A Year of Great Live Music

It seems crazy that for about 18 months in 2020 and 2021, there was no live music. I wasn’t watching it. I wasn’t playing it. I was, well…I’m not sure what the heck I was doing for those 18 months. Can you remember what you were doing? I think that the old John Steinbeck quote from Travels With Charlie rings true: “Eventlessness collapses time.”

By the end of 2021 I’d gotten a few gigs and dipped my toes into watching live music again: one outdoors and one indoors with masks on. Some great shows, but for me the floodgates really opened this year, 2024, a magical year for music that will surely provide the signposts necessary to truly remember the time period, rather than having it float away in the ether of my fading memory.

What’s particularly gratifying is that I saw eight acts I’d never seen before in six venues I’d never visited before, including two iconic sites: The Troubadour and The Hollywood Bowl. Both were very cool to check out and rectify the preconceived mental pictures I’d conjured (turns out that The Troubadour isn’t narrow and deep, but wide and shallow. Who knew?). In addition, I’m happy that at least half a dozen acts are producing legitimate new material. In other words, I wasn’t only scratching the itch of seeing legacy acts. Finally, as I wrote about a few months ago, I got to see shows with two of my kids, my wife, my sister, and a bunch of buddies, adding another element of good feelings.

Without further ado, here’s the list:

January 27, Black Pumas, Salt Shed (indoors), Chicago, IL
March 22, The Lone Bellow, The Troubadour, West Hollywood, CA
April 18, Graham Parker, Old Town School of Folk, Chicago, IL
April 20, Robert Cray Band, Des Plaines Theater, Des Plaines, IL
June 8, James Taylor, Ravinia, Highland Park, IL
June 16, Joe Jackson, Cahn Auditorium, Evanston, IL
June 27, Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs, Pat McCurdy, The Dandy Warhols, The Hold Steady, Summerfest, Milwaukee, WI
August 17, Sara Bareilles with opener Renée Elise Goldsberry, Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, CA
September 18, Keane with opener Everything Everything Chicago Theater, Chicago, IL
September 26, Lake Street Dive, Salt Shed (outdoors), Chicago, IL
October 8, Charles Heath Quartet, Andy’s Jazz Club, Chicago, IL
October 17, Saga, Arcada Theater, St Charles, IL
October 24, Stevie Wonder, Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, WI
November 1, BEAT (80s King Crimson), Copernicus Center, Chicago, IL

In addition to these shows, I played live eighteen times, plus a church gig or two, I recorded 50 podcast episodes, I completed an album, wrote additional songs for my next project, purchased close to 100 records and CDs…if I’m being honest, by the time I saw BEAT in November, I was kind of finished. It’s been a hell of a great year for music.

To date, I have tickets to only one show in 2025, and given the amount of money my family has been spending lately, that may be the way it has to stay. It’s time to do more writing, recording and producing and less consuming!

Foreigner, Little River Band, Foghat, and other Great Cover Bands

My buddy Aaron is a big classic rock guy, and he and I have long discussed the idea of bands being brands that should theoretically go on forever. Steve Howe is the only guy left in Yes? So what! Keep playing, and in ten years, twenty years, and beyond, the Yes name can continue to put on good shows long after Howe is gone. After all, we can still hear Beethoven’s Fifth performed – why shouldn’t we continue to hear “Close to the Edge”?

I’ve never been as comfortable with this logic, and even Aaron is hitting his limit. He said to me this morning, “We cheer for people who have meant something to us along the way. When I see these bands, I don’t even know who I’m cheering for anymore.”

It’s a legitimate point. For example, Foreigner is on their farewell tour, and there are literally no foreigners left in Foreigner! Not a one. It’s a cover band. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being in a cover band – I’ve been in several over the years – and there’s nothing wrong with paying to see a cover band of music you enjoy, but there is something wrong with Foreigner advertising itself as Foreigner. They should call themselves “The Official Foreigner Tribute Band” or something similar – musicians who are performing under the Foreigner banner as sanctioned by Mick Jones, or whomever owns the band name.

When “Starship Featuring Mickey Thomas” is advertised, you know what you’re getting: you’re getting Mickey Thomas and a bunch of good musicians backing him up. You’re not expecting to see Grace Slick and Marty Balin.

By contrast, should Little River Band be advertising itself as Little River Band? If so, by what logic? There’s not one member in this band from their heyday. As my friend said, “Who am I cheering for?” Or Foghat – the only guy left is drummer Roger Earl, not exactly the guy people came to see when Foghat was selling out concert venues in the 70s. If they want to call themselves “Foghat Featuring Roger Earl” or something along those lines, that’s good by me.

