I (heart) this music

Today is Valentine's Day and there's really not much more for me to say, other than: Happy Birthday, Zachman. My son turns 25 today and I hope he gets off that destroyer in Pearl Harbor long enough to hoist a cold one.

You know the drill. If you didn't happen to think of the mood music, there is still time for that. Even if you're not in a relationship, your pet will appreciate you switching off the head-banger music for a day. Even goldfish are known to respond positively (not sure how, other than air bubbles) to music.

If you don't have pets then think about your plants, which also dig a good vibe. I swear my Norfolk pine did a lean toward the speakers yesterday after I put Ben Webster in the player.

(Click on the image above to discover what's on tap today.)

Here are 10 songs playing today at the Sanctuary that are in some way connected to the heart. Some are about love, and others speak to yearning and lust, or love lost. SSS, after all, is reality-based blogging. Take this verse from "Milk of the Moon" by Greg Brown:

I'm drunk on moonmilk, I'm high up in the air
Oh, woman, you are silk there and there and there
With a kiss you wake me up, you always leave too soon
As you go will you fill my cup with the milk of the moon?

That woman is gone, but what sweet residue.

1. Valentine's Day, Steve Earle
2. Two-Fisted Love, Phoebe Snow
3. Love is a Rose, Neil Young
4. My Funny Valentine, Chet Baker
5. God Only Knows, Beach Boys
6. Pretty Please, Blue Mountain
7. Let's Stay Together, Al Green
8. Real Love, Lucinda Williams
9. Milk of the Moon, Greg Brown
10. Baby You Got to Choose, Randy Weeks

k.d.lang + leonard cohen = hallelujah

I knew there was a reason I gave up my great perch at Walter's on North last night.

Hallelujah!

From this particular corner stool you can watch a TV screen unimpeded, catch the action at the pool table in the adjoining room, see who's coming through the front door -- or leaving -- and clearly hear the jukebox music channeled through the speakers overhead. The only rub is that the lovely and talented barmaid Cricket is often stationed at the other half of the bar. But she does know how to work the room.

Anyway, I gave it all up last night after watching the U.S. entourage enter the stadium in Vancouver. I may have been missing a lot viewing the splendor and majesty of the Opening Games amid the loud music and barroom chatter, but it LOOKED pretty cool to those of us who were paying attention.

What I did next was pure serendipity. I got home safely, turned on the TV set, and sat down just in time to watch k.d. lang belt out a stirring rendition of "Hallalujah." What an amazing performance. If you didn't see it, I'm sure it has been posted somewhere by now. I just grabbed what I could find and threw it up here for you.

Canada produces some of the finest songwriters, singers, musicians and artists on this planet, and to start naming them here would be a disservice to those who might not receive mention. But today it is safe to say that k.d. lang is one of the finest, and last night she may have been the proudest among them.

It's been more than 20 years since lang remade Roy Orbinson's "Crying" -- a song very few vocalists would or should attempt to take on -- and belted it out of the park. And while her open lesbianism and political views were at least a distraction earlier in her career, she has always been there with that big, beautiful voice, waiting to take on anything.

And last night, performing fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen's classic, she was never better.

hallelujah!

Prine time, all the time

Do you know what blood looks like in a black and white video? If you've heard John Prine's "Lake Marie" you know the answer.

Shadows! Shadows, that's exactly what it looks like!

Good morning, it's John Prine Appreciation Day. No particular reason, other than it provides a great launching pad for the weekend. I'm thinking we'd all do better if we kept a steady diet of Prine songs streaming through our speakers and earbuds.

Anyway, "Lake Marie" has been on my mind recently. In the process of rigging up the TV and video equipment in my new apartment I somehow got some wires crossed and must have put a plug in the wrong port. I went back several times to check the DVD-to-TV connection to no avail. So for about three months I was only able to view movies in black & white. (Television, no problem with the color). I never got this issue resolved because:

a) I've become technology challenged
b) I'm too cheap to hire out help
c) I haven't met a neighbor geek who'll do it for a few beers
d) I've come to appreciate everything being cast in film noir.

Really, you should try viewing "Sideways" in black and white. The California wine country has never looked so luscious.

"Road to Perdition," another recently viewed DVD, could have been filmed in black and white. Lots of "shadows." It's spectacular in that format, and gets back to my point, which is: There's a John Prine song for just about everything you encounter in life.

