Lost classic.

Thanks to the internet, there are no secrets anymore.  Those of us who began our musical journey in the pre-internet era used to be able to take some degree of pride in finding out about the cool stuff that nobody else knew about.  I remember when I first got into R.L. Burnside, and I had to twist arms to get people to realize that mid-tempo Chicago shuffles with wanky guitar solos weren’t the only form of blues currently in existence.  Fast-forward a few years, and I’m at the Deep Blues festival hearing yet another band play maybe the sixth version of Shake ‘Em On Down in a day, and I am no longer a unique snowflake.

When we’ve got full biographies and discographies devoted to artists as obscure as Omo the Hobo, to choose an example, you might think that everything that could be said about anything musical has already been covered to death on the intertoobz.   So why isn’t there more out there about one of my all-time favorite records, Mississippi Delta Dues by McHouston Baker?  Seems like I’m either the only person who likes this record, or I’m the only person who knows it exists.  Or both.  Me, I love this record.

I don’t think there are a lot of copies of the original LP on Blue Star, and you can’t have mine.  The album got the deluxe CD reissue treatment (which you are not allowed to scoff at) in 2004.  There’s only one review of the reissue on Amazon, and it’s by some idiot who dismisses the string arrangements as “truly cheestastic” and the record as being “About as ‘Mississippi Delta Blues’ as Seals & Crofts.”  As Robert Gordon once said, referring to a negative review of Alex Chilton’s Like Flies On Sherbert, “Such a statement reveals a dickhead writer with a bad record collection.”  Sure enough, if you look at said reviewer’s history, he gave four stars to middlebrow NPR blues like Chris Thomas King and Rory Block, while giving the thumbs down to one of my favorite albs.  (Seriously – fuck this guy.)

Clearly, there is a general lack of appreciation for this album in the world.

The McHouston Baker behind Mississippi Delta Dues is none other than the man better known as Mickey Baker, who you of course know from the single Love Is Strange, the album The Wildest Guitar, and from playing as a session cat on just about every record on every label you can think of (Atlantic, King, RCA, Decca, OKeh, and more that I don’t even know about) back when record labels put out good records with good people playing on them.

Please send copies of this record to: Schooley.

Better known for his electric, jazzy guitar style on both his session work and eponymous releases, Mississippi Delta Dues is a bit of a departure.  There are some tasteful additions to add some color – percussion, maracas, bongos, electric bass – but mostly it’s a straight-up acoustic guitar album.  Stefan Grossman, a name that you will be familiar with if you are any kind of guitar nerd, plays some backup guitar.  Baker’s voice is deep and resonant, and he sings with a laid back authority.  Almost makes you wish he hadn’t spent most of his career recording instrumentals, or backing up other singers.  Recorded in London in 1973, it’s got the feel of men playing together live in a good room with good microphones.  Great sounding recording.

A problem with many blues albums is the dilemma of the overplayed standard.  This record even includes a version of Sweet Home Chicago, and if you are like me, you are probably thinking, “I never need to hear another version of Sweet Home Chicago as long as I live.”  But it’s good, and breathes new life into a tired tune.

Other selections are less well known, like the great version of J.B. Lenoir’s Good Advice that opens the album.

What really sets the record apart are the string arrangements.  I absolutely love the string arrangements on this album.  Mickey says in the liner notes for the CD reissue that he wanted to “put together new arrangements that would bring something new to the table, but still convey the original country blues feel.”

It seems that the general knee-jerk reaction to the idea of combining blues music with strings is total disgust, in 1973 or 2013.  Quit yer whining.  Mickey – wait, make that Mr. Baker to you – says:

As we were trying to create a different kind of blues record, I decided to write arrangements for a full string section, to be layered on top of the acoustic foundation of guitars and percussion.  That was pretty daring, as indeed it went against the grain of the sentiments of blues purists at the time, but we deliberately chose to ignore that mentality.  Since the record company had not voiced any particular opinion about the artistic direction of the record, we felt free to go for a more progressive approach.  In any case, I really wanted to create some special aural effects via the writing of the string section arrangements, in combination with the original folk blues guitars.

This doesn’t end up sounding as radical on the record as it does in theory, actually.  When you get down to it, violins and cellos are acoustic wooden instruments, just like acoustic guitars.  With the good sound they had going on in that studio, they end up complimenting each other quite nicely.  Lest we forget, Baker is an accomplished technical musician and arranger.  He’s even written his own course on jazz guitar.  The man knows his shit, but he doesn’t let his technical side overpower the feel of the material.  This isn’t like Yngwie Malmsteen combining metal and classical, to the detriment of both styles.

