No Love for The Grammys

The slogan for this year is “We’re All Fans”.

No…we’re not.

Frankly, I don’t give a shit anymore. After too many episodes of lame nominees, seasoned veterans nominated for “Best New Artist” (because the mass media finally caught on) and the same album winning awards in multiple years, I’m throwing in the towel.

Fuck the Grammy Awards. I’m not watching and I don’t care who wins. It’s a sham and a waste of my time.

Like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, NARAS is just an organization with a lot of money bestowing honors with a lot of behind-the-scenes machinations influencing the result. I have my own awards show and my own hall of fame, and both are firmly housed in my heart and head, where good decisions belong.

But as a public service for those who do enjoy the show, here’s the link to the nominees. The same link will no doubt list the winners after the fact. Have fun.

Now please excuse me while I play Peacock Swagger by Plasticsoul, which no one will mention during the telecast. It’s head and shoulders better than anything you’re going to hear from that Grammy stage tonight.

I've got your Award winners and Hall of Fame right here

Blast From The Past: Best of British

 

When a musician is in demand as much as Ian “Mac” McLagan, you don’t seek him out as much as you find yourself encountering him at every turn. While viewing the DVD from the recent James McMurtry release, there he was at stage left manning the keyboard and rocking the house in an Amsterdam club. Not a day later while channel-surfing I came across Hal Ashby‘s 1983 film Let’s Spend The Night Together, the documentary capturing the Rolling Stones 1981 tour. Sure enough, there was Mac again, pounding the piano with the same energy and skill he continues to bless us with today. 

In 35 years, McLagan has seen it all—lunatic egos, shape-shifting musical styles, more money than one could count and eras where you couldn’t give a great song away. Yet by all accounts, his survival is as attributable to his amiable nature as it is to his stellar chops. He’s the kind of chap you could imagine sitting at the pub with on a rainy afternoon, pints in hand, sharing a laugh and a tale. 

A decade after writing those words, I got the chance to do just that, twice. Mac is a charming and amiable fellow without a wisp of ego, and having a pint or two while listening to his stories was as much fun as I imagined it would be. And telling him a joke that caused him to double over in laughter is a memory that will forever bring a smile to my face. 

So with that serendipitous chain of events in mind, I pulled out my copy of Best of British and gave it a spin this morning. I also pulled up that old review… 

Ian McLagan’s third solo record has been a long time coming—almost 20 years, to be exact. His previous platters, Troublemaker (1979) and Bump In The Night (1981), are a mixture of rock, boogie-woogie and bluesy soul. I’m happy to say that Best Of British picks up right where he left off, and with timeless music like his, the dates don’t mean a damned thing. 

Read the full Best of British review from PopMatters. 

Mac’s website 

macspages 

Mac's tales - a brilliant read!

T.G.I.F. – Top Ten Albums of 2009

Someone always disagrees

As you may or may not know, scrambling to assemble a Top Ten list of the year for anything is a pain in the ass, since many times eligible films and albums don’t come out until December. For that reason (let’s put procrastination aside for a moment) my deadline has always been Super Bowl Sunday, which use to be sometime in January. This year the Gods of Sport have decided to move the game back into February, probably to pretend its part of the Winter Olympics. And with all the wonderful decisions they have been making, who are we to question the brilliance of network television executives? 

But each year the deadline for the Village Voice gets earlier. So while I am still filtering through decisions on the lower end of the top forty, the Top Ten is cut in stone. (The full list will be available after the Super Bowl.)

I’ve already posted reviews for some of these albums, others will be forthcoming (some are not yet published in the respective magazines they were submitted to). So without further ado, I hereby announce my choices for the Top Ten Albums of 2009: 

  

One : Love and Curses (The Reigning Sound) 

Two: Lions in the Street (Lions in the Street) 

Three: National Champions (Olympic Ass Kicking Team) 

Four: 1372 Overton Park (Lucero) 

Five: Learning Love (Bobby Emmett) 

Six: More Like Me (Webb Wilder) 

Seven: Tinted Windows (Tinted Windows) 

Eight: Little White Lies (Fastball) 

Nine: Spills and Thrills (John Paul Keith and the One Four Fives) 

Ten: House To House (Tripwires) 

 

Link to my Village Voice Pazz & Jop ballot. 