If you’re willing to shell out $60 for a really good cover band, there’s no harm in that, but you should know that you’re shelling out cash for a cover band and not be duped into thinking that there’s anything authentic about the product. There will of course come the day when all of the original people associated with all of the bands from the 70s and 80s are long gone, by which point it will be obvious what we’re getting, but even then, I would like things to be labeled properly. Then again, the Count Basie Orchestra continues to play four decades after Count Basie’s death, and I don’t think anyone attending those shows feels shortchanged, so what do I know?

For me personally, it’s hard to get excited about listening to music that none of the performers on stage had anything to do with. But the alternative is to have the music die over time, and that’s not such an enviable ending. It’s a tricky balance. I do hope that in a hundred years someone can see “Close to the Edge” performed live; I just hope it’s not advertised as Yes.

Crying My Eyes Out

I’ve broken down in tears during no fewer than four concerts in the last 12 months. No shame in that, I suppose, but it does beg the question: why? Is it simply because the music moves me? Is it because of my past? A sense of loss? A realization that the artists I’m watching won’t be around much longer? Probably all of those things and more, but I’d like to delve a little deeper into the songs that had be blubbering like a fool and attempt to understand what the heck is going on.

Peter Gabriel: “Washing of the Water.”  September 2023

I didn’t see this one coming. Last time I saw Gabriel – coupled with Sting in 2016 – he opened with the eerily magnificent “The Rhythm of the Heat,” a song that’s cool as hell, but hardly one that I can relate to. But in 2023, he sat down on a chair with a small keyboard, and beside him sat long-time bassist Tony Levin. Together, they played the quiet, heart-breaking song of pain and grief and a plea for inner peace. That’s probably enough to put me over the edge in any context, but to see these two musicians, together for nearly fifty years, back on stage as a duo? That might have been enough right there, no matter what song they chose to play.

And then there’s my own past to reckon with. Gabriel’s Secret World DVD was on constant rotation in my household when my kids were young. My daughter Jessica wanted to be Paula Cole, a vocalist on that tour from 1993. Envisioning my three young children who watched that concert with me over and over – children who are all now adults living in different time zones – well, that certainly contributed to the waterworks. And to top things off, I was watching the concert with my 21-year-old son, over 36 years after I’d first seen Gabriel on his So tour, when I was an even younger 19. It boggles the mind. It conjures up a time when the future long and wide…you know the drill.

I also knew instinctively that this was the last time I’d see Peter Gabriel live, and that in the not-too-distant future, he’ll no longer be with us.

Geesh. Add that all up – how could I not cry?

James Taylor: “Shed a Little Light” and “That Lonesome Road.” June 2024

I should note first that I can’t listen to “That Lonesome Road” without crying. I find it absolutely heart-wrenching, this tale of a man – much like the man in Peter Gabriel’s ”Washing of the Water” – who’s reeling from his mistakes, untethered, attempting to rise above his pain, to start anew.

But dang, to play an encore of “Shed a Little Light” – a favorite of my wife’s and mine – followed by “Your Smiling Face” and “That Lonesome Road”…I knew, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would never see James Taylor play again, and I felt a sense of loss for a future without this magnificent artist who so eloquently captures the human condition. It’s like what Mark Twain said about worrying: it’s like paying a debt you don’t owe. I was experiencing grief for a person who’s still living. Kinda dumb. But there it is.

Sara Bareilles” “She Used to be Mind.” August 2024

Okay. Once again, a very touching song.  Sara has about a half a dozen that can set me off in a flash.  She’s got that gift. And here I was on a beautiful night with my beautiful daughter Sarah at the beautiful Hollywood Bowl. I mean, come on! The first time I saw Sara Bareilles was with both of my daughters at this strange venue – the Scottish Rite Center in Milwaukee – where Bareilles played a solo show prior to the release of The Blessed Unrest. I blogged about that concert back in 2013, and here I was over a decade later, watching her perform this wonderful song about self-acceptance. It killed me.

