Not Jolly Ol' London

(Image from Panicposters.com)

IF THE CLASH WERE A ONE-HIT WONDER AND THE DOUBLE-ALBUM London Calling was their only record, The Clash would probably be the greatest rock band of all fragging time!

Thank the punk gods for that reason they aren’t.

With already two classic albums behind them, The Clash and Give ‘Em Enough Rope, London’s best working-class band were (upholding their image) down on their luck. Joe Strummer was writing songs in his grandma’s pad using a manual typewriter and his group owed their record label money.

After putting together enough songs for three studio albums, they chose the best 19 of the lot and the rest is rock ‘n’ roll history.

The Summer of '79

(Image from Tosca.homeip.net)

THE NAME IS PERFECTLY APPROPRIATE FOR THEIR MUSIC AND THEY came right on time when the time wasn’t right. The Knopfler brothers and a fitting rhythm complement of basic base and minimalist drumming to their Hungarian-Scottish blues psychedelia floated on the New Wave and landed on the shore with more grace and staying power than what turned out to be something of a passing fancy. Thanks to Mark Knopfler’s “swan’s neck for a guitar,” Pick Withers’ aural version of Chinese painting, the able backup of Knopfler’s brother David on rhythm guitar, and base-guitar player John Illsley.

Admittedly, my choice for the best studio album that Dire Straits recorded, this one, is biased as hell. On a five-star rating system, this LP could rate only four stars, or 4 1/2 at best, but this was their debut album, and first is first. And it’s not bad either; it actually is superb (or near superb). The carrier single, Sultans Of Swing, introduced the band to the world, which ever since has had pockets of diehard fans who refuse to let go of the past. (I am talking about myself.) There could be others.

Sentimental value notwithstanding, Dire Straits was one of the best albums (this was the time when vinyl still ruled and the cassette tape was still winding its way to replace the big black shiny happy circle with a hole in the middle, long before the compact disc repeated history) released that year, 1978. Record companies in my country had, still have, a delayed reaction to many hit singles (remember 45 RPMs) and LPs (remember 33 1/3 RPMs), releasing their own presses only when music rags (no Internet yet) made so much noise it was impossible to ignore. So, I got hold of this in 1979. Sultans of Swing was a soft-spoken bomb that exploded on radio. Mark Knopfler’s finger-picking style and just as laidback talk-singing (I thought Michael Franks was the best poet in the music business, until I heard Mark Knopfler/Dire Straits) was erroneously lumped together with the retro tendencies of new wave and punk. Dire Straits stood above the rest. Except for the Ramones, no one from that era survived the ’80s and beyond better than Knopfler’s gang. OK, so Dire Straits split eventually, too, and the Ramones died off one after another, with the exception of hardy Marky Ramone.

Down to the Waterline is one of those quite-rare songs that perfectly opens a record: “Sweet surrender/On the quay side/You remember/We used to run and hide.” Jaunty guitars set the mood for the fun of the ride, which doesn’t end until Lions – my second all-time favorite Dire Straits ditty, eight songs away. Sultans of Swing strategically positioned as cut number 6 on Side 2, lies in wait for pleasures that for me (this is personal and way nostalgic) still make my skin tingle 30 odd years after the initial act. “You get a shiver in the dark/It’s raining in the park/But meantime/South of the river you hold everything.” I can still recite in singsong many lyrics of what Knopfler wrote. I intentionally refuse to read lyric sheets, or search the web for the exact words, because I want to re-experience everything. Hopefully, my memory serves me right, and that my heart is still in the right place.

This is supposed to be a record review. But how can you review a feeling you had three decades ago? It is never the same. One can only hope you haven’t become so jaded not to remember. I will try. Song for song. Here, I have to pull out my dusty LP from a neat rack threatened by termites for the proper sequence.

Down to the Waterline: Refer to above.

Water of Love: Continues the water reference from the first cut. Mike Scott could have taken Dire Straits for his inspiration.

Setting Me Up: Uptempo paranoid.

Six Blade Knife: “Your six-blade knife/Do anything for you/Anything you want it to/One blade for breaking my heart/One blade for tearing me apart...” I still don’t see how that is physically possible and practical to have a six-sided blade or six-edged knife, or, all right, six-bladed knife. The tough guys in our neighborhood used to conceal tres and cuatro-cantos knives in their person for those sudden violent street confrontations, but sais cantos? I will take Mark’s word.