The man his ownself.

The result is something really unique and special.  The cliché associations for blues music are often bipolar – it’s either all raucous drinking and good-timing in dirty roadhouses, or it’s all forlorn and mournful, lonesome moaning.  Yeah, maybe the clichés are accurate in some cases, but they also sell the genre short.  If that’s all there is to the blues, where would an album like The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt fit in?

It’s nice to hear a blues album that can also bring to mind lying in bright sunlight on a green southern hillside.  Mississippi Delta Dues is an album infused with light, even on darker songs like the original composition Alabama March (the arrangement of which Baker says was inspired by composers like Penderecki and Xenakis) or the Son House tune My Black Woman.  Mono no aware never sounded so good.

McHouston Baker is still alive and kicking at 86 years old, and I think Mississippi Delta dues sounds as great today, and as antithetical to the “blues purist” (if there are even any of those left anymore), as on the day it was recorded.  It still hasn’t been duplicated, although lesser musicians have tried.  Where do you think I got the idea to include cello parts on those instrumentals that begin both of my one man band albums on Voodoo Rhythm?

But hey, this is the future.  You don’t have to take my word for it.

Schooley/Tom Smykowski - "Just remember, hang in there, good things, yadda yadda yadda."

I missed some things, but I’ve also been awfully lucky.  If you hang in there long enough, good things can happen in this world. I mean, look at me.

I was excited just to get a chance to see Junior Kimbrough, and later was out of my mind when I booked a show for R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me I would actually be backing up R.L.  onstage a couple of years later.

This is a big deal, in my world.

Same thing happened with The Penetrators – I’m just a fool who is a fan of the Kings of Basement Rock LP, and next thing you know I’m learning to play Shopping Bag and then I’m onstage backing up Spike and Jack.  An honorary Penetrator.  I think the juxtaposition of R.L. Burnside and The Penetrators also explains a lot about where I come from, musically speaking.

This has happened every now and then.  I’m hoping I get a chance just to see Spencer P. Jones perform, and then I end up doing a couple of shows and hanging out with him.  He’s an entertaining guy.  Same deal with Billy Childish.  I was just a fan of Walter Daniels, now the dude is a friend of mine and he’s even played on my records, and asked me to play on his.  He’s even stooped to commenting on my shitty blog – whatta pal!

"World's Greatest Unknown Guitarist," proving that there is no justice in this shitty world.

I’m pretty lucky in that I got to see Danny Gatton for one the few shows when he left his native D.C.-area stomping grounds.  That was one of those shows where I bought the expensive ticket and made the long drive when I had the chance, and I’m glad I did.  They videotaped the whole thing, but I’ve never seen it turn up anywhere.  There was a clip on Youtube for awhile, but then the video got taken down.  I’d love to get a copy of that show.

Some of the “rediscovered” acts I’ve gotten a chance to see have really been great.  Record nerds have occasionally tracked down the people who recorded those objects of their obsession, and found them still capable of kicking ass and taking names.  Thanks to them, some performers got a new lease on life, and I got to see them do what they do.

Andre Williams was a revelation the first time I saw him, in some nowhere bar and backed up by a garage band, the Countdowns, who were just excited to be there.  At the time, who knew he was still alive?  The Alarm Clocks only had the one single, disappeared for 40 years, then returned sounding like nothing had even happened in the interim.  Wanda Jackson still had her voice, and even if you had to politely sit through hearing about how she was saved before she would sing Funnel of Love, it was worth it.  Sonny Burgess was good-natured and fun, and still revealed a glimmer of what must have been, back in the day.  Ronnie Dawson could still rock, and was probably better at it than when he did those first recordings as a teenager.

I don't care what anybody says, this is a fun album.

I’ve seen a lot of blues acts, some old men who were barely hanging on, some who were still dynamic performers.  There were a number of mediocre blues artists touring in the 90′s, and still a few good ones, and I saw as many as possible.  I saw stuff like Lonnie Brooks and Jimmy Johnson, who were kind of dull.  Perhaps enough time has elapsed for a critical reappraisal of this maligned genre, the white boy blues band.  All anybody thinks of now is that scene from Ghost World.  While largely accurate, they all weren’t that bad.  Little Charlie and the Nightcats, for example, were very good.  Nobody was playing Louis Jordan-style jump blues or west coast 1940′s small combo R&B then, and nobody is playing it now.  Rick Estrin is a also phenomenal harp player.  He took the Sonny Boy wah-wah technique to ridiculous extremes, just like his stage persona, which came across as kind of a Tex Avery cartoon wolf slash used car salesman.

