RIP, Andy Griffith (Goober says "Hey!")

"The Andy Griffith Show" ("starring Andy Griffith!") many times gets lumped into the low-brow TV fare of its day that included "The Beverly Hillbillies", "Petticoat Junction" and all the TV crap that portrayed the South as full of hicks and hayseeds. And that may have been true in the early days of "TAGS" (Andy, mouth full of teeth and cornpone cliches), but soon the show found its rhythm. I sincerely think that there are several seasons (1962-1964)
of "The Andy Griffith Show" that can stand with the best of television.

Those would be the Don Knotts/Barney Fife years. Yes, yes, Don was wonderful in the role, but the way that Andy the actor stepped back and let Don take the spotlight was a great lesson in putting the writing first. My favorite bits seemed improvised -- after dinner, on the porch, Andy strumming his guitar while he and Barney seem to do the southern version of "Waiting for Godot". Gonna watch TV with Thelma Lou, maybe going to the pictures to see "The Monster from Outta Town" -- great, great stuff, played so relaxed and unhurried.

So many favorites, one of which is "Opie the Birdman". Opie, playing with his new slingshot, accidentally kills a bird, her babies now without a mother. Opie insists on taking the place of the mother, Andy implies this may not work out so well... but Opie persists, feeding the babies before leaving for school. Eventually, the caged birds must be freed, and Opie turns to his pa, saying "The cage seems pretty empty", while Andy responds with the classic line "Yeah, but don't the trees sound nice and full" (Apologies if my memory fudges the exact lines.) 


Andy, Barn and Goober have gone to that ol' fishin' hole in the sky, God bless 'em. Thanks so much, guys.

"Retromania"

Recently read "Retromania" by Simon Reynolds, subtitled "Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past". As an official card-carrying geezer, this is familiar territory to me. Listening to radio, I thunder like an Old Testament prophet: "There is nothing new under the sun!" (I may have mentioned it before, but there was an old National Lampoon article that revealed, there only being so many musical notes and only so many combinations, the last new song would have been written in the late '80s.) Reynolds rails (nice, eh?) against the laziness of pop music: find a hit, repeat the formula ad nauseam... Even lesser bands that have nothing to lose by taking a chance couch their music in familiar patterns. It's like I described current popular country music to someone: it already sounds familiar the first time you hear it. Sampling, remakes, tributes -- all of pop music comes under Reynold's withering gaze and comes up wanting. He does, however, have a glimmer of hope: for him, the '60s was groundbreaking, the '70s not so much...he feels newness is cyclical, and we have bright days ahead, eventually. As depressing as I found "Retromania", I did get a great album recommend: "Music Has the Right to Children" by Boards of Canada. It was one of the albums that set Radiohead on their pilgrimage after "Ok Computer" into the wilds of "Kid A". The Boards album came out in 1998, and it was an electronic album that rejected the cold android feel of then-popular electronic pop and instead took a cue from Eno's '70s work. Short vignettes drift across the soundscape, make their statement and move on. These aren't 'songs, but visual events captured in sound. My feeling is that Radiohead learned from this approach and raised it to a whole new level, but I was fascinated to hear some of the compost that Radiohead used to fertilize their new music.

Behind the Scenes

I began buying records in the Beatles era, and in that pre-internet, pre-Rolling Stone time, you had to parse whatever information you could from the LP credits themselves, not always the best source, it turns out. Jump ahead to the '70s: liner notes include musician credits. Many of the same names crop up over and over again, and that's when I learned about studio musicians, professionals hired by the hour to deliver whatever the songs needed. (Later, the "professional" part became the problem for many bands -- too slick for rock and roll? And yet, Steely Dan treasured just that professional slickness to add that sonic sheen they desired so much. Go figure.) As rock bands decided they were indeed bands, the ground shifted. The band members played their own instruments and wrote their own songs. (Here's that Beatles thing again -- oh, and yes, the evolution of the Monkees.) The studio musicians from the Phil Spector/early Beach Boy era were no longer in demand, and there was another crop of long-haired, more 'hip' musicians ready to take their place. "The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret" by Kent Hartman is about the earlier bunch, guys (and Carol Kaye on bass!) who performed the 'band' functions on Phil Spector sessions, plus records by the Beach Boys, Gary and the Playboys, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, the Turtles...really, the list goes on and on.

