Tarfumes

"Be careful what you do, 'cause the lie becomes the truth."

Highly recommended reading on Michael Jackson:

• Trapped: Michael Jackson and the Crossover Dream, by Dave Marsh
• Ishmael Reed's piece "The Persecution of Michael Jackson" on Counterpunch 
• Recent interview with Quincy Jones 

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"You know who plays guitar on that record?" my friend asked, keeping his voice low so as not to attract the attention of our teacher during a school assembly.

"Yeah, that's Eddie Van Halen," I replied.  My friend nodded as if to say, we know about something special.  A secret shared by about 15 million others at the time.

We were talking about Michael Jackson's new single "Beat It" which, as with every subsequent single of his for the next two years, was inescapable.  What was notable about the inescapability of "Beat It" was that every station had to play it.  The most backward-looking narrowcasting "classic rock" stations even played it, and frequently (you could literally hear it sandwiched between Foreigner and Styx).  

But I mostly listened to Chicago's WLS-AM, which played top 40...which meant the top 40 from roughly 1956 to the present.  You would literally hear Chuck Berry, REO Speedwagon, and Prince in the same hour.  Jackson's songs seemed to occupy roughly 1/3rd of its playlist from late 1982 to late 1984, so like everyone else who listened to top 40 radio in those days, I was deeply familiar with the singles off Thriller (which is to say, seven out of its nine tracks).

But I didn't actually buy a copy of Thriller (or even hear the whole record) until years later.  For the time being, my allegiance was to Duran Duran.  I'm not sure why, other than that most of my friends were into Duran Duran and weren't particularly into Michael Jackson.  Some Duran Duran records were decent (Rio), some were horrible (everything else), and all of them had shitty singing.  But in junior high, fights would break out over who was better, Duran Duran or Michael Jackson (I've often wondered if this was our generation's version of the 70s Ace-Frehley-vs-Jimmy-Page schoolyard brawls).  I couldn't argue the case for Duran Duran too strenuously; as much as I liked them at the time, I ultimately knew that Michael Jackson's music wasn't just far superior, but was destined to endure in a way Duran Duran's simply couldn't.  Duran Duran sounds hopelessly dated now; Thriller and Off The Wall sound timeless.

Or rather, they would if Quincy Jones hadn't kept putting those moronic horn fills in Jackson's songs.  I've heard arguments that Jones was the "real" genius behind Jackson's records.  I've heard similar theories about George Martin; a friend once told me that "all the Beatles had to do was sing," which is like saying, "All Michael Jackson had to do was sing" -- if performances that heroic can be so dismissed as an afterthought, I suspect the point of those records is being missed.  What's forgotten is that, like the Beatles, Michael Jackson made brilliant music without his supposed puppetmaster, and the puppetmasters (Jones and Martin) almost never made indisputably great music without their supposed puppets.  Jackson's home demos of "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" and "Billie Jean" show that the arrangements -- Jackson's arrangements -- are complete (and bracing and groundbreaking and a blueprint for future hip-hop arrangements) and nearly identical to those on the master takes.  Jones does add strings and horns to "Don't Stop" (as he would to, in a similarly clumsy fashion, "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'") -- a big, bold, brassy horn section, technically proficient, precise, unnecessary, and utterly laughable, the only element of Jackson's records that dates them (and, not coincidentally, the only one not followed up on, or even imitated, by the vast legions of artists influenced by Jackson).

I don't want to suggest that Jones was useless, or that Jackson could have made those records without him.  He couldn't have.  The role of a producer can be anything from composing and arranging to simply being physically present, but with equal sway over the proceedings.  As Jackson's keyboardist Greg Phillinganes put it, Jones was "running the show without really running the show."  But the music snobs who grudgingly praised Thriller and Off The Wall's innovations with their disdainful comments about who was really the genius behind them (hint: not Jackson) unwittingly provided another example of how unfathomably broad Jackson's influence was.  

