Tag Archives: rock

Sting Goes Rogue or The Audacity of Dream of the Blue Turtles

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It takes guts to walk away from the biggest band in the world. It takes defiance to then make an album that seemed designed to confuse everyone from the record company to the critics to the fans. That is exactly what Sting did in 1985. On his solo debut, “The Dream Of The Blue Turtles,” he made a statement of intent that was equal parts refusal and provocation.

Looking back it was a fascinating gamble. There was no easing into a post-Police identity, no transitional record, no pussyfooting. He followed his instinct and assembled a band of jazz assassins to make, what is at first listen, a pop record that revealed so much more just below the surface.

The opener, “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,” is pure pop poetry, bright and bouncy, with a great hook, but listen closer. Lyrically it is a clean break from the possessive paranoia of “Every Breath You Take.” Musically, the rhythm doesn’t sit still, the groove breathes and flexes; the band orbits each other refusing to lock into place. This made the critics and record company uneasy because it was too slick for jazz and too fidgety for pop. They were all shouting, “What is this album supposed to be?”

Sting doesn’t give an easy answer, and ultimately just pushed a answer further away the deeper you get into the album.

“Russians” barely qualifies as a song in the pop sense. It is piercing, frozen in the Cold war, set to a borrowed piece of classical music and delivered with unflinching seriousness. The words pleading for common humanity, something so simple that at the time was seen as radical. The critics again were flinching at what seemed like gravitas coming from the pop reggae guy.

“Russians” is followed by “Children’s Crusade,” and the jazz ambitions are front and center. It asks a lot; dense, intricate, rich chords and an open structure. It’s heavy and doesn’t offer the listener an immediate reward, requiring instead engagement. The critics hated it because it didn’t distill it’s subject matter into a neat digestible slogan.

But it isn’t all like that, toward the end of side two we get “Moon Over Bourbon Street,” which gives us resolve and clarity for everything that came before. It is moody like a lot of the album. Narrative driven and atmospheric, the music serves the story instead of vice-a-versa. Branford Marsalis sax paints the edges, almost haunting them and you are carried away on the melody before being pulled in by the lyric. It all make sense now, Sting’s ambition coming through and the sense that he can inhabit many world’s at once.

He had built something at the intersection of rock and jazz that wasn’t quite the solo album anyone expected. In 1985 this was unheard of; jazz phrasing, pop hooks, and a political conscious with no critical framework. The critics said “Pick a lane,” Sting built an overpass.

And there is your disconnect: the record companies wanted continuity, the ‘new’ Police, critics wanted him all in or all out of the jazz tradition. What the fans embraced was an artist in transition: experimenting, overreaching, occasionally borrowing, but moving toward something new.

The fans were all that mattered in the end. The album sold millions and the songs have endured. The questions about genre and identity have been washed away. Sting could lead a virtuoso band, blur boundaries and still hit the pop charts.

We had the privilage of watching an artist morph into his next stage. That’s why “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” still holds it’s own where a Police rip off probably wouldn’t.

Tedeschi Trucks Band March 18th 2026 Review and Recap

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There are bands that play songs, and then there are bands that play time. It is stretched, bent, allowed to breathe until a four minute song becomes a whole emotional weather system. Tedeschi Trucks Band are that band, the , one whose shows are like walking into a Southern soul revival where the sermon comes down in distorted guitars, screaming brass, and gritty vocals.

Last night at the Beacon in NYC, midway through their 10 show residency, this was on full display. From the opening tune Hear My Dear thru to the Space Captain encore, Derek Trucks played slide so liquid it seemed to be melting the frets. He plays like other people breathe, with an unconscious inevitability, like there is no difference between the instrument and the hands holding it.

Standing next to Derek is his partner and the true gravitational center of the band, Susan Tedeschi. When she steps up to the mic the room shifts, warming and welcoming you. She sings in that rare liminal space between gospel confession and beer soaked barroom blues, a rare combination of tenderness and grit. Even the covers feel like she owns them, they become her joys and heartbreaks.

Susan is complimented by Mike Mattison, who took the lead several times during the night including a down and dirty take on Dylan’s Down In The Flood, and keyboard wizard Gabe Dixon whose vocals add an angelic feel. And they are just two of this musical juggernaut.

Tedeschi Trucks band are different from most jam adjacent acts, both in the professionalism and huge sound with the dozen musicians on stage. Horns, back ground singers, and dual drummers, the band becomes a soul soaked mini orchestra under the influence of the Allman Brothers Band.

The night’s set list was a strong mix of covers, originals, and new tunes. Hero, with their producer Mike Dandelion on bass, was the strongest of the new material. It’s “I’m not your hero / I’m not a zero” chorus hits hard and Susan brings it home with her vocal performance.

The horns added punch comes on like the ghost of Stax records. Blind Faith’s Had To Cry Today took on a whole new life. The rhythm section churning in a patient groove, letting the moment swell and build, right before it all locks in and there is a collective exhale.

Nels Cline came out toward the end of the recently added Loving Cup and stayed through Sleepy John Estes’ Leaving Trunk and Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Volunteered Slavery. It became an extended blues work out stretching twenty minutes. Trucks and Cline traded solos, moving deftly from quiet to a spiral of sound that sounded as if it was defying gravity, while the band raged behind them.

