KEVN FM July 2020 - Waiting for things again

Notes on Music I’m listening to.

Turned the sound off the typewriter so I can listen. (I’m using Tom Hanks’ typewriter app to write this up on my iPad Pro)  I am waiting at the car dealer while they give the Highlander a once over.  Got it in February and it has less than 2000 miles on it.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  The music I’m listening to.  

I make these playlists I call KEVN FM because they contain music I would probably program if I owned my own radio station.  The call signs would very probably be KEVN.  Because it would be my radio station.  Duh.  

This one is called “KEVN FM July 2020” and it’s on Spotify. So far it’s full of old sounding newer stuff like The Black Keys, Drive-By Truckers, and Secret Machines.  But it has some classics on it too like... OK, no classics yet, but they are coming.  

The Walkmen have a couple of songs that I’m loving.  I put “The Rat” on here because it’s been stuck in my head a bunch recently.  There is a brand new Jayhawks album with a song called “Homecoming” that is quickly becoming a new fav.  I guess the most “classic” song I have on there right now is “A Girl Like You” by the Smithereens.  And I preceded it with “A Girl Like You” by Edwin Colins, which is another newer classic.  Might be time to throw a few real classics on here to before some marketing guy decides to put a name on my station like “Edge” or “End” or something juvenile like that.  I always thought the Edwin Colins song sounded like Iggy Pop took voice lessons.  So maybe I’ll add some Stooges or Iggy’s best solo stuff.  Songs that should be played on Classic Rock stations but isn’t.  I have a whole other rant on the Classic Rock format and how it’s killing Rock and Roll radio.  My classic rock station would play the Ramones too, come to think of it.

When I was a kid we didn’t have classic rock.  Because of that we could discover new stuff in the Rock and Roll genre.  For example, I heard Ratt on the rock station that also played Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top and Boston.  But these days you have to wait for a new song to get close to 20 years old before they will program it on a Classic Rock station.  This is stupid and not good for rock and roll.  OK.  I added Candy by Iggy and switched the order of the two Girl’s Like You.  Oh... forgot how much I like the Smithereens.  

I have my mask on while I sit here in the car dealer’s waiting room.  I have my AirPods in and every time I turn my head the mask moves them a little.  Maybe in these days of COVID mask with built in headphones could be a thing.

U2 Songs of Experience - initial impressions

Though this is a review ostensibly based on “initial impressions” I have actually heard this album a few times since I started working on this post.  So, some of my initial impressions are being revised, which feels like an oxymoron.  But here goes.

 

I’ve been a U2 fan since they put out War in 1983.  I think I saw the live performance of Sunday Bloody Sunday during the US Festival with Bono waving that huge flag and I was on board, even though my thing was heavy guitar rock ala AC/DC and Van Halen these guys also stuck a chord with me.  I listened to them often and wore out my cassette of War and was well on my way to wearing out Unforgettable Fire when Joshua Tree came out.  That album resulted in a major escalation in my fandom for these blokes as it instantly sounded like a classic.  I remember half way through my first listen in the little college radio station I was volunteering at thinking we’ll be hearing this on the radio 20 years down the road.  It’s gonna be huge.  I went out of the little listening room that the radio station had set up and accosting all of the other DJs in the area saying “you gotta hear this.  It’s the best thing they’ve ever done.”  I remember being floored by one guys response “It’s not as good as October.”  Wait what?  Obviously that guy is the guy who just wants to be cooler than everyone else: proto-hipster.  But the fact is, that album was huge and 30 years later it’s a staple of classic rock radio and still one of my favorite albums.

 

But after all this time I want another Joshua Tree.  And when I say I want another Joshua Tree, I’m not saying I want another U2 album that sounds like it came from the same influences of roots rock and Americana that Joshua Tree came from.  I want something that moved me as much as that album did.  And on a first listen, Songs of Experience isn’t doing that for me.  Remember, Joshua Tree didn’t grow on me.  It hit me between the eyes.  I loved it like I loved Back in Black.  It was an instant classic in my mind.  But as I listen to Songs of Experience it is starting to grow on me the way Rush used to do for me.  Often for Rush, my favorite band in the 80s other than AC/DC I would have to listen to their albums 3 or 4 times before I started to lock in.  (Not for Moving Pictures, but for most of the rest of them.  Moving pictures was one of my between the eyes albums along with Back in Black and Joshua Tree)  I really wanted this album to be my BackInBlackMovingPicturesJoshuaTreeNevermind moment, but I think my expectations have made it harder to appreciate this album as much as I want to.