I haven’t seen much heavy metal live, though I kind of wish that I had now that I think about it.  I didn’t really appreciate it before.  We all have our different priorities, after all.  The rhythm section of Celtic Frost once served me bourbon in Zürich.  That’s all I’ve got.

Thinning hair had no discernible effect on Rob Younger.

When you get into the more modern rock n’ roll era, even if the players aren’t as old as your classic rootsy performers, it can still be a crapshoot.  Getting back to the Australians, while I loved both bands, I was always a bigger Saints fan than I was a fan of Radio Birdman.  But Radio Birdman was incredible when I saw them on their reunion tour, while the Saints (mostly just Chris Bailey, but that’s how they were billed) were not even a shell of the band that recorded I’m Stranded.

When you see a reunion show, or a band that’s had a long run, and the number of original members is down to one or two, sometimes you have to wonder if it even counts as the same band anymore.  Sometimes the later members have been in the band longer than the founding members, but they don’t get the same respect. Other times, there’s just one guy left who’d be better off touring as a solo act instead of trying to capitalize on the name recognition of his old band.  Sometimes the newer members breathe life into a live show that might have been dull if it was still all the original dudes up there.  Other times, the original group of people has a certain chemistry that can’t be replicated.  You can never tell.  As Eugene Chadbourne has pointed out, as with all things musical there is no consistency.

Saw them in the Aussie equivalent of a VFW hall, in Sydney.

When I saw Rose Tattoo in Sydney (again, hey, sometimes I get lucky) there was no Ian Rilen, but it still seemed like Rose Tattoo.  When I saw X (the Australian X, there is no other X as far as I’m concerned) there was also no Ian Rilen, but there also wasn’t any Cathy Green, and I start to wonder if it still counts.  Well, I got to see Steve Lucas sing T.V. Glue, anyway.  I’ve already discussed the foolishness of trying to be snobbish about AC/DC, so no griping about Brian taking over for Bon is allowed.  However, while I wouldn’t have sneered at seeing AC/DC with Simon Wright or Chris Slade, I’m glad I got to see them with Phil Rudd.  Indeed.

Jon Wayne was perhaps the drunkest show I ever saw.  Not me, the performers.  Another one of those I’ll-never-get-to-see-them bands, and then I get to see them.  It was better than I ever would have imagined.  At any given moment, one member of the band was wandering drunkenly across the stage, not playing their instrument.  It didn’t matter.  The bass player turned around to take a piss, on the back of the stage.  Twice.  During the same song.  I was also amazed by the crowd.  I didn’t think anybody knew about the band but me, and I’d only heard them because Eric Oblivian turned me onto them, saying Jon Wanye and The Fall were the twin pillars of the Country Teasers sound.  I had picked up a copy of the LP in Madrid, I’d never even come across it in the states.  Yet the place was packed with people I’d never seen before, and who knew all the songs. The show ended with Texas Genealogy from the Two Graduated Jiggers CD, a song which hadn’t seemed that great on the record but for a few minutes was absolutely the apex of human civilization.

I believe my reaction was something along the lines of "HOLY SHIT."

I’ve been lucky enough to see a few bands not as revival acts or established elder statesmen, but in their heyday.  Some of them were up there with anything you could ever see.  Teengenerate springs to mind.  Among the best, ever. I can’t believe the New Bomb Turks were willing to take the stage after them, but they did.  Even held their own.  I was never a huge Turks fan but they certainly earned my respect that night.  I woulda slinked out the back.

Saw The Cramps multiple times, and I’m glad I did.  The first time I saw them, it was on Valentine’s Day, and somebody set a present onstage for Lux.  He opened it up, and it was a giant neon pink dildo with an elastic strap.  Lux tied it to his forehead when they closed the show with She Said, and was climbing the walls like a dying Cadillac de-model-ee-dee.  I was fresh out of the woods at that point, and I’d never even heard of Hazil Adkins before.  Quite the introduction.  Thanks, Lux.

Tav Falco came through town just a couple of months ago.  Good things can still happen in this world.

Dammit, do I have to hear that Trio cover again?