That is where the magic lies, whether taking disparate covers and making them feel brand new or their ever expanding catalog of originals, they take the entire history of American music and make it alive.

The band closed with Matthew Moore’s Space Captain and we all swayed as one. It burned slow in our souls, the chorus of “Learning to live together” ringing in our ears as we spilled out into the cold night, warm for the brilliance we had been bathed in.

They may play Southern rock, blues and soul, but what they really do is play the moment those sounds collide. It reminds you why live music matters when a band like Tedeschi Trucks walk on stage and make life a little bit better.

Set list: Hear My Dear, Fall In, Little by Little, Last Night in the Rain, Until You Remember, Down in the Flood, Isaac/Kebbi Jam, Let Me Get By, Hero*, Tangled Up in Blue, Had to Cry Today, Soul Sweet Song, The Sky Is Crying, Looking for Answers, Loving Cup**> Leaving Trunk**> Volunteered Slavery** E: Space Captain (* With Mike Elizondo on bass) (** With Nels Cline on guitar)

Side One, Side Two, and the Death of Discipline or How Streaming Killed The LP

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Listening to a record is ritual. You gently remove the vinyl from the sleeve, place it on the turntable and lower the tone arm. Twenty minutes later you lift it, flip the record and play side two.

Side one had the big opener, the one with the hook, and the radio single. Side two you’d get a little deeper, vulnerable or weird, and often find magic. It was a formula, one created by the constraints of the medium of the music’s reproduction, the LP, as much as the song length. The format directed decisions made by the musicians when deciding what would make the final cut.

There is beauty in this discipline. Twenty-three minutes maximum per side. You had a physical boundary, a hard stop. You had to earn each side. There were ruthless choices to be made. “Does this song deserve a larger audience?” “Does it belong on side one or is it a B-side for a single?” “Does it earn its spot or is this other one better?”

The ultimate editor was time, pitting songs against each other.

This dynamic made the greatest albums. They wouldn’t exist without it. It was a death match in the studio, every song fighting for a spot. Then came the sequencing and another fight. Track one, side one had to kick in your teeth while the side one closer had to make you want to flip the record and once you did you needed to find a warm welcome back.

Things were good, then there was something new, the compact disc, and the Pandora’s box it opened.

74 minute, pushing double LP space. All of a sudden artists had an extra 29 minutes or so. It was heralded as freedom. It was also marketed like freedom: musicians could give the fans everything.

Sadly, they did.

Editing? Optional. That tight ten song LP? Sixteen tracks of sprawl. Songs that would have been on the cutting room floor in 1979 were now Track 14, neatly sandwiched between a remix and a moody acoustic demo no one quite believed in. There was a bad case of bloat. Continuity disappeared with the death of Side One and Side Two. It was no longer a journey, it became a fall down a rabbit hole.

Then just as quickly things shifted again. Enter the internet and the emptying of Pandora’s box.

Time limits? That’s funny. No sides. No runtime. No physical format to provide some guardrail, some limit, some voice to say “Maybe cut this one.” You can upload everything now: half-baked demos, that jam that sounded good in the moment, the song you wrote taking a dump in under twelve minutes because you got to feed the algorithm. It was no longer about making an album, but producing output.

The art of keeping things locked in the vault had become extinct.

That is the problem, constraints make mediocre art great. Twenty minutes or so per side, you think like a storyteller. Every note must contribute something to the albums flow; you cut a decent song in favor of a great one. The fate of a song becomes argued like it is a life or death decision.

And it was.

There is a difference between a good album and the ones we call masterpieces and that is determined, often, by what we never heard. There are miles of tape in dusty studio storerooms holding thousands of hours of okay tracks that lost the argument. Thank God it happened and they died so the album could live.

That is the crux of the matter, there isn’t necessarily too much music, it is there is too little editing. We don’t need to hear every idea a band has, we need the ones that they fought to keep.

This is something vinyl knows.

That’s why we’re still flipping the record.

Counterculture in Collapse: FM Radio, Cultural Upheaval, and the Foundations of Punk Rock

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The alienation and social unrest found in the three chord hopped up music called Punk didn’t just appear in New York in the mid seventies. Long before CBGB’s became the epicenter for a new music there were bands pushing back against the corporatization of Rock and Roll. The polished, radio friendly sounds of bands like The Beach Boys, Beatles, Elvis and Motown had become passé while songs like “Louie Louie” by The Kingsman were pushing boundaries. The barely intelligible “Louie Louie” was actually considered subversive with the FBI investigating Richard Berry in February 1964 over complaints the lyrics were obscene. Nothing came of it, but the point was made; rock and roll was dangerous.

These new sounds were played fast and loud for a disenfranchised youth audience, fueling the dreams of hundreds of kids in high school rock bands pounding away on 2nd hand guitars. If you knew 3 chords and could play for 2 and a half minutes you could do this rock and roll thing. Groups like The Monks “I Hate You,” The Count Five “Psychotic Reaction” and The Sonics “Psycho” stripped back all the gloss and pomp. It was attitude over virtuosity. Teen angst unrestrained and amplified through a blown speaker. They were playing by their own set of rules.

