Steve: Don’t know if our readers are aware of this, but Phil is one of the great music geeks of our time. He worked in the music industry, he’s got a gazillion recordings and he can tell you which night The Grateful Dead did the jumpin’-est version of “‘Shakedown Street” live on stage in Germany. I’m nowhere near as fluent in music trivia, though I do have a variety of addictions — Chicago blues, the Stones, Clapton, Stax, Charlie Parker, rockabilly — that must be satisfied regularly. Today, we talk about what we’ve been listening to lately, and how music defines our “guyness.” Maestro?
Phil: Well, I can’t argue with the geek part (the Dead opened with a killer “Shakedown Street” on New Year’s Eve 1984 at the San Francisco Civic. They had never opened with the song before, and it stands as the definitive version in my mind). As for your list there, you’re a man after my own heart. I love music, just about any kind of music, but I’m particularly fond of American music. Blues, jazz, country-folk… even Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. The music I first heard as a kid, my folks being the children of Dust Bowl immigrants, ran toward the Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley side of the dial. My first record was Ricky Nelson on the old Imperial label (labels meant something in those days) and I was hooked. Songs like “Poor Little Fool,” “Stood Up” and a heart-wrenching “Unchained Melody” that predated the Phil Spector-produced version by years, and kicked its ass, too, if I do say so.
But, Ricky Nelson wasn’t a very “manly” choice in rock stars. Of course, many popular artists transcend gender, but there is certain “girl” stuff and “boy” stuff. Guys have a tendency to get excited over VERY LOUD music with screaming guitars. My wife never really listened to much blues or heavy electric guitar. She turns the volume down every time I put on “Axis: Bold As Love.” She doesn’t care for Stevie Ray Vaughan kind of stuff either. In school, girls liked the Beach Boys and Beatles while the guys listened to the Rolling Stones and The Animals. Go figure.
Steve: Nearly all of what you just wrote applies to me. Same upbringing, same addiction to electric guitar, same trouble with my wife. She’s especially irritated by extended solos of slide guitar — people like Muddy Waters, Duane Allman and Derek Trucks. Which, of course, are my absolute favorites. Whatever one spouse loves, loves, loves in music, the other one probably won’t get. The place where you lost me was Ricky freaking Nelson. Are you kidding me? How old are you again? When were you a girl? My first album was much cooler than that: The Dave Clark Five.
Phil: “Bits and Pieces,” great stuff, but five guys in white turtlenecks and tight pants ain’t exactly macho there, Brewer, so don’t be talkin’ smack about Ricky. Anybody who could get the great James Burton to play guitar on their records is OK with me. Dylan had a great quote in his Playboy interview (yeah, I looked at Playboy back then, for the articles): “I can tell by the way you hold your cigarette if you dig Ricky Nelson or not.” The Bobster even covered “Lonesome Town” on his ’86 tour with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. I got caught up in the British Invasion, too. I remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and it was as if these guys were from Mars. I had never heard or seen anything like them, and a whole new world exploded open.
Steve: The turning point for me came at 14 when I started buying 45-rpm records by Creedence Clearwater Revival at the IGA supermarket in Sheridan, Arkansas. The green Fantasy label. And listened to Jimi Hendrix in my best friend’s attic room. God, we were so manly and cool and misunderstood, there in rural Arkansas. We had an eight-track import of scratchy “greatest hits” by the Rolling Stones. Our theme song that summer was “Honky Tonk Women.” None of us had ever been in a honky tonk (or a woman) at that point, but we had aspirations.
Phil: It’s still an aspiration of mine to do anything ever mentioned in a Rolling Stones song.
Steve: I know you’ve got all kinds of stereos and MP3 whozits and computerized whatzits for your music consumption, but I am, as you know, a simpleton, so I mostly listen to a little five-CD Sony bookshelf stereo. Five albums are about as much as I can hold in my brain at one time anyway, so it’s about right for me. I like to pick five discs that complement each other and set the machine on “shuffle” and see what rises to the top. Currently, I’ve got a country/roots thing going with our own Jim Dyar’s new CD, Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women, a collection of Hank Williams songs (“Timeless”) done by singers ranging from Emmylou Harris to Beck, Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, and the bluegrass-and-boogie soundtrack from a movie called “Traveller.” What’s in your (CD) wallet?