I’m not one for repeating the same experiences, even if they are positive.  My favorite musicians I’ve still only seen a handful of times.  Probably the band I’ve seen more than any other in my life is the Oblivians, just because I did a long tour with them.  I had already played a few shows with them before that.  I don’t know the total, maybe 30-40 shows?  Good thing I liked them.  Not a bad one to have for your most-seen live band, considering the era into which I was born.

The Oblivians were a perfect band to be stuck watching every night because they were wildly inconsistent, yet still entertaining whether a sloppy mess or tight and together. I found them hilarious and entertaining when falling apart, but if you only saw on one of those nights, you could be forgiven for not getting the full picture.  When firing on all cylinders, they were ungodly powerful.  I haven’t gone to any of the reunion shows, I figure I might as well leave my spot to somebody who never got the chance.

Never got to see the Devil Dogs.  I’m still hoping for a reunion.

The list gets shorter the further you get into the modern era.  What band from the 00′s will people be kicking themselves for missing?  I’d vote for the Deadly Snakes.  They were great live, and their records still sound good.  Somebody in Toronto is probably hearing Love Undone for the first time right now and cursing the fact that they were too young to have seen them back in the day.

And to think, there are people out there who bought Black Lips albums.

The Lazy Cowgirls are another one.  They had been around for a long time, from the 80′s through the aughts with various lineups, and they toured incessantly.  You had plenty of chances to see them, and it was easy to take them for granted.  Then suddenly they weren’t around anymore, and the unpretentious style of rock n’ roll they played suddenly isn’t so easy to come by, either.  Saw ‘em plenty, but I’d love to see the Cowgirls one more time.  They’d wipe the floor with the skinny jeans wearing rock n’ roll pretenders we’re infested with today, even in their dotage.

Never saw the Mummies.  Damn.

I’ve got to give credit where credit is due, to guys like Max Meehan, Timmy Hefner, and Johnny Sarkis, for booking so many great shows here in Austin.  Without Timmy, I never would have seen The Kids.  Thanks to Sarkis, I got to see The Upper Crust two more times.  And thanks to Max, I got to see the Beasts of Bourbon at Beerland.  Thanks.

Yup.

Getting back to Australian rock and Beerland, which is how this rambling got started in the first place:  the Beasts of Bourbon were yet another band I never thought I’d get the chance to see.  Hell, I couldn’t even find any Beasts LPs when I was actually in Australia.   Then, fortune shines down, and I see them at my favorite bar.  Amazing.  That was probably the single greatest rock n’ roll show I ever had the privilege to witness.  Even if Kim Salmon wasn’t with them anymore.

They were in town for SXSW, and played a couple of different shows before the one at Beerland, all under less than ideal circumstances.  One was at 10:30 in the morning (seriously!), and they were good, but clearly the Beasts are not a band who should be playing at 10:30 in the morning.  Their “official showcase” was at a horrible bar on 6th street that was usually reserved for jello shots and SRV cover bands, with bad sound and a terrible lineup of bands.  By the time that set was over, they were obviously disgusted with their experience at this alleged world-renowned music festival.

Luckily, booker extraordinaire Max Meehan had set up an extra show for them at Beerland, and I kept assuring them that the vibe at Beerland would be better.  I really didn’t know the half of it, though.  The the crowd, the Beasts performance, the venue – it sounds like hyperbole to say “best show ever” but,

Best. Show. Ever.

Anyway, long story short…

Barring any unforeseen reunion tours, Feedtime is just about the last band I really wanted to see that I never got the chance.  Antipodean or otherwise.

Once I’ve seen them, I can retire.  I’ll have my memories, and I’ll be rested when the roll is called.

Well… still haven’t seen The Scientists, though.

Feedtime is one of those bands I thought I’d never get a chance to see.  They broke up, reunited, and disbanded again, all before I was even aware of their existence.  Now, they are playing my favorite bar.

Not many Australian noise punk records made it to rural Missouri when I was a kid, so I had never even heard of them until I was full-grown and actually made it to Australia.  I was scouring the record shops for Beasts of Bourbon records without success.  (I asked one of the shop owners if they had any Beasts records.  His response: “We get a lot of Americans that come in and ask that question.”)  Rich Stanley, an Aussie legend in his own right, handed me a copy of Cooper S and said, “Have you heard this?  You’d probably like it.”  No, I hadn’t, but yes, I did.

