Music

Hello, my name is Don, and I am a music snob. I will be sharing my opinions on various subjects with music being the main one, of course. Every once in a while, I will put out one of these blogs just to empty my head. So, they will be short most of the time. I will try to relate them to something current or local whenever possible. Since this is my first blog, I hope you will give me some room for improvement. Any suggestions or comments are welcome!

There is a new Van Halen album this month. This is the first album they have recorded with David Lee Roth since 1983. While this reunion is not at the same excitement level for me as a reunion of the original Beatles, it is quite a bit higher than the level for a possible Color Me Badd reunion. I am not going to get into all the chatter about the songs being remakes of material they started writing decades ago. It is new to me. It is their music; they can put it out however they want. I wish them the best of luck, and I will probably get the new album. I would like to say it was because I thought they were still a great band, but it will probably be because it is on sale for five bucks. Without Michael Anthony, it is a tough sell. He made the whole sound with his vocals.

 

Why a reunion? Probably because they figured out that changing singers once and remaining successful was the exception that proves the rule. Usually, if you change singers and try to carry on, it does not go well. Just ask Motley Crue, they replaced Vince Neil with a singer for a few years, and it did not work out very well at all. Vince came back, and they made a mountain of money. They had two of their most successful tours without producing any new music worth listening to. They even landed a residency at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. They had a crazy stage show, but… well, you can look on YouTube to see what I am getting at.

I think the whole reunion craze started with the Eagles and the trailer loads of cash they hauled in on their 1994-96 tour. Kiss had a reunion of the original members soon after, and toured the world in their 1976 makeup. Then, they put out an album nearly unparalleled in its awfulness and toured the world again, making millions. Fleetwood Mac had a reunion around the same time, so did Black Sabbath, The E street band, and many others. Roger Waters even had a reunion with Pink Floyd at the Live 8 concerts a few years back. I was sure I would never see that. It is a shame that they couldn’t have done something else together before Rick Wright passed away.

At the other end of the spectrum are the bands that continue with only one or two of the original members. Guns N’ Roses comes to mind. Kiss is doing this now, too. They say it is because the makeup is bigger than the band members. I guess it is bigger than the panda bears they sell with the makeup designs on them too. I guess when your band becomes a “brand” you gotta ride that horse until it drops.

It makes you wonder why bands split up in the first place. I look at it this way: Most bands start out as just a group of friends. In order to be successful, they spend almost all of their time together. A lot of bands have lived together in a house or apartment for years trying to make it in the music business. They are like a family. It’s all for one and one for all because the band is what is important. This can work for a while, even for many years, but eventually it begins to wear on you. Especially when alcohol, drugs and other substances like success come into the picture. At some point, people need space from each other. A band that is successful or trying to be does not provide much space, so things tend to get amplified and yesterday’s disagreements settled after a few beers and couple games of pool turn into today’s fistfights settled after an arrest or a management ultimatum. Someone quits the band or gets fired. The band is too big and probably owes too much money to the record company to stop, so a new member is brought in and they soldier on.

It is just like most families. The only difference is that you tend to move out of the house at some point after you become adults. Has anyone been in a confined space like an RV with their family when everyone was an adult? How did that go? Pretty well if you drove for three or fewer hours. If it was longer, I bet you were ready to leave the band when it was over or maybe fire a couple of members. The only problem is that you and I cannot plug DJ Ashba or Wolfgang Van Halen into the chairs around our Thanksgiving tables.

I think it was Joe Perry from Aerosmith who once told his drummer that they did not have to be friends to be in a band together. This may be a cold, heartless thing to say, but it is the truth.

Based on all of this, I will give this advice to those in bands today: Try not to spend all of your free time with your band mates. Find other interests, even a side band or doing solo music. Make every rehearsal and show a reunion, so you do not have to have one for the wrong reasons later. It has been said that if you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life. Unfortunately, this does not apply to the music industry. That is why very few bands survive anymore. I will get into that more in later blogs. For now, remember the two rules some very wise friends shared with me. One: Less is more. This applies to every facet of music except, of course, for volume. Two: Look for quality rather than quantity. This applies to music and just about everything else.

Don Van Dyke

Listen before you judge, it is interesting.

 

Someone on Youtube had a good comment:
“This lady made this old man cry and I love bob Dylan. Grew up with his music. One thing I learned over the years is to keep my mind open.”

Read the story of why here: http://www.thelocalq.com/node/2573

Ke$ha said this about the song she covered: “Everything has changed. It’s amazing, but there are moments that are incredibly lonely. This caught me at one of those incredibly lonely moments, and it really struck home. There’s a line, ‘It’s a long and lonesome road, babe, where I’m bound I can’t tell.’ It’s tragically relevant,” said Ke$ha in a phone interview. “I think these are all positive things for young people to see that you can be strong and you can be irreverent and you can say what you want and you have the freedom of speech, but I’ve learned that vulnerability is actually an asset. It can be just as much of an asset as strength.”