You can say it started in 1955 when a new sound came across American radio. Sonny Burgess “Red Headed Woman,” Billy Lee Riley “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll,” Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” and of course Jerry Lee Lewis “Great Balls Of Fire” were all attitude and wild showmanship. They were pushing boundaries with their shows, lyrics and primal beat. In 1958 Link Wray upped the game, releasing “Rumble,” a down and dirty instrumental that Iggy Pop said inspired him to join a band. From this even rawer sounds like Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs “Wooly Bully”, The Kingsman’s “Louie Louie” and The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird” entered the mainstream consciousness, further pushing the idea of what rock and roll was.

It was even happening in the heart of Motown where Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith together with Rob Tyner, Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson started what would become the first cornerstone of Punk Rock’s foundation, The MC5. It was 1964 and the folkie movement had gained steam with the likes of Bob Dylan and Phil Oakes making protest music with acoustic instruments. It was there that the idea that you could protest with electric instruments just as easily was planted and over the next few years the band got tighter, began writing songs and by the late 60s were waiting for a chance to be released on the world.

American popular culture in 1967 took a 180 with what was known as the Summer of Love. A media construct to try and explain what was happening socially, musically and culturally in SF. Bands played long free form shows at various reclaimed ballrooms around the city and a reevaluation of what could and couldn’t be done within the context of a rock and roll show started. Sex and drugs were no longer seen as taboo and a new way of thinking was born. Sadly, the Utopia that was being sold didn’t last long and by 1968 the whole thing had become a shitshow.

A big factor in the decline of the SF scene was the rise of FM radio. KSAN in San Francisco had become a model for the wild west that was FM radio, playing deep album cuts, unknown bands and live performances, but what started as a means to share new sounds and a new philosophy to a larger audience was co-opted in 1968 by big media conglomerates to sell records. FM stations began to pop in small town America and bands like the Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service, whose long jams were favored on these formats, became stars. There was also an unintended consequence, it opened people’s minds and the kids began flocking to San Francisco to take part in free love, music and drugs. The problem was this perceived ‘unlimited freedom’ led down some dark roads and the Summer of love was over as quickly as it began in a haze of bad drugs and broken dreams. As FM became co-opted by the industry, a new underground energy sought to reclaim rock for the disaffected, paving the way for punk’s DIY ethos.

At the same time anger over the Vietnam war had begun to stoke serious upheaval in middle American. Children were pitted against parents and friends against neighbors, the Tet Offensive showed America losing a war they shouldn’t have been in, RFK and MLK were assassinated and the Democratic National Convention fell into chaos with cops beating kids in the streets. The call to peace and love began to fall on deaf ears with the daily assault of images of the war on television and the time was right for the MC 5. They became the soundtrack for the violence the country witnessed at the 1968 Democratic Convention and had found their voice.

By 1969 the SF scene had completely collapsed with the Hell’s Angels killing a concert goer at Altamont Speedway while The Rolling Stones played Sympathy For The Devil. Out of the ashes came the MC5’s seminal release Kick Out The Jams and they provided a much needed foil in American music to the sounds on the radio that had grown from a counterculture movement to a pop cliche. Recorded live at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom on October 30 and 31, 1968, it preached something radically different, embracing their militant activism of their manager, the poet, John Sinclair. They were throwing a different kind of Party.

The music they played was similar in some ways to the SF sound in as much as it was loose and favored longer solos, but it was differentiated by the intense edge of the songs, raw and unpolished, overtly political and not shying away from inciting violence. Because they were, in the end, a reaction against and the next logical step to the SF counterculture. Sadly, they didn’t find a mass market and even after getting a big feature in Rolling Stone, never were more than an underground band. By 1972 were done. Their influence continues to this day, but at the time it left the underground with a void waiting to be filled.

Flower power had become a tourist trap, a glittering corpse of failed idealism, and bands like the MC5 appeared to fill the void. Slick production and love and light lyrics gave way to music that could punch you in the gut; three chords and maximum noise with lyrics rooted in a spit in the face of authority manifesto fueled by casual nihilism.

From the smoke filled basements in Detroit the sound of kids who were sick of the charade called FM radio with it’s sixties idealism appeared. It answered the call for unpolished, raw, uncut music. It wasn’t polite. It wasn’t pretty. It was a musical middle finger to a society that had failed the youth with the promise of freedom and instead delivering disappointment. They answered with a revolution made up of amps, sneakers, and sneers.

Review: Johnny Blue Skies Goes Rogue On Mutiny After Midnight

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The artist formerly known as Sturgill Simpson has always been an outlaw, the kind who kicks open the bar door and asks why the jukebox keeps playing the same 6 songs. With Mutiny After Midnight, released under his alter ego Johnny Blue Skies, he’s taking it a step further and kicking the whole damn jukebox down the stairs.

Luckily we get to dance on the wreckage. Dance to a record that is a horny late night groove throw down. Equal parts outlaw country, disco, and psychedelic experiment, we find an LP full of bar-band verve when the clock is calling closing time. The music you put on when the lights are dim and the conversation turns strange.