Finally getting to see Feedtime is great, but it also makes me think about what other bands or musicians I would still be this excited about seeing, and unfortunately, the list is getting mighty short.  Only an idiot, or a writer for Pitchfork (probably not mutually exclusive categories), would try to claim that we are living in a golden age of anything musical right now.  You could argue whether the true golden age of American music was anywhere in the 1930′s, 40′s, 50′s, or 60′s, depending on whether you were more into bebop or girl groups or delta blues or whatever.  But you have to agree that the bad started to outnumber the good by the late 1970′s, at least as far as commercial popularity was concerned.  Things got worse in the 80′s, and by the time we got to the 90′s and 00′s it’s been downhill ever since.

Not that there hasn’t been good and bad music made during any of those decades, but just look at the top releases from, say, 1965 and 2005, and try to tell me there’s any comparison.  I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m just telling it like it is.  We may be living in a golden age of smartphone apps or something right now, but not music.

I take some comfort in the fact that, even though I happened to be born when the era of recorded sound excellence was already well in decline, I still managed to see quite a few great musical performances.  It has helped that the people who make rootsier kinds of music sometimes get better at it as they age.  Some of the most memorable shows I’ve seen are of artists that have since died, or who have stopped performing, so I’m glad I got the chance.  That’s just because, sorry kids: most of the best music got made a long time ago.  Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I missed most of it, too.

The majority of the shows I’ve seen have been either of the rootsy, rock n’ roll, or punk variety, and I’m not going to apologize for it.  If you don’t want to read about that, what are you doing here?  The Fabulous Andy G of the Devil Dog summed up my position in profane and exasperated fashion, on one of the great live albums from a generally miserable musical decade:

"No requests tonight! How do ya like that, ya fuckin' jerks? Eh?"

Andy G, trying to get a response from a lame crowd: “Do you people like rock n’ roll music?!”

Crowd: scattered golf claps, some smartass yells “NO!”

Andy G: “NO?!  So, get the fuck out!  What the fuck are you doing here?  You know something, I hate opera music, but you don’t catch me down at the fuckin’ opera hall!”

Okay, now that I’ve run off all of the squares, here are some highlights from a lifetime of going to shows…

You can’t talk about great shows you’ve seen without a tinge of regret for the ones that you didn’t.  Not the stuff you were born too late to see, that’s nobody’s fault, but the stuff that you at least had a reasonable chance to see but didn’t.  The two big ones for me are Johnny Cash and the Ramones.  I missed both of them, and even though it would have been later in their careers, I would have liked to be able to say that I caught them once.

I was just a dumb kid, but I realized at the time that seeing the Ramones would have required me driving a few hours to Lollapalooza in 1996, and risking hearing the likes of Rancid, Soundgarden, Soul Coughing, or Ben Folds.  Then, after enduring all that, I probably would have had to hear some songs from ¡Adios Amigos!  You can see my dilemma.  Still, missed my chance.

Wasn't there.

Some I missed, but don’t really regret.  Bo Diddley falls into this category.  By the time I could have seen him, his later shows were reportedly lackluster.  Same story with John Lee Hooker.  I heard the show was just his backing band for 45 minutes, then they brought him out to mumble for 15, and that was it.  There’s a big difference between seeing an artist that you admire put on a good show, and just ticking off the fact that you saw X before he/she died.  That can be depressing when they don’t have the goods anymore, even if you get to lord it over somebody who missed them, that “Yes, I saw ____.”  Sometimes you are better off saving your money.

Saw it.

I’ve had a few of those, too.  Yes, I can say that I saw Jerry Lee Lewis, but he looked like an audio-animatronic Crypt Keeper propped up at the piano.  I can say that I saw Booker T. Jones, but I can also say that the show was boring.  Chuck Berry was just a sloppy mess.  Bob Dylan’s voice was shot by the time I got to see him, even if I did like Love and Theft.  I saw Link Wray play Rumble live and in person, but he had a ponytail down to his waist, a fanny pack, and I wouldn’t say it was particularly good from a musical perspective, either.  But hey, I saw Link Wray play Rumble, and that’s all anyone wants to hear.

Other times, you can see a legend, and they still deliver.  I managed to see some of the greats who still had it.

Little Richard still had it, and was hilarious, to boot.  Etta James had to sit down, but she could still sing.  And how.  I saw James Brown on a rotating circular stage in the middle of a rodeo arena, and cowboys were getting down.  During Sex Machine, he ran off the stage, got in the sawdust, and ran around the entire arena, shouting “Get on up!” the entire time.  He was in his late 60′s at that point. Unreal!