Keane: “Can’t Stop Now.” September 2024

This isn’t a song that would normally set me off, but there were several things going on here. First was the pure jubilation of finally seeing this band after a few failed attempts, the last one a cancelled show in Nashville due to the pandemic. Second, my daughter Jessica was by my side (and yeah, all four of the cry-fests in this blog involve watching a band with a loved one – no coincidence). Third was the sheer power coming from the musicians on-stage, especially the vocal perfection of Tom Chaplin.  Fourth, the fact that in 2020 – just a month after that cancelled Nashville show – I got to play a Keane song with all three of my kids at a little outdoor concert on my neighbor’s driveway while families huddled outside in their safe family bubbles, none of us knowing that this was what life would look like for the rest of the year. And fifth is some serious personal stuff than I can’t delve into on-line, but suffice it to say that I’m aware of life and death, what I have and what I’ve lost, what matters and what doesn’t.

And all of that adds up to tears. Again.

And look, I grew up in a rather undemonstrative family, so I view my ability to cry – in public, no less – as a step in the right directions, generationally speaking. Maybe my kids will have a better chance to be more fearless and open than I’ve been. And maybe in thirty years they’ll be at concert with their adult children, listening to a song that has them breaking down in tears.

Lyrics that Stress the Wrong Syl-LA-ble

There’s a Dan Fogelberg song that was a hit back in 1975 called “Part of the Plan.” It’s a good tune that I’d forgotten all about until recently, when a friend of mine gave me a copy of the album Souvenirs. I listened to the opening track and scratched my head a bit, because while I remembered the tune, I still didn’t know what the heck Fogelberg was saying during the chorus. Was he mentioning an exotic city somewhere? A bar? A dance I’m unfamiliar with?

No, he was saying “One day we’ll all un-DER-stand,” stressing the wrong syl-LA-ble. It sounded weird when I was six. It sounds weird today at age 56.

And it brought to mind additional cases where songwriters have taken huge liberties with their lyrics, asking the audience to basically shrug off what is clearly artistic license gone awry.

On my podcast recently (episode 74), we featured a song called “Mirage Zone” by Hot Mama Silver. In preparation for the recording, I listened to the song multiple times, not knowing what it was called, and I didn’t figure the title out until I read it. The singer sings, “MEER-age Zone,” instead of “Mir-AGE Zone,” and it’s the most important part of the tune! The title! Hot Mama Silver did themselves no favors with this one.

I thought of some other tunes that stress wrong syllables for the sake of the melody, and some of them are hits - fantastic songs in every other way.

Stevie Wonder takes all sorts of liberties with the syllables on his amazing song, “I Wish,” the most egregious being in the chorus: “Why did those days e-VER have to go.”

The first line of Alanis Morissette’s breakout hit, “You Oughta Know,” stresses the wrong syllable:

“I want you to know, I’m hap-PY for you,” and she goes on to sing the words eloquent-LY and ba-BY. But hey, there’s no denying the song’s greatness. I still remember hearing it for the first time en route from Detroit to Muskegon, Michigan, and I was floored. Now, you could make the argument that the odd stresses in this song mirror the singer’s seething anger, a case when what one says doesn’t come out calm or controlled or correct.

You could argue that, but Morissette is a repeat offender, as a contributor to this link highlights. It was pointed out that she outdid her mis-syllabic self on the song “Uninvited,” (another song I like):

“I am fla-TERED by…”
“I have sim-PLY”
“An un-for-TUN-ate slight.”

Ugh. Yeah, I like the tune, but that’s pretty bad.

Another hit song with a misplaced stress is Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” when they sing, “When the rain wa-SHES you clean you’ll know.”

The above-referenced link of syllabic stresses has a lot more examples, including several I hadn’t thought of:

Eric Clapton, “Won’t you be my FOR-ever woman.”

Stevie Wonder again, from “You Are the Sunshine of My Life, when he sings, “Because you came to my res-CUE.”

The Beatles “Old Brown Shoe” with the line, “My love is something you can’t RE-ject.”

The list could go on and on. But what are we do make of it, especially if you’re a songwriter? Should lyrics always be sung the way we speak? Probably not, but I would say most of the time, yes. If you’re purposely stressing a wrong syllable to be clever or for comedic effect – a sort of “wink” to the audience – then I think it can be not only justified, but downright genius. One contributor to the above thread wrote about Ira Gershwin employing stresses for comedic effect in the song “It Ain’t Necessrily So”:

“He made his home in
that fish’s ab-DO-men.”

That’s great! And I imagine that showtunes are full of these types of examples. Hip hop and rap, too.

But many of the above examples seem to simply be laziness. When a word didn’t fit the meter, the songwriter just stuck with it even if it sounded odd. That certainly isn’t the ideal. No one is denying (or at least I’m not) the merits of each and every song I mentioned above, but I’m confident that they would all have benefited if the offending lyrics had been replaced by words that fit the stresses naturally.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

But now I’m wondering how many misplaced stresses I’ve written in my repertoire. There are probably a few!

