Forty Years On, Songwriter Jimmy Webb Finds His Voice

By Steven Rosen
(This ran in Cincinnati CityBeat, 1-18-12)

The AOL Music website describes Jimmy Webb as “that rarity in Rock music, a professional songwriter who achieved stardom in that capacity,” pointing out that almost all of Rock’s other great songwriters became well-known for their own versions of their material.


The truth of that has long seemed self-evident. After starting to write professionally in his teens, Webb was just over 20 when he wrote a series of enduring Pop classics in the late 1960s — “Up, Up and Away” for The 5th Dimension, “MacArthur Park” for Richard Harris, “The Worst That Could Happen” for Brooklyn Bridge and, especially, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston” for Glen Campbell. While that was his zeitgeist moment, he has continued to pen hits for others — “Highwayman” for Country supergroup The Highwaymen, “All I Know” for Art Garfunkel and Donna Summers’ Disco-era revival of “MacArthur Park.”

But an interesting thing has happened in just the past year or two, as Webb passed age 60. He’s now become recognized as a singer/songwriter, too, as a result of the sales success of his 2010 album Just Across the River. And he’s increased his touring and public appearances to accommodate the newfound recognition — Webb will be singing and playing piano at St. Xavier High School on Saturday night as part of the Greater Cincinnati Performing Arts Society’s schedule.

Vinyl Night Playlist from December

To quote the Dells, who we unfortunately didn't get a chance to play at our electrifying Vinyl Night session of Dec. 27th, "Oh What a Night" it was! We played classic blues and R&B, remembering Hubert Sumlin and Howard Tate; British rock at its most eccentric (Roy Wood's Wizzard); rootsy post-psychedelic American album-rock (Goose Creek Symphony); two of jazz's finest sonic explorers ever, Anthony Braxton with Max Roach; and so much more. Conversation at times was heated -- as to whether the Shaggs qualified as outsider-art rock or mere novelty act, for example. And some cuts were surprises, such as the superbly arranged "She's Everything" by Ral Donner, one of the many moody Elvis-influenced crooners of the early 1960s; and Ed Sanders' prescient "Yodeling Robot."


Our next Vinyl Night is Tuesday, Jan. 31, at 7:30 p.m. sharp at H.D. Beans & Bottles Cafe on the Kennedy Heights/Silverton border. Any questions, contact me or Technical Director Neil Sharrow at lastsafari@fuse.net. And thanks to JP Pfister for designing our playlist -- we hope he will be returning to Vinyl Night soon.

Sincerely,

Steven Rosen

December Vinyl Night Playlist







1 Artist -- Title  --  Album/45 -- Presenter -- Notes

2 Gordon Brisker Collective Consciousness Collective Consciousness (Warm-up music) Cincinnati-born saxophonist

3 10CC I'm Mandy Fly Me 45 Neville Judd

4 Alberto y Los Trios Paranoias Kill Snuff (Stiff) Rock EP Neville Judd

5 Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit 7 Nights to Rock The Rose of England Greg Reece

