Classic Rock News for a New Year

I've told Dave White on several occasions that I WANT HIS JOB!  I would love to be paid for writing about one of my favorite topics.  But the truth is, he does a great job and I would miss him if he ever left.

Here's the latest news for Classic Rock in 2011 taken from Dave's site at About.com :

STUDIO ALBUMS

Some of the most familiar A-list classic rock acts have announced plans for new studio albums in 2011.

• ZZ Top will celebrate the 40th anniversary of their debut album with the release of of their 15th.

• The Zombies will celebrate their 50th anniversary with a new album, expected sometime in Spring 2011.

• Yes, Journey, The Cars, Steve Miller Band, Jeff Beck, Motorhead, Blondie, Paul Simon, and Joe Walsh have announced 2011 album release plans.

• Supergroups Chickenfoot, Black Country Communion, and Them Crooked Vultures plan to release their second albums in the coming year.

• Look for the release (CD and DVD) of live performance footage of Jimi Hendrix during a European tour in 1969. Expect to see the catalogs of Queen, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Thin Lizzy and Rory Gallagher being reissued.

• And then there are the "maybes" -- the ones that have been the subject of conversations about possible (but by no means confirmed) 2011 albums: Aerosmith, Van Halen, Rolling Stones, Rush, Crosby Stills & Nash.

ON TOUR

• Judas Priest will begin a long farewell tour, as Scorpions continue theirs. Allman Brothers Band will return to Beacon Theater for their annual New York City residency.

• James Taylor will be joined by his son, Ben on the road. Robert Plant and his recently reconstituted Band of Joy will be touring.

• Rush, Eric Clapton and John Mellencamp will continue tours already in progress. Jeff Beck, Ozzy Osbourne and Thin Lizzy have 2011 gigs booked.

• Mentioned as possible, but far from certain: The Who, Rolling Stones, and Van Halen.

REUNIONS

• Already on the books are reunions of The Zombies, The Cars and Toto.

• Very possible but not certain are 2011 Pink Floyd and Buffalo Springfield reunions.

• Discussed but nixed: there will be NO reunions in the new year for the original members of Black Sabbath or The Kinks.

ALSO NOTEWORTHY

• Sammy Hagar will publish his autobiography

• Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, David Crosby, Charlie Watts, David Clayton-Thomas, Richie Havens, Paul Kantner, Neil Diamond and Mike Love will turn 70.

The Best of Spirit

For someone who has never experienced the band Spirit, this is an excellent album to start with.

The vinyl version was released in 1973 after the original line up of the band broke up. Jay Ferguson and Mark Andes had left to form Jo Jo Gunne. Randy California had taken time off after a horse riding accident and the record company was looking to cash in on their past successes. With the release of this album and after releasing the popular song Mr. Skin from the album Dr. Sardonicus , the bands popularity grew again. Dr. Sardonicus was creatively their most critically acclaimed. It shows on this Best of album with 5 of the songs coming from the Dr. album.


It also includes a song that kind of got lost when first released in 1968 called 1984. The lyrics brought up controversial images of the George Orwell novel of the same name. The radio stations had for the most part boycotted this strong song due to its content. I also really like the song Mechanical World. A psychedelic wonder with haunting vocals and instruments. Their original break through chart hits, I Got a Line on You and Natures Way were a part of this line up as well.

Altogether a great album for those who like their music on the psychedelic side. Here's one of their best.

NEIL YOUNG

TIME FADES AWAY

Released as a document of the ill-starred 1973 tour with the Stray Gators, this is a very nervous record.

I like it a lot.

YOUNG: "My least favorite record is Time Fades Away. I think it's the worst record I ever made - but as a documentary of what was happening to me, it was a great record. I was onstage and I was playing all these songs that nobody had heard before, recording them, and I didn't have the right band. It was just an uncomfortable tour. It was supposed to be this big deal - I just had Harvest out, and they booked me into ninety cities. I felt like a product, and I had this band of all-star musicians that couldn't even look at each other. It was a total joke."

Out of print on vinyl and still not available on CD, this rough gem begins a sequence of albums that were artistically brilliant.

"Harvest" was huge hit, "Heart of Gold" went to number one and Neil was riding high following his work with CSNY and Crazy Horse. The next logical step was to bring the mellow, back porch sounds of his recent LP on a lucrative tour. Heavyweight players from the "Harvest" sessions were drafted, though one member of the band didn't make it past rehearsals.

Danny Whitten was Neil's right hand in the first incarnation of Crazy Horse on second guitar and vocals. He was talented but headed down a path of heavy substance abuse, leading Neil to dump Crazy Horse for awhile. Whitten was invited to join the new touring outfit based on word that he was in the process of straightening himself out.

He wasn't.

YOUNG: 'We were rehearsing with him and he just couldn't cut it. He couldn't remember anything. He was too out of it. Too far gone. I had to tell him to go back to L.A. 'It's not happening, man. You're not together enough.' He just said, 'I've got nowhere else to go, man. How am I gonna tell my friends?' And he split. That night the coroner called me from L.A. and told me he'd ODed. That blew my mind. Fucking blew my mind. I loved Danny. I felt responsible. And from there, I had to go right out on this huge tour of huge arenas. I was very nervous and . . . insecure.'