Since I live in a baseball city and am a big Cardinals fan, I decided to do a little investigation into something we all hear at the stadium but never give much thought to: the introduction at-bat music for each player.

This is the song that you hear about 3-5 seconds of as the player walks to the plate. The origin of the intro song is believed by many to be rooted in the early 1970s when the Yankees played “Pomp and Circumstance” upon closer Sparky Lyle’s entrance into games. It caught on with pop culturing in the 1989 movie “Major League” when Charlie Sheen’s character, Ricky Vaughn, ran onto the field to the raucous “Wild Thing”. These days some players take it pretty lightly, but other players put a lot of thought and effort into choosing their song. Many have their Facebook or Twitter fans vote for their song.

Though Major League Baseball doesn’t specify a specific number of seconds that a song clip can play, the league does specify that the batter’s music should start immediately after he’s announced and should stop when he reaches the dirt cut-out around home plate. As for the content of the song, baseball leaves it up to the clubs to “use good judgment.” Hmmmmm, that seems risky. Starting pitchers have their own music, but those tunes are often lost in the shuffle of the top of the first when everyone is finding their seat and cramming down some peanuts and cracker jacks. Closers have better luck getting fans attention. Mariano Rivera, of course, instills the fear of God into opponents when he trots out of the Yankee Stadium bullpen to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”

While it may seem like a fairly insignificant piece of the baseball routine, image-conscious ballplayers love the chance to express themselves as the spotlight shifts to them at home plate. Jose Reyes owns a record label and sometimes uses his own music as his intro song. When it comes to poor choices in at bat songs, the former Yankee Nick Johnson always gets a mention. He came to the plate to Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA,” reportedly because it was his daughter’s favorite song.  Apparently some bands lobby to get their songs included as intro music by sending gifts and gift cards to the players (as if the players can’t afford to pay their bill at Chili’s).

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could have some “at-bat music” at work? Let’s say every time you have to give a presentation, on your way to the podium, they play your song to get you pumped up.  Or if you work at a fast food place, they play your song as the next car drives around in order for you to hand their order to them?  OK, I’m getting a little off-topic here, but think about what song you’d have played. Please reply on Facebook or the Local Q website and let me know what your personal “at-bat music” would be. Interestingly, “Your Love” by The Outfield was picked by quite a few players (Eric Byrnes, Gordon Beckham, Kelly Johnson).  Say what?  Good song, but I thought I was the only one who liked it, back in the ’80s. And I’m not real sure how this pumps up a batter.

Anyway, here are some interesting choices from around the MLB:

Albert Pujols – “Five Second,” by Canton Jones  (Did anyone hear he signed with the Angels?)

Carlos Beltran – “El Esta Aqui,” (He Is Here) by David y Abraham

Matt Holiday – “Chicken Fried,” by Zac Brown Band

Skip Schumaker – “The Stroke,” by Billy Squier

David Freese – “Little Pink Houses,” by John ‘COUGAR’ Mellencamp

Nick Punto – “In the Air Tonight,” by Phil Collins

Mark Hamilton – “ET,” by Katy Perry

Drew Stubbs – “Riot,” by Three Days Grace

Edgar Renteria – Any song by 2Pac, requested to mix it up each time

Kelly Johnson – “Bulls on Parade,” by Rage Against the Machine

John Smoltz – “Thunderstruck,” by AC/DC

David Ortiz – “Big Poppa,” by Notorious B.I.G.

Mike Lowell & Jay Bruce – “Iron Man,” by Black Sabbath

Josh Beckett & Brad Hawpe – “Rockstar,” by Nickelback

Nick Swisher – “Danger Zone,” by Kenny Loggins

Joey Votto – “Black Betty” by Ram Jam

Lance Berkman – “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” by Johnny Cash & “Cat Scratch Fever” by Ted Nugent

Billy Butler – “Click Click Boom,” by Saliva

Ryan Braun – “Power,” by Kanye West

Randy Wolf – “By Demons Be Driven” by Pantera

Kyle Kendrick (pitcher) – “Been Caught Stealing” by Jane’s Addiction (clever)

Chase Utley – “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin

Roy Oswalt – “My Kinda Party,” by Jason Aldean

Joakim Soria – “Welcome to the Jungle,” by Guns N’ Roses

Derek Jeter  - “Otis,” by Jay-Z & Kanye West

Mark Teixeira – “I Wanna Rock,” by Twisted Sister

Alex Rodriguez – “Welcome to the Jungle,” by Jay-Z & Kanye West

Steve Stoner

For those of you procrastinators still looking for some gift ideas for the musicians in your family who can actually read (just kidding, musicians), I wanted to throw out some ideas for music biographies and autobiographies. I’m addicted to this genre and my Amazon.com past purchases account proves it. I’ll separate these out by music style to save you some time.