In the summer of 1988 I attended the Northwestern High School Music Institute.  On the second day, the director of the Institute, a longtime NU band director, gave a speech with some pretty cogent advice for the students (from what I remember, it amounted to, "You might think you're hot shit; but everyone sitting in this room thinks that about themselves too").  But out of nowhere he made some crack about Michael Jackson saying, "Heh...if you can call that music!"  I thought, yeah, way to engage the world and encourage us to engage it.  I'm not saying he should've uncritically sung Jackson's praises, but I've never considered "music" (like "art") to be a qualitative term, and to offhandedly dismiss anything as "not music" strikes me as ignorant at best (it's like weather: just because the weather sucks doesn't mean it's not weather).  I didn't even consider myself a Jackson fan at the time, and I still thought it was a fucked up thing to say.  He could've said the same thing about, say, Andrew Lloyd Webber and I would have had the same reaction (though not nearly as strong...and, truth be told, I'm not sure a white composer would have provoked such a flip dismissal).  But in slamming Jackson this band director was, intentionally or not, revealing a desire to shut himself off from one of the more important currents in music and, implicitly, encouraging us to do the same.

I finally heard Thriller in its entirety when I was a freshman in college, a used cassette I bought off another student.  I also heard Cheap Trick's first record and John Coltrane's "Live" At The Village Vanguard that same week for the first time.  By law, the Coltrane record should have negated the Cheap Trick and Jackson records, and while it did have an absolutely massive impact on me, one that hasn't abated to this day, it didn't reveal those other records to be frauds.  I've never understood what is ultimately a false dichotomy: that the brilliance and power of one record somehow negates the brilliance and power of others.  I've written about this many times before, how the overwhelming influence of the musics of Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, and Bill Dixon in my life not only didn't kill my interest in other musics, but in fact strengthened it.  There are a handful of instances in which such a dichotomy has made sense to me: Sam & Dave surely reveals the Blues Brothers to be the minstrel act they always were, and a John Zorn aficionado's first exposure to, say, Anthony Braxton or Jimmy Lyons would likely reveal the utter lack of depth in Zorn's work.  But immersing myself in Coltrane's and Jackson's (and Cheap Trick's) records for those weeks revealed far more common ground (and more crosstalk between those artists) than one might think possible.  It's there for all who are willing to listen.

When I finally took a conscious, deliberate listen to Thriller it was somewhat shocking at first; initially, I smiled at what struck me as quaint sonics/production.  This was in the early 90s, after years of bombastic, digital-reverb-heavy production in pop music.  By comparison, Thriller almost sounded stripped-down, but Jackson's instincts, before his music suffered from his constant second-guessing, were infallible.  Thriller still sounds more contemporary than much of the music he's made since.  On subsequent records, instead of trying to expand on the groundbreaking arrangements of Thriller, he was mostly flailing around trying to hit a moving (and rapidly fragmenting) target.

In a recent blog post, Chicago Sun-Times critic Jim DeRogatis wrote, "The singular success of 'Thriller' makes it easy to forget that Jackson's canon actually is much skimpier than those of Sinatra, Presley, the Beatles or any other superstar who had such a massive impact on the culture. ...a total of three keepers out of 10 solo albums."  Another false dichotomy (and one which inexplicably ignores Jackson's work with his brothers).  Just as the mountains of mediocre-to-shitty records that Sinatra and Presley made don't negate the achievements of their great records, Jackson's two indisputable (I haven't heard Bad in years, so I'm reserving judgement on it for now) masterpieces don't somehow disappear because of his more recent subpar records.  In fact, such a wide-ranging impact largely centering around one record (Thriller) is something that Sinatra, Presley, and the Beatles were not able to achieve, and I doubt DeRogatis would claim that those artists' respective accomplishments were too dissipated or unfocused.

