"Wheels Within Wheels"
Rory Gallagher

I heard this on the satellite on the ride home from Palm Springs and it was so right, so in the pocket, that it’s never left my mind.

Rory Gallagher was doomed by being on Polydor, a second-rate label. I saw him open for Blind Faith with his band Taste, then he went solo, but never broke through. But if he didn’t drink himself to death, he’d be on a victory lap right now.

You don’t learn how to play this well overnight. You pay your dues. And your facility with the instrument translates. Come on, listen to these licks, they speak to your head and heart, they make your body writhe.


"Never Stop"
Jackson Browne

Sure, the lyrics are good, but this track is all about the groove, and the change. This is one time where Jackson plays with a band and it works, it’s better than the live solo acoustic rendition that was released a handful of years later.

Listen to the guitar accents. Hear how the band is locked into the groove.

But most of all, hang in there until the change at 3:55. It’s unexpected, you just think the song’s gonna repeat until the end…

Remember when you look into my eyes
I’m the one who took you by surprise
The time has come and gone and come back ’round again
And I’m still here to take you by surprise my friend

Relationships pay dividends. Hit and run can be fun, but when you hang in there with someone you get to fall back in love with them. It’s spontaneous, the b.s. drops away, you remember why you loved them to begin with, with a twist. It’s a look, it’s a feeling, it’s magic.

Show me your eyes, tell me again
Where you want to go
Now the night is glowing beneath your skin
And when you smile I’m the richest man I know

That’s true wealth. Being in a relationship.

"Get Up Jonah"
Bruce Cockburn

Music, when done right, instantly takes you away, deposits you in a place no other artistic medium can.

Whenever I hear "Get Up Jonah" I picture myself walking down the street in a new city, energized and aware.

I woke up thinking about Turkish drummers
Didn’t take long – I don’t know much about Turkish drummers
But it made me think of Germany and the guy who sold me cigarettes who’d been in the Afghan secret police
Who made the observation
That it’s hard
To live

Whew! Wisdom!

It’s like you’re in a bar in a foreign country and you run into an English-speaking denizen who starts telling his tale and all you can be is mesmerized. He’s not telling you he knows everything, he’s just laying out his story, but you’re impressed, because life is about living, and this person has…and the more adventures you have, the more you know, and the less sure you are of everything.

And ain’t that how it always is in a dream. Random, vivid connections.

And the lyrics are insightful, but the groove is wonderful!

You can play "Get Up Jonah" for anybody and they’ll get it.

"I Wanna Go To Marz"
John Grant

And they say there’s no good new music…

If this doesn’t remind you of lying on your bedroom floor, stoned, listening to great classic rock on headphones, you never did.

With everybody trying to crowd the hit parade it’s exciting to find someone doing it his own way…and succeeding.

"Country Doctor"
Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers

There’s a studio take of this, but this live version is better.

The improvisation is inviting, but it’s when Bruce starts pounding the riff a little after a minute in that you and he lock on to the groove. This is jam band music at its best. Not noodling, but expansion upon an underlying theme.

Imagine being at the gig, you wouldn’t be able to keep your body still. Hell, it’s almost impossible at home!

"The Song Of Purple Summer"
"Spring Awakening"

My introduction to music was show tunes, the Original Broadway Cast, my mother used to spin those records ad infinitum, I came to love them, I know every note.

And too many modern musicals lack memorable music.

But this hearkens back to "Hair" and that movie musical, "Fame". The vocals are mixed right up front, changes are important, a mood is set.

This is not hip, but that’s what’s wrong with the mainstream today, it’s an echo chamber, and everybody is desirous of getting inside, but the true rewards are outside.

If you’re too hip to like this, you’re too hip for me.

"Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)"
Glass Tiger

How many years has it been since you’ve heard this?

But admit it, not only do you know every lick, you like it! It’s a minor pop masterpiece, it’s like spending an afternoon at an amusement park, and Bryan Adams’s vocal is worth the price of admission, hell, pay attention at 2:35.

"Still Feels Good"
Rascal Flatts

AND IT DOES!

It’s almost like Skynyrd, when you hear the vocal imploring you to COME ON, you turn your head, drop your laundry and RUN to the sound!