Roy Head could still do the splits.  Ike Turner played Rocket 88 on piano, and then strapped on a guitar, and proceeded to sound exactly like Ike Turner.  Mind = blown.

I missed Johnny Cash, but Merle Haggard projected that air of an elder statesman, and I saw him when Red Volkeart was still in his band, so it was that much better.  George Jones was still in good voice, and I got to see him in a country dive and not the Moody Theater.  I did the sound for Willie Nelson.  A record store set that turned into a full show.  He was supposed to play outdoors that night, but it was pouring, and the show got canceled.  He did his whole set to a few hundred people in the store instead.  Stripped-down band, mostly acoustic, maybe ten feet away from me.  One of those once-in-a-lifetime deals.

I can remember the exact date I saw her, because: history.

I saw Irma Thomas play a show on the eve of Hurricane Katrina.  What an amazing, sorrowful, soulful night.  Everybody knew the storm was going to be big.  She couldn’t go home the next day.  She did requests.  I asked for Ruler of My Heart, and she sang it.

Sometimes you wonder how they do it.  I booked a show for Leo Kottke in the early 90′s when I was just a kid, and he seemed like a weird and hilarious curmudgeonly old man.  I saw him nearly 15 years later; he still sounded great and he appeared to be exactly the same.  Not that he still appeared youthful, because he hadn’t really appeared that youthful in the first place, but just that he hadn’t changed at all.  Forget the eternal youth, maybe you are better off being pre-aged.

I’ve seen some big names, but the smaller shows were often more rewarding.  I was working at a blues club when Latimore played there.  I didn’t know shit from chitlin circuit soul at the time, and seeing fat black women freaking out over Latimore in his gold lamé suit was a trip.

Yeah, I saw the Rolling Stones with thousands of other people, but it was more memorable seeing John Fahey play an impromptu set to nobody.  It started raining, seemingly just to lend atmosphere to the performance.

You may earn some bragging rights, but it can also be frustrating to see an artist that you think deserves wider recognition playing to an empty room.  Due to SXSW booking incompetence, apparently nobody was aware that Peter Stamphel of the Holy Modal Rounders (one of my all-time favorite recording sensations) was playing in the Hilton ballroom, of all places.  Yeah, it was cool to have a private audience with him – for me.  But it was Stamphel’s first time playing Austin, and playing to a half-dozen people probably wasn’t what he envisioned when he agreed to this gig at the supposedly world-renowned music festival.  Still put on a great show, though.

Killer version of "Old Man Mose"

Sam Butera was still playing small lounges the first time I went to Vegas, giving his all to handfuls of people.  Still an energetic performer well into his 70′s.  It was like a trip back in time, to when Vegas was actually cool.

Junior Kimbrough brought the groove, heavy, at the old Antone’s.   A younger guitar player (Gary Burnside?  I honestly don’t remember) had opened for Kimbrough, and then switched to bass to back him up.  The opening set was a more guitar-wanky, SRV style of blues, that apparently was more appealing to the drunken jackass demographic.  There was one drunk asshole who kept yelling “Let the bass player play guitar!” over and over.   Middle-aged loudmouth

Totally saw that.

type, he kept shouting this phrase repeatedly and wouldn’t stop.  Junior Kimbrough deserved more respect than that.  I finally threatened to kick his ass if he didn’t shut the hell up, and I’m not the violent type.  I’m sure I wasn’t intimidating in any way, but maybe I looked pissed off enough that he believed me.  I felt like the lone representative of all that was good in the world, against all that was douchey.  Maybe the guy just got bored that there weren’t going to be any wanky guitar solos, but he shut up and left, and I got to enjoy the rest of the set.

Next time: More of the same!

No respect! No respect, I tell ya!

CDs get a bad rap.  The idea that CDs have any value is a joke.  Bashing the compact disc while praising vinyl has been the choice of the cool kids for awhile now, but it seems to be more about appearances than about the intrinsic value of either format.  I think I detect an unnecessary level of pretentiousness being added.  It’s like claiming to love Bon Scott-era AC/DC, but then hating on Brian Johnson.  We all love Bon, but c’mon.  If Brian hadn’t taken over, and the band had broken up instead, most of us would never have gotten a chance to see them live, and we never would have gotten Back In Black.

