Vinyl

The Big Bad, by The Big Bad. 2016, age 44.

I grew up on vinyl. My brothers, 15 and 13 years older than me, were already avid rock and roll fans by the time I'd come along. The first album I remember hearing (and seeing) was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

Growing up I listened to every record they owned: The Beatles "Red," "Blue," and "White" albums; Abraxas; Electric Warrior; Band on the Run; Houses of the Holy; Never Mind the Bollocks; London Calling; 1999; Mott the Hoople Greatest Hits; The Name of This Band is Talking Heads; Bella Donna; A Night at the Opera; more Bowie, more T. Rex, more Zeppelin, more Beatles, some Stones . . . a bit of everything.

My parents were older and their tastes reflected it. They didn't have a lot of records, but the ones they had were important: Hank Williams 40 Greatest Hits, Nat "King" Cole's Unforgettable, some big band stuff.

The first record I bought (at 8-years-old) was The Beatles' Story, which is more of a sound documentary than a music record. (My twin sister bought The Muppet Movie Soundtrack, arguably a more important musical choice.) Something New was my second record. Later came LOTS of Prince records (usually bought the day of their release), The Time, Duran Duran, Heart, and all kinds of 80s goodies.

Then I got "serious" about music and bought hard-to-get jazz records. Blue Train was the first jazz album I bought on a reborn Blue Note label in the mid-eighties.

In college, we played "drop the needle" in saxophone masterclass and had listening parties with other music nerds. My roommate Eric, took me to the Princeton Record Exchange when I went home with him to New Jersey. We'd come back to school with armloads of experimental classical music, folk and world music on Nonesuch, and tons of jazz. I'd also grab a few rock-and-roll records.

After I got married (the first time), I'd make a point of visiting the used record stores in every town where we vacationed. I'd hit them up in Chicago, the Lower East Side, Memphis, and New Orleans. Lots in New Orleans.

Somehow, I ended up with a couple thousand records.

I mean, it didn't keep me from buying CDs. And cassette tapes -- though that format was more for making mixes for others. And then downloading digital music when all that happened.

When I got divorced, my wife let me keep all the vinyl. I had a turntable, but I didn't make it out with the stereo. I had all these treasures and no way to enjoy them.

I moved around with all of it. You wanna know how committed you are to vinyl, move a few times with a couple thousand LPs.

All of the sudden, I had a new family and all this stuff.

I had a small portable record player -- very retro, except that it is probably actually from about 1976 -- but what I didn't know what that turntables from that era won't play microgrooves on newer albums. I could play original Stevie Wonder through the tiny speakers, but not anything after about 1985.

And I kept buying new vinyl. Stuff by new favorite bands like The Cryptkeeper Five and Harley Poe. And some old vinyl. Which made no sense because I had no way to hear it. I just knew I eventually would.

A little over a month ago, I decide to organize my home studio. I also decided to find a way to listen to my turntable through the board and speakers I use for playing keyboards. I got everything hooked up just right and then went to put on my first record.

The stylus was broken. (For you youngsters, the stylus is the needle that transmits the vibration from the groove of the record to the amplification system.)

So I ordered one.

It came in today.

There is something so different about listening to an album on vinyl. Yeah, I think it probably sounds a little better, but that may be mostly imagination. I'm not sure.

But putting on a 12-inch platter, dropping the needle, sinking into a chair, looking at the jacket, reading the notes in a readable font size . . .

The first record I selected was The Big Bad. It happens to be a record by a band I play in.

The last time I could listen to vinyl on a stereo, I couldn't have had that experience. It makes me feel really good.

I think it's going to be a late night.

Ashes to Ashes

2016, Age 43. "Blackstar" by David Bowie, from Blackstar.

David Bowie died yesterday. He was 69.

I've written elsewhere about my love for Bowie. It would be hard for me to overstate his impact on me musically and personally.

I was born the same year that The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was released, the same month that Bowie broke Top of the Pops with his live performance of "Starman." In fact, "Starman" was the very first record I remember hearing as a child.

My brothers played Bowie when I was young: Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Hunky Dory, Space Oddity, Pinups, Young Americans, Scary Monsters, and the Live! album. Oh, and Lou Reed and Mott the Hoople and anyone else Bowie influenced. By the time I was 10, I knew all the words on every one of those records.

David Bowie was the reason I had rock star fantasies. The Beatles were big to me and Prince a little later, but it was Bowie who first combined the music with the costumes and rock-star attitude.

Like a lot of people, Bowie gave me courage to be the person I was. He still does, as a matter of fact. All of those songs about being an alien — is there life on Mars? — gave comfort to all the freaks, geeks, and queers of the world. Thousands of kids like me growing up in small towns got strength to be ourselves through his music.

I puzzled over his weird turns of phrase, trying to work out what they meant. "She's a tongue twisting storm, she will come to the show tonight, praying to the light machine." "I'm closer to the Golden Dawn, immersed in Crowley's uniform of imagery." "As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent, you asked for the latest party. With your silicone hump and your ten inch stump, dressed like a priest you was, Todd Browning's freak you was." His lyrics sent me to the dictionary and to the encyclopedia. They were smart, but to creative ends — not just playing at cleverness.