Casting a pall over the tour, the negativity would only be exacerbated with disputes about money and a set of brand new songs that Young wanted to try out and record live.



Switching to a Gibson Flying V that refused to stay in tune, blowing out his voice (Crosby and Nash were brought on board late in the tour to help with vocals) and pissing off fans in packed stadia at every stop by presenting sets of unfamiliar material were all events that marred Young's 90 day trek.

The result was worth it.



Making no attempt to be cuddly, rough edges are left in, capturing things on the fly. Real, though not radio-friendly, Young would be frustrated with his audience and their inability to move with him. Opening with a pounding, uptempo country raver that introduces "fourteen junkies, too weak to work" down on "pain street", the subject matter stands apart from what his contemporaries were singing about. It was the antithesis of the sunny California, singer-songwriter trip which was then in vogue.

Canada features in the lyrics of the title track and "Journey Through the Past", which boasts a great melody and had been around in his set for some time before seeing official release on Time Fades Away. (you can hear it on the BBC session and the Massey Hall gig from 1971). A gentle song that catches the author in a reflective mood, it provides a softer contrast to the junkies on pain street. This was one of three solo piano spots on the disc, each offering a quiet musical snapshot.



"LA' is one of my favorites on the set, with a haunting refrain ("LA... city in the smog..uptight...") and creeping steel part (courtesy of the late Ben K eith) that comes closest in feel to the material on Harvest. Too many artists in the "alt-country" genre have based their sound completely on this musical model, though they fail to create the same mood. (weak songs, little originality) "Don't Be Denied" is autobiographical in tone, covering being beaten up in school through to jumping the border and helping to form Buffalo Springfield. There's an excellent version of it with CSNY at Wembley at the close of their 74 tour. The riff is simple, but effective when married to the pleading nature of the chorus.



"Last Dance" folks, but no one was dancing when a very drunk Young was screaming at the audience in Cleveland ("Get up!!") and making ungodly noise on his out of tune Flying V. That particular performance doesn't show up here, though I kind of wish that it did. Turgid and flatfooted, it seems to go on "for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours..." (listen to the record). Should have been edited to make room for another cut. Young always had songs in his back pocket and set lists from this tour reveal tunes that are unreleased to this day ("Sweet Joni" being a case in point.)

While it was not greeted warmly by fans or critics, charting outside the top 20, it's an important release. Never before had a major artist put out a live disc, comprised of all new material, with nary a hit single to be found.

Imagine the balls that it took to present this to the record company.

Now it's quite sought after and opinions have since (of course) been revised, though you won't see it released on CD anytime soon. The sonic problem with "Time Fades Away" is stated on the LP label: "This Recording Was Mastered16-Track/DirectToDisc (acetate) by Computer." The multi-track master tape was recorded/mixed LIVE, leaving little room for remixing tape hiss, bad notes and crowd noise. To reassemble the album, someone would need to sort through fifty or so ¼" and/or 2" multi-track reels and "a few" cassettes. Finding the right version by date would be easy enough, but at what stage would the mix be at? Raw recording? Truck monitor mix? Mono PA monitor recording?



Right.

Best just to snag it on vinyl, as I did when my cassette copy finally died.

Happy Holiday's From Layla's Classic Rock!

 Wishing all of you a the best holiday possible under whatever circumstances you may be in.

I want to send a very HUGE THANK YOU to Dan, Sean and Darrin for keeping Layla's alive.  Thanks boys, you are the BEST!

Guest Post from Australia

Classic Rock & Mysticism

"While on the surface many music listeners may hear but simple words in songs by rock legends such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the ever eccentric Ozzy Osbourne the reality is that if you peer beneath the depths of the lyrics of this music, you will sometimes find golden pieces of wisdom of both a philosophical and literal nature…

What I find particularly interesting about the concept is that for the most part, this wisdom, these hidden meanings more often than not fall on complete deaf ears and this really makes one think back to that insightful quote “he who have an ear, let him hear”.

I don’t want to go into specific meanings and lyrical messages that are prominent throughout music, after all, most of it is subject to personal interpretation and if you were meant to have heard it, you would have by now wouldn’t you?

But while it is true, that most messages conveyed through lyrics are subject to personal interpretation, In some circumstances when we understand the background of the individual who has penned the lyrics and music, we can safely conclude they intended us to hear a specific thing…

For example, did you know that Jimmy Page, the world renowned guitarist of led zeppelin was a huge occult practitioner and regularly spent his time traveling about seeking out all sorts of eclectic texts and visiting “scared” locations, Perhaps you did, perhaps you didn’t, but riddle me this…

Those of you who have listened to led zeppelin extensively would know, that during improvisation page often projects an almost “mysterious” feel about his playing and is often seen in footage performing rather strange movements on stage, take for example his antics with the violin bow in dazed and confused.