Southbound Again: My on-the-road song. I used to hum and play this song in my head while on a bus going (geographically south, actually) back to college from my hometown. The sight of coconut trees, mountains, the sea, from the window of the bus, was the music video for this song.

Sultans of Swing: A “shiver in the dark,” “rain” “in the park”...Mark Knopfler as a child must have gotten wet so many times aside from under the bathroom shower he has to experience again the sensation in his music. It’s all right, Mark. We listen to you and we feel warm.

In the Gallery: I have always wanted to see the inside of an art museum, art gallery in England. I am stuck in an archipelago in Asia damned by incorrigibly corrupt politicians. My former assistant editor, though, now lives and works in London. I grill him on life in the UK whenever he comes home to visit. Lucky bastard! Sorry, Jack, your parents never did marry. No offense, mate.

Wild West End: I grew up on the old TV western Wild Wild West. I understand that the West End is a section in London, or...OK! It is in England, right? It is incongruous to visualize Englishmen in suits and derby hats drawing revolvers and shooting each other down in the middle of Main Street, even in the 1800s. It is not? How about skinheads battling the coppers? Something wild in the West End. My imagination is running wild.

Lions: The perfect closer to the perfect opener – Down to the Waterline. Sans record sleeve lyrics sheet and decades before the Internet, I played songs on the turntable, picking up the needle arm (!!!) and putting it back on the starting groove to transcribe the lyrics. I memorized more songs this way than accompanying myself on the guitar or piano singing songs on a songbook. “Red sun going down/Wait over/Dirty town/The stars are sweeping around now/Crazy show/Listen and a girl is there/Right over around the square.” My listening skills are not perfect and Knopfler’s grumble can be off-putting to those keen on getting his lyrics right. This is the best that I can do, all things considered.

The Dire Straits sound got heavier, more solid, and more commercial, when Brothers in Arms and Money for Nothing came along seven and 10 years later, respectively. They had more fans and much more money in the bank by then. For that reason, I keep holding on to the slender past. The reason their debut record will remain my favorite Dire Straits LP. Play it long...in my mind for now.

This is the best I can do from the top of my head, raiding raw memory. My brother (in needle mark arms) sold our two Sansui amplifiers when he was still trying to listen to voices and music in his head with the aid of chemicals for a shot of whatever he fancied at the time. My turntable is kaput. The speakers stand in a corner silent. I have kept all my LP records while hoping I find a cheap stereo set.

There are voices and music in my head, too, but I don’t need to sink a needle in my arm or inhale substances that God did not intend for his creatures to. Life has too many natural highs and abysmal lows. One of those highs is Dire Straits’ music. A definite low is being unable to listen to them on vinyl again. Wait! I still have my well-wound cassette tape of Alchemy and Live at the BBC. "Analogue is warmer."

All is not lost.

Fagen and Becker: The New (Old) Lennon-McCartney

WHENEVER SOMEONE ASKS ME who my favorite band of all time is, I hedge my answer. I make a point of making an exception of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones –- who are in a class all their own. There’s no point including them in anyone’s list of all-time favorites; everyone likes them, even those who claim that they don’t. So I come up with a list of three bands whose music I have been listening to for the good part of 30 years, in order of preference: Steely Dan, Dire Straits, The Clash.

Although the argument as to whether Steely Dan is a band can be made quite convincingly. Since releasing their debut album Can’t Buy A Thrill in 1972, Steely Dan’s lineup has changed practically from record to record. There are only two constants in Steely Dan –- lead-vocalist keyboardist Donald Fagen and base-guitar player/guitarist Walter Becker.

They met in Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York in 1967 and have been together musically since then, except for the years when they broke up their band in 1981 after releasing their seventh studio album, Gaucho. They collaborated sporadically on each other’s solo efforts before deciding to get back together to write songs for their reunion album, Two Against Nature, which won Record of the Year in the 2001Grammy Awards. Many are of the opinion that Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP should have won instead. But it’s hard to go against the choice of The Recording Academy, a good number of its members must be longtime fans of Steely Dan, and were probably merely acting on the dictum that you do your job long enough in show business, and you will eventually be given an award that you don’t deserve to make up for past omissions. Having recorded seven of the most distinctive albums in the last 30 years beforehand without winning any major Grammies, it was Steely Dan’s turn in the limelight. Making up for past mistakes can take a long time.