Of course, the music was something else. At times just pure rock and roll — "Rebel, Rebel," "Suffragette City," "Jean Genie" — at times arty or experimental — "Space Oddity," "Warszawa," "Yassassin." And what about soul? The Thin White Duke was funky enough to be invited on Soul Train and name checked in one of Parliament Funkadelic's best-known tracks.

And he played saxophone. I wonder how many people can say they chose to play saxophone, which in turn led to a career in music and two college degrees in saxophone performance because of David Bowie? Before Trane, before Bird, I knew Bowie. I can still see my junior high school band director's puzzled look when I told him Bowie was my favorite saxophonist.

His music has truly been the soundtrack of my life. I boogied to Let's Dance in the early years of MTV. I obsessively watched the TV show Life on Mars because of it's constant references to Bowie. When I was teaching, I wanted to share my love of the music so much that I asked my friend Steve to arrange four songs for a Bowie tribute show with the marching band. I listened to "Loving the Alien" over and over when I was going through a loss of faith. I put Bowie on several playlists for my children, include track one of the mix they listen to every night when they fall asleep ("Kooks"). I blasted "Modern Love" driving to the church when I got married. I never saw him live, though I did see a great cover band one at the Empty Glass and sang along very loudly and very drunkenly. Just Friday I found myself listening to all of Low for inspiration with my electronic music. Facebook tells me that I've mentioned Bowie more than 55 times, more than any other person other than family members, and that's not including the times I just posted lyrics or shared articles.

So it was that I noted his birthday just a few days ago and downloaded his new album, Blackstar. I hadn't yet had the chance to give it a listen, because I wanted to give it my full attention and in a house with four kids, that's not often possible.

Then I was up late, watching some Netflix with my wife and I saw it on Facebook.

I don't ever remember being this distressed about the death of a celebrity. John Lennon, maybe, but I was eight-years-old at the time. It feels a little silly, to grieve someone you don't know, but I can tell you that I do.

I went to my basement and put the record on.

It's brilliant, of course.

It's also obviously meant as something of a last statement to the world. Hitting me heavily right now is this lyric:
​
Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried,
"I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar!"
​
How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?
He trod on sacred ground, he cried loud into the crowd,
"I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar, I’m not a gangster!"
​
I can’t answer why (I’m a blackstar)
Just go with me (I’m not a filmstar)
I’m-a take you home (I’m a blackstar)
Take your passport and shoes (I’m not a popstar)
And your sedatives, boo (I’m a blackstar)
You’re a flash in the pan (I’m not a marvel star)
I’m the great I am (I’m a blackstar)

Almost no one knew he was dying, but he did. The New York Times reported today in it's arts pages today that "it's a good time to be David Bowie." While probably not exactly accurate, this is certainly the way to leave the world.

So goodbye, Davy Jones. Goodbye, Major Tom. Goodbye, Arnold Corns. Goodbye, Ziggy Stardust. Goodbye, Halloween Jack. Goodbye, Jean Genie. Goodbye Aladdin, Sane. Goodbye, Thin White Duke. Goodbye, Goblin King. Goodbye, Tao Jones.

Rest in peace, David Bowie.

Long live rock-and-roll.

Everybody's Singin' the Blues

1980, Age 8. "Every Day I Have the Blues," by B.B. King, from the album Singin' the Blues. 

B.B. King died this morning.

My guess is that there will be thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of tributes written about him over the next few days. About half of them will be titled, "The Thrill is Gone." A bunch of them will make a variation of the joke, "He just didn't wake up this morning."

King lived to be 89 years old, which is exceptional for a black man in America, and certainly for a blues musician. He was truly born in a different era, hailing from the Mississippi Delta in the early part of the 20th century and making his early career on Memphis' famous Beale Street. He was the Beale Street "Blues Boy" — the "B.B." in his name.

In many ways, it is not surprising that my Facebook feed is filled with thoughts, tributes, and remembrances of B.B. King. He was, after all, the "King of the Blues." But while many somehow understand that the blues is important in American music, I would guess that there are relatively few who listen to the blues on a regular basis, fewer still who buy blues records.

For most Americans, B.B. King was the face of the blues.

My parents weren't particularly blues fans. They listened to old swing and country music, for the most part. But they had this stash of records, many of them from the dry goods store that my granny helped run when she married her second husband and moved to Man, West Virginia. I would look through them for hours and pull out the more interesting ones to give a listen. It was a good cross-section of what was popular in America in the early 1950s. I found Johnny Mathis and Skeeter Davis and records with titles like, "Your Favorite Pop Hits on the Hammond Organ!" Among these were two copies of B.B. King's debut album, Singin' the Blues.

I should mention that both were extremely water-damaged and certainly not collectible in any sense. I think I gave one of them to my friend Chris. But I would put it on and give it a listen. It was the only blues record in the entire collection.

Years later, I found myself teaching music. I would ask if they knew any blues musicians and apart from the occasional kid with hippie parents who would offer up the name of Eric Clapton, B.B. King was the only one they could identify. But they all knew him.

I saw him once in concert, about nine years ago, on his 84th birthday. It was at the House of Blues and the audience was packed — standing room only. It was clear that few of them had more than a passing familiarity with his music, but they ate him up. My clearest memory was some college kid in khakis and a backward ball cap who insisted on shouting, "You are the king, sir!" at the show's quietest moments.

