Dylan, Jagger, Springsteen – and more – in Boomer rock bonanza

Has there ever been more activity in the Boomer rock marketplace? I can’t remember such frenzy: nearly all the big beasts in the dadrock jungle are offering new product for the autumn sales season:

24 September
Joni Mitchell, Shine

1 October
Bob Dylan, Dylan 3CD
Mick Jagger, Very Best Of
Bruce Springsteen, Magic

22 October
Neil Young, Chrome Dreams 2
Van Morrison, Still On Top – The Greatest Hits 3CD

(All dates - UK release).

While all these outstanding artists are firm favourites in this grown-up parish, the two releases I’m savouring most are the discs by Jagger (an under-rated solo performer) and Mitchell (a welcome return by one of the giants of 20thC music).

Reviews of all these releases to follow – and your reviews are very welcome.


Gerry Smith

Remixes, Top Ten composers, new Miles product

* Three cheers for remixes of sacred recordings

Promoting Dylan, the new 3CD compilation album, Columbia will release next week a remix of Dylan’s mid-‘60s recording of Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine.

It’s already provoked righteous anger from some of the faithful, but not from here. Remixing is an acceptable way of finding younger markets for classic rockpop – it’s been a huge success with giants like Elvis, Ella, Miles, Bob Marley and Nina Simone, so why should Dylan be immune?

The kids get drawn in. More conservative listeners can simply ignore the remixes – they complement the originals, but they don’t replace them. The classic recordings can still be enjoyed.



* Top Ten Composers

The Independent newspaper is currently giving away a series of 14 handsome short booklets entitled The Great Composers, by Michael Steen.

As the newspaper is using the series to build circulation and can thus be expected to be issuing them in order of popularity, its top ten ranking is revealing:

1. Mozart
2. Beethoven
3. Bach
4. Handel
5. Tchaikovsky
6. Schubert
7. Mendelssohn
8. Verdi
9. Puccini
10.Haydn

Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn apart, I’d say that this ranking would be endorsed by most grown-ups who love classical music.



* More exciting new Miles Davis releases

Sixteen years after the maestro’s death, “new” Miles Davis continues to appear. Autumn 2007 releases exciting me include:

* Evolution Of The Groove, a 5 track (14 minute!) EP of remixes

* The Complete On The Corner Sessions – 6CD box set

* a new Rudy Van Gelder Edition of another of the great Prestige recording, Steamin’

* Live At The 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival, almost featuring the second great quintet (George Coleman hadn’t then been replaced by Wayne Shorte.

Yummy!




Gerry Smith

Exciting autumn season new releases

Autumn is the season for new music – a flood of new CD releases, as well as the start of the new performance season.

New CDs for autumn 2007 causing much excitement in these parts include:

Grown-up rockpop:
* Shine by Joni Mitchell
* Magic by Bruce Springsteen

and two compilations:
* The Very Best Of Mick Jagger, and
* Tony Bennett Sings The Ultimate American Songbook, Vol 1

Jazz:
* Herbie Hancock – River: the joni letters

Classical:
* Maria by Cecilia Bartoli

Keep an eye on Music for Grown-Ups for further news/reviews of these, and more.



Gerry Smith

Private musical passions

I’d have expected Private Passions, an upmarket Desert Island Discs which I’ve listened to religiously since launch (Sundays 1200, BBC Radio 3) to reveal many of its subjects as grown-up music lovers with eclectic tastes.

Not so. With some exceptions (step forward, Elvis Costello), most of the middle-aged creatives and public figures who appear have drearily predictable, rigid, genre-bound musical passions.

An analysis of the choices of music made in the first ten years of the programme shows JS Bach as favourite, and Mozart second. OK so far. But Miles Davis and Bob Dylan have both attracted less than 10% of the plays of these two classical giants – well behind such mediocrities as Janacek, Ravel and Sibelius.

Janacek - more important than Miles or Dylan? Gimme a break!

Private Passions is a fine programme but it needs to cast the net wider to avoid an endless succession of musical stiffs - narrow-minded genre prisoners who’ll probably never grow up.