Steely Dan’s music is in a rarified section of pop music. It is an eccentric brew of jazz and rock, with a dose of the Brill Building Sound. Fagen and Becker hate to be called a rock ‘n’ roll band. Maybe they shouldn’t be. Besides blossoming in the age of rock, they don’t share much with the genre. Cognoscenti love the Dan’s music for its quirky melodic twists and arcane lyrics. It’s like listening to surreal poetry set to melodies birthed in the mind of a jazz obscurist who is also a closet rock ‘n’ roller. Steely Dan’s music is difficult to place in a box, and it shouldn’t be.

Steely Dan are an acquired taste. Not everyone digs them. Some people you’d think would love them, should love them, are actually puzzled by fans’ fondness for a band whose songs include exotic polysyllabic titles like Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me), Rikki Don’t Lose That Number, Throw Back The Little Ones, and one-word handles like Bodhisattva, Aja, Josie, and Gaucho.

This durable duo of dynamic musicians brings to mind another musical pair who wrote most of the songs of the iconic British pop-rock group the Beatles. But where John Lennon and Paul McCartney were basically a team that composed effervescent pop with whimsical lyrics and poignant ballads with hooks that latch on for decades, the Fagen-Becker tandem is deliberately inscrutable and openly disdainful of the obvious sensibilities of most Top 40 fodder. They once told an interviewer that their coded lyrics are nothing like the lyrics of the songs of James Taylor, whom they described as being wont to “singing about his lost underwear.”

Steely Dan and the Beatles are poles apart musically. It is in song craft where similarities are found. Lennon and McCartney were Liverpool lads who found themselves enmeshed in the skiffle music of their generation, part of their growth as serious musicians that led them to create the ultimate product of their musical genius in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In the case of Steely Dan, their sixth studio album Aja found them chipping away past patchiness to reach their peak. Their experience has not allowed them to surpass Aja’s achievements, as evinced by the surprisingly sub-par effort on the reunion LPs Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go.

As a testament to Steely Dan’s high level of musicality, Berklee College of Music conferred Honorary Doctor of Music degrees to Fagen and Becker the same year Two Against Nature won the Grammy for Album of the Year. The auteurs were gracious enough to receive their degrees in person.

The late John Lennon is one of the most revered songwriters and political symbols of the 20th century. Together with Paul McCartney, they made up the best pop-songwriting team ever, regardless of what fanatics of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have to say. Hall and Oates fans could throw in their collective hats into the arena and take part in the dispute. “Best of all time” lists will always be tainted with subjectivity, and the proof is in the pudding.

It will be out of character for Fagen and Becker to insist that they be counted as well. But their body of work will stand the test of time, much like the Beatles and the Stones oeuvre will. They might not even mind if some music fans and critics tag them as the Lennon-McCartney of their time. For sure, both Steely Dan stalwarts have one time or another sang or hummed Yesterday and Strawberry Fields Forever.

Resurrection

MY HEROES AIN’T DEAD AFTER ALL: They're alive. Alive in America. Yes, they’re old. The kind that’s good. The kind that’s reunited. Reunited oldies but goodies. Instead of youthful kinetic exuberance, good judgment borne of experience takes its place. Discipline. Polish. Things some might associate in a knee-jerk reaction with boring. Actually, boredom does seem to creep in certain songs (Bodhisattva, Sign In Stranger, for instance) but sheer talent and the music's sophistication keeps ennui from settling.

Some people might question the necessity of a live Steely Dan record at this point in time, this late, more than a decade after their breakup. If the Beatles, minus a “live” John Lennon, were able to reunite and record new songs for a double-album release at that, there’s no reason why an intact (as far as creative core is concerned) Steely Dan can’t put out a concert album of all vintage (except for Book of Liars) material.

The biggest disappointment I have with this record is that there are too many brilliant songs in the Steely Dan discography that are not here: Do It Again, Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me), My Old School, With A Gun, Any Major Dude Will Tell You, Dr. Wu, Any World That I’m Welcome To, Bad Sneakers, Throw Back The Little Ones, The Caves Of Altamira, Don’t Take Me Alive, The Royal Scam, Haitian Divorce, Black Cow, Deacon Blues, to name some.