Americans knew B.B. King. They knew his guitar(s), Lucille. They knew he had diabetes, thanks to commercials he did for OneTouch Ultra. And they'd seen his face on Toyota commercials, too.

Part of King's legacy is no doubt due to the fact that he was one of the musicians who bridged the transition between blues and rock music. Eric Clapton performed with him often. George Harrison claimed him as a major influence, which can certainly be heard. So did Jimi Hendrix, though that may be a little less obvious.

His music was called "day blues" early on. It was the showier, glitzier cousin of Chicago's electric blues. While it didn't have the grittiness that many blues fans love, it did keep blues in the mainstream for some time.

Mr. King was the ambassador for blues music, performing for presidents and kings, prison inmates, and school children. His legacy is important for that reason, almost as much as for the music itself.

I'm always surprised when I meet people who claim to not like the blues. Back when I taught music, one of the central "big ideas" I wanted students to leave with was, "All American music comes from the blues." It doesn't matter if you like rock or hip-hop or punk or funk or country or bluegrass or jazz or metal — none of them would exist without the blues.

Yesterday I found myself driving for work and I put on The Cramps first record and noticed the familiar three-chord, twelve-bar blues form that musicians like King, Muddy Waters and their contemporaries popularized. It has become so much a part of the American musical memory that it's hard to imagine a time before the blues. The blues have become a form on which musicians as diverse as Charlie Parker, Bill Monroe, and the Ramones have hung their musical and lyrical ideas.

I've got three nights of gigs this weekend, playing punk, rock-and-roll, and soul music. I'll be sharing the stage with seasoned jazz musicians, kids with shitty guitars who started playing a couple years ago, and one R&B legend. It is not an exaggeration to say that all of them owe a debt of gratitude to B.B. King.

Long live the King.

I Dream of Wires

1981, age 9. Switched on Bach, by Walter Carlos.

I guess my background is similar to a lot of people who fell in love with music from a young age. I grew up in a house filled with music, my mom played piano for the church choir, and I started taking piano lessons at age 6.

Like a lot of kids, there were days I hated practicing. My mom would put this kitchen timer on top of the piano until I finished my requisite 30 minutes. I think I liked the idea of being a musician a lot more than actually playing the instrument.

I was okay, I guess, but not nearly as good as my twin sister, Sarah. She really came into her own on the piano and was the kid who was always winning talent shows and playing for school functions. She was gracing audiences with "The Spinning Song" while I was struggling to make it out of the first volume of Teaching Little Fingers to Play.

We switched teachers over the years as some moved away or others weren't the right fit. There was Mrs. Showalter, the preacher's dowdy wife, who moved when the church fired her husband. There was Mrs. Ward, who played organ at the church. We had Mr. Stewart, a cocktail pianist and junior high music teacher, a flamboyantly gay man in a very conservative Bible-belt town, who moved to Florida and died soon afterward. There was John Yurick, who has since become a good friend, an accomplished musician and composer who taught at the local music store.

The thing was, when I started really getting into music, I wanted to play the guitar. Guitar was what rock and roll musicians played. The Beatles didn't have a piano player.

My mom told me I was too young to play the guitar and that I could do that after I'd played piano for several years.

So I resigned myself to the keyboard for awhile, looking for any hint of its rock and roll soul.

I noticed that "Lady Madonna" seemed pretty focused around the piano, as were a lot of Paul McCartney's contributions to The Beatles. I learned that some people even called Billy Preston "The Fifth Beatle." Then there was David Bowie banging away on "Rock and Roll Star" and other tracks from the Ziggy Stardust record. I thought I even heard some organ on those Santana records my brothers played.

About this time I checked out a book from the public library called Musical Instruments of the World. It was really fascinating and had drawings and descriptions of every instrument I could ever imagine: balalaikas, citterns, Sicilian bagpipes, nose flutes, and erhus. They even had a section on "Modern Rock Music," that explained how an amplifier worked and the different pieces of a drum set. I was deeply gratified to find the keyboard instruments included as well, with a long-haired gentleman in platform shoes standing behind a Hammond B-3 and Fender Rhodes. But there was another instrument there, too, something I didn't recognize, with all kinds of knobs and weird cables connecting parts of it. It was called a "synthesizer."

When I read about the synthesizer, it sounded magical. Its sounds were produced entirely electronically, so it was a really modern instrument. Because of this, the authors told me, a synthesizer was capable of producing the sound of any other instrument. I read about the synthesizer made by Robert Moog, whose name I assumed, as I guess some of you have just now, rhymed with "fugue." It does not. It rhymes with "vogue."

So I started looking for synthesizers in the music I was listening to. I found bits and pieces, but nothing I could really hear that well. So the next time I was at the library, I strolled over to the bins where they kept the LPs and began digging. I found it in the classical section. It was called Switched on Bach by Walter Carlos Williams.

The record was already over a decade old, but the cover was fascinating. It showed a gentleman in full Baroque attire standing in front of cabinets housing panels of electronic modules and cables connecting various pieces. It looked like it should be used by NASA. I wrongfully assumed that the gentleman was Mr. Williams, unaware that Mr. Williams had begun living as Ms. Williams by the time Switched on Bach came out and had made the complete jump biologically by the time I held the album in my hands, financed largely by the record's success.