Gerry Smith

Springsteen exhibition and limited edition artwork

Thanks to Guy White at Birmingham’s innovative Snap Galleries:

“Next up at Snap: The Swamps of Jersey - Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith and Southside Johnny - photographs by Frank Stefanko: our next exhibition starts Saturday 29th September - come and meet Frank Stefanko on the first day if you're around, and download the catalogue here:

http://homepage.mac.com/guywhite/FileSharing2.html

“Bruceville: seems like a bit of a Bruce-fest at the moment, but for a really nice Xmas gift idea, check out this exclusive limited edition "Bruceville" map of New Jersey by renowned New York based illustrator Aaron Meshon, available now for GBP 175.

http://homepage.mac.com/guywhite/FileSharing4.html

“Nebraska sessions by David Michael Kennedy: take a look at some exquisite limited edition platinum palladium prints from the 1982 Nebraska sessions by David Michael Kennedy, including the bleak yet beautiful cover shot.

http://homepage.mac.com/guywhite/FileSharing5.html


Snap Galleries Limited, Fort Dunlop, Fort Parkway, Birmingham B24 9FD
www.snapgalleries.com; email: info@snapgalleries.com

This Week's Music for Grown-Ups on Radio/TV

Your exclusive listening/watching guide… thanks to compiler Mike Ollier:


RADIO

Weds BBC2 23.00 ~ 23.30
* The Coal Miner's Daughter: The Loretta Lynn story
A repeat of the Loretta's rags-to-riches story arc.

Thurs BBCR2 22.00 ~ 23.00
* Seven More Days That Rocked The World: Alan Freed: Payola Scandal (5/7). At last, a decent story that perhaps lives up to the title for once.

Fri BBCR6 21.00 ~ 22.00
* Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan: Colours
If Carling made radio programmes, they would be like this! Another wonderfully warm and witty hour with Bob and the likes of Jimi Hendrix et al.

Fri BBCR3 22.30 ~ 23.30
* Jazz Library
Buddy Rich bangs some things.

Fri BBCR3 23.30 ~ 01.00
* Jazz On Three
Drummer Jeff 'Tain' Watts recorded at the Jazz Café, London and featuring David Gilmour on guitar.


TV

Don't miss the greatest TV drama ever, as The Sopranos (E4, Sundays and repeats Tuesdays) moves menacingly towards its finale, with its usual great soundtrack.

Fri BBC4 20.30 ~ 21.00
* Transatlantic Sessions
Second of a six part series featuring the cream of the Irish/Scottish music community playing in session with Americana acts. Music directors are dobro-man Jerry Douglas and fiddler Aly Bain. This week features Eddi Reader.

Fri BBC4 21.00 ~22.30
* Factory: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays
The story of Tony (sorry, Anthony) Wilson, the Hacienda, Factory Records and Manchester's rise on the popular culture tide of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. Excellent.

That Led Zeppelin reunion – encore

Thanks to Mike Ollier:

“RE: Zep ~ unfortunately I don't think it is all dad-rock... being a music lecturer in college I can tell you who the majority of the students like.

“I love it when the students accuse me of being an old fart, I always reply '‘Scuse me, which one of us is wearing The Doors/Led Zep/Deep Purple T-shirt)?’

“The most popular groups amongst 16 year olds are Led Zeppelin, Free, Queen, Gnu's n Roses, Leornard Skinner etc etc... it's depressing. Those that don't like the above like Death Metal and someone called Killswitch Engage and Trivium.”

That Led Zeppelin reunion

Announcement of the Led Zeppelin reunion gig in London provoked a mixed reaction in these parts.

Yes, they were a seminal band, quintessential musicians for grown-ups, with a back catalogue which stands up as absolutely key rock. And if their dadrock fanbase wants a Heritage Rock Nostalgiafest, good luck to them. Ditto some other recent dadrock reunions, notably by The Police.

But I wouldn’t go to either gig, even if sent free tickets. Unlike some other oldies who are still touring – notably Dylan, Neil Young, Van the Man, and even the Stones -Zep and the Police chose long ago to quit as vital creative artists.

There’s far too much original music for grown-ups around to spend time on artistically irrelevant reunions.




Gerry Smith

Video promoting new Dylan album

Dylan, the 3CD compilation album due on 1 October, is set to be the autumn’s biggest rockpop launch.

The mid-‘60s Dylan song Most Likely Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine has been remixed for release as a single. The video of the single is to be aired on Channel 4 TV on Sunday night (officially, Monday 17 September 12:05am - 12:10am). Finger on the VHS button… .

If you can’t wait, it’s on YouTube, now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCeKkJlMJDQ

Record label Sony have tried to generate a controversy… should record producer Ronson have been allowed to mess with Dylan’s sacred catalogue, blah, blah. Yawn, yawn.

Regardless of the merits of the recording, the TV clip underlines what we already knew – pop video might be a powerful promo tool, but it’s a vacuous creative medium. To watch pop vids you need to be very hard up for something to do.



Gerry Smith

Joe Zawinul RIP

Joe Zawinul, who died yesterday, was a great musician for grown-ups. He leaves a rich legacy, not least In A Silent Way, one of Music for Grown-Ups’ favourite albums of all.