I feel the same way about vinyl and CDs.  Yes, vinyl is better, but without the CD there is too much music that I would have missed.  So, much as with Brian Johnson, I’m grateful to the CD.  I’m not a dick toward it.  Don’t be so high and mighty about vinyl, you ungrateful bastards.

Everybody knows that vinyl is cool, and is even undergoing a “resurgence,” according to various internet yahoos.  I like vinyl recordings for the same reasons as everybody else.  But I bought vinyl and CDs for the same reasons – because sometimes it was the only way I could hear certain things.  Yeah, now you can download everything, fine.  But before you could, CDs served an important function.

I have some standards, but I’m not an audiophile.  Vinyl sounds better, and mp3s sound like shit, but a 44.1/16 bit .wav file can sound pretty alright.  I’m also not sentimental.  This may shatter your preconceptions about John Schooley, the man, but I don’t really have much romantic attachment to vinyl as a format.  Okay, maybe a little.

$5,100.69 = Not affordable. Also, a little tough to find a copy.

I do care about music.  If you really like music you end up having to be able to play just about anything, because there is always some stuff you’ll never hear otherwise.  Just as I bought vinyl because that was the only way to hear certain things that hadn’t been reissued on CD, I bought CDs because some of the releases on CD were of things that were so rare, I never would have been able to find a copy of the original vinyl release.  Or, if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.  CD reissues performed a valuable service by putting impossible-to-find records in the hands of us regular folks.

Ace CD comp featuring Eager Boy, released in 1996 = affordable, and easily located.

Yes, CDs sounded like crap when they were first introduced, and yes, they were also part of a ploy by record companies to get music fans to buy their favorite albums again in a different, and more expensive, format. But if you are one of those people who likes to justify your illegal downloads because CDs “only had a few good songs and the rest were filler”, you probably just had really shitty taste in music.  If you weren’t buying a bunch of lowest common denominator, mass-market kinda crap, you could find plenty of CDs that were great all the way through, thanks to the careful curation of the people who released them.

The mid-1990′s to mid-2000′s were actually a golden era for CD reissues.  Eventually they figured out how to master CDs properly, and they sounded very good.  A good CD could compete with a good vinyl copy, sonically.  Labels like Norton, Ace Records, Kent, Bear Family, Sundazed, Rhino, Revenant, Crypt, Soul Jazz, the too-shortly-lived Excello/AVI, and plenty of other operations, did exceptional re-issue work.  Norton, Crypt, and others did vinyl reissues, too.  But most of them did primarily CDs, just because that was the dominant format at the time.

Ain't nobody writing no affectionate coffee table books about the dudes who made Rapidshare or Megaupload

They cleaned up and remastered recordings, they hunted down unreleased tracks, they got knowledgeable people to write informative liner notes.  They dealt with our ridiculous copyright laws, and the major labels (and sometimes, reluctant artists) who owned the rights to the material, and who were reluctant to let it see the light of day again. Without the good work of these people in the pre-iPod era, I either wouldn’t have heard a lot of the music I love, or I would have had to pay outrageous collector-scum prices to hear it.  In fact, I think it is safe to say that we owe the current richness of the vinyl reissues we now enjoy, in part, to the wave of CD reissues from previous decades.

These CD reissues also served to re-shuffle the deck, history-wise.  Artists that had previously been consigned to undeserved obscurity found new life with release on CD.  How many of you two-cool-for-compact-disc people would have heard the likes of the Monks, if not for the Repertoire CD reissue in 1994, or the Infinite Zero release in 1997, which re-introduced the world to their genius?

Thank you, Mr. Engineer.

Sometimes, you got to hear things that never even made it to vinyl in the first place. The genius of Bo Diddley’s Please, Mr. Engineer somehow never saw an official release, only coming to light after the CD compilation Rare and Well Done appeared in 1997.  Or how about hearing the unreleased alternate take of The Coasters’ The Climb, the mind-blowing The Slime? Hell, it was hard enough to find the actual release of The Climb, which only appeared on the That Is Rock n’ Roll LP, Clarion #605, from 1965.  The alternate take had never been released at all. Wouldn’t have happened without Rhino’s 50 Coastin’ Classics, in 1992.  Thank you, Rhino.  The evil major labels were often sitting on some great material and refusing to release it, and for that they deserved to be castigated.  But when it did see the light of day, it was thanks to discos compactos.