I took it home and listened to it. It was engrossing. It was classical music, familiar, accessible — but made with weird electronic sounds. There were tinkling sounds and buzzing sounds and swooping, gyrating sounds. There were thick, round sounds and piercingly thin sounds. It was all very interesting.

But it wasn't rock and roll.

So I kept my eyes and ears open, looking for the appearance of one of these fabled instruments.

Then something wonderful happened. It was called "MTV."

Synthesizers were all over MTV. The very first video I saw on the channel was "Words," by Missing Persons, and the singer, Dale Bozio, stood in front of a platform where a musician worked behind a bank of keyboards. But they weren't the only ones. There was Duran Duran and Human League and Flock of Seagulls and Depeche Mode and Devo. There was Prince, that enigmatic purple-clad sprite whose music was my sexual awakening, due in no small part to the catchy synth hooks that dominated the music, played live by "Lisa" and "Dr. Fink."

I had to have one.

I remember the very first synthesizer I saw. It was a Moog Rogue (that rhymes, in case you have forgotten) and it was at Don Elkins' Music on Valley Drive, where I went for my piano lesson every week. It was 32 keys in a black case with white lettering, a few simple knobs and sliders labelled with strange words: "Oscillators," "Modulation," "Contour Filter." I had no idea what it sounded like and it wasn't connected to any sort of amplifier in the store, so you couldn't even try the thing out. Yet in my mind, it was all electronic sex and rock and roll glory. Some kids wanted to be Batman; I wanted to own a Moog Rogue.

Some time after our school music teacher even brought in a friend, a local DJ, who demonstrated the Minimoog for us in the school cafetorium. I sat riveted. The encounter was brief, but it stuck with me.

There were mail order companies in those days that sold synthesizers. I'm not sure where I got the address for one — maybe in Keyboardist magazine. The catalogs would come in the mail to me and they were just pages upon pages of incomprehensible science projects. They were DIY kits for synth home hobbyists and you could buy and put together yourself these modular synthesizers of any possible size you could imagine. I couldn't imagine where to begin among the list of puzzling modules: VCOs, VCFs, LFOs, ring modulators, and so on. Then you'd have to get an amplifier of some sort to plug the thing in. And a "keyboard controller" that made no sound on its own. Oh, and I found out that these "analog" synths were "monophonic": they could only play one note at a time. My confusion grew.

Somewhere around this time I started playing guitar and saxophone, and my obsession with owning a synthesizer faded. I owned an electric guitar long before I owned a synth, and I was regularly playing saxophone in bands of various styles.

The MIDI revolution happened in the late 1980s and 90s, and once I went to music school, owning a MIDI keyboard than had access to banks of sounds was no big deal. I bought a cheap Casio and used it happily to play with sampled sounds and banks of soft synths. It was not quite the same thing, but it served my needs.

Then a couple of years ago, my cousin Zack asked me to play saxophone with his band. "And some keys." This was without ever hearing me play. I suppose he trusted that I knew what I was doing. So I started shopping around, asking questions, and looking into buy a synth — or maybe an organ. I wasn't sure yet.

I ended up with this very cool Casio XW-P1. Now, most people associate that name with cheap keyboards (see above comment) and this one is a budget synth. (I was less than broke when I bought it.) But it's the real deal: sampled sounds, plus digital synthesis that could be played with. It's been a great little workhorse. I like it so much that when it got stolen last fall, I bought another one.

It's completely opened me up creatively and I've started playing with the on-board sequencer and arpeggiator. I've discovered that timbre can be as great of a source for creativity as rhythm or harmony. I can spend hours at a time making new sounds, lost in my own little world.

Then the inevitable happened: I bought another one. It was called a Synthstation 25 and really it was just a little mini-keyboard controller I bought used for $19. You plug your phone into it and start a $2 app and all of the sudden you have a drum machine, a sequencer, and an analog-modeling synth at your fingers.

Then I got another one at Christmas. It's an Arturia MiniBrute and it's an actual analog synthesizer. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the differences between "analog" and "digital," suffice it to say that digital is basically playing with computers and analog is basically playing with raw electricity.) It can make some pretty bitchin' sounds, man.

Then I got a Nord Electro 4, which isn't exactly what most people think of as a synthesizer, but has great organ and piano sounds, as well as samples of an old Mellotron — a type of pre-digital sampler that used little bits of tape.

I also got a little $50 Korg Monotron, which is basically a single oscillator and filer with a ribbon controller. It makes all kinds of delicious bleeps and bloops.

I'm really not a gear head, but these instruments just keep opening up new worlds for me. It's like being a painter and discovering that there are new colors you haven't ever seen, or even colors you can invent yourself.

All of which has brought me to this fateful day.

I'm wrapping up this blog post, then I'm making a payment to purchase my very first modular synthesizer. It's not been built yet. I've ordered it from a well-known company that specializes in this sort of thing. I spoke to the owner and chose each module myself: the power supply, the two oscillators, the two contrasting filters, the LFO — all of it. I even chose the case it comes in, which has blank spots, by the way, so I can keep adding to it.