Now, if you do your research on page, you quickly learn he was extremely interested in the works of Aleister Crowley, in fact for many years he actually owned one of his most used houses, and when you cross reference pages stage antics with Crowley’s writings we can perhaps draw insight into what was going through his mind at the time...

You see, Crowley considered himself a magician, while I won’t go into that specifically, it is worth pointing out that his teachings talk about using talismans, daggers and wands to perform certain alleged “magickal” acts…

Now call me crazy if you will, but if we know that jimmy page was a practicing occultist who followed the works of Crowley during the time that he composed the song dazed and confused, is it such a far stretch to speculate that perhaps in his mind, the violin bow was his “wand” and he was, at least from his point of view, conducting a ritual?

I think so, of course I do know a lot more on the subject, but I can’t be giving away all my secrets now can I? but as we conclude this article for today, it might interest you to know, that jimmy page once spent an entire week alone, conducting occult practices inside Aleister Crowley’s abbey in Scotland, when he returned, he had  written the song Kashmir…

Interesting don’t you think? Take a closer listen to some of your music, you will be surprised at what is there to be learned just beneath the surface."

Please let me know what you think of his insights, he may become a frequent guest here at Layla's.

Also, check out his website which you will also find listed in the sidebar:

Dub Turbo

Favorite Christmas Albums

This album for me has more to say about Christmas than many of the classic Christmas songs. Vince Guaraldi's arrangements, piano playing and the other 2 in his trio were impeccable.

I remember as an 8 year old kid when I first watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" I loved every minute of the show. I will never forget Snoopy joyfully dancing on top of Schroeder's piano with his nose in the air. I believe the music played a large part to my adoration.


If you have another classic Christmas album that sticks in your mind, let me know your favorites.

Dave Clark Five

Happy Birthday Dave Clark, 68 years old today.



They were a great 60's pop/rock band who followed The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Too bad Mike Smith, the lead singer, passed away a couple of years ago, but they still make me Glad All Over!

44 Musicians Who Have Died

The guy who made this video was kind enough to forward it to me, knowing I'd appreciate it.  I am going to make room for it on "Gone But Not Forgotten".  Speaking of that - we have not lost anyone (that I know of) since Ronnie James Dio back in May.

Happy Birthday, Jim Morrison

Happy Birthday, Jim.  I know I'm a day late in wishing you one, but you know how its been the last 30 years - the focus has been on John on December 8th.  You probably understand and don't mind people remembering his death before your birth...but I just wanted you to know, I didn't forget.

Oh, and btw, I heard you were being pardoned for your "indecent exposure" charge all those years ago.  Times have changed, its amazing what people do on stage these days.  I doubt that you were indecent at all...maybe just a little feisty.

Remember John Today

LOON CHOIR

EXPANSION FORCES

Courtesy of online accessibility, a wealth of new sounds are bubbling up from the underground to a waiting world, readily available to those who want something of substance in their musical diet. While much from the indie menu commends itself, sometimes it's helpful to have a map with clear directions to the best, undiscovered gems out there.

Loon Choir's debut should be your next stop.

Hailing from Ottawa (Canada), the young sextet manages to balance icy synths with the warmth of a very human approach to their songcraft. There is fantastic counterpoint in the vocal department as male and female leads are deployed, cleverly, to bring additional depth and variety to the material. The bedrock tempo of the songs easily translates to the dance floor, yet there is melody present and a great deal of care taken to infuse the hooks with thoughtful lyrical subject matter.

Highlights of the disc include "New Forewarnings", "Bricks" and "Soil Science", though all of the tracks are pretty stellar. Having had the pleasure to catch them in the act, I was most impressed by the fact that their tunes have an even greater impact in a live setting. They come across as grittier while retaining the polish of the recorded versions.



Layered in the mix, there are echoes of groups from the early eighties who married technology to real playing (Gary Numan, Joy Division) and managed to strike a balance between keyboard oriented themes and guitar-centric ideas. This provides only a hint of the overall sound, which again greatly benefits from the vocal interplay of Nicole Yates (who has a strong Kate Bush inflection-definitely a compliment) and Derek Atkinson. Overall, this is a satisfying listen that begs the question of what direction they will choose to take in plotting their next project.

Put Expansion Forces on your list and share it with your friends. Check out selections from the CD here (also available for purchase on itunes)

Get to know the band

10 Grammy Nominations for Eminem

So often when you ask someone (of my age) what kind of music they like they will say "oh, everything.....except rap/hip hop of course!"

Well, I used to say that too but I begrudgingly became a fan of Eminem.  I say begrudgingly because when he first appeared on the scene with his obscenities and violent lyrics I forbid my son to listen to him and judged him as a bad influence with nothing beneficial to say and very little talent.

But then I had to follow my own advice and not judge a book by its cover (or in this case a hip-hop artist by his image).  I learned more about him and listened not to the words he was saying, but to the message.

As time went on I started to realize why my son liked him.  I liked him too.  I especially like his latest CD, "Recovery".

I wish him the best of luck in winning all those nominations.

What about you?

- do you like him?
- are you surprised that I do?
- have you listened to "Recovery"?
- who do you like that I may be surprised by?
- do you watch the Grammy's (I don't)?