"Lake Marie," always a favorite, became a personal theme song for that one silly passage:

Shadows! Shadows, that's what it looks like!"

And now that my daughter Jessi has solved the video issue I'll be looking for a new theme song. In the meantime "Lake Marie" will continue to receive play. After all, there's a lake not far from here along the Illinois-Wisconsin border, and this summer we're going to put some Italian sausages on the grill, and before long you know what they'll be doing?

Ssssssizzlin...

When karaoke kills

And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain...

Botch that song and you could be dead in the Phillipines.

We have our feelings about karoake but, thankfully, it has never led to homicide, justifiable or not. I used to plan visits to certain bars by their karaoke schedules. In other words, if a certain bar was hosting Karaoke Night I would make sure I visited a different watering spot that night.

There are few things worse than having to endure a hacked up version of "My Way" while you're trying to enjoy a refreshing tap beer following a long day of job hunting. Now we learn that bad karaoke can get you killed in other parts of the world. Did you see the story? I stumbled across a headline on Slate.com and followed the link. I was certain "Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord" was some goofy parody hatched by the Onion. But no, it was a New York Times story so it had to be true. Here's an excerpt:

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

This has to be the Onion, right? Someone must be making this up. But, no, it's the Times. Read on, or follow this link to the complete story.

The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?

Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks. And the country’s many Sinatra lovers, like Mr. Gregorio here in this city in the southernmost Philippines, are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.

Karaoke-related killings are not limited to the Philippines. In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Karaoke-related assaults have also occurred in the United States, including at a Seattle bar where a woman punched a man for singing Coldplay’s “Yellow” after criticizing his version.

I'm speechless, and that might be a good thing to remember when visiting the Phillipines.

Just a pissing fancy?

Some people say the world ain't what it is
All I know is I just got to take a whiz

Was it because of lyrics like those from "Piss on the Wall," or in spite of them, that the J. Geils Band rose to prominence?

They were a tough band to figure out. They were named for a guitarist who didn't sing or write and wasn't accomplished at his instrument. The band's beat was driven by a "lead" harmonica player, Magic Dick -- a memorable moniker for any verile rocker. The vocalist, Peter Wolf, was an artist who married Faye Dunaway and certainly didn't lack a stage presence. But when Wolf left in 1983 after creative differences with Seth Justman, the band's keyboardist and songwriter, J. Geils was pretty much gone without him.

They were not easy to put in a genre, being a mixture of blues, rock, R&B and soul with funkadelic grooves running through everything. Rollingstone.com's bio refers to them as "the finest Jewish blues-rockers ever to do the Boston Monkey." Whatever.

At this time in 1982 they had the No. 1 song in the country, "Centerfold," featuring a lead riff that will either make you tap a foot or run to the medicine cabinet for aspirin, and possibly both.

Early J. Geils, we're talking a decader earlier, generated some sonically pleasing blues-driven ramps that gave the band its footing. They would enjoy several commercially successful singles like "Give It to Me" and "Must Have Got Lost," and they always produced albums with cool cover artwork that any self-respecting pothead would want to collect.

But it's still a bit surprising to think that "Centerfold" could reside for six weeks atop the Billboard chart. Did the song really have the right mojo and staying power, or were times that lean on the music front in early '82? Probably a little of both. Here was your top five 28 years ago today:

1. Centerfold, J. Geils Band
2. I Can't Go for That (No Can Do), Hall & Oates
3. Waiting for a Girl Like You, Foreigner
4. Harden My Heart, Quarterflash
5. Turn Your Love Around, George Benson

We make too much of these song rankings, but there seems to be some residual value in sifting through the musical remains of the day. And Billboard, for all its faults, at least provides a measuring tool. It's worth noting the song that replaced "Centerfield" at No. 1, Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n Roll" stayed there even longer -- seven weeks. And the chart-topper that ushered in '82 ahead of "Centerfold" was there for 10 weeks: Olivia Newton-John's "Physical."

What does it all mean? What does it MEAN!!! I don't know, but I got to take a whiz...

Don't they have snow days anymore?

Random thoughts while waiting for those 12-14 inches of snow to materialize in the greater Milwaukee area...

In the old newspaper days we called these "notes columns." Once a week you would dump out the leftover contents in your reporter's notebook, organize a few thoughts (if you had time), write a crafty "lede" or "top" and you were done.