Forget everything you know about modern country music, forget your preconceived notion of Rascal Flatts, just LISTEN!

That old t-shirt you wear to bed
Hangin’ off your shoulders by a thread
The one you ripped off me when we first met
Still feels good

Sharing clothes. It happens early in a relationship, and randomly thereafter, and when it does, it puts a smile upon your face. On a cold morning, when Felice dons my Two Elk fleece, I smile on the inside.

And she sleeps in a t-shirt. The softer and rattier the better. We’re attached to our garments, they’re our blankies, even though we’re no longer infants.

That old familiar song blarin’ from my car
We know every note, every word by heart
Puts a smile on your face ’cause you know it’s ours
And it still feels good

Come on, you know this feeling! Of cruising down the highway, wind blowing in your hair with no words being said, both of you locked on to the track, feeling both centered and ecstatic.

Your fingers hooked around my belt loops

The imagery is simplistic, but it doesn’t bother you, because it’s so in the pocket, it’s so right. Oh come on, if you haven’t put your fingers in her belt loops…you’ve never been with a her or a him, you’re a lonely bastard just waiting for intimacy, the true reward of life.

And the song is a tear, with great changes and piano notes that penetrate, but…

Hang in there, the ride doesn’t truly begin until two minutes in.

You’re ascending the hill of the roller coaster, there’s one more chorus and then the track slows down, you’re cresting the peak, it’s all anticipation, then the train starts to descend, the guitar begins to WAIL!

Really, at the 3:20 mark you’re gonna hear ferocious picking, guitar playing that can measure up to any speed metal band, any classic rocker, it makes you feel so good that your only option is to…

Play it again.

BECAUSE IT STILL FEELS GOOD!

Spotify playlist

Previous Rhinofy playlists

Am I the only one with mixed emotions?

I guess what I hate most is those copycat awards shows, you know, the AMAs and the ACMs. They watered down the essence. They confused the populace.

They were all about the money.

Maybe I was too young for "American Bandstand". Or maybe I was the beneficiary of New York television, with a cornucopia of choices. Dick Clark was not my only way to gain access to youthful entertainment, and from the moment I tuned into his show, it always seemed ersatz.

Yes, I know he broke a few barriers. But if you’re speaking influence, don’t we give more credit to Don Cornelius? With "Soul Train"? A man who truly broke barriers, was true to the music and delivered something that the white mainstream media men shrugged their shoulders at.

Then again, Dick Clark was never about the music. Otherwise, why would he have hosted game shows?

Dick Clark was addicted to fame. And money.

His is a very American story.

The fact that I’m reviewing his life with bittersweet tones proves the point. He made it. We always try to drag down those who rise to the top.

But those at the bottom have no idea how difficult it is to make it. How one-minded you’ve got to be. How you’ve got to sacrifice.

And you’re faced with choices every day. People keep e-mailing me that "Rolling Stone" piece wherein he refers to himself as a "whore". You’ve got a choice, you can do what’s expedient or do what’s right, and they’re not always the same thing. More specifically, you can make the artistic choice or the monetary choice. One leaves your credibility intact, but may cause the spotlight to shine elsewhere.

Then again, Neil Young maintains.

But so does Ryan Seacrest.

I have a dream. One day America will get off its high horse and deem Ryan Seacrest an ass-kissing phony. Something the public knows but the media refuses to acknowledge. He’s smart, but white bread and empty. And his great contribution to the American landscape is the Kardashian TV show. Then again, he’s perfect for the time, where it’s all about money.

But those days are fading. Because most people don’t only have no money, they’ve got no chance of getting any significant sum. Entertainers’ income pales in comparison to that of the corporate titans. So, do you chase the truly rich or try to trump them by playing your own game. In the real world of rock/paper/scissors, art beats money every day of the week.

Even though those playing at the arts will pay penance to money.

Now, more than ever, you don’t need money, but you must be truly great, your art must speak for itself.

Now I don’t want to dismiss everything Mr. Clark was involved in. I was addicted to "Where The Action Is", at least during its inaugural summer season. I’d run home from the baseball field to see my favorite acts.

Then again, once Casey Kasem gained traction, Mr. Clark went into competition with him.