I'll leave the last word to Dave Marsh who wrote the definitive study of Jackson's heyday-turned-sour (linked above), and wrote this passage for The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, published in 1983.  He's cooled on Jackson somewhat since then, but this still rings true for me:  

Michael Jackson's importance as a singer was established with the very first Jackson Five singles. His importance as a record-making innovator is somewhat obscured by his collaboration with Quincy Jones (although the difference between the debacle of Jones' work with Donna Summer and the genius of his work with Jackson gives a clue as to who is really boss), but both his songwriting and his production and arranging chops have grown so mightily on [Thriller] that he is now in the very top rank of rock artists measured from the beginning. Like Stevie Wonder, Jackson has been capable of sustaining an artistic persona from preadolescence into adulthood, and theorists of rock's eternal attachment to youth notwithstanding, his music has grown richer and more intelligent with each passing year. Michael Jackson is no longer an optional pleasure for those who pretend to know about American music. He has become a necessity.

You there, eating the paste!

Right after I promised myself to start blogging more, I decided to move.  So packing has been taking up time that...well, in all honesty, still wouldn't necessarily be spent blogging.  I'm still working on my piece for Absurd Records (who knew that hundreds of overdubs could be time-consuming?), and now I'll be doing music for a video game, in addition to my duties with Barn Owl and ThRiLLpiLLow.  So blogging is a distant 14th.  Anyway, I was looking over Phil Freeman's Running The Voodoo Down blog yesterday and came across this book:

The press release reads: 

Modern art is a mass phenomenon. Conceptual artists like Damien Hirst enjoy celebrity status. Works by 20th century abstract artists like Mark Rothko are selling for record breaking sums, while the millions commanded by works by Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon make headline news.

However, while the general public has no trouble embracing avant garde and experimental art, there is, by contrast, mass resistance to avant garde and experimental music, although both were born at the same time under similar circumstances - and despite the fact that from Schoenberg and Kandinsky onwards, musicians and artists have made repeated efforts to establish a "synaesthesia" between their two media.

This book examines the parallel histories of modern art and modern music and examines why one is embraced and understood and the other ignored, derided or regarded with bewilderment, as noisy, random nonsense perpetrated by, and listened to by the inexplicably crazed. It draws on interviews and often highly amusing anecdotal evidence in order to find answers to the question: Why do people get Rothko and not Stockhausen?

I have several problems with this, all of which I will catalog right now in excruciating detail.  Heh, no, I'm kidding.  Just irritating detail.  Anytime a critic accuses "people" of "not getting" art my first reaction (well, third; my first impulse is to crank call them, and my second impulse is to concoct an Annie Hall-type scenario in which Stockhausen confronts Stubbs in person) is, "You elitist jagweed!"  The most obvious contradiction -- unless Stubbs (or whoever wrote his press release) really believes that a handful of millionaire art collectors constitutes the "general public" -- is, since when does the sale of artwork for "record breaking sums" constitute "mass acceptance" of said artwork?  If sale and auction prices are what he's basing everything on, then, by Stubbs' logic, the fact that Sun Ra's original vinyl Saturn records routinely go for anywhere between $100 and $1000 means that the "general public" "gets" Sun Ra.  Done and done.

Of course, it's a little dangerous and/or mind-numbingly silly to conflate the purchase of work with "getting" it.  So does the person who bought a Rothko work "get" Rothko?  How do we know?  Who decides?  For that matter, how is Stubbs determining that "people" don't "get" Stockhausen?  What unit of measurement determines...um...getocity? 

I desperately hope this book isn't the latest in a series of "Hey MAN, this music is TOO HEAVY for JOHN Q. SQUARESVILLE to DIG!"  There are far too many examples to list that contradict the notion that there has been mass rejection of "experimental" music (which is a pointless term, as all music is experimental): Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, let's say, Radiohead, and the emergence and dominance of hip-hop all should serve as the final nail in the coffin of the "people don't like 'out-there' or 'far-out' music" argument once and for all.  If he's keeping his focus narrowed on European composers like Stockhausen, it begs the question, at what point was Stockhausen's music promoted and given the degree of visibility that would allow the "general public" to be aware of it?  Or did the "general public" somehow reject Stockhausen's work without being aware of its existence (aka, "And where are the fries I did not ask for?!  You guys need to anticipate me!")?