It irritates to realize that the choice of their concert repertoire seems to hinge on the instrumentalists’ opportunity to show off virtuosity. Then you wish again that the original members and crack session men who played in the studio records were in the touring lineup. Case in point: the solo guitar lead in Reelin’ In The Years. When you have listened to it countless times, the song ingrained in your consciousness, you hear a live version that’s obviously different; the classic lead by Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (some sources say it’s by Elliot Randall) whom Jimmy Page admits to being his all-time favorite guitar solo, being rendered unrecognizable. One can’t help but be dismayed, longing for the original. That is, the original song and lineup; Donald Fagen and Walter Becker being the only ones left of the studio Can’t Buy A Thrill era band.

The nature of Steely Dan as a jazz-influenced pop/rock unit probably inhibits them from the stale gesture of performing cepra live renditions –- jazz music as spontaneous, as unencumbered by the orthodox rules of the music establishment as it is. Only purists would throw the “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken,” dictum at you.

Not that all the material in this album stray far from the original. Josie, except for the brief ’70s arena-rock-like drum solo, is surprisingly faithful to the studio cut. Not that there aren’t any shining moments. In Third World Man, Fagen’s voice is a panther stalking prey, graceful, sinuous, powerful, wound tight, ready to pounce. The lead guitar dives and grapples. The languid rhythm section ideal for the lead guitar intrusion. All elements producing a solid whole.

Perhaps it’s intentional. Fagen calls their seven studio records “failed experiments” and maybe he and Becker simply want to wash their hands and distance themselves from their past product –- an arrogant brush-off or honest admission. Even if that’s the case, those seven “failed experiments” are worth 70 Duran Duran, Petshop Boys and Depeche Mode platinum records put together. Those bands can base their whole careers on Steely Dan’s two worst LPs.

Part of the fun listening to Steely Dan songs is deciphering the lyrics. Fagen and Becker being the purveyors of esoterica and arcana, the strangled intensity of Fagen’s singing makes code-cracking far from easy.

Analyzing the reason for the release of a live-concert record is easier: They have gotten over their boredom with each other and are now eager to start working on their eighth Steely Dan studio album. You wish! PJT/February 1996, Horizons

Note: Steely Dan did release an eighth studio record: the Grammy winning Two Against Nature –- a middling effort which managed to beat Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP for Record of the Year in 2001 besides winning three other Grammies. Plenty of guilty middle-aged National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences members out there with a predilection to overcompensate.

Record Reviews A La Mode

IN THE MID-'90S I WAS GIFTED WITH THE OPPORTUNITY TO REVIEW music records for a glossy travel magazine spin-off of a leading English daily which inevitably went defunct considering its confused raison d’etre. The following articles are reprints with edits of two columns on Steely Dan Donald-Fagen Walter-Becker albums that I did for Horizons.

This whole music-critic thing was bound to happen, the wetting of my feet in the music-review biz, that is. While in college, I was similarly honored in Weekly Sillimanian with a review column – Rewind – name-use years ahead of cable’s Channel V nostalgia program.

My debut review, of The Cure’s Three Imaginary Boys (per Philippine recording industry methodology, this 1979 LP saw the light of day in these shores more than 10 years after it’s initial international release as the RP buying public started noticing the band), was long-winded but made aesthetically visually attractive with a column logo of a Gilbert-Arbon rendering of a cassette tape with a pencil stuck through the reel. Also, it was probably that school publication’s first attempt at pop music criticism.

This blog is the culmination of a dream-emulation honed reading local music rags Jingle, Moptop, and the “imported” Rolling Stone, Creem, Crawdaddy, and countless others brain cells can’t recall. Those who can, become rock stars. Those who can’t, become critics. As it turned out, it was only the beginning. The Internet was in its infancy. Ten years and some hence, it’s a teenager. Just about the same stage that this age group discovers sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Ego aside, I believe my music-dissecting skills have similarly grown. Watch this teen rebel.

Let’s Get It On! I mean – Rock On!

The Dan Is Old

MY HEROES ARE DEAD AND I'VE got to get this off my chest. How many times have you read a record review extolling the musical virtues of a veteran musician, how a certain artist unfailingly and gracefully grows with age, exploring tried and tested musical byways and virgin territories with equal elan?