6 Joe Jackson Jumpin' with Symphony Sid Jumpin' Jive Greg Reece

7 Ed Sanders & the Hemptones Yodeling Robot Beer Cans on the Moon Wayne Perin

8 Jim Kweskin Jug Band Richland Woman Greatest Hits Wayne Perin vocal by Maria D'Amato (Muldaur)

9 Hubert Sumlin A Soul That's Been Abused Hubert Sumlin's Blues Party Gary Janssen Sumlin passed away in December

10 Splodgenessabounds 2 Pints of Lager & a Packet of Crisps Please Simon Templer EP Bill Frost

11 Billy Bragg The Milkman of Human Kindness Life's a Riot with Spy Vs Spy 12" EP Bill Frost

12 Howard Tate Get It While You Can Get It While You Can Steve Spatt Tate passed away in December

13 Wizzard I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday See My Baby Jive Steve Spatt

14 Gefilte Joe & the Fish Hanukkah Rocks Hanukkah Rocks EP Steve Spatt Blue vinyl, shaped like Star of David

15 Carl Kress & Dick McDonough Chicken a la Swing Pioneers of Jazz Guitar Christopher Pazowski

16 Tom Tom Club Genius of Love Tom Tom Club Drew MacDonald

17 Klaatu Doctor Marvello Klaatu Drew MacDonald

18 NRBQ 12 Bar Blues Grooves in Orbit Polly Campbell

19 The Shaggs My Pal Foot Foot Shaggs' Own Thing Polly Campbell

20 The Highway Men After the Sun Highway Men 12" EP Luann Gibbs

21 True Believers Rebel Kind True Believers Luann Gibbs

22 Donald Byrd Cristo Redentor A New Perspective Steve Kemme

23 Max Roach & Anthony Braxton Rebirth Birth & Rebirth Steve Kemme

24 Goose Creek Symphony Do Your Thing But Don't Touch Mine Do Your Thing But Don't Touch Mine Jim McNair

25 Goose Creek Symphony Teresa Do Your Thing But Don't Touch Mine Jim McNair

26 Geoff Muldaur Livin' in the Sunlight Lovin' in the Moonlight Geoff Muldaur Is Having a Wonderful Time Bob Nyswonger

27 Randy Newman A Wedding in Cherokee County Good Old Boys Bob Nyswonger

28 Ernie Maresca Shout! Shout! 45 Steve Rosen

29 Ral Donner She's Everything (I Wanted You to Be) 45 Steve Rosen

30 Gabriel & the Angels That's Life 45 Steve Rosen

31 Edgar Winter Hung Up/Back in the Blues/Re-Entrance Entrance Viv Rusche

32 Racing Cars They Shoot Horses Don't They Downtown Tonight Steve Gibbs

33 The Freshies I'm in Love with the Girl on the Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk

45 Steve Gibbs

34 The Wildweeds No Good to Cry 45 Neil Sharrow

35 Howard Tate These Are the Things That Make Me Know

You're Gone 45 Neil Sharrow

36 Preservation Hall Jazz Band &

Del McCoury Band 50/50 Chance American Legacies Greg Reece Green vinyl

37 Splodgenessabounds Michael Booth's Talking Bum Simon Templer EP Bill Frost



Posted by JP Pfister

Why "Ten for Two" is the John Lennon Music Doc You Haven't Seen

By Steven Rosen
This ran at IndieWire (http://www.indiewire.com/) on Dec. 6, 2011


When John Lennon and Yoko Ono accepted an invitation to perform at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally in Ann Arbor, they knew it would be an event to remember. In addition to their performances, the rock benefit concert marathon featured Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger and Allen Ginsberg as well as activists like Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Father James Groppi and David Dellinger. 



So Lennon and Ono commissioned “Ten For Two,” a documentary of the event; this Saturday, the University of Michigan's student union will celebrate the event's 40th anniversary. And the film is still unavailable for release in the U.S.

“It’s been a sore point with me since it was canned,” says its director, Steve Gebhardt, who shot the film with Robert Fries and two other filmmakers. “I think it’s always had its need to be screened.” 



Gebhardt believes that by the time the film was ready in early 1973, the couple feared its release would further antagonize the Nixon administration, which began trying to deport Lennon for his political activism after the Sinclair rally for Sinclair, an activist and manager of MC5 who received a 10-year sentence for possessing two joints. 



“I think the pressure was on from above, lawyers, not to the piss the government off at this point,” Gebhardt says. 



Ono’s attorney, Jonas E. Herbsman, said by email that Ono wasn’t available to talk about the film. In a subsequent email asking for his input, Herbsman wrote, “Sorry, we do not have information on the film's current status or exhibition history to share.”



Wussy's "Strawberry": They're an American Band (and a Great One)

Wussy's "Strawberry"
By Steven Rosen
Blurt (http://www.blurt-online.com/)
Published 12-14-2011


Some of the best rock bands of the past, alternative and mainstream, have had male-female co-leads - early Velvet Underground, 1970s-era Fleetwood Mac, X, Human Switchboard.

Wussy is a striking, significant addition to that legacy. The Cincinnati band, whose fourth full-length CD is Strawberry, is still a faithful believer in the musical possibilities of a time when the tunefully buzzy, intelligent indie-rock of the 1980s (Husker Du and the Pixies) met the rawer, more emotionally exposed grunge of the early 1990s. It was a short-lived era in which alt-rock was the sound of young (and not-so-young) America - an integral part of the country's cultural conversation.

Chuck Cleaver, whose wavering and emotionally committed singing is a key element of Wussy's sound (he's also a guitarist), was around for that period, as leader of the band Ass Ponys. (So, too, was Strawberry's co-producer John Curley, as a member of Afghan Whigs.) On the other hand, Cleaver's equal singing/songwriting partner in Wussy, Lisa Walker, is younger. The contrast between the two only adds to Wussy's freshness and magnificence. The band combines a sometimes-foreboding sense of alt-rock history with sonic optimism about its possibilities. The two distinctly different voices add color, complexity and mystery; one never knows how or if Cleaver and Walker are inspiring one another.

Honed into a tight quartet (with bassist/multi-instrumentalist Mark Messerly and drummer/album co-producer Joe Klug) that favors a densely textured sound that's scruffy and edgy but always clear, Wussy makes alt-rock that still cares a lot. Nothing ever feels like received wisdom; it's all fresh.

Cleaver is a phenomenal songwriter with an astonishing frame of reference. His writing is imagistic and concise like poetry, yet revealingly narrative like a short story. A mid-tempo, dusty rocker like "Grand Champion Steer," for instance, which appears to be about a day at the county fair, uses specific details (the steer, a Tilt-a-Whirl) to build to a moment of profound illumination - the way a lover's look inadvertently reveals an affair. When he reaches the final line, "Me I was off spinning life out of wishes and air," you're amazed by the power of it. On his "Waiting Room," where he shares lead vocals with Walker, he speaks of his partner's face "with the lines and creases coming on like U.S. Grant took Richmond." Wow! Who else is writing like this?