Ideal Album Lengths

We knew we were in trouble when Aerosmith started putting out 60-minute records.

I recently purchased two Van Halen albums on vinyl and noticed how quickly I had to flip the record. VH wasn’t prone to long-winded releases. Check out the times of their first several records:

Van Halen, 35:34
Van Halen II, 31:36
Women and Children First, 33:35
Fair Warning, 31:11
Diver Down, 31:04
1984, 33:22

Not until you get into the CD era do their albums go over 40 minutes.

It’s not as if the LP format was limited to 35 minutes’ worth of music. I remember back in the day dubbing LPs onto a side of a Maxwell 90-minute cassette tape and having to cut songs when copying Genesis records. My first two purchases from Genesis were …And Then There Were Three and Selling England by the Pound, which both came in at over 53 minutes, more than an entire album side of material than your typical Van Halen record. Talk about getting more bang for your buck.

You could argue that the fidelity of those old Genesis albums wasn’t very good due to the physical constraints of the LP format and the compromises that had to be made to pack in that much music, but there were very good-sounding records with more content than your standard hard rock album:

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon: 42:50
Stevie Wonder, Innervisions: 43:52
Supertramp, Breakfast in America: 46:06
Toto IV: 42:17
Michael Jackson, Thriller: 42:16

Clearly, even during the vinyl era, bands could put out records that were over 40 minutes that still sounded amazing (which is why engineer Ken Caillat’s argument that the wonderful song ”Silver Springs” had to be dropped from the 38-minute Rumours doesn’t really hold water).

But then came the CD, and things started to get out of hand. Aerosmith’s 1993 release Get a Grip clocked in at a whopping 62 minutes! Who on Earth needed to hear over 60 minutes of Aerosmith in 1993? Van Halen’s 1998 release Van Halen III was 63 minutes. Rush got into the act too, with Vapor Trails and Snakes and Arrows both well over an hour long.

I’m a big Rush fan. But that’s too damn long.

Listening to records from the CD era, it’s hard not to conclude that if artists had had some self-discipline, they could have ended up with a perfect 40-minute record. I recently listened to the Genesis album We Can’t Dance from 1991, and it’s generally regarded as a subpar album, but it’s over 71 minutes! If you cut out five of the weakest tracks (and there are definitely five weak tracks), I think you’d end up with a very good 45-minute album.

For a more recent example, Peter Gabriel’s I/O from 2023 may contain some good songs, but once again, it runs at almost 70 minutes long. It’s just too much, with too many tracks that aren’t distinctive enough to hold a listener’s attention for over an hour.

One could rightly point out that some of the greatest records ever released have been double-LPs with a lot of material. Consider the following:

The Beatles, The Beatles (White Album): 93:33
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main St.: 67:07
The Who, Quadrophenia: 81:42
Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti: 85:59
Fleetwood Mac, Tusk: 74:02
Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life: if you include the extra EP included with the double album, a whopping 104:29
The Clash, London Calling: 65:07
Pink Floyd, The Wall: 80:42
Prince, 1999: 70:29

That’s a pretty amazing list, so why was it okay for those bands to put out lengthy records but not Aerosmith, Van Halen and Rush?

Well, it would have been okay for those bands to put out a double album when they were at their creative peaks. You want to combine Toys in the Attic and Rocks into one double album? Sold! It would be among the all-time best. The same for Van Halen’s first two records or Rush’s Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures.

But by the 1990s, these bands were not producing their best stuff. Yes, some of it was good. Maybe a lot of it was good. But an awful lot was filler, fluff, overwrought, drawn out and tedious. Long albums should be reserved for artists at their peaks, creating so much material that they can hardly stop themselves from composing great track after great track, struggling to find a way to get it all out on record. That’s why in the CD era it made sense for artists like Smashing Pumpkins, 2Pac, Drive-By Truckers, Beyonce, Christina Aguilera and Arcade Fire to put out really long albums. It was their time.

In the 1990s, it was not Rush’s time, nor Genesis’s nor Van Halen’s.

And let’s face it: sometimes less is more. I’ll take a perfect half-an hour record by Van Halen any day over a bloated album that has me constantly reaching for the skip button.

After writing the above, I wondered if I’d ever committed the sin of producing an album that was way too long. I did a quick check, and the longest one I’ve ever completed was The Palisades from 2016, clocking in at 47:53. And you know what? It would probably have been better at 40 minutes.

So there you are.