#11 - The Allman Brothers Band

A Force For Change

Listening for the first time to At Filmore East, The Allman Brothers' impossibly good, live album, one is struck dumb for a moment, the awe of a truely original rock sound sinking in.  Why?

What's it about that sound that makes it so wonderful?  One can cite the innovative twin lead guitars and twin drums, the delightful covers of such classics as Muddy Waters' "Trouble No More", the improvisational jamming that reminds one of jazz, the camaraderie that existed among the band's members.  Likely all the above.

And wherever its origins and whatever the sound's components, we find it so absolute that most listeners willingly forget the years of excess and embarrassment that followed, prior to the band's eventual resurrection and renewed greatness over the past two decades.  

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Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

10/8/8/9 = 35 out of a perfect 40

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Connection:  The Allman Brothers' Band's sublime "Jessica" was written as a tribute to this list's #15, Django Reinhardt.  A more fitting tribute I can't imagine.

#12 -- Neil Young

My Personal Take On His 49-Years-And-Counting Career

"Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" is a top-ten album for me, perhaps even top-five.  Its jamming is astonishing, its melancholy is calm and its ambiance is sing-round-the-campfire western.  The cover art may be my favorite: it shows Young in jeans and checkered plaid, leaning gracefully against a tree, his dog the center of attention.  Combined with his contemporaneous work with Crosby, Stills and Nash, songs like "Country Girl", "Round & Round" and "Helpless" have been the soundtrack to my life.

And Young has found ways to stay relevant ever since "Hello Cowgirl In The Sand".  Like CSN&Y's "Ohio", which was released soon after the Kent State shootings, Young has felt it important to reflect the times.  His "On The Beach" from 1974, for example, has a newspaper's front page visible; it reads: "Nixon Resigns".

I followed his output through the 70's, then sporadically thereafter.  Even when he was into his controversial 'grunge' phase, I found songs to like (I bought and thoroughly enjoyed his "Ragged Glory" from 1990, for example).

Young is one of the few performers I've seen live, and most importantly, in very small venues.  Frankly, I was "blown away" by the crazy horse, himself, in action.  Warning: his amazingly inventive guitar work does involve contorted facial expressions, perhaps part of his epileptic burden; instead, just listen.  

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Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

9/10/8/8 = 35 out of a perfect 40

.................................... 

In the mid-1970s, some frineds and I went to a Stephen Stills concert in Palo Alto, California that was good; but when Neil Young showed up in the second half, the crowd simply went wild at their good fortune.

#13 - Jimi Hendrix

The Magic of Two In One: Both Rhythm and Lead

Arguably the greatest rock 'n roll artist of all time, Hendrix was, unfortunately, handicapped by circumstance: poverty, family turmoil, racism.  And to think that despite all those headwinds, he rose through the music industry to the very top, being the highest paid performer at the time of his death in 1970.  My own sense is that he wasn't so much gifted, since he started with nothing, as he was supremely creative and dedicated to that fact.  

Here are a few snapshots that shine a brief light:

* When he was a boy he carried a broom around with him in order to practice what we would call 'air guitar'.  Despite this obvious interest, his education lacked a musical focus and his first instrument, a cast-off one-string ukulele, didn't appear until he was in his mid-teens.  Exhibit A for poor schools.

* His name change, to "Jimi" instead of "Jimmy", along with the idea of burning his guitar after performances, were ideas hatched by his manager and other hangers on; these profile raisers did have the desired effect however.

* He was a musical perfectionist, irritating his bandmates with his insistence on getting the sound exactly right when recording in the studio.

....................................

Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

10/9/8/8 = 35 out of a perfect 40

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When, as a 13-year-old at a kids' dance party, I heard the line "...let me stand next to your fire." I remember thinking this was 'my' music, and dancing accordingly.  

#14 -- Santana

Live Mix

History is filled with dramatic appearances.  To cite just one example: the influx of spices from the mysterious 'East' during the European middle ages that allowed a relatively tasteless, hum-drum cuisine to blossom.

Likewise, as we saw in #15's Django Reinhardt, music is no stranger to the shock of innovation.  Along with other guitar greats of the 1930s and '40's, like Charlie Christian, Reinhardt's Romani (gypsy) sound steered music in new directions, among them, transforming the guitar from a rhythm to a lead instrument.

Among the shocks of the 1960s, when television was exposing Americans to new horizons, and large gains in wealth were being felt by a large majority, there appeared on the Rock 'N Roll scene the equivalent of coffee, chili peppers and chocolate: Santana.  The swoon was immediate and complete.