Senior Moments: The First Rock's Backpages Poll of Best Albums by Older Musicians

Senior Moments: Rock’s Backpages' Best Albums of the Year by Artists Over 50




Published by Rock's Backpages
Wed, Dec 14, 2011

Striking a blow against the perennial ageism of pop culture, Steven R. Rosen polled the Rock's Backpages writers to determine the best albums of the year by music's senior citizens. Read on for the RBP Top 10 and for individual lists from 50 of our most respected contributors. (Some of them are under 50!)——Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages



By Steven R. Rosen

In an effort to show the world — or at least its readers — that rock music continues, and often even improves, when its practitioners reach and pass 50, Rock's Backpages this year sponsors a poll of Best Albums by Older Musicians. In the case of groups or collaborations, an album counts if a significant member was 50 or older. Any kind of pop music was eligible, with an unstated understanding that at this point rock's influence can be felt in virtually all other musical s



The prompt was that — though there are exceptions — our consumerist culture (especially commercial radio) sells and celebrates new work by younger artists but tends to treat the more senior ones as "oldies." That marketplace remembers and repackages their past glories, often in extravagant ways, but gives short shrift to their latest. As a result, one of the standing clichés of rock is that the portion of a concert where an older familiar musician plays his/her newest work is known as "bathroom break time."

Mick "Boom Boom" Jagger & Freddy "Brown Sugar" Cannon

 

(Note: When I reviewed this album for Blurt-online.com on Feb. 22, 2009, I was dubious about the claim in the liner notes that Mick Jagger based "Brown Sugar's" melody on "Tallahassee Lassie." But the emergence of a Stones version of "Lassie" on the new, expanded version of "Some Girls" goes a long way to taking the claim seriously. At this point, I'm looking for a new "Freddy Cannon & the Rolling Stones" album soon.)

CD Review

Freddy Cannon
Boom Boom Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Best of Freddy Cannon [reissue]
(Shout Factory)
Here's the most amazing music-trivia factoid in a long time, courtesy of the liner notes to Boom Boom 24-song greatest-hits collection: Mick Jagger acknowledges he based "Brown Sugar's" melody on Freddy Cannon's 1959 hit, "Tallahassee Lassie." Gentleman, start your mash-ups now!

Actually, you can see why Jagger might have liked Cannon, an ebullient and exuberant Italian-American kid from Boston still active on the oldies circuit today. Cannon didn't so much sing as shout and yelp his lyrics with a voice like fireworks; there's a rawness and street authenticity to such songs about the teen experience as "Transistor Sister," "Action," "The Dedication Song" and his classic "Palisades Park," a New Jersey anthem written by "Gong Show's" Chuck Barris. They have a goosey, ejaculatory quality about them.

But for too much of his career, Cannon was stuck on the Swan label out of Philadelphia, which surrounded him with the same kind of corny, brassy, "swingin'" arrangements - and similarly fussy material, like "Jump Over" and "Teen Queen of the Week" - that Philadelphia teen idol Bobby Rydell had such success with on Cameo Records. But Rydell was a lounge-ish stylist; Cannon was a rocker who needed records that could let him do his stuff.

Things got better when he moved to Warner Bros. for 1964's spunky, sexy hit "Abigail Beecher," but by then he was fighting the British Invasion. He did manage one of the great songs about songs on the radio, "The Dedication Song," in 1966 -- so spirited it practically leaps off the airwaves and dances and shouts right next to you. The song has a physical presence.

It'd be great to see someone give him a first-class production treatment now, perhaps "Palisades Park" aficionado Bruce Springsteen? (He once did that for Gary U.S. Bonds.) Freddy Cannon and the E Street Band, anyone?

Standout Tracks: "Palisades Park," "The Dedication Song" STEVEN ROSEN

The Supreme Dicks: A Candidate for Year's Best Archival Release

Supreme Dicks

Breathing and Not Breathing

Jagjaguwar  (www.jagjaguwar.com)

Nine stars

By Steven Rosen

For Blurt Magazine

It’s hard to fathom where rock would be without the Velvet Underground, whose mix of intellectualism and primitivism created a new dramatic structure – intentionally flirting with chaos – for the popular song. We’re still finding bands influenced by them but who never got their due, and Supreme Dicks – subject of the four-disc Breathing and Not Breathing reissue of late-1980s/early 1990s material – is a major rediscovery. It combines two albums officially released (1993’s The Unexamined Life and 1996’s The Emotional Plague) with one of earlier material and one combining a later EP, This Is Not a Dick, with rare cuts. Emerging out of Hampshire College in Massachusetts, the band was technically challenged but bravely committed to the need for musical struggle. As a result, their often-dark songs have a triumphant dimension, as when “Jack-O-Lantern” moves from tentative guitar exploration to blisteringly urgent, note-holding vocals. And the foray into free-jazz trumpeting and chanting on “A Donkey’s Burial in a Tower on a Mirage” shows their ability to create memorable soundscapes. There's tough competition, as there's a race on to discover overlooked punk and post-punk bands, but this could be the reissue of the year.

Steven Rosen