TV On The Radio reconsidered

Based on their performances last month on "Saturday Night Live" and "The Colbert Report," I may have to do a serious reinvestigation of TV On The Radio's Dear Science,.  Everything that seems wrong with the record was completely right with the performance.  Tempos were reckless, the interplay was loose and frantic, and they were essentially the anti-Radiohead.  Radiohead's live performances frequently suffer from a overly strict adherence to the studio arrangements, which tends to suck the life out of their live shows.  Compared to Radiohead, TV On The Radio is the Band, joyously tossing firecrackers at each other.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

TV on the Radio - Dancing Choose

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
NASA Name Contest

Tunneling outta there took longer than expected.

Huh?  What?  Um, (cough) nothing.

Anyway, I just finished -- I mean, just finished, as in one hour ago -- recording my new record (can one record a record?  Can you sleep on a rainbow?  Can you drink the sky?).  It's a piece in three movements, where I overdubbed myself many, many times, and I managed to resolved the issue of how to get a saxophone sound out of a rototom.  Also, tuba and brass sounds out of tympani.  Anyway, this record should be out by October at the latest, but I'll be posting excerpts on my MySpace page before then.  I will now commence recording on another piece, which will be released on the Greek label Absurd Records.  As if in anticipation of this new recording, my computer (um, which I record on) has been so nice to me lately by accepting things it really shouldn't accept, like playing back twenty-plus overdubs without crashing.  It's also stopped making that horrific loud fan noise.  I...(sniff)...I promised myself I wouldn't cry...

Barn Owl made a studio recording recently, with the capable and pirate-hat-wearing Chris Cooper at the helm.  We recorded a few hours' worth of stuff, so we're not yet sure what form that'll take, but rest assured, it'll take one form if it takes a thousand.  Also on the recording front, the concert that Ben and Roger Miller and I played in Cambridge last year was just mixed (unfortunately, without my participation, due to a head full of cement...at least, that's what the doctor told me), and should see release fairly soon.  I also recently did an interview with the Rice Thresher, the Rice University paper.  Generally speaking, e-mail interviews aren't my favorite, as they don't allow for follow-ups or challenges (shouting "I was cleared of those charges!" doesn't have the same impact in an e-mail as it does in person or on the phone), but I enjoyed this one.  

And finally, merci beaucoup to Noel Tachet his review of not to be taken away in the French magazine Improjazz:

matt weston
Not to be taken away
7272music #004
www.7272music.com, iTunes
Matt Weston dr, traitement du son
Il existe encore des musiques inécoutables, Matt Weston en est la preuve, c'est un improvisateur punk sans souci de mesure ni égard pour ses auditeurs. Ce qui l'intéresse ce sont les tourbillons du son, dans la lignée de Cecil Taylor mais assis non pas derrière un monument de la culture musicale mais à une batterie et devant des bidouillages électriques/électroniques. Matt Weston se fiche de l'histoire, il raconte la sienne et il la raconte fort, il fait du bruit comme une cigale qui se secoue les élytres. C'est naturel et parfois insupportable mais on y revient. Comme le dit le titre choisi par Matt Weston, "not to be taken away" ça ne s'emporte pas, ça ne se déplace pas, et sans doute ça ne s'emporte pas au paradis ; c'est lourd, indifférent, agressif et dépourvu de censure.
Noël TACHET

Best of 2008, part three: TV On The Radio, Dear Science,

Like in previous years, not all of my "bests" of 2008 are complete winners.  Like this one.

Return To Cookie Mountain was one of the more intriguing records of 2006.  And it's not that Dear Science, doesn't match up; it's that it's trying too hard.  It reminds me of Elvis Costello's Mighty Like A Rose, or Anthony Braxton's For Four Orchestras, or some of Evan Parker's solo pieces, or John Zorn's entire recorded output, or MTV Cribs: the accumulation and possession of resources is not a creative accomplishment in itself.  Simply displaying the resources that you have at your disposal shouldn't be confused with doing something creative with them.  Dear Science, isn't at the Zorn level of ostentatious McMansiony blandness, and it definitely has its share of exciting moments, but they're often ruined by insecure over-arrangements: "Hey, we didn't add this element; whether it's needed or not, let's pile it on just in case!" (and the static mastering, negating all dynamic shifts, certainly doesn't do it any favors)  

Like the aforementioned Costello record, the neatly-stacked piles are so high that they obscure why they were stacked like that in the first place.