You might hear the same approaches on different sessions -- "She's Just My Style" by Gary Lewis and the Playboys owes a lot to the Beach Boys sound -- because the same musicians played both sessions.

And it wasn't only the musicians; there were songwriting factories (like the Brill Building, home to Neil Sedaka, Carole King, etc.) So what? Well, the book either ignores the elephant in the room, or just leaves the reader to discover it themselves. Here's my take: when the Wrecking Crew played on Phil Spector sessions, we never thought there was a 'band' -- we heard the vocalists plus musicians, as you would a big band or an orchestra. Fine. But when as a pre-teen thirsty for knowledge I pored over those Gary Lewis and the Playboy albums -- they portrayed the photogenic band member playing the bass --which he didn't!??! Example: all these '60s bands mime to backing tracks on Ed Sullivan, say, but they're faking not only that they are playing live, but that they ever played that music at all. Ever. Concert tour sound at that time was so crappy and the venues so ill-suited for amplified music that audiences never noticed that they were getting a poor approximation of the songs they knew from radio.

That was then, right? The whole "band as contained unit" lasted a while, but then MTV arrived, and suddenly you didn't need talent if you looked good. Now we were inundated with photogenic puppets. The session musicians were replaced by studio technology and computer techs, but they still needed songs. The Brill Building was gone, but there were more songwriters just waiting for their turn at the trough. The more things change...

Bluegrass Across the Years

A pair of fairly recent DVDs that show two very different views of the bluegrass world. "Bluegrass Country Soul" was filmed at a bluegrass festival in 1971, and it shows a genre in flux. "Traditional" bluegrass was flummoxed by the popular long-hair culture -- how do we keep current without betraying our roots? I'm sure at the time some of the crossover song choices were considered radical (John Denver! Elton John!!) and it's weird seeing Earl Scruggs in short hair and short sleeves playing with his far more hirsute offspring. We also get to see Ralph Stanley (long before "O Death" but still every inch the patriarch), J.D. Crowe (with a young chubby-faced Tony Rice -- who doesn't even get to solo!), Chubby Wise playing his trademark "Orange Blossom Special" with the biggest grin on his face, and Bluegrass 45, a band of young Japanese men that elicits one of the biggest responses from the crowd. But my favorite has to be the Stanley Brothers. They play like they could do it in their sleep, but I never felt they were phoning it in -- and "Ruby" still has all those hill-holler piercing high notes. Jump ahead 30 years, and you get "Bluegrass Journey", recorded at the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in 2000. We get to see performers from "Bluegrass Country Soul" like Del McCoury and Tony Rice, but this DVD includes the full festival experience, which by now includes the special instrumental workshops and the crazy jamming through the night at the official hotel (I REALLY need to get to Wintergrass in Bellevue next year). Highlights for me: Peter Rowan performing "The Hobo Song" that he recorded with Old & In the Way which featured Jerry Garcia and started me on the road to bluegrass, Nickel Creek stretching the boundaries with "Old Cold Coffee On the Dashboard" (oh, wait, it's just a variation on what David Grisman was doing in, umm, 1976, but okay, I still like it), and yes, you guessed it, Tony Rice performing his medley of "Shenandoah" and "Danny Boy". I also love the energy in the hotel, from the lobby where old friends meet again to the hallways and rooms where all the jam sessions happen. The scenes from the International Bluegrass Music Association's "World of Bluegrass" (the bluegrass Grammys) show we're a long way from 1971. Two DVDs, two very different looks at a fascinating culture. And RIP, Earl. His performance in "Bluegrass Country Soul" shows a gracious, humble man, performing with so many of the people he influenced. Priceless.