Phil: Wow, good stuff. I’ve got Dyar’s “Magical Land” on my playlist along with the Dave Alvin. After Alvin’s show at the Cascade the other night, my wife ran out to the lobby and bought up everything on the table. We had both seen him (many, many eons ago) when he and his brother, Phil, led the Blasters. Sort of lost track of him for awhile, but glad to rediscover him! My wife jumped all over a track from the Guilty Women CD, “Downey Girl.” When Alvin introduced the song from the stage he said it was about a girl from his hometown who had hit it big, and my wife whispered to me, “It must be about Karen Carpenter!” My wife was born in Lynwood (Downey didn’t have a hospital then) and her big brother went to high school with Richard Carpenter. Six degrees of separation, eh? My wife knows everybody.
Also on my playlist at this exact moment: An album of covers called “Country Club” by John Doe & The Sadies (hey, Dave Alvin got me listening to these old L.A. cowpunks that I thought were all dead and gone). Doe and the band cover some mini-country classics. Really good, you’d like it. Next in the stack is the new Son Volt, and ironically, the new Wilco right under that. I must confess that most of what I’m listening to lately has been “cool” jazz and electric blues, from the 1955-1965 era. Miles, Mingus, Monk, Muddy and Wolf. I’ve got Junior Wells and Buddy Guy’s “Hoodoo Blues” spinnin’ right now. I’d also highly recommend Levon Helm’s latest, “Electric Dirt.” Killer stuff.
Steve: Levon Helm is a fellow Arkie. I love me some Leon.
Phil: OK, a little exercise; If you could give someone five albums that you think they just have to hear before they go teats up and shuffle off this mortal coil, what five would you give them?
Steve: Tough one. Off the top of my head: “Exile on Main Street,” by the Stones. “Live at Fillmore East,” by The Allman Brothers. The Chess Blues collection (cheating, it’s four disks). A 20-song sampler called “The Best of Ken Burns Jazz.” Tom Waits’ “The Heart of Saturday Night.” You?
Phil: Wow, I could live with your list but I’d have to go with “The Complete Robert Johnson,” “The Complete Singles Collection,” from Hank Williams, the Beatles’ “Revolver,” Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” and just for the heck of it, “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers,” by the Firesign Theatre.
Steve: Somehow, I knew you’d work Firesign Theatre into this Cutting Board. OK, now a different sort of playlist. What do you like to play when you have people over? Music selection for dinner parties is a point of discord (har!) at our house. I usually try for some bop or soft jazz, Charlie Parker, maybe some Django Reinhart. But inevitably, some old Otis Redding or Charles Brown disk will slip into the shuffle, which will make my wife say, at some point in the evening, “That music makes me want to kill myself.”
Phil: You know, I have to watch myself because if I put something on, I want to listen to it, so I shush people. I have been known to pore over a “mix” disc for days trying to get the right tracks together. I love to make ’em and give ’em to people. It’s a compulsion. I love sharing things and maybe turning somebody on to something they haven’t heard that I know they’ll like. But I can be a Music Nazi, and we all know Nazis don’t make good dinner party hosts.
Steve: So that’s where you always go at parties. I assumed you were out in the flower beds. What do you do if someone requests Duran Duran? Do you goose-step them with little cartoonist feet? Do you make them listen to Jimi Hendrix until they’ve recovered?
Phil: Dear Lord, requesting Duran Duran or Flock of a Hundred Haircuts requires drastic intervention. Just saying the words “Duran Duran” will require 10 Hail Marys and an hour of Captain Beefheart.
Steve: Cue the Big Wrap-up. You can talk about guitar solos, you can talk about lyrics, you can talk about sax and violins, but it’s really all about the testosterone level. Tell me, Herr Music Nazi, which one song was the Ultimate Guy Song of all time? I vote “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash.
Phil: Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy.” George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” has some pretty hairy sacks, and no violins. But, what do I know, I dig Ricky Nelson.
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