I'm sure you know, but that was Ringo's kid Zak Starkey behind the drum kit during The Who's Super Bowl performance. I wonder if he paused to consider that 46 years earlier his old man was playing a pretty big gig himself: It was the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. They sang "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand." ...

Not all the good ones die (real) young: Having mentioned the anniversary of the deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. Richardson, we'd be remiss in ignoring Bill Haley, who blazed a pretty fine trail of rock 'n' roll himself. He died on this date in 1981 at age 55. ...

Have you heard anything by James Maddock? Here's a songwriter worth catching up on, and his newish album Sunrise on Avenue C would be a very good entry point. Maddock pretty much disappeared after his band Wood released Songs from Stamford Hill, a critically lauded debut in 2000. Ten years between albums? What's up with that? ...

And speaking of disappearing acts, I was wondering the other day about Eastmountainsouth. Can you blend harmony any better than Kat Maslich and Peter Adams do on songs like that Stephen Foster chestnut "Hard Times"? ...

Quick, find some candles: Carole King, whose Tapestry album remains one of the favorite pop albums of its era, turns 68 today. Other birthdays on February 9 include songwriter Barry Mann (71), "Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp Bomp)," drummer Brian Bennett (70) of the Shadows, and singer Barbara Lewis (66) who melted boys hearts with "Baby I'm Yours" in 1965. ...

And what became of Travis Tritt, who turns 47 with hardly a mention that he was the Super Bowl halftime headliner back in 1993. Goodness how times change. One day you're living in Marietta, Georgia, just down the road from a country star, and 18 years later you're next door neighbors with U.S. Olympic speedskating hopeful Trevor Marsicano. Go get 'em, buddy!

This is fun, but I really have to get Jessi to the airport and there isn't a snowplow in sight. That's her above, enjoying a frigid moment at Atwater Park overlooking Lake Michigan. Click on the image for the true "lake effect." Can't you almost feel it? Brrrrrrrrrr...

The windmills of our minds

I'm not here this morning to bash The Who. I'm certainly not going to blame them for their halftime show. I mean, they were invited by the NFL to perform at the Super Bowl and they showed up, you know? Maybe it was 30 years too late. But it's not like their legacy is suddenly falling into question. If Pete Townshend wants to windmill a Strat at his age (he'll be 65 in May) I'm there for him.

As a service to SSS followers here's a sampling of reviews from other venues:

Frazier Moore, Associated Press
Maybe 30 years ago, The Who would have been an explosive act for a Super Bowl halftime show. Or anywhere else.

At Sunday's Super Bowl, The Who – led by what's left of them from the original groundbreaking foursome a generation ago – did all that was expected under these circumstances. Filling the dozen minutes allotted them between two halves of football pageantry, the group pounded out nostalgia and spectacle – and five classic songs.

They're not ready for Branson, Mo. ...

The original Who were British lads who early on forged a timeless up-yours message to their seniors with the mantra "Hope I die before I get old." But that lyric wasn't heard Sunday night, nor was their landmark song "My Generation." After all, (Pete) Townshend and (Roger) Daltrey are well into their 60s.

Their voices aren't what they were, and it's been a long time since the once-hyperkinetic axman Townshend did his balletic leaping and springing. During Sunday's show he offered only a few trademark windmill guitar licks.

This is not to say these musicians, even in their advancing age, didn't make a powerful impression. And, of course, the staging helped, with plenty of pyrotechnics, laser pinstripes slicing the Sun Life Stadium, and illuminated eruptions dousing the arena.

Despite its brevity, it was a big, warm, enjoyable show, and The Who looked right at home.

Rick Ellis, allyourtv.com
Roger Daltry and Pete Townsend (ie. The Who) were the half-time performers at this year's Super Bowl and the entire segment was dreadful and often horrifying to watch. Even though the vocals were apparently pre-recorded, the singing was often off-key. The harmonies were non-existent and both Daltry and Townsend lumbered across the stage with all the grace of a couple of retirees searching for their walkers.

It was just sad and bittersweet to watch. I don't begrudge the duo for wanting to keep performing. But it's clear that their best days (or even okay days) are way behind them. It was never clear to me why the NFL booked The Who in the first place. And after seeing this horrific performance, it's really a mystery to me now.

Andrew Dansby, Houston Chronicle
Ever since Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake helped usher the phrase “wardrobe malfunction” into mainstream pop culture, Super Bowl halftime performances have sought to coddle audiences with comfortable and familiar artists.