The mysterious 'other' with its dreamy, steamy, spicy incantations became a staple of '70s culture and music (the mystical, the flowery, the off-beat, the impressionistic groove).

And yet, the overwhelming success of Santana in its early '70s heyday was in part due to the group's roots in a proto-American sound.  As we'll soon discover with Jimi Hendrix, Robbie Robertson (The Band) and Bob Marley's Native American underpinnings, the surprise of much 'other' music is that it's a mix that includes a native pre-mainstream element.  In other words, Roots music, with its promise of redemption for a wandering flock who occasionally lose their way.

....................................

Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

10/8/7/10 = 35 out of a perfect 40

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Perfect Timing: Santana's #1 album of 1999, Supernatural, bookends one of the longest gaps between #1 albums.  In this case, 28 years between it and the original Santana album.

#15 - Django Reinhardt

The Jack Who Was Never King

If one looks at this Greatest 55 list, there is probably no greater shock than to see a 1930's and 40's European (and no, not even a Brit.) here at #15.

There's a perfectly good explanation, of course.  Frankly, with a few notable exceptions like B. B. King and The Weavers, this list begins somewhere in the early 1960s.

So, here's a tip of the cap to all that formative music.  And if you haven't listened to Reinhardt, his nimble, bouncing guitar spells out a rhythm that reminds one an awful lot of that proverbial rock rolling downhill.   

....................................

Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

7/10/6/10 = 33 out of a perfect 40

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Sad: Unfortunately, Django Reinhardt died young, and is much more highly regarded now than when he was alive.

#16 - Pink Floyd

Immediacy

To be present in the moment is to hear Pink Floyd.

....................................

Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

10/7/9/7 = 33 out of a perfect 40

....................................  

Observation: Two of the band's charter members, Roger Waters and Nick Mason, who met in architectural school in the early 60's, did not read music.  The band's lead guitarist, David Gilmour--he of the famously slow, majestic pace, described their make-shift notation for Waters' magnificent music and lyrics as resembling "...architectural diagram(s)".  Which proves that even the untaught amateur can become one of the very best at something.

#17 -- Sarah McLachlan

Organizing A Mystery

It's easy to remember Sarah McLachlan as the female musician who famously became annoyed at radio stations refusing to play back-to-back female artists, and did something about it.  The Lilith Fair festival of the late 1990s was the result, showcasing women musicians who toured as a unit.

No voice, however, sounds quite as satisfying to my ear, so though she's sold only about half the number of albums of artists like The Doors or Tom Petty, I'm predicting quite the historical afterglow.

Perhaps if you build it, they really will come.  And this being music, those who do come for the show might not even realize their minds have changed.  And that, of course, was the dream of rock 'n roll in its 1960s heyday--that a revolutionary geometry heard by millions of ears would in itself change minds.  Gradually and mysteriously we proceed.

....................................

Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

7/9/7/8 = 31 out of a perfect 40

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 Hey, what do you know:  Four of this list's top 20 acts are Canadian, or mainly so, including McLachlan. 

#18 -- Mark Knopfler

"Wha...?"

Alex Voltaire recently published a well-thought-out essay on the musical artists spurned by the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame.  He lists the 20 most egregious snubs according to several opinion-makers within the industry, including Rolling Stone magazine.  All the lists except his own are missing Dire Straits.

How could that be?  The band's biggest selling album, Brothers In Arms, outsold such classics as U2's Joshua Tree, Carole King's Tapestry, Bob Marley and the Wailer's Legend, Eric Clapton's Unplugged, and Simon and Garfunkle's Bridge Over Troubled Waters.

Dire Straits' overall sales, meanwhile, bested such giants as Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart and The Who.  What gives?

Could it be the name?  Possibly.  It evokes hard times and a stiff challenge before an ill wind.  

The music, though, is so well crafted and the lyrics so well constructed, one is left perplexed.  

And Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler isn't alone.  Our next artist was also passed over.

Knopfler, recording on his own since the mid-90's, is also known for his forays into country music--"The Bug" from Dire Straits' final album was a cross-over hit.  The great Chet Atkins and the engaging Emmylou Harris made excellent collaborators. 

....................................

Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

7/8/9/7 = 31 out of a perfect 40

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Note: The often misunderstood "Money For Nothing" and the zippy "Walk of Life" were part of what was the first album to sell a million CDs, ushering in that era.