I've not quite crossed the threshold yet into building my own modules, though on slow afternoons I imagine myself hunkered in my basement with a soldering iron, piecing together transistors and resistors, bringing the sounds to life for the very first time.

I also put a bid on someone's old Moog Rogue online.

Someone else can be Batman.

Twerking through the Ages

1984, age 14. "Head," by Prince, from the album Dirty Mind.

WARNING: This blog post contains frank discussion of some matters related to human sexuality. Proceed with caution.

It's been awhile since I've watched MTV's Video Music Awards. I suppose that's mostly because I don't think MTV has much cred discussing music videos.  I also think they are a little predictable.

Nevertheless, I'm an avid pop culture junkie, so I felt the need to investigate following the social media eruption that happened after Miley Cyrus' performance with Robin Thicke on the VMAs. I will confess that I didn't even know that Ms. Cyrus had crossed over to a post-Disney career, following the footsteps of other alum Fergie, Christina Aguilera, Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, Shia LeBeouf, Selena Gomez, and of course, the original beach babe, Annette Funicello.

The hullabaloo seems to be related to Miley extending her tongue and twerking during the performance.  She's been called slutty, trashy, and cheap on posts from my own friends and pop culture bloggers. Several of my friends have opined that she represents a decline in musicianship, civil rights, and/or culture at large.

I gotta say, I think it's all a tempest in a teacup.

For those of you over 30, "tweaking" is defined by the Urban Dictionary as "The rhythmic gyrating of the lower fleshy extremities in a lascivious manner with the intent to elicit sexual arousal or laughter in ones [sic] intended audience." (Congrats, Urban Dictionary, for your post-SAT vocab, but you may want to look up "extremities." I don't think the ass counts.)

When I read that definition, I immediately thought of one pop performer: Elvis Presley.

You know, "Elvis the Pelvis"? The King of Rock and Roll?  You've heard of him, right?

Well, if you don't know how Elvis earned the moniker, it's related to one of his earliest television performances. The 19-year-old singer appeared on The Milton Berle Show in 1956 and performed a couple of his hits, including a hip-shaking cover of Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog." Now, it's no surprise that Elvis might seek to emphasize the sexuality of "Hound Dog." The song is about a man who sleeps around.  (You knew that, yeah? I mean, you knew it wasn't actually about a dog, right?) The result was electrifying and the public reaction was immediate. Ed Sullivan, TV's most popular host, immediately declared that he would never book Presley. The day following the performance, the New York Times said, "Mr. Presley has no singing ability . . . His one specialty is an accented movement of the body that heretofore has been primarily identified with the repertoire of the blonde bombshells of the burlesque runway. The gyration never had anything to do with the world of popular music and still doesn't." The Daily News echoed the sentiment by saying that the performance was "tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos." Other media outlets concurred.

You know the rest of the story: teenage Elvis went back to Tennessee, scorned and dejected, and lived out the rest of his days pumping gas at an Esso station, never to return to the stage again.

Well, except for the part where Ed Sullivan ate crow, signed Elvis for an unprecedented three-show, $50,000 contract, and he became the single most identifiable figure in the history of rock and roll music.

Presley went on to record lots of songs about sex, by the way, including "Shake, Rattle, and Roll," and "Jailhouse Rock," perhaps popular music's first paean to gay prison sex. (You knew that's what the song was about, right? I mean, what did you think Number 47 and Number 3 were talking about, exactly?)

In fact, Elvis was just continuing a tradition of performing songs to shock the elders. Anyone who is a blues fan knows just how "blue" the music got in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. (Go give Bessie Smith's "Kitchen Man" a listen. I once heard my friend Doris perform it and make a room blush.) And R&B singles like "The Rotten Cocksuckers Ball" by the Clovers, circa 1954, were certainly more explicit than anything the King had to offer. Hell, the tradition goes back even further to the so-called "bawdy ballads" like "Roll Your Leg Over."

And the tradition continued. Songs about sex (and drugs, the other post-30 bugaboo) are pervasive in the history of rock and roll, as are "shocking" sexual performances. A sample:

• Almost all of Little Richard's output consists of sexual innuendo, and sometimes explicit content. "Tutti Frutti" was, of course, about gay sex (You knew that, right? I mean "All the Fruits"? What did you think it was about?) and "Long Tall Sally" included lyrics like, "Long Tall Sally she's built for speed, she's got everything that Uncle John needs."
• The Rolling Stones were forced to change the lyrics of their hit, "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's Spend Some Time Together" for the Ed Sullivan Show. The group agreed, but then returned to the stage wearing Nazi uniforms and regalia to protest the censorship.
• The Doors' Jim Morrison was arrested in Miami for allegedly shouting, "Do you want to see my cock?" and then exposing his penis to a concert audience.
• David Bowie was possibly the first pop artist to come out as bisexual in an interview with Playboy magazine in 1975.
• The Ohio Players released some albums.
• A 17-year-old Prince releases his first album, including the single, "Soft and Wet." Prince's Dirty Mind album, featured the performer on the cover in a g-string and trench coat and includes songs about cunnilingus and incest. Prince's Controversy track, "Jack U Off," is only one of the most explicit from the album. The newly-formed Parents Music Resource Center targets Prince's "Darling Nikki," for including lyrics about female masturbation. Prince appears nude on the the cover of his album, Lovesexy. Everything that Prince has every done.
• In 1990, hip hop artists 2 Live Crew had their album banned for obscenity by a U.S. District Court.
• Remember Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl?
• The VMAs themselves have included Madonna rolling on the stage in a bridal gown singing, "Like a Virgin;" an 18-year-old Britney Spears donning a "nude" costume and boa constrictor; and Madonna french-kissing Christina Aguilera and a 22-year-old Britney Spears, both former Disney stars.