And Dick was vain, and refused to relinquish the spotlight.

That’s when you know someone’s truly narcissistic, empty inside. When they hang on to fame for dear life, as if without the attention, they’re nothing.

But Sean Connery has relinquished the spotlight. Others have aged out and passed the torch. But to do this you have to be well-adjusted, you must be able to laugh at life, you must possess something beyond your notoriety.

Dick Clark wouldn’t let our memories be. He had to go on "New Year’s Rockin’ Eve" with his compromised speech not to illustrate that stroke victims can function, but because he needed the attention.

Some are addicted to fame. It fills up the empty hole inside.

But if you’re not true to one thing, if you dabble in everything, you die and fade away quickly.

Ask someone under twenty who Walter Cronkite was. Even Johnny Carson. Icons once, they’ve been forgotten.

If you want to be remembered, write a great song, make a great movie, the best are evergreens.

But few can accomplish this. For the rest of us, it’s about the ride.

And Dick Clark had one hell of an excursion. He had stories galore. And money to boot. He pursued the American Dream and won.

But what is winning?

And does that dream still hold?

We’ll see what the future brings.

As for Dick himself…

He was a force of nature. Smooth and sunny on the outside, you don’t get that far being nice.

But it was a different era. One of post-war recovery. When everybody was middle class and everybody wanted more, and this could still be accomplished.

And then the sixties happened and everything went topsy-turvy.

They say Dick Clark was part of this tumult.

But it can be easily argued he was on the wrong side.

Limit-testers don’t tend to last long, but their impact is great.

After all these years, with his fame and his money…

Dick Clark’s social impact was not commensurate.

In "Rolling Stone":
"The problem," says Clark, "is that you’re a f___ing idealist, and I’m a whore."

Music: Dick Clark: 20 Years of Clearasil Rock

This is a non-story. Troupes of holograms will not be gracing the stages of amphitheatres, it was a one time stunt, which paid dividends for Snoop and Dre, expect it to be trotted out to diminishing returns in the future, like 3-D movies, but if you think holograms are where live entertainment is going, you probably believe Radiohead’s name your own price paradigm is here to stay.

Credit Dre for accomplishing his goal, getting everybody to pay attention to an icon who’s been soft on the charts. It’s a perfect set-up for his next single. It wowed those in attendance and word ricocheted around the Internet instantly.

And then the mainstream media weighed in.

You know the media, they’ve got to fill up the news hole every day. Especially television, which does no reporting, unless it involves a car chase or a bake sale. But newspapers are now almost as bad. In a truly 24/7 news cycle, papers are lost. They used to set the agenda, now they’re constantly behind the curve.

So they send out neophytes to trump up a story that is not one.

Maybe we’re interested in how much the hologram of Tupac cost, we’re a bit intrigued by how they did it. But to extrapolate to the point where digital images will now go on tour is to deny the past decade wherein we learned live is everything. In a canned, digital society, people want something real, something tangible. Sure, too many Top Forty stars and aging divas sing to tape, if they sing at all, but at least they react to the crowd, we go to see how they look, have they gained weight, have they gotten plastic surgery, and I’ll argue this paradigm is fading…

Dre’s use of a digital Tupac is no different from the morphing effect in Michael Jackson’s "Black Or White" video. Michael was the first to use it, he could afford it, and within mere moments, it was tired and passe. If anything, morphing is something individuals do online, with their images and YouTube clips. It’s cheap technology that pros have abandoned.

You can get people to pay attention.

But then what?

Dre triumphed at Coachella. But can he have a hit record? Can he re-enter the public consciousness?

Hell, I’ll argue that Dre is behind the times. Instead of trying to get it right, instead of continuing to polish a single track into oblivion, Dre should get with the modern paradigm and release a ton of stuff, whenever he gets the urge, and he’ll be back in the public consciousness and who knows, one of his tracks might break through, he’s certainly talented enough.

That’s the story here. Is Dre Madonna, a recording has-been who can only play his greatest hits live, or can he mean something once again?

And there are subplots. Isn’t it amazing that twenty years ago, this music was dangerous. Warner got rid of Interscope and when Jimmy and Ted’s company went to Universal, there was a new behemoth in town, Warner never recovered.

