REMAKE

In the fall of ’74, living on my sister’s couch, I was going through music withdrawal.  Sure, I had the radio, there were more stations in L.A. than any place I’d ever been.  Five rock stations!  Even more than New York!

But that didn’t fully feed my addiction.  Listening on the radio was only part of the equation.  I had to buy some records.  Even though I had no record player, even though in a matter of weeks I was going to hit the road for Utah.

One Sunday night we went to Licorice Pizza on Wilshire, just this side of Santa Monica.  We bought Linda Ronstadt’s breakthrough album, the one with "You’re No Good".  Loggins & Messina.  ELO.  Hell, there were six or seven albums in all.  Including Average White Band.

Why did I buy it?  I can’t remember.  I didn’t love "Pick Up The Pieces".  Maybe my sister wanted it, hell, she was still in graduate school, we were using our dad’s credit card.  Anyway…

I broke my leg, my college buddy John showed up in L.A. after he was laid off from his job in K.C.  And over New Year’s weekend, we used the tape deck he’d schlepped in the back of his Chevy to make cassettes, for the road, we both had Blaupunkts in the dash.

That’s how I ended up with a Maxell of AWB’s second album, which most people believed was their first.

Finally I had new road music!  I’d burned out my old cassettes driving cross-country.  So I played these six or seven new albums all the way from L.A. to Salt Lake, and everywhere I drove thereafter.  I became intimately involved with every note.  I came to love the Average White Band.

I still can’t listen to "Pick Up The Pieces".

But when the horns flare at the beginning of "Work To Do", I start shimmying and shaking, in a way you’ll never see otherwise, I’m normally too self-conscious to dance.  But when the right song comes over the stereo, I can’t resist!

There’s a sexiness, an intimacy in "Person To Person".  Like you’re inside the bedroom.  And not getting any in Utah, there being twenty or thirty guys for every girl, it fueled my mental movies.

Then there’s "Got The Love"…  Which is like stumbling into a party from some blaxploitation pic, smoke in the air, bodies sweating and bumping.

So when someone linked me to "Live At Daryl’s House" to hear Todd Rundgren’s "Can We Still Be Friends", my adrenaline pumped when I saw "You Got It".  Was this the song Bonnie Raitt remade for that movie soundtrack or…could it be the AWB song, the one that opens the album on a tear?

When I heard the organ and rhythm guitar 2:30 into the clip, I was back in ’74.  Older and wiser, it was not nostalgia. A great song allows you to feel reinvigorated, you hear it and live in the present, but are informed by all the episodes of the past.
If a bunch of supposed has-beens can get together and play music like this, we truly have hope.  Hell, this clip is more alive than any of that tripe up for awards on the VMAs!

ORIGINAL:

Either you’re part of the problem, or part of the solution.

That’s what they said back in the sixties.  Ironically, that aphorism works in the present.  Whereas in the sixties we were subservient to FM radio, today we’re beholden to techies, who’ve created all this great technology, allowing us to fulfill our dreams.  Obliterating the past in the process.

What’s a musician to do?  Who never learned to program in C++, who used to depend on the fat cats at the label to deliver just enough money to record and eat.  PLAY MUSIC!

You remember music, don’t you?

It’s time to party like it’s 2009.

There’s an ulterior motive in "Live From Daryl’s House", you know he’s angling for some kind of distribution deal.  But right now, other than a bit of merch, there’s no cash involved, he’s doing it for the love of music.  What a concept!

And with today’s tools he could single-handedly replicate the great hits of the past, instead he’s rounded up a bunch of players and guest stars to play not only their hits, but their favorites.

And it’s these favorites that are blowing my mind.

Do you own that Average White Band album?  The one with the black and white cover?  Oh, there was a hit, the instrumental, "Pick Up The Pieces", but between the cover, in the grooves, was the best white soul record of all time.  The more you played it, the more you loved it.  My favorite cut is the first side closer, "Work To Do", be sure to check out "Person To Person" and "Got The Love", but the record starts off swinging, with "You Got It".

On this episode of "Live From Daryl’s House", Daryl and Todd Rundgren play this song.  I couldn’t believe it!

I fired up the site because I wanted to hear "Can We Still Be Friends", I’m a Todd freak.  But I couldn’t find it.  But I did see…"You Got It"?

No, can’t be.

This is an album I played in snowstorms, as I drove the flatlands of Idaho, through northern Utah.  Shit, I vividly remember listening to it descending from Snowbird, a road that hugs a cliff and descends 1,000 feet every mile.  Scary in snow?  Shit, this was way before everybody had four wheel drive.  You put on the brakes and your car started to skid, so you had to accelerate, but then you were closer to the other sliding cars.

And the one show I went to that winter was in a ballroom, on the second floor of some building south of downtown.  It was Average White Band.

So I’m scrolling, pushing the slider on this video, waiting to see if this is the right song, and 2:30 in, the combination of the organ and rhythm guitar is exactly right!

I’d like to say the same thing about Daryl’s vocal, but alas, that’s not the case.  Yet Todd’s one of the great imitators.  But what truly resonates here is the joy of the players!

If you grew up with the Beatles, you picked up a guitar, maybe the drums, you formed a band.  You set up in one person’s basement, and generated this awful noise, that made you feel positively alive!

Maybe that’s why the baby boomers still go to the gig.  It’s in their DNA.  We tried, we weren’t good enough, but we respected those who were. We knew and still know the joy of music.  Playing, listening, dancing!

Yes, you can’t help but move listening to "You Got It".  Hell, I’m shimmying at the computer right now!

You got it, any way you want
Any way you want it to be

Yes, you can pick up an instrument.  You’ve got GarageBand, all the rudimentary tools.  You can make this joyous noise.  Even better, we can see our heroes recreate the hits of the past, the ones we all loved, free online.

This is a band.  Maybe an impromptu one, playing new material, just this one day.  But this is exactly what hooked us way back when.  This is what’s missing.  Music played by people who had to.  Who’d do it even if they never got on TV, never made a fucking nickel.

Go to: Live From Daryl’s House Episode 23

Under "Individual Songs" on the right-hand side, scroll down to the sixth one…  Shit, I just found "Can We Still Be Friends", it’s number five!  But "You Got It" is number six.

"Can We Still Be Friends" kills.  It’s much better than "You Got It".  But it’s one of Todd’s classics.  We’re used to this.  But it’s the rougher cover of AWB’s "You Got It" that inspired me here.

The Internet didn’t kill music.  Don’t believe the hype!