With his backing band The Dark Clouds we get a class in old school rhythm. The songs move, and make you move, but not like the suits in Nashville would like it. It is loose, hypnotic, as much a jam session as a tightly constructed studio product. The guitars scintillate while stretching grooves, the keys swell and the drums and bass are locked in with the swagger you have on a Friday night when everyone gets paid and everyone wants to get laid.

The lyrics zig zag between frustration at the political landscape in America, keeping your dark side in check, and the half horny musings of a midnight philosopher. We find a broken America, full of bruised bodies begging for freedom, recounted with Sturgill’s wry humor and biting criticism. His sincerity is that irreverent shrug, it never feels preachy and that is the magic.

This is an artist who understands absurdity, he can take topics and phrasing that make the Music Row pundits cringe and turn them into an invitation to party. It is rugged charisma, provocative but playful, that has you chuckling as you’re cutting the linoleum carpet.

Critics may call out that the album feels unfinished. Those critics don’t understand that is why it works, why it breathes. It is trying to be alive, not perfect.

Johnny Blue Skies is going up against the machine, eschewing the trap of chasing algorithms and meticulous branding to make a dystopian disco protest joint. It is a greasy, naughty, sometimes deranged manifesto about sex, drugs, and what it really means to be an American.

Not the album America asked for, but maybe the one it needs.

The Records Keep Talking: Joe McDonald Remembered

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There are voices that live in another time and place for me, faint voices that let you step into the past. You can pull them up on You Tube, but the intimacy of sitting in a bedroom, black light melting the lamp shade, is gone. Country Joe McDonald, with The Fish, or solo, was one of those voices for me. Always whispering. Now all that remains are those artifacts, the well worn vinyl.

I knew him from watching Woodstock. The iconic “FUCK” cheer was enough to hook me at 13. Then there was Rock and Soul Music and I was off to the record store.

In those days finding records was a sport and an art. You had to get to some pretty weird spots to find the best selections. Most of the Country Joe albums I had were bought on one trip to Florida.

Like most rock and roll kids, part of the obsession was flipping through rows of records. Weighing the cover, any previous knowledge of the band. Reading any notes to figure out the musicians. Hoping to find something dangerous or mysterious, something to make you feel alive.

Remember, you were spending your allowance, you had to be strategic. Today you can hear anything on a whim, back then you spent that money you were invested.

It was the summer before eighth grade and I was under the influence of the Summer Of Love. Country Joe fit nicely in that box. After a while you realize how much a part of the story of the sixties he was. This was on the ground reporting from a tumultuous time in America.

It was the happenstance appearance at Woodstock, getting everyone to chant an obscenity, that launched him into the counter culture subconscious. It was a finger to the war in Vietnam and made you believe music could change the world, an idea that ran deep through his catalog.

Here We Go Again may be my favorite album of his with The Fish. It leans early into the move from straight psychedelic to the country influence the scene morphed into in the early seventies. You can hear the road worn longing just below the warm friendly hug of the lilting opening track.

This is the sound of someone who has spent lifetime toiling at their art. It is lived in, honest, OK with the chaos. It is putting forth the belief that we need to believe in music. You come back because it is real, there is no fancy ending or neat resolution in Donovan’s Reef or Crystal Blues.

Still it was an odd solo album, War War War, that really was it for me. It spoke to my naive sensibilities. I was just discovering the power of poetry and McDonald’s brilliant re-purposing of Robert Service’s poems anout World War One couldn’t have dovetailed for me more perfectly. It was the rawness, I closed my eyes and could see Joe in a tattered uniform relating Service’s brilliant accounting of war.

It is the weight of two eras and my own personal battles suspended in a perfect liminal space. It covers the spcetrum of human emotion, a lot of anger, but humor too, and sadness, and even an optimistic hope. It was prologue and prelude.

Storytelling, laid bare with voice and guitar, is a difficult endeavor. McDonald did it with wide eyed grace, showing you the horror while keeping you grounded in the present. Right there, spinning on my turntable, he was instilling in me the need for peace.

His voice draws you in. It is unpretentious, he has seen the absurdity and sang out in defiance. Earthy, witty, wry, it was as much protest and cosmic joke, a spirit from another time whose echoes reverberate. When protest music works it nudges you toward the realization that this is the voice of the everyday people, not because it shouts.

That was Joe McDonald. A voice I will carry with me in memories of worn vinyl. Rest easy, your songs will march on.

Ripple Effect or Stop Me If You Heard This Jam Before

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You are at a show. The local Grateful Dead cover band is rocking the house. Then you notice for the last twenty minutes you hadn’t really been listening. Your brain had been vacillating between “Where is the bathroom?” and getting lost in the glow of someone waving the flashlight on their phone like it’s 1979. Both guitarists are staring down at their fingers running the fret baord like they are trying to decipher a hidden truth from the cosmos. The drummer and bassist are locked into the same mid tempo rock groove they have been playing since Clinton was in office. Someone to your right is singing off key and the wrong verse.

Then you have a revelation; ‘I’m done with this.’

Don’t misconstrue it, this isn’t anything against the sacred ground I place the Grateful Dead on. That is something that is vast as continents. There are entire emotional ecosystems that live inside songs like Terrapin Station, Let It Grow and Eyes Of The World; songs so encompassing they map large parts of your life.

The problem is trying to recreate that.