I saw him playing live in London eight years ago. He was inspirational. I was spellbound:



Joe Zawinul, London Barbican, November 1999

We spent last night at a stunning double-header at the London Jazz Festival, in the magnificent Barbican Hall.

Main attraction was Joe Zawinul, the man who actually wrote In A Silent Way, and played on it (and several other Miles discs). After branching off into Weather Report in the early 1970s, Zawinul started exploring the outer reaches of innovative music and is now deep in a very satisfying fusion-meets-worldbeat groove. He's still one of the biggest names in the world of jazz.

A deeply enjoyable gig, remarkable for: the array of instruments; the free-form structure, where players know in advance the message, and the language, but not the actual vocabulary they will use; and, perhaps most of all, the democratic style the great Joe Zawinul brings to the stage - he's in charge, but he makes sure all the musicians get plenty of time in the limelight, showing their chops, and he visibly exults in their performance.

Very engaging gig, if rather more cerebral than trumpetmeister Mark Isham's opener.


Gerry Smith

PJ Harvey and Brett Anderson spearhead Royal Festival Hall’s return as top venue

After several years’ closure for substantial rebuilding work, London’s Royal Festival Hall, which used to be Music for Grown-Ups’ favourite English venue, reopened this summer and is quickly re-establishing itself with a typically intelligent, challenging autumn programme.

In addition to a high quality classical roster, rockpop highlights include:

* PJ Harvey, acoustic, on Sat 29 September

* Brett Anderson, former Suede frontman, on Sat 20 October


Very, very promising…


http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk



Gerry Smith

High quality Pavarotti TV obit

Many of yesterday’s radio/TV tributes to Pavarotti hit the wrong note in this parish. It was mainly the queue of TV-friendly celeb “opera” stars who sell albums by the shedload, but who wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a proper opera house, that drove me to the off switch several times in the day.

But BBC1 TV only had to pick off the shelf an Arena programme it made in 2004, Pavarotti – The Last Tenor. The beautiful 90 minute film tracked Pavarotti, with hand-held camera, around the world in 2003/2004, mixing in career-spanning performance footage with archives and home movies, plus innumerable talking heads who knew what they were talking about.

It was an outstanding piece of documentary film-making, which left you feeling you understood the Maestro. A fine, fitting tribute to a great man and his great art. Silly title, though.

BBC Radio 3’s In Tune did a good job, too, centred around its recording of a 2002 interview.

Not often I say this, but fairness demands it: Bravo BBC!



Gerry Smith

Luciano Pavarotti, a great musician for grown-ups: RIP

With his unmistakeable muscular tenor, Pavarotti was classical music’s superstar. Almost single-handedly, he took opera to the Anglo masses, after FIFA (and BBC TV) adopted his stirring Nessum Dorma aria, from Puccini’s Turandot, for Italia 90, the football World Cup tournament.

Pavarotti’s recordings, followed by those of the Three Tenors (viz Pavarotti and his two only slightly less stellar contemporaries, Domingo and Carreras), helped power a (short-lived) upsurge in the popularity of opera, an art form usually seen as far too exclusive. For a few years in the early 1990s, Pavarotti was a bona fide pop star.

Which might have tempted some opera buffs to sneer. But, unlike the army of opera-lite singers, both male and female, who have since attempted to supply the same market, Pavarotti was the real deal – he’d already spent an entire career as a kosher opera singer, a top draw in the top opera houses of the world. He’d been equally at home on the set of La Scala or the Metropolitan Opera House as he had been playing to classic-lite sell-out audiences at the Royal Albert Hall or Hyde Park.

Pavarotti’s talent dwarfed that of the successor generation whose popopera careers have been built on his success - modern pretenders who appear from nowhere at regular intervals, all fine voices and talented performers, but irredeemably lightweight when heard in a blind test alongside the real thing. Why anyone would listen to such singers when they could listen to Pavarotti, singing the same repertoire, immeasurably more convincingly, is a mystery. Well, no, it’s not really: it’s testament to the power of marketing.

Pavarotti recorded many complete operas in a long career stretching from the 1950s to well beyond the 1990s. The best known is his transcendent performance as Rodolfo, alongside the great soprano Mirella Freni in Puccini’s La Boheme. It’s highly recommended as a first disc for grown-ups tempted to try some opera, although absolute beginners might be better served by any of the three outstanding compilation discs which made Pavarotti such a crossover success - Essential Pavarotti, Essential Pavarotti 2, and Tutto Pavarotti.