I mean, this is a sample — not some exhaustive list. And I'm not including all the Satan-worshipping, biting-the-heads-off-doves incidents, either. The history of music is just full of this stuff.

So what's it all mean?

Two things I think.

The first is that my aunt Awayn was right. (That's pronounced "A-1" with the accent on the first syllable, and yes, that is her real name.) Awayn is a fundamentalist Christian (and she would not mind me saying that). When I was a kid, she insisted that rock and roll was "jungle music" and that it was mostly about sex.

Well, she's right. I'm sure that the term "jungle music" probably indicates some latent racism on her part, but the music is African in much of it's origin — as is all American music. (The conversation about the appropriation of these styles, i.e., the "white boy who stole the blues," is too long for this post, but Robin Thicke is just the latest example.)

But rock and roll is also largely about sex. I mean, "rockin' and rollin' . . ." That's obvious, right? Why are we surprised that there is music about what is arguably the single most dominant biological function of every living organism on the planet? And why are we pretending it's new?

The second is that rock and roll — and many other popular American styles — are about a younger generation rebelling against the social mores of an older generation.

My guess is that Miley's manager said something to her like this: "Girl, Lady GAGA is gonna be on the VMAs. That chick wore a dress made out of flank steaks! You better step up your SHIT!"

Because, how do you shock a generation that rocked out to "Love the One You're With" and "Why Don't We Do It in the Road"? We've all seen your muddy nude dancing at Woodstock, we have read about your acid trips, and we know how you advocated "free love." It takes a lot to shock you.

And you 70s types, with your Studio 54 and cocaine spoons, your Masters and Johnson, your Coming of Age in Samoa — how exactly are we supposed to rock your world?

As for you 80s children, all I can say is that you had Prince.

Art is fundamentally about starting a conversation, making people think. For that reason, this one goes in the "win" column for Ms. Cyrus. We're talking about her performance. And you've read this far. 

The other group who has expressed strong objection to Sunday's show are those who are distressed that we are all talking about Miley while Syrians are being killed, the Egyptian government is in a shambles, and the polar ice caps are melting. To those good-hearted people, I would just say that you are right: the world can be unbearably awful at times. Sometimes art answers those issues. But sometimes (as I have written elsewhere), it just provides a much-needed, booty-shaking respite from all the awfulness. It may not be your cup of tea, but there are those, probably younger than you, who are twerking away, just trying to lose themselves in the music for awhile.

Why I'm Not a Snob (Anymore)

1990, age 18. "Time After Time," by Miles Davis, from the album You're Under Arrest.

You know the movie High Fidelity? It's easily one of my top five movies of all time. I may qualify as a nerd in several of the genus' subspecies, but I am most definitely and finally a music nerd. This is a movie for people like me. It shows the types of obsessions that we have about record labels, limited releases, track order, and the like. Perhaps given the ubiquity of Top 40 (and Top 10, Top 20, Top 50, and Top 100) lists, it also shows our passion for ordering. Top Five Track One, Side Ones of All Time. Top Five Songs about Death. Top Five Crimes Perpetrated by Stevie Wonder in the 80s and 90s.  It's true: we really do that. I can remember conversations with like-minded friends about top five (or ten) Art Blakey sidemen, break-up songs, underrated bass players, country covers, and pop records of all time. Oh, and saxophonists. The list is a staple of the music nerd's life.

Of course, inherent to the list is the idea of ranking, i.e., determining who is the best. It's kind of a weird obsession with music fans, but it's pretty universal. "You think Sonny Rollins swings harder than Trane? Are you freaking kidding me?!" "In what world is The White Album better than Revolver?" "Only a complete imbecile would think Screamin' Jay Hawkins sings 'I Put a Spell on You' better than Nina Simone." Music lovers strongly attach to their opinions. They can make a discussion of the Top Five Folk-Rock Duos after Simon and Garfunkel more contentious and of seemingly greater gravitas than the First Council of Nicaea.

Which brings me to one of my favorite scenes in High Fidelity. The record store staff are talking to a regular customer, Louis, who has just witnessed them belittling another store patron and this exchange happens:

     Louis: You guys are snobs
     Staff: No, we're not.
     Louis: Yeah, seriously, you're totally elitist. You feel like the unappreciated scholars, so you shit        on people who know less than you.
     Staff: No!
     Louis: Which is everybody . . . 
     Staff: Yeah . . . 

All this list-making, all of this obsession over minutia, all of the fierce defense over one's opinions leads almost inexorably to being a music snob.