Had The Who of 45 years ago been transported to 2010 by time machine, the band likely have been too edgy to have been successfully vetted for this event.

But that was then, and Sunday night half of the remaining Who performed following breast-free Bowl appearances by Paul McCartney, Prince, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen.

While Pete Townshend offered a succinct master class as to why he's one of rock's most important and innovative guitarists, the band's set was shouty and reliant on its legend. It was the musical equivalent of having your food chewed for you, with six guys doing what four used to.

Roger Daltrey's upper register has been endangered for some time, and on a big stage he resorted to chesty bluster. He and Townshend harmonized like bickering walruses. Their chests remained covered, though, as they worked through a porridgey medley of song fragments familiar to people over 30 and viewers of CSI. Pinball Wizard, Baba O'Reilly, Who Are You (where Townshend was particularly sharp and Daltrey came a little closer to hitting the notes), a tiny snippet of Tommy's “see me” refrain and Won't Get Fooled Again were served with conviction and enthusiasm and rote nostalgia. ...

Attempts to go younger risk alienating a core audience. Bridging generations would likely be as sleepy in execution as it sounds on paper: Imagine John Mayer and Eric Clapton boring three generations of football fans together.

Beyoncé would at least keep it classy. Or they could always bring back Prince.

Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune
The Who's Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend huffed and puffed as they tried to match the energy and bravado of songs originally recorded more than 30 years ago Sunday in their showcase slot as Super Bowl halftime headliners.

These gruff, grizzled rock ‘n’ roll lifers gave it a good go as they chased past glories. At least Daltrey and Townshend weren’t lip-synching as they struck poses amid the lasers and pyrotechnics. Townshend in shades and porkpie hat swung through windmill chords, Daltrey bellowed and blew through a harmonica solo, and drummer Zak Starkey (yes, Ringo’s son) wore a union-jack shirt for the occasion, evoking the band’s earliest publicity photos from Britain’s Mod era.

Of course, back then Keith Moon was the band’s drummer and John Entwistle its bassist. Both are long gone, and The Who has never really been the same since. No matter, Daltrey and Townshend keep pushing the brand and have licensed their music to countless advertisers to keep it alive. Their set list played like a compendium of TV commercials from the last decade as much as a classic-rock primer: snippets of “Pinball Wizard,” “Baba O’Riley,” “Who Are You,” “See Me, Feel Me,” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” It all built up to the climactic, spleen-busting, technologically-enhanced Daltrey scream. Couldn’t have said it better myself, Roger.

Melinda Newman, HitFix.com
While there was much talk that Daltrey and Townshend would be playing to pre-recorded tracks, there’s no doubt those vocals (other than the scream) were live. Daltrey’s voice is diminished, but it’s still powerful and there were moments during “Who are You” where he sounded great. For the most part, Townshend just sounded creaky. I felt like he should be yelling at us to get off his lawn. Townshend’s guitar playing sounded strong and lots of parents probably got to teach their kids about the Windmill, but the cameras cut away anytime he started to do something interesting. There was no passion whatsoever in the performance (I know, I know, they’ve been phoning it in live for years… I’ve seen them in concert enough to know that), but it’s still disappointing. ...

Ever since Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime appearance with Justin Timberlake, no female breasts have been allowed on stage. It’s been veteran male-fronted acts ever since: Paul McCartney in 2005, Rolling Stones in 2006, Prince in 2007, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in 2008 and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band in 2009.

I say bring back the estrogen: for 2011, we’re rooting for Lady GaGa or Beyonce.

Rachel Sklar, mediaite.com
If you love The Who and are old enough to remember how awesomely groundbreaking they were — not to mention guitar-breaking — then you will just love the 2010 Superbowl Half-Time Show, even if it is the Doritos Half-Time show (and I’m pretty sure that group that recorded “The Who Sell Out” would have found that pretty ironic). Kicking off with the iconic opening strains of “Pinball Wizard” they segued a little clunkily to “Baba O’Riley,” singing emphatically of the Teenage Wasteland as only middle-aged rockers can. But who cares — Roger Daltrey may not have the free-flowing blonde locks and rockin’ bod that so enticed Cousin Kevin and the Acid Queen and made me go all melty during “I’m Free,” but damn can they still put on a show, and Pete Townsend wailing on the mic gave me a little thrill.