Donald Fagen, who along with Walter Becker formed the nucleus of Steely Dan and recorded seven of the most distinctively elegant albums of the rock ‘n’ roll era, releases only his second solo record after Steely Dan temporarily broke up in 1981 just as the vinyl presses of Gaucho got cold and putting two singles in the pop charts. Those who were charmed by Fagen’s solo debut, The Nightly, will likely be less than enamored this time.

Nightfly, which sounds a lot like the whole Steely Dan catalogue in a single package, may not be a radical intergalactic jump from the stylistic adventurism of the sinister duo, but at least it isn’t boring. The same cannot be said of Kamakiriad.

From the inlay card notes: “Kamakiriad is an album of eight related songs. The literal action takes place a few years in the future, near the millennium.

"In the first song, Trans-Island Skyway, the narrator tells us he is about to embark on a journey in his new dream-car, a custom-tooled Kamakiri. It’s built for the new century: steam-driven, with a self-contained vegetable garden and a radio link with the Tripstar routing satellite.

“The next six songs describe his adventures along the way. The last song, Teahouse On The Track, the narrator lands in a dismal Flytown where he must decide whether to bail out of to rally and continue moving into the unknown.”

Fagen’s (and for that matter, Becker’s) best material was done when he was with Steely Dan. There is no indication that they can top their collaborative oeuvre. There is a creative energy that is only unleashed when one is with the right people or group. That energy inevitably siphons off when the alliance ends. The syndrome is demonstrated in the Bread-less David Gates, who resorted to writing sappier ballads with less bite, and in Jimmy Page, who could produce nothing but mediocre blues-based songs apart from Led Zeppelin. It is no coincidence that one of the brighter spots on Kamakiriad is Snowbound, co-written by Fagen and Becker. There is also the languidly graceful Florida Room, composed by Fagen and his wife Libby Titus.

There is something self-destructive in the way Fagen writes a melody. The first bar works out fine; suddenly the appeal level drops off. Snowbound stands out because the melody builds alongside fluid storytelling. This is how Fagen and Becker operate in Steely Dan. Fagen can’t do better than Steely Dan. He should follow his own advice in Trans-Island Skyway: “Let’s talk about the good times.”

The song titles in 11 Tracks of Whack strung together can tell a story on a chapter of the life of Becker who had a girlfriend die of a drug overdose in his house. He was sued for damages by the OD victim’s mother but was acquitted and cleared of all liabilities.

With a little grammatical license and inserted phrases, the story goes this way – Becker found himself Down In The Bottom after Steely Dan broke up and he had his Junkie Girl OD. Becker had to Surf And/Or Die in the courtroom. Lucky for him, he had his Book Of Liars. Lucky Henry, that’s Becker, a Hard-Up Case and a Cringemaker. Although he admits his Girlfriend to be almost My Waterloo that has made him This Moody Bastard. What Hat Too Flat means and who or what Little Kawai is, is anybody’s guess. PJT/November 1995, Horizons

Of Classic Rock and Cyber Meanderings

I WAS SURFING, KEYWORDING WORDS I'D RATHER NOT DIVULGE, when I came upon a blog by someone who was faintly familiar. One of the keywords that got me to her site was Silliman, the university in Dumaguete, not the person last name. In her blog she admits to being a classic rock fan and that she is into creative writing, poetry, if I remember right.

The reason I don't mention her name is because I don't actually know her, she is just the namesake of a sexy female creature I met in college who wrote poetry and I was pleasurably shocked to learn that she had memorized some of the poems I wrote. The only reason I won't say the title of the former’s blog is...make your own conclusion. Suffice it to say that she likes the likes of The Doors, Cream, among others; and since she is a fan of "classic rock, poets and idealists..." she must be a fan of mine. Insert laughter track here or that SMS symbol for a smile and a laugh.

I have a confession to make, though, her site gave me the idea to start my own Blogspot site, my second actually. The first one has topics that I'm pretty sure she won't find pretty and maybe is too macho for her sensitive literary taste. On second thought, when one likes classic rock, especially the music of bands fronted by less than wholesome anarchists (is there a wholesome anarchist?) like James Douglas Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, you should have an adventurous streak.

Anyway, I will try to be more prolific with this new blog of mine than with the first one which not only suffered from intermittent zeal and postings but also from a dose of laziness. What's a cushy dewfoam bed for anyway?

See you in the funny pages and hear you in the analog world. Classic rock, remember?