There was a time when seeing Grateful Dead cover bands filled my social calendar. It had ritual, an unpredictable predictability. Every midsize city in America had at least one Dead cover band that has been playing Wednesday nights since before we had dial-up internet. It was as dependable as the sunset when you wanted to check out for a few hours mid work week.

Then at some point gravity shifted.

The musicianship was the first crack in the facade.

Don’t twist it, there are a lot of fantastic players who work their nine to five all week and can replicate Jerry Garcia’s mystic tone. They know it like their own DNA. The runs that pierce like shards of ice. The bastardization of the Bakersfield outlaw country twang. The free jazz sprawl that sounds like a demented saxophone.

On the other side are a lot of bands that are, at best, fine.

Not terrible or mortifying on any level, just fine.

The keyboard is nailing that Brent Myland early eighties slick. The guitar player knows the runs like the back of his hand. The bassist is doing jazz runs over the drummer who does the work of two drummers without derailing the train. They play St Stephen better then the Dead did and can launch Darkstar into a solid fifteen minute voyage through outer space.

But it feels like looking at a picture that was photoshopped.

The Dead were never clean, never perfect. That was the beauty of it, the potential for degeneration into chaos at any moment. Tempos are a suggestion. Everyone solos at once. Jams turn into runaway lawn mowers.

What held it together was their sixth sense.

That is what is so sorely missing with cover bands, you get the skeleton without the flesh. They know where the heart goes in a jam, but there is no blood. It is like watching Bob Ross do paint by numbers.

The room starts to morph. It feels weird.

You go to enough Dead cover band shows and it reads like a formula for a sitcom. There are the guys who think they are still on the lot at RFK in 1989. The couple who slow dance to everything from Ripple to Truckin’. A few college kids getting beer drunk.

And then there are the characters who had run around your life at some point, in a forgotten past.

You know what I’m talking about.

People who you hung out with in high school or college. They shared the same orbit as you because you were both navigating this scene and discovering the same musical worlds. You see them once every few years at best, mostly within the gravitational pull of Dead cover band shows.

A tap on the shoulder. An awkward hug.

“Hey MAN! It’s been years!”

You pull up the card catalog of memory, try to put a face to a name. There are fragments of a conversation, but it is a time or place lost to alcohol or LSD.

Now comes the small talk.

“What are you up to?”

“You still (arbitrary activity)?”

“How is (person you think you both know)?”

The band is still chugging on, roaring through a 3rd reprise of Viola Lee Blues. You are nodding “That’s crazy” for the twelfth time and mapping out how to get to the front door so you can grab a smoke.

Small talk is the worst kind of improvisation because no one says anything. A lot of “I’ve been busy,” and “Things are good.” Maybe a mention of a job or kid or big move coming up.

Searching for some connection in the memory of a dream you once shared.

The moment you realize you are no longer part of that tribe.

At one time Dead culture was a secret handshake. You would be walking through the mall and see someone with a Steal Your Face shirt and you would knowingly nod. You knew they were your people without saying a word. It was an underground community.

But you can’t stay underground forever.

There is distance as you stand there watching the band launch into Bertha for the four millionth time. The spark you felt before is gone, recognition without joy. As if you are suddenly back in high school. The hallways are the same, the smells, the whirl of bodies in motion, but the emotional nervous system is gone. There is a void. What these walls are remembering doesn’t exist anymore.

Maybe it is recapitulation on some level.

The Grateful Dead’s catalog demands endless reexamination. They did it every night for thirty years because they always believed the magic depended on it. They could take you to the deepest reaches of the galaxy and land you gently as you please on the other side.

This is a Herculean task for any band, let alone a cover band. The unpredictable element is what suffers. The songs can feel lived in, but without being there when they were built you don’t know what is behind the walls.

You can write the set list driving to the show. A big opener, a few shorter warm ups, a big jam or two to close the first set. Second set you get the jam vehicles, a Dark Star or Playing In The Band, maybe even a Terrapin Station if they are feeling themselves.

Time is frozen. The music and the audience.

1980s Deadhead culture is in full force. People don their uniforms and the room becomes a museum full or tie dye, patchouli, and Birkenstock. If it only felt alive instead of like a historical reenactment.

Evolution is all that maters ultimately, constant mutation and bringing in new styles like the Grateful Dead did. When they failed it was still interesting because they were pushing the envelope.

A cover band by definition does the opposite, capturing a band in a place and time.

That is nostalgia impersonating investigation and as you get older nostalgia starts to seem strange. No longer does it serve as a safe corner where your memory is of consequence or searches for comfort that the music that made you still existed in the wild.

The corner becomes suffocating.

The room is full of chatter on an endless loop. “Best show ever,” “favorite Franklin’s Tower,” mushrooms or acid, who made the best grilled cheese on lot.

But you are far from that anonymous hockey arena’s parking lot.

You have found other parking lots and sometimes just silence.

You outgrow things, not because there is anything wrong with it, but because you got everything you needed from it.

Last night the band started a stirring version of Brokedown Palace late in the night. Everyone drifted side to side in unison. People whispered the lyrics in quiet reverence.

I stood there watching, an observer in a church that was no longer mine.

I love that song, it can bring a tear to my eye, but the feeling I remember sharing that deep connection with everyone in the room had quietly expired.