I used to be okay with that. When I was growing up, I seemed to think that becoming more opinionated was somehow the point of it all.  After all, even the most famous of musicians and critics are virulent in their attacks on others.  I've mentioned it elsewhere, so I won't rehearse it again here, but older generations of musicians disparage the music of younger musicians almost as a point of honor. It's not just old versus new, of course. Country fans can't stand hip hop. Blues fans think jazz is pretentious and egg-headed. Hard rock fans think that "disco sucks." Etc.

As I've mentioned previously, I was a huge Prince fan when I was young. It started with the 1999 album when I was just 10 years old (yikes!) and continued through my junior high school years. But when I joined the school band, I started playing saxophone and listening to jazz. Soon my listening habits began to change. Instead of Prince, I was listening to John Coltrane. Miles Davis replaced Morris Day and I dug on Ella Fitzgerald more than Vanity 6. Needless to say, not many 13-year-olds in my zip code were head-bobbing to Horace Silver in 1985. On one hand, that made me a bit eccentric and outcast. On the other hand, it kind of made me feel superior. Superior in taste, in intellect . . . even morally superior in some way, as if the decision to spin Blue Train instead of Purple Rain was of ethical significance.

And so, over the next few years, I began to "refine" my record collection. I not only bought more bebop, I actually got rid of most of my pop records. I can even remember when I sent a crate full of them — including my Prince albums — with one of my sisters to be sold at a flea market for 10 cents apiece.

Fast forward a couple more years and I find myself in college majoring in music. I had a few great professors and a whole bunch of similarly-minded musicians as peers. My ears opened up to all kinds of new sounds that year. Also new that year was a book that came recommended from my professors and made the rounds in our studio — Miles: An Autobiography. You felt cool reading it. Hell, you felt cool just carrying it around so that girls could see that you were reading it. It's very entertaining. (E.g., from page 9: "But shit, I wasn't alone in listening to them like that, because the whole band would just like have an orgasm every time Diz or Bird played — especially Bird. I mean Bird was unbelievable. Sarah Vaughan was there also, and she's a motherfucker, too." There's pages of this stuff.)

So I'm reading this thing and feeling all cool — I remember I was home for a weekend riding in the back of my parent's car going somewhere, reading this book. Then I come across this passage: ". . . I really love Prince, and after I heard him, I wanted to play with him sometime . . . he plays his ass off as well as he sings and writes. He's got that church thing up in what he does. He plays guitar and piano and plays them very well . . . Prince is a very nice, a shy kind of person, a little genius, too."

Say what?!

Miles Davis, the Miles Davis, jazz legend and icon, thinks Prince is a genius. Not just, "Yeah, I can dance to that stuff," but "genius."

I'll be honest with you, it shook up my world. Not least of all because I remembered all those records that someone got for about $2.00 a few years back.

Well, I was still learning and apparently hadn't heard the whole story, you know? Yeah, evidently Miles had been singing the praise of pop music and musicians for a couple of decades by that point, even though my listening hadn't gotten past his mid-Columbia output. In fact, he'd even released an album where he covered Cyndi Lauper's "Time after Time." Oh man.

I kind of took it hard. At first, I wanted to side with all those jazz musicians who accused Miles of "selling out." The thing was, this guy was there at the birth of the cool. There was no one who could school Miles Davis on what was cool. He practically invented the notion.

So, I started picking up copies of all those Prince albums I'd sold off, this time on CD. I was watching Saturday Night Live the night Miles Davis died during my sophomore year.  The musical guest was Public Enemy and they observed a moment of silence in his honor. That seemed right.

I also started a slow shift in my thinking about music that continues to this day.

The thing about music is that most people listen to it because they find meaning and joy in it. When you're a music snob, it's like saying, "You shouldn't find meaning and joy in that thing that seems to be giving you so much pleasure." Why would you do that? This world is hard enough. We need joy and meaning wherever we find it, and we don't all find it in the same place.

These days I enjoy more music than I ever have. I have a couple of college degrees in music and I get why some of it is more complex or sophisticated or technically difficult or whatever, but I have to say: I don't really care. What matters to me when I'm listening is if the performer is connecting with me emotionally. They don't always, but I can always appreciate the attempt.

That doesn't mean there isn't some music I'd rather eat chalk than listen to. Kenny G still turns my stomach. You can keep your Jimmy Buffett, too. I could list a bunch of them, but I don't want to get in the way of your aural bliss. I don't have to dig what you're spinning, but musical taste is not a moral issue for me anymore. The power of music is.

Oh yeah: I'm also gonna keep making those lists. I may have mellowed a bit, but I'm still a nerd.

Cover Me

2005, age 35.  "How Come U Don't Call Me?" by Alicia Keys, from the album Unplugged.

I once had this idea for a mixtape that I wanted to call "Cover Me."  The basic idea was that each track would be an artist covering a song by the previous artist on the mix, with the first track being a cover of a song written by the final artist.  I thought it was a pretty good idea, actually, and spent a lot of time working on the mix.  In the end, I kind of lost interest in it, partly because I wasn't sure how the flow of the thing worked.  My favorite part of the mix was The Stylistics doing Willie Nelson's "Always on My Mind," followed by Prince with "Betcha By Golly, Wow," and then Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U."  I got stuck trying to find a cover of a Sinead tune that I actually liked, but those three tracks work really well together.