Max Neuhaus

Pioneering musician and composer Max Neuhaus passed away yesterday.  I was lucky enough to experience one of his installations this past summer; at first it was barely noticeable, but suddenly, and subtly, my whole orientation changed, and it was like stepping into a brightly-lit room, but aurally.  And outside. 

His record Electronics & Percussion was a major influence on my work; it was one of those first listens where you say to yourself (out loud, in my case), "This is possible?" and then quickly replace the question mark with an exclamation point.  The first movement on my first solo record Vacuums is essentially an homage to Neuhaus. 

Another new review!

This one from the redoubtable Derek Morton over at Furthernoise:

Matt Weston fires out another solo release on his 7272Music label. Not to be Taken Away is a brave set of compositions documenting Mr. Weston's electronic experimentation with live percussion improvisation. What for the listener "should be taken away" from these collections of tracks, is that Matt is attempting to work on a few different levels. Improv, extended technique and Free Music are just starting points. As a percussionist he uses the studio to ultimately frame his sonorities into realized pieces. 

The first track, Home of the Railsplitter sputters to life with the sounds of distorted drums that may send the listener checking their cd or audio connections for a problem. It becomes apparent however, that the over saturation is on purpose as the sound quality shifts from distortion, to glitch and then over-driven again. Millions of Yeah squeals with dense feedback, while special panning is employed to emphasize the various harmonics and layers of noise. Headphones will enhance the experience here, or perhaps make this track less listenable depending on your threshold for musical cacophony. 

The quirky Something Sensational in Every Issue introduces what sounds like primitive electronics and circuit bending overlaying recorded percussion and squashed through an unhealthy granular synthesis patch. The two very different sounds really come together in a playful way, in what is probably the most successful track on Not To be Taken... 

Sing Like This oozes with frustration and anxiety as the circuit bent sounds get more cracked and broken up, its not a happy moment. If you made it this far, Weston lets up a bit with his straight forward Yeah to Slang. Well, straight forward in the sense that the track sounds like it is an unadulterated recording of a creaky cool live set, where the space of the room contributes to the mood and feel. It's a strong document of Weston's unique style, however a bit out place on the release. That's What I Want sends the listener back into freefall, with DJ like scratching that spins percussion samples back and forth: imagine Christian Marclay without recognizable sound bites of popular music culture. The rush of sound here is powerful and liberating, although a bit nauseating in a kind of artistically successful way. Ten minutes later, Transistor Radio ends the release in what sounds like a minimal reprise to Yeah To Slang. 

A percussionist is usually valued by their sense of timing, but Mr. Weston explores sound art that lies just above a perceptual rhythmic chaos and I get the sense he enjoys messing with our ears.

"There's things goin' on that you don't know."

Ron Asheton had a much bigger impact on me as a musician, but I was almost equally saddened to hear today of Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboardist Billy Powell's passing.  Powell's, and the rest of Skynyrd's, abilities and intentions are about as misunderstood as Asheton's/the Stooges' (which is the subject of a future post).  Most obvious and disturbing is the confederate flag iconography that follows Skynyrd wherever they go.  Ross Warner clears that up:

...the band had serious reservations about the label they were tagged with. Particularly troubling was the Confederate flag that often hung behind the stage. In 1975, [Skynyrd lead vocalist and songwriter Ronnie] Van Zant mused, “That was strictly an MCA gimmick to start us off with some label. It was useful at first, but by now it’s embarrassing except in Europe, where they really like all that stuff because they think it’s macho American.” The “stars and bars” that eventually began popping up in the band’s crowds became more than embarrassing. It was bad enough to be portrayed as ignorant hayseeds. It was entirely another to be categorized as racist.

Their music and subsequent fame brought pride to the forgotten folks in the South, but Van Zant never condoned discrimination of those who were most forgotten. In fact, when they name-checked George Wallace in “Sweet Home Alabama” it was only meant to take a swipe at his pro-segregation stance. When Van Zant referred to Birmingham loving the governor, the back-up singers sang “Boo! Boo! Boo!” in criticism. However, listeners didn’t notice the criticism among the catchy harmony.