The music was what I loved, but here it became background noise to a social ritual that was no longer mine.

I am mourning a community that helped me become who I am, that was home, but now seemed like a place that wasn’t even comfortable to come back to. All the people I used to be fill the room, you can hear the small talk and debates echo.

And the music doesn’t stop.

The band launches into another rave up. Someone spills a drink. I go outside to grab a smoke.

It’s not that anything is inherently wrong in the moment, just my inner compass is telling me my North star is somewhere else. There is no anger at the band or judgment of the people who still find salvation here. I love that they still have that, alive inside something that meant everything to me once.

The band played one more song as the clock approached midnight. The crowd move in closer to the stage to bask in the glow one last time tonight.

And maybe that is all that matters. The music exists for the people who need it. Sometimes I am sure I still will, but for now I’ll just slip out the side door. It’s like hopping off a carousel and leaving the gold ring for the next person.

In a few weeks they will play again.

I am OK with missing it.

The Day the Guitar Solo Died Or Why the ’90s Didn’t Kill Rock, They Just Made It Smaller

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The guitar solo was once the pinnacle of rock excess, all sex and noise and youth.

You heard the opening riff of Van Halen’s Running With The Devil and it wasn’t just a song, it was a celebration of freedom. When AC/DC added cannons and a two ton Hell’s Bell to their stage show, it felt earned. Excess was the point. If Led Zeppelin wanted to sing about hobbits and Mordor before calling down the thunder gods, sign me up.

Seventies rock built monuments.
Eighties rock poured on gasoline and lit a match.

Then the ’90s showed up with a fire extinguisher and a thrift-store flannel.

If you asked Billy Corgan he would put forth the idea MTV betrayed rock. Or should I say the ‘myth’ that a room full of pencil pushers in New York woke up one day and said “Let’s kill rock and replace it with DJs and boy bands.”

I guess if you need a villain. I think it is a little more banal. MTV didn’t cancel rock, rock just stopped being so much fun.

The Main Character Syndrome

Rock was the universe in the ’70s with a gravitational pull that extended across the radio dial. Pink Floyd charted maps of the human psyche. Rush turned Romantic era poetry into rock anthems. You listened, but also had whole new world’s opened to you.

As America limped into the ’80s all subtlety was gone. Rock was at a crossroads between Punk and Disco. Blondie became huge, but weren’t sure what they were. Punk had gone underground and disco was dying, so rock did what it was supposed to and leaned in. We got Bon Jovi single handedly saving the hairspray industry, Def Leppard taking studio wizardry to heights previously only imagined for rock gods, and Metallica giving us theatrical precision wrapped in fury.

The look became cartoonish, the stage shows overblown spectacle where every song ended in an anthemic chorus, and every new release an event of epic proportion. Across the country teenagers tuned MTV into must see TV, for bands the video became identity. The single was cool on the radio, but seeing the video was what everyone would be talking about in school the next day.

MTV amplified rocks every crazy impulse.

Getting Smaller All The Time

And then there was flannel.

The ’80s looked right in the camera and screamed “I am the show,” the ’90s shifted it’s gaze and said “don’t look at me.” The over indulgent guitar solos had been replaced with the Doll’s mantra “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.” And when you got to the chorus it wasn’t overblown, that would be dishonest. The big hair was gone, the studio clarity morphed into fuzz, and the ambition turned modest.

But it wasn’t an accident, it was a correction.

All the eyeliner and polytechnics in the world couldn’t make rock feel real again. Pearl Jam sang like their lives depended on it. Alice In Chains made you look at things you couldn’t unsee. Weezer took awkward and made it an art form.

And it worked.

But the why is what no one talks about, rock got smaller.

Gone were the 10 minute opuses. Solos became compact, but fierce. Rock shows filled with lights and props were casually throw into a backroom. It was as if rock had developed an intolerance of the excess that was it’s superpower.

The Bigger The Better

You can say that MTV pivoted here because it hated what rock had become, but it it is probably something simpler; rock stopped being a spectacle.

Having hour on hour of what amounted to anti-performance videos made it hard to keep viewers engaged. It is an uphill battle to sell attitude when it rejects attention. MTV had a void to fill, enter hip-hop, pop, r&b, and reality TV. The Real World was more in line with the old rock ethic of shock, drama, and need.

What rock had become was a landscape of fiercely loyal camps. The Pumpkins with their faux grandeur. Soundgarden roaring as mono-culture was fragmenting. And then Radiohead flushing the whole idea of a rock formula down the cultural throne.

That wasn’t MTV decentralizing rock, it was rock cannibalizing itself.

The Reactionary Generation

The ’90s was what it wasn’t.

Not glossy or flashy or virtuosic for the sake of virtuosity.

The problem is that the veracity of their movement wasn’t designed to build empires. It instead stood amongst the rubble, took a deep breath, and reset to rocks real roots.

The ’70s drew the blueprint.
The ’80s built the mansion.
The ’90s hung a sign on the door that read “Please remove your shoes.”

For some that was shrinkage, for other salvation.

That is the painful truth; the ’90s made rock less dominant, not worse.

It wasn’t unified. The theatrics were gone, so was the myth. Rock was no longer the loudest thing and MTV was built on loud. The guitar solo didn’t really die, it just was relegated to the back burner.