I've thought a lot about covers and what they mean.  Musicians have always covered other artists' material, of course, but it seems different now.  In the post-modern era, it's not enough to faithfully recreate a beloved song.  Instead, artists feel the need to re-imagine the original.  I love this.  There is something wonderful about listening to someone perform a piece that they have digested so completely and so lovingly that their own performance is something entirely new.  The piece becomes not only a work of art but a meta-commentary on art itself and what it is to really love music.

So here for you are my Top Ten Favorite Re-imagined Cover Songs.  Not all of them are of recent vintage, but they all represent a fairly substantial departure from the original in a way that only makes me love the song more.  I hope you'll take the time to check them out.

1. "Life on Mars," by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.  Let me begin here by saying that "Life on Mars" is one of the great, great, greatest of David Bowie's songs, one that cannot be improved upon in any way.  Unless it is performed by a ukulele ensemble.  The UOGB do a mash-up of the Hunky Dory song with "For Once in My Life," by Stevie Wonder; the title track from the film Born Free; and the Sinatra staple, "My Way."  The weird thing is that they manage it without mocking any of the sources and making an already poignant song a little more poignanter (?).  Not available anywhere but on DVD, unfortunately.

2.  "Nothing Compares 2 U," by Sinead O'Connor.  I think doing a cover of a Prince song is a pretty risky proposition.  His work is so quirky, so of-a-piece with his personality, that one risks sounding like a parody (witness Maroon 5's take on "Kiss").  But I gotta say, I think Sinead has it going on with this one.  I was never a big fan of the production on the original, so the relatively sparse setting when she sings, "It's been seven hours and fifteen days," sends chills up my spine.

3.  "Crimson and Clover," by Joan Jett and The Blackhearts.  I love, love, love this record and have since I was 8-years-old and joined the Joan Jett and The Blackhearts fan club.  The original, by Tommy James and the Shondells, is most notable for the the tremolo on the vocal toward the end, which I think is a really annoying effect.  When Joan sings, "Yeah, I'm not such a sweet thing, wanna do everything . . . " it still gives me butterflies and I can see those big eyes going wide in the video.

4.  "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In Love with You)," by Isaac Hayes.  (Link unavailable.)  Hank Williams songs seem incredibly coverable and there are lots of good ones out there, but there is something about this b-side to "Never Can Say Goodbye," that I really dig.  The lush orchestration (it has French horns!) and the R&B vocal styling completely transform this honky-tonk classic and somehow make it seem that Hayes really spent some time feeling the import of these words.

5.  "More Than This," by Norah Jones.  Have you ever had a song from your youth that you didn't really think about at all until you heard someone cover it in a way that made you re-think the whole thing and go, "Dayum!  That's a great song!"  That's how I feel about this Norah Jones' cover of the Roxy Music original.  I pretty much love Bryan Ferry's voice, but something about Ms. Jones interpretation helps me hear this song, almost like it's the first time every time I listen.  Charlie Hunter on guitar, which is nice, too.

6.  "I'm Shakin'," by Jack White.  Now, it takes some real talent to improve on a Little Willie John song, but I really think Jack White has it.  Is it possible that the cover sounds more raw than the original?  The back-up "oooohs" from the chick singers and White's overdrive send this one over the top.  (Great video, too.)

7.  "Overkill," by Colin Hay.  Ok, this one might be cheating.  Colin Hay was the lead singer of the Down Under pop act Men At Work and here he is covering a song they made a top-ten hit.  But this version deconstructs the original in a way that you really hear it afresh, especially if you are 40-ish and mostly remember the silly video that was in heavy rotation on MTV with this one.  The spare, lone guitar just reinforces the lyric, and you can easily imagine Mssr. Hay sitting at home, late on a weeknight, singing his hymn to neurosis: "I can't get to sleep, I think about the implications . . ."  Bonus points for first appearing in a Scrubs episode.

8.  "Qué Sera Sera," by Pink Martini.  This one is just plain creepy and brings out the really dark nature of the lyrics.  Asking your mother if you will be happy as an adult and being answered with, "Whatever, kid."  Pink Martini blows Doris Day out of the water, with an atonal, angular accompaniment to an relatively straight vocal delivery, broken by an instrumental chorus that feels like the carnival in Something Wicked This Way Comes.

9.  "How Come U Don't Call Me," by Alicia Keys.  Ok, remember when I said a little while back that covering Prince songs is a risky premise?  Well, that's true, but lots of artists try it, and some of them are bound to hit.  And let me be clear: I am talking about Alicia's live version here, on her Unplugged album.  Keys' own soulful piano, the churchy Hammond, spot-on back-up singers, the entirely predictable but entirely satisfying vocal cadenza, and the energy the record captures between the performer and the audience is really electrifying.  As a rule, I am not a fan of live records, but this one just sends me.

10.  "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" by Roberta Flack.  Songwriter Carole King was reportedly displeased with The Shirelles up-tempo take on her song, even though it went to #1.  But she loved Roberta Flack's version, and it's easy to see why.  The simplest piano with a touch of strings in just the right places and time to listen to the real heartbreak in the lyric.  It really makes you ache.  (King recorded her own version on her Tapestry album, but it would be hard to top Flack's.)

What about you?  You got a favorite cover version —or do you agree with His Purple Majesty that cover versions should be banned?  I'd like to hear your thoughts.