Can you stand any better news?
Peter Gabriel, who hasn't been able to come up with anything since Kate Bush told him not to give up...has issued yet another live album. Just to prove he's alive.
Can you stand even better news?
Those new albums from Elton John, Paul McCartney, Cher, Rod Stewart and Elvis Costello (among others). Just to prove they're alive.
Right...the new Jimmy Webb. Like anyone ever bought the old Jimmy Webb! Sorry...I like the guy. I actually have almost all his albums. But I don't think many can say that they own even one. The new one is...yeah...that other dodge...the "duets" deal. The aging singer brings in other aging singers, and they re-hash the greatest hits that weren't meant to be duets in the first place. I'll give him credit, some of it is interesting to hear, at least once. Like, poor Art Garfunkel now almost a baritone, leading Webb to adjust the melody of "Macarthur Park" with Webb ending up singing the high notes. "Oh no! Ohhh no!" Yes, it's so. Poor Art.
Can I hear those fossils from The Who singing..."We won't be fooled again..."
No, we won't. Because we have illegal downloads from Google's Blogspot squad, and the secret forums, and the brazen torrents. So, if we LIKE it we'll BUY it. But not likely. If any of the above shit (ok, just call the Beatles BBC stuff "stuff") actually hits the Billboard charts, it'll be due to some affluent Yuppies grabbing it off iTunes, or buying just to keep the "collection" complete.
No, no, I won't repeat, yet again, any lyrics from Randy Newman's "I'm Dead But I Don't Know It."
I understand how hard it is to let go. We all wish we were back in a time when Elton John records were fun...and even at times, pseudo-profound on the ballads. We wish we were still under the magical spell of Peter Gabriel and thrilling to his songs of paranoia, fear and a search for sanity. We wish we were back in the days when Elvis Costello was refreshing rock and making us feel like music still had the capacity to lead us into new directions. We wish we were back in the days of thinking we just might find our own Maggie Mae to teach us sexual tricks like she did Rod Stewart...instead of maybe being an old trick instead. We wish we were back in the days when we only thought the new Paul McCartney album would suck. Know we know it will.
At best, the new Elvis Costello is like meeting up with an old middle-aged friend you haven't seen in a while. Oh, holding up. Not repeating himself. Looking like himself. A little fatter. Very predictable. But still not ready for the old folks home.
Then there's the strange Glen Campbell album from last year...the guy trying, ala Warren Zevon, to complete one last farewell and not embarrass himself. And he didn't. Nice going. So now they've got a Fall release on him? Yep...they took the outtakes, the warm-ups, his versions of his older tunes...and cobbled together yet another FINAL album...with the threat that there might be a "live album" to be pulled together when he's on his death bed, or right after he dies. Shit, they think he's another Johnny Cash cash cow?
Mostly, hearing an album from a very aging artist is not like meeting an old classmate who is hanging in there, or a cousin who is doing ok...it's like visiting your grandmother at the old folks home. The new Elton John is like that. Ugh. Do I have to sit through all of this? Do I have to listen to this semi-coherent babble? The whining dirge-like yammer? The oh so familiar phrases? Oh, kill me now!
As for The Band? Who the fuck cares anymore. Really. The first two albums were great. Some of the songs are still great. Get over it. Going into the vaults for live shows...it's usually the same songs done the same way. If not, the difference is a lot of assholes shouting WOO, and there may be a lousy cover version of something, and maybe an extended drum or guitar solo you don't need.
The Beatles at the BBC? We've all been there. We've got all that. We don't listen to it. If they ever put out "Hollywood Bowl" we wouldn't care, either. It's over. They blew it. They could've had a series like Dylan's "official bootlegs," and said, "OK, this is shit, but if you want it, here it is..." and every year or two kept the interest alive by issuing alternate takes, Let it Be session cover versions, whatever. Now? Anyone really think people under 30 give a shit? They don't. And people over that age have this crap via bootlegs, don't have disposable income anymore, or have other interests like just staying alive. Certainly playing music is a low priority now that there's so much more "entertainment" out there, with video games and Facebook and sexting and hundreds of cable channels.
It's pretty sad that the great Fall line-up, the biggies for the first "buying" wave are so lame. Yes, this is the record label "first wave," grabbing the "back to school" vibe. Then they stop because we've got to waste our money on Halloween. Then they start in around mid-November to release that "second wave" of albums we're supposed to buy for Christmas gifts.
Too bad our old favorites are dead or letting us down. So we get feeble new studio albums from those who are ambulatory. We get live greatest hits and "live concert" albums for the dead bands. And we get clunked on the head by five or six CD sets from half-dead assholes like The Beach Boys...who have released God Only Knows what shit lately...rehashing whatever pretentious and faggoty nonsense Van Dyke Parks produced for them, whatever gooey harmonics latent homosexuals from Holland want to cry about, and whatever's been lying congealed in a can like expired suntan oil.
Isn't it time people understand the Beach Boys were never competition for The Beatles? Not the American Beatles? NOT very good? They were just the sun-tanned Four Seasons. They wrote and performed a handful of "good time" stupid songs ("Help Me Rhonda" "California Girls" among them), recycled "Barbara Ann" (my father knew the writer) and that's it. They were upscale Paul Revere and the Raiders. "Pet Sounds" is not "Sgt. Pepper." And let's repeat the word FAGGOTY. These Grandsons of the Pioneers were just a little too fey in the studio. Grown men harmonizing together is very queer and doesn't work too often. After one "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" you wonder which pioneers were bending over for the others. Same with some of those awful Beach Boys album tracks. Oh...yeah, "In my Room" was ok, and the mewly "Don't Go near the wahhh-ter." But come on, five and six CD sets of this shit? Just to convince people America had their own supergroup like "The Beatles?" No. No country on Earth had a group like The Beatles. England didn't even have another like them...just a rival rock and roll band called the Rolling Stones. Everything else...Kinks, Who, whoever...on a rung well down the ladder...with a huge gap that basically says "no, you can't climb up to rival The Beatles. Forget it.
So what can we do? We can look here and there for some indie and niche artists who are in our groove. We can always hope that some 60's or 70's star puts out an album that isn't too bad or might have two or three good songs (Dylan is pretty good about it...Ray Davies, Loudon Wainwright, Randy Newman and Leonard Cohen aren't likely to ever truly disappoint their fans...). We can hope that some act we sort of paid attention to once (like Robin Trower, Bryan Ferry or Marianne Faithfull) might put out a record that sort of sounds ok. Maybe a few tracks have some of the old magic. We can always listen to the OLD albums and usually find some new facets to admire (you will wear out a lot of Dylan and Beatles before you've gotten all you can get out of them). Or you can go watch a movie. Or...vague possibility, be amused and entertained by live companionship.
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