Although the song is perceived as an anthem of southern pride, “Sweet Home Alabama,” was actually intended not only as the band’s fond recollection of their first time in a recording studio but as a reminder to the rest of America that not all southerners were rednecks. When Skynyrd criticized Neil Young’s “Southern Man,” it was for the sweeping generalization of all southerners as rednecks. Don’t condemn southerners now for what their ancestors did. “We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two,” Van Zant said. “We’re southern rebels, but more than that, we know the difference between right and wrong.” In fact, the band was quite outspoken about their disdain for Wallace’s policies.

Probably my favorite Powell moment with Skynyrd is on "Things Goin' On," as direct and uncompromising a protest song as anyone had recorded in the mid-70s:

Best of 2008, part two: the Who, View From A Backstage Pass; At Kilburn, 1977

"You know who I like?  Peter Townshend.  He knows how not to play.  Somebody else would use three chords, but he picks the one, the right one, and uses it.  He knows how not to play." -- Miles Davis

View From A Backstage Pass is a compilation of (mostly) previously unreleased live material from between October of 1969 (at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit) and June of 1976 (at a stadium in Wales).  Ever the contrarians, or just terminally mis-managed, the Who released this, their best and most-representative-of-their-strengths album, only to subscribers of their website ("Free to subscribers!" = a bullshit $50 subscription fee, which otherwise only gives you access to Pete Townshend's blog about how he committed to a new Who album in 2008 only to completely reverse himself hours later, and Roger Daltrey's blog wherein he reveals that he hates the internet, and tells readers to "Get a life"), a full 25 years after their first "final" break-up.

While they get it wrong in almost every conceivable extramusical respect (exorbitant ticket prices, exorbitant website subscription fees, songs used in 9 out of 10 TV commercials), they get it right musically.  And they get it right by getting it wrong.  Ginger Baker once implied that Keith Moon was somehow deficient because he wasn't "trained," and couldn't have played with a big band.  All wrong.  A big band couldn't have played with him.  

"He's beautiful.  Totally free." -- Tony Williams on Keith Moon

For every 100 drummers who engage in careerist beak-wetting, there are 2 or 3 who are redefining how percussion is approached, to the point where session work is simply not an option.  It's the difference between accepting the established vocabularies, trying to make yourself, as a musician, available and amenable to all who work within those parameters; and finding the established parameters deficient, to the point that musicians will have to come to you (cf. Bill Dixon in Imagine The Sound talking about "all those people that laughed at Ornette Coleman, and then had to go around and try to play like him").  The irony is that as widely as Moon is heard on TV commercials nowadays, a drummer with Moon's imagination today wouldn't have a prayer trying to get steady session work.  This isn't exactly a unique phenomenon: Bill Dixon often spoke of how, if he were to resurface today, Thelonious Monk wouldn't be allowed to participate in the competition that bears his name; and bass guitarist/composer James Jamerson's idiosyncratic style found a home at Motown (or, more accurately, Motown was built around Jamerson's idiosyncratic style), but was not easily adaptable to LA session work, and he was finding work hard to come by -- of course, today his work is correctly seen as what a sizeable chunk of 20th century Western music revolves around.

"The man is a drummer.  Everything he plays, he contains it." -- Elvin Jones on Keith Moon

Any drummer in the world can woodshed their brains out and come out sounding like Ginger Baker or Neil Peart or Brian Chippendale or whatever shiny piece of equipment happens to be the Modern Drummer pinup of the month.  But no amount of woodshedding can bring a drummer anywhere close to the precarious delicacy of Sunny Murray, or the swing of Al Jackson, or the casual propulsion of Bernard Purdie, or the focused panic of Keith Moon.  It's the spaces between the sounds...and the spaces between the spaces between the sounds, and the impetus behind the sounds and the spaces.  Musicians too often forget about those parts. 