A new rock and roll adventure

Last year I rekindled an old hobby.  In my 20s I dabbled in playing guitar.  My wife and I were living in Japan near Tokyo and one day walking by a guitar store I decided to go in and look around while she went shopping for her stuff across the street.  When she came back over to the guitar store to let me know she was finished shopping she found me examining a very pretty blue Stratocaster knock off.  It was made by a Japanese company called Fernandes and it was very lightly used (as in probably not played beyond the time it would take to develop enough calluses to not be painful anymore) and only cost about 10,000 yen or less than $100.  So I got it and taught myself the pentatonic scale in the first position, and eventually got 3 chords I could play haltingly.  Then, we moved back to the US and sold the guitar cheap.  Chances it would have made it back to the US unbroken were low through our moving company and it would not have been worth it to ship.  (I thought at the time, though it might be worth more money today.)

So last year as I turned 50 I decided to take up guitar again.  I got a $300 Epiphone Les Paul Studio and I have been playing pretty much every day since.  The big advantage now over then is that I have the WWW and You Tube video lessons for free.  My wife also paid for a couple hundred dollars' worth of lessons which were helpful.  And after a year of playing I realized that this guitar buying problem that so many people seem to have is a real thing.  I had to have another one. 

This year I became a multi-guitar owner and I went all in.  For as long as I can remember I wanted to own a Les Paul.  An actual Gibson Les Paul was out of the budget range last year so I got the Epiphone.  I'm not sorry I did, because it is a great little guitar with a lot of promise.  I can upgrade the pickups at some point and the rest of the electronics, etc. But the other one I always wanted was a Fender Telecaster. 

A little back story is in order here.  My wife and I have a tendency to try and get Christmas and Birthday gifts for each other that are of equal value.  So in the past she had got some Coach hand bags and I have got a pair of Bose Noise Canceling headphones.  She'd get a nice ring and I'd replace my old Bose Noise Canceling headphones.  Well a few years ago she became a fan of a Korean pop group called TVXQ.  She has a bit of an obsessive personality so she became a super fan traveling all of the US and Asia to see them and calling it a Birthday/Christmas gift.  And I would replace my Bose Noise Canceling headphones.  (OK, last year I also got a $700 leather jacket on our trip to Florence Italy, but that was more of a souvenir.  And she got a much more expensive ring because apparently Florence is famous for that too.)

This year I decided it was time to cash in a bit and I was going to get a new Telecaster.  I set my sights on a $600 made in Mexico Baja Telecaster that was originally $800 because it had some in-store damage.  Two color sunburst, with the classic 50's style bridge assembly, etc.  But my wife said, if you pay a little more then you can get one that isn't damaged.  That got me to thinking.  A little more than $600 is $800, (all numbers are rounded up)  but a little more than $800 is $1,000 and that goes from a made in Mexico to an American made Telecaster Special with "better" pickups. 

Then I started doing a little research on how much a trip to Seoul, South Korea costs, which is where my wife went to see the latest concert of her K-Pop boy band.  That convinced me to push for the more expensive option, get the guitar I wanted (within reason) and I started my search in earnest.  Transactional as Hell, I know, but fair is fair right?

This search went on for months.  I learned as much as I could about Telecasters and as often as I could I'd go to Guitar Center (GC) and play whatever they had in stock.  They had a two color burst American Special that I was pretty sure I was going to buy but I compared it against everything they had.  I played a Deluxe Nashville with three pickups and a nice twang, but I didn't like the colors.  I even compared it to the Squire Classic Vibe and though I liked it, I still had in the back of my mind that I wanted a made in America Telecaster or one made in Mexico if it was actually better than a similar priced American made. 

One day the whole family was at the mall at the same time and my wife and I decided that it was time to buy the guitar.  So she came with me to GC and we grabbed all the Teles in contention for my $$$ and brought them into the room with all the expensive guitars (most of which are locked up) and started comparing them to one another.  I was playing them through a nice Tweed covered Blues Deluxe Reissue and they all sounded great.  I even had a used American Standard in there that up to that point was the best feeling one in the bunch but the electronics were a bit crackly.  It was hard to choose, so I decided to pick out one of the unlocked "expensive" Teles to compare it with.  It was butterscotch blonde and the neck felt smooth as silk.  Not too chunky for my hands and it sounded great!  I kept going back to it as the new standard that all of the other ones were compared to.  Finally I thought I had narrowed it down to the $1000 American Special but they didn't have the color I wanted so I said I was going to have to order it.