What is unpolished to one person is anti-corporate rock to another, but if your version of rock was built on the epic anthem and a solo that was like edging, the ’90s can seem tame.

And rock was never meant to be tame.

The Best Band You Never Heard Of: TWEN

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TWEN is what your favorite band wants to be, a band that never blinks. Their songs arrive the way a great bar story does; midway through, a little drunk, and emotionally over committed, but somehow ending with everyone singing along whether they meant to or not. It is the sound of a conversation that started yesterday and will continue tomorrow. They understand what a lot of bands seem to forget, rock and roll isn’t supposed to be impressed with itself.

Jane Fitzsimmons’ voice moves effortlessly from intimate to electrifying, pulling you between vulnerability and defiance. Her lyrics respect the listener, there is no myth making or redemption arc. You know she isn’t going to bullshit you, just lucidity, tension, affinity, and forward motion. Sweetness isn’t a default so much as a risk she keeps taking. Guitarist Ian Jones is the perfect foil, complementing her lyrics while challenging the listener. He is grounding while pushing the songs to reckless abandon; an anchor and an accelerant. The songs feel lived in, there isn’t any cosplay here or posturing as outsiders.

While the songs themselves are quietly devastating, the way they are realized by the full band takes them next level. There are no neat resolutions here, no anthems either. What we find is a map of the aftermath, when you have already said it all and are just stuck with the memory of saying it. These songs build and then linger, haunting, staring back this is real.

There’s a strong sense that TWEN is comfortable in their skin. They survived every scene without belonging to any of them. Shoegaze wanted them hazier. Indie wanted them smarter. Punk wanted them punker. They said “No thanks,” instead crafting something unique from the disparate parts. That’s not irony. That’s clarity.

Live, TWEN taps into the idea of rock music as a shared nervous system, humming between stage and crowd. There is a loose intensity, a trusting in the moment, as tempos shift and songs bleed into one another. They treat rock and roll like a job. They show up, sweat, maybe bleed a little, collect their drink tickets, and do it again tomorrow.

Rock and roll dies when it becomes a therapy session and we live in a world where a lot of modern indie rock feels obsessed with catharsis. TWEN offers companionship, avoiding sentimentality by facing consequence. What happens after you say the thing. After you stay. After you leave. After you realize you’re still thinking about it months later while walking home from work.

These songs don’t fix your feelings. They sit with them. They light a cigarette then ask one good question and let the silence answer.

That is maybe the most rock and roll move left.

Phish and Trips: How British Psych and Prog Influenced Phish

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Phish are often framed by their relationship to American Psychedelic music, particularly The Grateful Dead. There are some similarities in their efforts to create a community through music, but musically they are often miles apart. 

A song like Phish’s Simple is different lyrically and musically from The Dead’s Playing In The Band, but they are both rooted in a psychedelic aesthetic. Listening to both will make you realize it is hard to nail down what psychedelic music is.

Some interesting questions present themselves:

Is psychedelic music the blues and jazz based improvisations of The Grateful Dead? Is it the carefully constructed studio work of Pink Floyd?

Taking it a step further, can psychedelic music be seen as a unifying aesthetic? Is it rooted in Tim Leary’s mantra of “turn on, tune in and drop out” or is it just an umbrella term for a diverse collection of bands and sounds?

In the end it depends on your point of reference. Fans of bands that came out of San Francisco in the late 60s will have a different take than someone who looks at Syd Barrett as their standard bearer. 

American Psych was rhythm and blues based with open-ended jams. The lyrics were rooted in folk and blues tropes or made political statements. British Psych embraced composed songs that left little room for improvisation. The lyrics concerned themselves with telling stories that were divorced from reality or recounting mundane activities.

This gives us two lines, music and lyrics, to follow as we explore if Phish falls more in the British or American camps. We will then weigh this against Phish in relation to the offspring of American and British Psych, Country Rock in America and Prog in England.

The Lyrics:

1969 found America in turmoil and The Jefferson Airplane were on the forefront of a cultural revolution. Their lyrics had turned from songs of love and peace to a call to arms and nowhere is this more clear than on the title cut to their Volunteers album

“Look what’s happening out in the streets

Got a revolution”

Meanwhile in England we have Kieth Emerson’s band, The Nice, releasing their 3rd album. The lyrics are cryptic, mining mythology and religion, as in Azrael Revisited, while highlighting Emerson’s keyboard prowess.

“They ask me what grey thought has just clouded my eye

I told them that Azrael looked down on their decline

What grey thought, if any, crossed the landscape of your mind

I told them that Azrael looks down on you from behind”

Phish falls on the British side here. Songs like The Lizards, Fee and Esther are vignettes that embrace fantasy in their lyrics and complexity in their composition. There are very few political statements or calls to arms in Phish’s work.

Point British Psych

The Music:

1969 is also significant in how each camp executed the composition and performance of their songs. An open ended jam like Quicksilver Messenger Service’s take on Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? compared to King Crimson and their structured song In The Court Of The Crimson King (including The Return of the Fire Witch & The Dance of the Puppets) tells us a lot about where Phish falls.