Though, inevitably, his voice had developed some rough edges, Pavarotti was still the benchmark tenor as he started saying farewell. And still the biggest star in the operatic firmament. By a mile.

May he rest in peace.



Gerry Smith

Patti Smith excels with Twelve, her new album of covers

I approached Twelve, Patti Smith’s new covers album, with some trepidation: I’m generally not fond of the covers genre; I normally avoid Dylan covers (unless they’re by Bryan Ferry or Van Morrison); and my admiration for Ms Smith is not unreserved.

But my, how I’ve been enjoying Twelve, and particularly the excellent Dylan track, Changing Of The Guards. Smith’s version of the iconic Street Legal opener is compelling – her insouciant style is ideally suited to the mystery and majesty of the lyrics. I found myself listening anew to a song that’s fast becoming one of my favourite Dylan compositions.

The album is chock full of tasty selections – some of the finest songs in the rockpop canon. Hell, I even like the Beatles choice!

Are You Experienced?
Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Helpless
Gimme Shelter
Within You Without You
White Rabbit
Changing Of The Guards
The Boy In The Bubble
Soul Kitchen
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Midnight Rider
Pastime Paradise


Twelve: recommended!




Gerry Smith

Recommended Rick Rubin profile in New York Times

Thanks to Mark Hall for a link to a highly recommended profile of music biz player Rick Rubin in Sunday’s New York Times.

The Music Man, by Lynn Hirschberg, is a long revelatory feature article, based around interviews with the legendary founder of Def Jam and agenda-setting producer (Beastie Boys>Johnny Cash), now co-head of Columbia Records, parachuted in by Sony to save the company from becoming irrelevant in the new music economy.

Rubin’s first two signings have been a rock band, Gossip, and an English operatic tenor, Paul Potts.


www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazine/02rubin.t.html?_28&oref=slogin&oref=slogin



Gerry Smith

This Week's Music for Grown-Ups on Radio/TV

Your exclusive listening/watching guide… thanks to compiler Mike Ollier:

Radio For Grown-Ups

Weds BBC2 23.00 ~ 23.30
* Earth, Wind for Hire (3/4)
Funnyman Bill Bailey continues with his sardonic look at tribute bands in this four-parter.

Thurs BBCR2 22.00 ~ 23.00
* Seven More Days That Rocked The World: Dixie Chicks vs George Bush (3/7)
The Beeb are stretching it a bit now, another documentary season wasted. I'm actually sick of hearing about this incident (there's a DVD out at the mo). Real rebels like Steve Earle have the CIA watching them.

Fri BBCR6 21.00 ~ 22.00
* Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan: Heart
Bob shows how hip he is by digging out The 101ers (early Strummer), Billie Holiday and Solomon Burke

Fri BBCR3 22.30 ~ 23.30
* Jazz Library
Benny Goodman

Fri BBCR3 23.30 ~ 01.00
* Jazz On Three
Chick Corea and Gary Burton live from the Barbican


TV For Grown-Ups

Still not a lot to report, summer's almost over (summer? What summer?) and so there may be some light in the tunnel… until then there's the best drama EVER, HBO's The Sopranos (started last night, repeated Tuesday night, on E4) for the next 9 weeks… great music included on the soundtrack. Opening scenes feature the brilliant Alabama 3's "Woke Up This Morning"

Thurs BBC4 21.00 ~ 22.30
* Mercury Music Prize 2007
The ubiquitous Ms Winehouse vies for the top prize of twenty grand. If she wins I wonder what she'll spend it on?

Thurs BBC2 21.30 ~ 22.00
* Saxondale
Tommy keeps rockin' on.

Dylan’s poetry to be taught in English schools

While a few university courses have been scrutinising Dylan’s work for years, not many school pupils have studied his songs as part of the official curriculum.

That’s about to change with the news (in yesterday’s Independent On Sunday) that lyrics from a range of songs, including I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine, are to be included on the national curriculum for English schools, thus ensuring the widest possible exposure for Dylan’s art among the iPod generation.

Some English teachers, of course, have been slipping Dylan into lessons for decades – Anne Ritchie, a good friend of The Dylan Daily, was exposing her 12-16 year old North London classes to Zim, alongside the Romantic poets and the Beats, 35 years ago. She wasn’t alone.

The welcome news of Dylan’s elevation is likely to resurrect the spurious media “debate” of a decade ago which attempted to belittle Dylan by comparing his poetry with that of Keats. It’s a wrong-headed exercise - if you’re going to compare Dylan with heritage poets, why bother with minor talents like Keats? The only worthwhile comparison is with Shakespeare.


Gerry Smith