My wife wanted to make sure that if we're paying that much money I am really getting what I wanted so she started asking questions.  One of the questions she asked was about the neck I kept commenting on.  I had been told that I could get a nice statin like finish with a little bit of sand paper so she asked about that.  I showed her the difference between the neck feel of the Special vs. the feel of the expensive one I had been comparing it to.  Then she asked about the color.  I said, I want a blonde instead of the two color burst and the Special blonde is OK.  A little lighter in the pictures I had seen than I really wanted.  I pointed to the Butterscotch Blonde I had been comparing everything with as the ideal color I was looking for.  So she said, it's $1,500 but it's everything you are looking for so why not get that?

SOLD!  And that's how I walked out of the store with a brand new American Professional Telecaster in Butterscotch Blonde.  So now, I'm all in and probably not going to spend too much money on guitar gear for the next year or so. 

Classic Rock is killing rock and roll

I hate Classic Rock.  Just to be clear, I do not hate the music that they play on classic rock stations; I just hate the category.  The realization of this new found hatred came to be today when I was driving in my car and tuned in to the areas largest "classic rock" station.  They were doing their typical "ROCK BLOCK WEEKEND" thing, or what ever they call it and just finished up a set of Aerosmith songs.  The usual; Back in the Saddle, Dream On but they finished with their live version of Train Kept a Rolllin', which was a nice change of pace.  So far so good.  Then they launched into a David Bowie set starting with Fame and finishing up with Rebel Rebel.  That's when I knew that the Classic Rock format is killing Rock and Roll and I hated it.

David Bowie has just passed away, but right before he went he left us with a new album.  Now, I have to say, I have not heard the album all the way through and really only just heard the one song that was making so many waves. (Lazarus)  But it got me thinking that there really wasn't any chance that anything from the new Bowie album was going to make it onto this radio station that has been making use of all of his old catalog for decades.  Where are we supposed to hear the new Bowie record?  If not on the Classic Rock station, then maybe the Alt Rock station, but really?  Isn't there a more adult alternative than "Alternative?"

So, I am not worried too much about other artists of Bowie's stature.  We will find there music on Spotify and YouTube, but things used to be so much better.  Back in the 70s and 80s we had a format called AOR, or Album Oriented Rock.  Anything that was 20 or 30 years old got relegated to the oldies station.  But the core of today's Classic Rock rotation came from that time period and DJs were taking chances on bands all the time.  This was where we heard ZZ Top, AC/DC, and Van Halen, when they were brand new.  They were still playing the Beatles and the Stones too, but the Eagles and Steely Dan were in the mix as well.  When Billy Joel would put out a new record they'd be sure to get the first single in heavy rotation quick and make us like it.

Sure, out in the Pacific Northwest we didn't hear a lot of Velvet Underground or The Jam, but KZEL in Eugene put the Jim Carrol Band's People Who Died in heavy rotation right along side all the Journey and Fleetwood Mac we could handle.  And we continued to hear a lot of diverse musical choices until MTV came along.  But even then our choices, though limited to what was being played a lot on the music video channel, broadened to include more than just Butt Rock and Heavy Metal.  We started hearing music from weird bands like U2, and The Police.

Today when I listen to my Spotify mixes and I hear songs from bands like The Eagles of Death Metal  or Sebadoh I think, there is no reason why these songs would not fit into the "Classic Rock" format.  Or Queens of the Stone Age for that matter.  But they just aren't old enough to make the cut I guess.  Nirvana is making the cut now, and some of the older REM, but even those are few and far between and not the deepest cuts.  There is a wealth of music classified as Rock and Roll that the programmers of "Classic Rock" feel are off limits and I think it's killing Rock and Roll.  Old guys don't want to lose their Led Zep and CCR, but I bet if you mixed in some J.D McPherson and Gary Clark Jr. they would play along nicely.

I miss AOR radio.  Somebody needs to bring it back.

Music to check out

http://www.allmusic.com/album/greatest-ever%21-classic-rock-mw0002807799

Episode 371 - E of Eels

Episode 371 - E of Eels

Nice interview.  Really, you should be listening to the WTF Podcast anyway, but if you're not, this would be a good time to start.

Does it have bad language?  Well, the show is called "What The Fuck," so enter at your own risk, right?

Yumpin Yetti!

What a lineup!