And the EBTG reissues begin

An Unlikely Pairing

"Folk Roots, New Routes" by Davy Graham and Shirley Collins is one of the cornerstones of the British folk movement, and I've only just recently managed to get a copy. Davy is THE major influence on Bert Jansch, Paul Simon, Donovan and many more in the burgeoning British folk scene of the '60s. Davy was a bit erratic, though, and fairly uninterested in the music business; Bert Jansch refined Davy's style and more importantly, kept playing and touring, so that he (Bert) is far better known, and probably a bigger influence on later generations of guitarists. Davy added jazz repertoire and other cultural influences (Moroccan, Indian) to folk guitar. Shirley Collins was one of the First Ladies of British folk, and "Folk Roots, New Routes" (released in 1964) influenced the Pentangles and the Fairports and the Steeleye Spans that came later. I had to get used to Shirley's voice. Many British women folkies have a high nasal pinched quality, but Shirley's tone is broad, doesn't hit the notes spot-on but in the general area. She reminds me of some British auntie after a few gin and tonics. The combination of Shirley and Davy shouldn't work but it does, admirably. Which brings me to more than 30 years and many miles away: "The Moon and the Banana Tree: New Guitar Music from Madagascar", released in 1996. No, the vocals (about half the album) don't sound anything like Shirley, and most times the guitar playing doesn't sound like Davy. But to my ears, there's a common theme of absorbing outside influences (mostly African, in this case) and reinterpreting a native folk music with a multicultural blend. And considering Davy's exotic travels, I wouldn't be surprised if he absorbed some of the Madagascar culture and reflected it in "Folk Roots, New Routes".

Where Did You Hear That? (Or: Oh Really? I Never Guessed You Work in a Library)

The Internet has certainly made it easier to discover new (or old) music, but I still rely on traditional channels: sometimes the radio, mostly reviews in the music press (Uncut and Mojo, primarily) and more often, music reference books (latest treasure trove is "The Great Folk Discography", Volumes 1 & 2 by Martin C Strong). Also very valuable: "1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die" by Tom Moon, the various Rough Guides {"Reggae: The Rough Guide" by Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, and "The Rough Guide to Rock" -- though be prepared for a British bias -- they feature many third-tier Brit bands you've -- rightly -- never heard of.)
Recently, I've enjoyed "The Best Music You've Never Heard" (another Rough Guide).

Umm, I sometimes refer to both the red and blue Rolling Stone guides, and the All Music Guide -- but they're really a last resort, mostly just repeating inaccurate information and third-hand reviews.

And I don't have a book source for jazz or classical. My son gave me "The Penguin Guide to Jazz", but do you really want a Brit to tell you about jazz? And classical music I just hunt and peck my way along. More about that later.

KSER at 90.7 is a life-saver. Sundays, there's the great double bill of Bluegrass Express at 11AM, followed by String Band Theory (traditional and acoustic music) at 1PM. Saturdays, I can usually listen to Juke Joint during my lunch break (show starts at 1PM) and then Dusties (R&B from the '40s through the '70s) on the way home from 5-7. This last Saturday, I had to drive to Coupeville for a family dinner, so I listened to Dusties all the way, and now I'm on the trail of late seventies funk bands like Mandrill and Cymande. These groups fall through the cracks of most music history complilations; listening to some of these shows, it's like there's an alternate universe of music, a whole parallel dimension outside the playlists we grew up with.

KING is our best classical choice, since CBC decided that kids these days don't listen to classical music unless it "rocks their world". Really? Is your market research department that lame? I try to listen to "Deep Roots" on Friday or Saturday, but there's a LOT of repeats, and TOM POWER repeats his name 45 times each hour!! KILL ME NOW!!!

Sorry. Back to KING. Great on-air talent, essential programs ("Northwest Focus" plays music to be performed locally. My heart leaps with hopeful anticipation.)

We have access to hundreds, if not thousands, of years of music. What's the point of sticking to some current commercially-driven pink slime when there are other worlds to discover? (Wait a minute, didn't Captain Kirk already say that?) Oh hell, I admit it; my credo is also from Star Trek, courtesy Jean Luc Picard: "Let's see what's out there!"