"We were playing a lot of Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Elmore James, B. B. King, and they are maximum R&B.  You can't get any better. ... Of course any song we did get 'old of, we weren't playing straight from the record.  We 'Who'd' it, so that what came out was the Who, not a copy." -- Keith Moon

A VH1 special this past summer featured a few bands paying tribute to the Who, but they did so in a pretty bizarre way: they tried to sound as much like the Who as possible.  In what universe is that any kind of tribute?  Aside from revealing that these bands had no original ideas (or if they did, they were well-hidden; I know the Flaming Lips are more daring than their performance on this show would indicate), I came away from the show with the sense that they'd all completely missed the point.  The distinction between what these bands did and someone playing Guitar Hero is a technical one.  These bands' love of the Who seemingly blinded them to the kinds of risks involved in making that music, and they were unwilling (or unable) to peer beneath the surface and come up with something unique.  As Cecil Taylor said, "The favorite song could be the rope that hangs your development."  (As a kind of corrective, Bettye LaVette re-imagined "Love Reign O'er Me" at the Kennedy Center Honors in December.  She showed everyone how such a tribute is supposed to be approached.)

All the points that those bands on the VH1 special missed -- all the things that make the Who great -- are on this record: the vulnerability, the precariousness, the humor, the danger, the awkwardness, the thrill of the chase, fighting against fatigue, fighting the creeping corporatization of the music business (or all of the above simultaneously on "The Punk and the Godfather") -- it's all proudly on display here.  And it's where Sun Ra and Link Wray are finally introduced to each other and realize how much they have in common.  The Who were always deeply suspicious of the future while recklessly barreling towards it.  How did their radical redefinition of their instruments' roles and emphasis on the audience-performer relationship to a degree unthinkable by most of their contemporaries turn into streamlined showbiz?  Obviously in capitalist culture, such co-option is inevitable.  But their deep frustration at not being able to change the situation is audible.  And fascinating.

There are no more profound triplets than those that Keith Moon uses to introduce the heretofore-unscaled heights of the version of "Magic Bus" heard here.  It's the most earth-shattering climax in a career defined by earth-shattering climaxes, completely absurd, rampagingly comical in its violence.  And if John Entwistle grew weary of having to play, as he put it, "eight-and-a-half minutes of A" in that song, you'd never know it; here, he's as hypnotically determined as Tony Allen.

The Kilburn 1977 DVD sheds new light on what was once unanimously thought to be a disastrous performance.  It was filmed because director Jeff Stein didn't have any contemporary footage for his documentary The Kids Are Alright; problem was, the Who hadn't played live together in 14 months.  The footage was immediately shelved, with all involved agreeing never to speak of it again (at one point in the concert Townshend says to Stein, "This wasn't fucking worth filming").  What's remarkable about this show isn't just how surprisingly dynamic they are, but that the performance shortcomings are largely technical -- a forgotten verse here, a missed chorus there.  Improbably, Keith Moon, just returned from a year-long bender in California, is the most fired-up, the one with the most to lose, the one who lived for the danger of the live performance.  He's also the one who manages to hold everything together (most strikingly, the famously tone-deaf Moon, in an attempt to remind Townshend how to play one of his own songs, sings it in the correct key, while a distrustful Townshend ends up playing it in the wrong key).  At no point does the band appear tired or resigned; as one reviewer pointed out, this is supposed to be the Who at their worst?  Given their live work up to that point, their worst show was roughly analogous to an off night by Charles Mingus' 1964 group.  But with too-few exceptions, the desultory and lifeless shows of the 1980, 1981, 1982, and 1989 tours lowered the bar significantly; The Who At Their Worst was sadly being redefined on a nightly basis.

This concert is bundled with a 1969 performance which is reliably stunning, Moon was at the peak of his powers here, pouring all he learned from Dannie Richmond and Elvin Jones into a new language that is today spoken-of far more than it's spoken.  

"These are questions that must be asked."

from "Where Do We Go From Here?", a speech given by Dr. King on August 16, 1967, at the Tenth Anniversary Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference:

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about "Where do we go from here," that we honestly face the fact that the Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, "Who owns the oil?" You begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?" You begin to ask the question, "Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?" These are questions that must be asked.