley – Iron Lion Zion
Mr. Whiteray has a lovely post on Mr. Marley which quite appealed to me as I’ve also been reading the late Timothy White’s bio on the music legend, Catch A Fire.

Bruce Cockburn – Wondering Where The Lions Are
I’ve always been a bit more partial to Bruce Cockburn’s more rock-oriented stuff, but there’s no denying some of his gentler material is wonderful, too.

Rosanne Cash – Dance With The Tiger
Rosanne’s father once came into the record store where I worked. Oddly enough, The Man In Black was wearing a bright, floral-patterned Hawaiian shirt. That said, Rosanne is certainly one of the more under appreciated female artists of the past twenty years.

Zebra – Bears
When Zebra released their debut in 1983, a lot of music fans embraced their Zeppelin-like sound. A lot of critics slagged them for their Zeppelin-like sound. Personally, I wore that first album out (on cassette, of course).

A Long Time Since I've Spent Time With Uncle Vic

A lot of bloggers have taken time the past few days to offer their thoughts reflecting on music and events of 2008. I had no intention of doing so, but, inspired by a series of posts over at The Hits Just Keep On Comin’, I have instead found myself reflecting on the music of 1980.

On the precipice of my teen years, music had little appeal to me during that year. It was occasionally background noise, but, at most, my scant interest was prompted by my peers. Then, on the first day of 1981, I happened to tune into Cincinnati’s Q102, a popular Top 40 station, where they were counting down the top 102 songs of 1980. They ran the countdown three times that day and something prompted me to tape as much of it – commercials and DJ chatter included – as I could.

Although I had missed much of the music on those tapes throughout the actual year, I listened to them repeatedly through the early months of 1981. And, as I caught up on the musical landscape of the previous year, I began to pay increasing attention to the new year as well.

For the next several years, until I discovered the left of the dial artists I could only hear on 97X, it became a personal tradition to listen to the top 102 on Q102, filling countless hours of blank cassettes with songs.

It’s possible, although unlikely, that those tapes from that countdown of 1980 are buried somewhere in the closet of my childhood bedroom at my parent’s house. If they are, those cheap cassettes are probably unlistenable, having oxidized over time and already worn thin by the innumerable times I played them as a kid when I had no idea how much music would matter to me over the next three decades.

I’d be most curious to find an actual chart of Q102’s top songs from that year. I do remember that #102 was a novelty song, Space Invaders, about the phenomenally popular video game by an act called Uncle Vic – a song which I haven’t heard since then. And, at the other end of the countdown was Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In The Wall (part II).

Here are some of the songs I remember in between those two songs…

The Dirt Band – An American Dream
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band under a truncated moniker with Linda Ronstadt adding vocals, An American Dream was one song which was quite familiar to me. It seemed to be on constant rotation on the jukebox of the bowling alley where my friends and I spent numerous hours loitering and playing pinball during the winter months of 1980. It’s promise of a getaway to warmer climes had a distinct appeal to those of us mired in the Midwest.

The Cars – Touch And Go
I was familiar with The Cars because of Let’s Go, but, I must admit, that song was better known to me in the version appearing on my younger brother’s copy of the Chipmunk Punk album. As for Touch And Go, I found Ric Ocasek’s vocals on the song to be a bit menacing at the time and, now, I’d consider it to be one of that band’s more underrated hits.

Olivia Newton-John – Magic
Although I wasn’t overly familiar with the songs of Olivia Newton-John at the time, like my friends, I was enamored with her from Grease. I still haven’t seen the movie Xanadu (on which the soundtrack Magic appeared), but I did know Magic. A good portion of our family’s vacation that summer had been spent at our aunt and uncle’s cabin in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania. I recall that every time we piled into the car during that trip, I was guaranteed to hear Magic on the radio. To this day, the song still sounds like summer to me.

The Pretenders – Brass In Pocket (I’m Special)
Had I been a serious music fan in 1980, I would have well known The Pretenders from their much heralded debut album which caused quite a stir. I don’t recall even knowing Brass In Pocket until I heard that year-end countdown, but I do recall that I immediately “got” it.