Quicksilver was typical of the American Psych scene in 1969. They played a groove based jam style. Abandoning the basic structure of the song, like in jazz, the band improvises over that basic melody for 20+ minutes.

At the same time in England was Robert Fripp, Greg Lake and the rest of King Crimson’s first incarnation playing composed pieces whose lyrics recounted a hero’s journey, much like Phish and their Gamehendge saga. 

Phish is more akin to Crimson with their multi part thematic pieces like YEM and Fluffhead. We don’t see blues based boogie extravaganzas with Phish. They abandoned American Psych as a viable path two years into their career, focusing instead on compositions that challenged them as a band while also challenging the listener.

Point British Psych

As the 70s started we saw the movement of both American and British Psych away from their roots. In America the sound went back to basics and became Country Rock. England went the other way becoming Prog with its complex arrangements very similar to the aforementioned Fluffhead.

Phish did incorporate some American styles like bluegrass and straight rock-and-roll into their repertoire, but composed songs were the focus, at least through Billy Breathes. This is where we find a deep connection between Phish and British Psych. 

American Psych in its early days focused on glorifying the Summer Of Love. The Turtles Happy Together or Young Rascals Groovin’ were straightforward with their message of peace and love, but as the 60s ended things changed.

Rising from the ashes of Altamont the SF sound took a radical turn. The wild electric sound of the Summer Of Love was replaced with acoustic guitars and well crafted lyrics. Albums like The Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead and The Byrds’ Sweetheart of The Radio let listeners know American Psych had grown up and made peace with itself.

British Psych’s focus is on telling stories and creating musical landscapes that recreate the psychedelic experience. A song like Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade Of Pale or Pink Floyd’s Bike transported the listener to another time and place. 

In the early 70s British Psych morphed into Prog. It was a logical extension as the songs became longer and the lyrics more metaphysical. We can see a direct line to Phish in songs like The Music Box by Genesis or Starship Trooper by Yes.

The use of classical motifs as in Starship Trooper is a defining characteristic from Prog’s earliest days. It is a thread that holds British Psych and Prog together. It is also something employed by Phish in their composed pieces.

Trey told Guitar World in 2013:

“The sound of Bach’s music has always appealed to me.

The use of arpeggios in “You Enjoy Myself” is definitely influenced by Bach.”

Procol Harum used Bach’s Air for the melody in Whiter Shade Of Pale and King Crimson embraced the modernism movement in classical music. Genesis then expanded on this idea with albums like Foxtrot and The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Trey has often talked about his love for both King Crimson and Peter Gabriel era Genesis, he even spoke at Genesis’ induction into the R&R HOF.

He explained further in a NY Times feature in 2019, noting how Phish was unlike the Dead, and by extension Am Psych:

“At 14, 15, 16, I worshiped at the idol of Peter Gabriel — the first couple of Genesis albums and then his solo albums. He was like a god. Prog rock was our thing. Then, through Peter Gabriel and “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,” I was introduced to Brian Eno’s music, and I had the ’70s Eno albums on perma-loop. I didn’t get into the Grateful Dead until 1980, ’81. That was when my parents got divorced and I went to boarding school and people there liked the Dead. So we would go to shows. We took acid. It was great. But at the same time I was going to see Frank Zappa and Sun Ra. King Crimson’s “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic” was one of my favorite records. I also worshiped at the idol of early Talking Heads. So if you listen to the first couple of Phish albums, they don’t sound anything like the Grateful Dead. I was more interested in Yes”

Which makes 3 for British Psych and 0 for American Psych. 

Throughout their career, Anastasio has continued this worshipping in songs like Guyute, Time Turns Elastic and Scents And Subtle Sounds. On the other side, they have also shown a deep reverence for British Psych in the covers they play, particularly Jon Fishman.

There was a time when most nights Fishman would take center stage with Trey on drums to serenade the crowd like only he can. Of the many songs he has attempted, he has covered more Pink Floyd / Syd Barrett songs than any other artist in his repertoire. No Good Trying, Bike, Terrapin, Baby Lemonade and Love You have all gotten the vacuum treatment.

They are fun and perhaps give us a clue where Fishman takes his inspiration from when writing lyrics. Songs like Gumbo and Tube take more from the unique British sense of lyricism in Barrett’s songs than from anything Robert Hunter wrote. They are surreal looks into a strange world, reminiscent of a modern day wonderland with all its pitfalls and dangers. 

As we touched on, British Psych is recreating the psychedelic experience through music, while Am Psych exists to enhance the psychedelic experience through music. The distinction between where fans of a band like The Grateful Dead’s and Phish falls is here. Mike has commented on this:

“There’s definitely some crossover (between Phish and Grateful Dead fans) —we both appeal to somewhat of a hippie-ish audience, and we both jam a lot, and this and that— but the people who really like the Dead probably don’t like us. Because the music is different enough, and the rhythms are different, and the attitude and even the sense of humor is way different.”

An almost British sense of humor and approach to songwriting that has served Phish well. It’s true that Phish does not write many multipart compositions anymore, but we can still hear Psych and Prog influences in a song like Petrichor on Big Boat. Sounding almost like a lost Gabriel era Genesis composition, it is adventurous but comfortable, a testament to the British Psych and Prog that influenced Phish on so many levels