My centricity rating, or how far off center my choices are. (Very) 

*** 

R.I.P. – the Greta Garbo of authors, J.D.Salinger 

New Album! Joe Grushecky

 

When Joe Grushecky first came pumping out of my car radio, two things immediately caught my attention. First, here was a real blue-collar rocker with a soulful sound and a band that played straight from the heart, and the songs were exciting. And second…was this really being played on the radio in Syracuse, New York in 1979? 

I guess you could say Bruce Springsteen had most recently kicked the door down, although local rockers like The Works and Joe Whiting had been stirring up the same kind of bar room fury on local stages for years. Like the mythical Eddie and The Cruisers, these bands had been lighting up shot-and-beer joints night after night, piling into vans and crisscrossing the East Coast. It wasn’t easy; you had to pull and keep a crowd on a Tuesday and Wednesday night because the weekend money just wasn’t quite enough to get you by. And like Eddie and that mythical band, what drove you and kept you alive was the camaraderie with your band mates and an unbending faith that if you kept punching over and over and over again, one day it would be worth it. 

In Pittsburgh, that band was Joe Grushecky and the Iron City Houserockers, and that day did come, albeit temporarily. A documentary about Joe and his career was released in 2007 called A Good Life: The Joe Grushecky Story and is now available on DVD. While the film is interesting and heartfelt, the real treasure in the package is a bonus live CD from a 1985 hometown show, featuring friend and fan Bruce Springsteen. 

While not quite a rags-to-riches story, we learn how the band followed the usual path of becoming the big fish in the small pond, friends in a rock ‘n’ roll brotherhood with huge dreams. How “Heroes are Hard to Find” caught the ear of Cleveland International’s Steve Popovich, who believed in Joe and financed some sessions that led to the first album getting released. How the lengthy process of working the record one town and one AOR station at a time led to five-star reviews for Have A Good Time But Get Out Alive and what looked like the start of a lifelong ride at the top…only to be derailed by a changing industry, an imploding label (MCA) and a few poor and impatient personal decisions. 

Read the rest of my review at PopMatters 

Joe’s website. 

The Grushecky/Houserockers Wikipedia page. 

“Pumping Iron”  and “Little Queenie” (live in 1988) 

“Have A Good Time But Get Out Alive” (live in 2005) 

Steel Rocking

Blast From The Past – The World’s Best Power Pop

“The oasis of pop for many an Internet surfer, the Not Lame Recording Company is a clearing house for power pop bands of all shapes and sizes – reissued classics and the best new hopefuls from around the world. Label head Bruce Brodeen is a pop fan first and foremost, and his passion for the genre has helped his business grow from a dream into a necessary conduit for many of the lesser known bands to connect with their potential audience.”

I wrote those words thirteen years ago when reviewing Not Lame’s first sampler for Consumable Online. It’s out of print now – a used copy is going for a hefty price on Amazon. Check out this list of artists (in bold); many were just breaking through in 1997 and have become favorites of the genre:

Plastic Moon Rain (Moptops) / Exit To Stay (DT’S) / It’s A Shame (This Perfect Day) / Just Another Day (Twenty Cent Crush) / Love You Like A King (Walter Clevenger) / Brenda Revisited (Martin Luther Lennon) / Colours (The Rooks) / Easy On The Eye (Kenny Howes) / Waking From A Dream (Micah Gilbert) / Miss July (Brad Jones) / What Goes Around (Barely Pink) / Go (Willie Wisely) / Yes Yes Hey Hey (Wunderband) / Today Will Be Yesterday (Big Hello) / Waterfall (Heavy Into Jeff) / Almost Something There (The Beatifics) / Wave To Ride (The Living Daylights) / Throw Me Down (Cool Blue Halo) / Try Not To Care (DGS Younger) / Nervous Man (Stellaluna) / So Low (Dead Flowers) / Take Me Or Leave Me (Time Bomb Symphony).

My money was on Stellaluna, a North Carolina band that got some help from Jamie Hoover of The Spongetones. They didn’t become a household name, but popularity has never had anything to do with quality. Read my full review of the Not Lame sampler here.

Bruce and Not Lame are still going strong; besides being a primary distributor for pop and rock bands, his label continues to release first-rate albums on their own imprint. Beyond their own artist roster, their tribute albums and box set anthologies are labors of love that have quickly become collectors items. Visit them here.

Bruce is Very Highly Recommended