COUNTRY MUSIC
“Diary of a Player: How My Musical Heroes Made a Guitar Man Out of Me,” by Brad Paisley and David Wild
Great book no matter what style of music you are into. This is especially true if you are a guitar player. Paisley talks about growing up with a grandfather that practically forced him to start playing guitar, but he eventually fell in love with the instrument and grew up playing in bands with some older gentlemen who taught him how to be a real musician. He then details his time at a business college in Nashville, while interning at a record label, writing songs and eventually getting a record deal. Anyone who knows much about Paisley knows he’s a ‘gear head,’ that is he loves guitars and amps and owns tons of them. Unfortunately, he lost almost every instrument he owned to the Nashville flood a couple of years ago. The book concludes with a great story that was also in Vintage Guitar magazine last month about Paisley receiving his insurance check and buying a very expensive, old Martin guitar from George Gruhn Guitars in Nashville that was more than likely played at some point by his grandfather 60 years earlier. GRADE: A+

“Waylon: An Autobiography,” by Waylon Jennings and Lenny Kaye
Like everything about Waylon, this book is gritty and honest and he doesn’t pull any punches. From his beginnings in a dirt floor house in west Texas, through busted marriages, his time as a DJ in Texas (along with the fateful day Buddy Holly dropped by the studio and made quick friends with Waylon), to his time playing bass guitar on tour with Buddy Holly, to his successful recording and touring career as well as his long and loving marriage to Jessi Colter, this book covers it all.  It’s packed with some great stories (my favorite is his animosity towards Merle Haggard for taking advantage of Waylon during a poker game) that makes you feel like you’re at the bar sharing a beer with Jennings as he takes you through his life’s experiences. GRADE: A

ROCK MUSIC
“Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock,” by Sammy Hagar
Great book if you are a Sammy fan, which I definitely am. The book starts as almost all biographies do, with the story of Sammy’s early life and in this case the extremely tough childhood he had with an abusive and alcoholic father. The book continues with his tear through rock and roll as a solo artist, lead singer of Montrose, and of course as the lead singer of Van Halen. The book comes full circle with Sammy again touring and recording as a solo artist and (his latest band) Chickenfoot. Sammy also tells about his many business ventures including his tequila, Cabo Wabo. Much has been made of his side of the story about the Van Halen brothers and you won’t be disappointed by the raw stories Sammy gives you in this book. GRADE: A+

“The Long Hard Road Out of Hell,” by Marilyn Manson & Neil Strauss
I’ve read a ton of positive reviews of this book, but unfortunately I wasn’t a big fan. I’ve never been a Marilyn Manson fan at all, so maybe that is why I’m not a fan of this book. “Why buy the book?” you might ask and that’s a good question. I guess I was just curious about what made this freaky dude tick. While the book is definitely entertaining and is a real roller coaster ride, I had a hard time telling how much was sincere and how much was given for shock value — just like everything else in his career I suppose. However, if you have a MM fan on your Christmas list, they will probably like the book. GRADE: C-

“Late, Late at Night,” by Rick Springfield
This one really surprised me. I was anticipating a ‘bubble gum biography,’ but what I got was a very deep and sincere memoir from an artist and actor who has been through more ups and downs than Traci Lords. I was unaware of Springfield’s childhood split between Australia and England or his early successes and then struggles in the music business long before “Jessie’s Girl” was recorded. The other surprising part of this story is Springfield’s long fight against depression that goes back to his childhood. Good read, but starts out a bit slow. GRADE: A-

BLUES MUSIC
“Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B.B. King,” by B. B. King & David Ritz
His real name is Riley B. King, but the B.B. stands, as any blues aficionado knows, for Blues Boy, a nickname he was given in the late 1940s when he was a disk jockey in Memphis. B.B. King — One of my favorite guitarists and a living legend. If you really want to hear about coming from nothing – dirt floor shack and all, B.B. can tell you that story and tell you the history of the Delta blues like no one else can. Great (but sad at times) story and very entertaining. GRADE: A+

NON-ARTIST BOOKS
“Guitar Lessons: A Life’s Journey Turning Passion into Business,” by Bob Taylor
Now this is not a book for everybody. You have to either (a) be a fan of Taylor guitars or (b) be interested in the business of guitar building or building a business from the ground up. Since I can check both (a) and (b), I was pretty sure I would enjoy it and I did. I had no idea that Bob Taylor is a first cousin with legendary Bulls and Lakers coach, Phil Jackson. Anyway, this book tells the story of a young man with a passion for building guitars that worked for over a decade without making one dollar’s profit but he soldiered on to create one of the most successful modern guitar companies. For me this book is an A+, but for the average reader it will probably be a C due to the subject matter. However, if you have a Taylor guitar fan on your list or someone interested in building guitars, this will be a great Christmas present. GRADE: A+

Hope this list helps if you need some last minute books for the musicians in your clan.

Merry Christmas!

Steve Stoner