Snoop used to wear a bulletproof vest.

Now he’s a dad who coaches football.

As for Tupac himself… Those rap wars, were they worth it? Did we really have to lose both Tupac and Biggie? And what if they were white, would the crimes really have gone unsolved?

If you think holograms are the future of live entertainment, you’re probably still waiting for more 3-D programming on your TV, you’re listening to your music in quad, you just don’t know that some things are fads and others last.

You didn’t get the public predicting a touring hologram future. The tweets were hipper than that. Talking about a slew of new Tupac albums… The public has a sense of humor, it’s got insight, it’s far in front of the media.

We’re in control.

Believe it.

P.S. If Dre morphed into a deejay, he could dominate instantly. Half those deejays mix in hits anyway, why not get the progenitor involved, the guy who created the sound? Furthermore, this would bring an African-American element into electronic music, a genre that’s presently far too white. That’s what we need in electronic music, more soul. And Dre could deliver it.

That’s not music!

You were wrong on rap, are you gonna be left out of the loop one more time?

Don’t be like Geffen Records, which famously thought rap was a fad and then went out of business (the label with that name today is a contractual obligation, it resembles not a whit the Aerosmith/Guns ‘N Roses/Tesla/Quarterflash label of yore).

Everybody missed it.

The promoters, the labels, it’s like 1964 all over again. The old farts declaring the Beatles are tripe. But look back at the record books, almost nothing before the Beatles survived, it was a revolution!

That’s what this electronic music thing is.

By saying you don’t get it, you’re labeling yourself ignorant.

Not only do you have to open your mind, you’ve got to understand, like living organisms, electronic music evolves. If you think what you’re hearing today is going to be the same tomorrow, then you tar all rap with that Puffy/Diddy remake of "Every Breath You Take". Sure, some electronic is lowest common denominator, but it’s not all!

As for the lack of…

Wouldn’t you say rap lacks a lot of these same things? And it’s had more than a twenty year run so far. We kept waiting for it to fade away, but it hasn’t. Maybe because rock became so calcified, so corporate, so paint by numbers that anybody who hadn’t lived through its heyday rejected it and embraced the new sound.

This is a business controlled by oldsters.

Sure, Justin Bieber and Willow Smith may have hits, but without the old men, they’re nowhere.

Electronic music burgeoned without the participation of any of these cynical bottom-feeders. It was all about the music, because at first there was no money. And when the money arrived, it came from none of the usual suspects. Not from recordings, not from radio, not from behemoth promoters but live shows promoted by newbies, lifers in the game. Isn’t it interesting that electronic went live long before the rest of the industry? Isn’t that today’s mantra, that it’s all about the gig? It’s been about the gig in electronic for decades!

And electronic musicians know it’s all about the show. You can’t be boring, you’ve got to get the people in the palm of your hand and take them on a trip. Passivity is for pussies.

Now I’m gonna tell you a story. My friend Mike Caren, who’s good enough to still have an A&R job in this meshuggeneh industry, told me his two year old can use an iPad. Then Mike said when his two year old grows up, he’s not going to pick up a guitar, he’s gonna make electronic music.

Think about that!

Those whiners trying out for TV singing shows, they’re behind the curve, they’re lowest common denominator, they’re all about the fame, they’re nothing about music. But read up on Deadmau5. He spent years in his bedroom, concocting. Are you gonna condemn him because he doesn’t play a guitar?

Sure, there’s good electronic music and bad. Cheese and excellence. Just like in pop, rock, even classical, to the degree anybody cares anymore.

You’ve got to broaden your horizons, you’ve got to open your mind. You can continue to be like Kodak, heading towards bankruptcy, or you can choose to be Instagram, knowing that the world is a blank slate upon which you draw.

Kodak was constrained by its box.

Hell, isn’t that what Top Forty radio is, a box? You’ve got to do it their way or you can’t get on. Who wants to be beholden to something as rigid and ancient as radio?

In a world with few rules, you’ve got to create your own paradigm.

And that’s what these electronic musicians have done.

And the public is flocking to them in droves. Not because there was a big publicity campaign, not because the stuff was jammed down their throats, but because it’s infectious, the music makes you move, it’s fun to go to the show, you don’t want to be left out!