Stack of Unused CD-Rs Turns Five

Take a moment to think where all those mp3s that you can download so easily today came from.  The USB turntable is only a recent innovation.  The torrents and downloads you’ve got on your iPod most likely came from one of these CD reissues.  Only now, you get it at 128 kbit/s (which really does sound inferior), with no liner notes.

Another thing that annoys me about the lack of appreciation for CDs is that Gen X and Gen Y types love to hate Baby Boomers, and yet they shun the format of their own era while embracing the format of the Boomers.  C’mon, if Baby Boomers suck so much, and are the source of all the world’s problems, shouldn’t it be the other way around?  Shouldn’t you be claiming that CDs are your favorite format?  Might as well apply this generational animus consistently if you are going to whine about it so much.

Finally, most of the people who enthuse about the quality of  “analog” vinyl sound over “digital” CD sound don’t even know what the hell they are talking about.  I hate to break it to ya, but if you are buying a new vinyl record today, it was probably mastered digitally.  That’s right, that album that you claim sounds so warm on vinyl -it may have been recorded on analog tape, but it probably got mixed digitally and mastered digitally.  Especially if it is a 7-inch on a small label.  100% analog mastering is expensive, way too expensive for most small labels to afford.  Don’t believe me?  Call around to the handful of pressing plants left across the country and ask ‘em.

Do the crusher.

So, in conclusion, rather than forsaking the lowly CD, we should be grateful for all that which it has brought us.  As the era of the compact disc closes, we should afford it in passing the respect that it deserves, and allow it to live out its final years with respect and dignity.

Amen.

So I guess some sort of explanation is in order, to account for my absence from the music world and my whereabouts lo these many months.  Fans (all three of ‘em!) want to know.

Short answer:  poverty.

Long answer:

After I released my first one man band LP in 2005, I had a good run of constantly either playing shows, touring, recording, or saving up my money and vacation time at the day job to do more of the same.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had a day job, and most of the musicians who I love have had day jobs.  Yeah, I like the Stones and Dylan like everybody else, but most of the musicians I like made little money from their musical careers.  In fact, me being a fan of your music would seem to be a guarantee of continuing poverty and undeserved obscurity.

A sampling of selected musician day jobs:

Alex Chilton – painted houses

Spencer P. Jones – last I heard, he was working in an art supply store between tours

Pat Todd – warehouse

Andy G. of the Devil Dogs – I heard his long-running day job was working at New York City Off Track Betting.

Roy Loney – record store manager

Tim Kerr – UT’s Fine Arts Library.  Worked there forever.

Jack Oblivian – paints houses

Walter Daniels – has had a number of different day jobs, the most memorable one he told me about being scaring away flocks of birds

Ross Johnson – librarian at the University of Memphis

I deliberately chose all white rock n’ rollers here.  Let’s not even discuss all the black musicians who toiled their whole lives, like R.L. Burnside, or men who had to turn to other jobs after their music careers, like Professor Longhair working as a janitor.  (This actually happened.  Professor Longhair had to work as a janitor.)  Some of the guys I listed, like Chilton, Spencer P., and Loney, were in legendary bands on major labels.  So, knowing that, what hope is there for the likes of me?

When The Revelators first started out, we were talking with Steve Mace, local hero as bassist for the Untamed Youth.  Untamed Youth had been on Norton (a big label in my world) and they had actually been to Europe (a big deal to my country-boy brain).  So we asked Mace the rather impertinent question of whether Untamed Youth ever made any money.  About two days later, after he stopped laughing, Mace stated:  “You’ll never make any money playing this music – it’s all for glory!”

Years later, I remember Tim Kerr telling me that most of his musical work wouldn’t have been possible without his job at UT, what with it’s health care coverage, paid vacation days, and other appurtenances.  I made a mental note.

As for my fellow one man bands, when I saw Bloodshot Bill I asked him how he could afford to be on the road so much.  Turned out, he still lived with his parents.  For me, moving back in with the parents was never an option.  I think Bloodshot and Mark Sultan have it a little easier being Canadian and having national health insurance.

Scott Biram/Tom Smykowski - "Just remember, if you hang in there long enough, good things can happen in this world. I mean, look at me."

Scott Biram was supposed to be on the bill for the record release show for my first one man band single back in 2003, when he got hit by a truck.  From what I understand, Scott got a big insurance settlement out of it, which allowed him to buy a house.  While no longer having to pay rent every month probably helped Scott Biram become the seasoned road warrior he is today, I can’t help but think of that guy at the end of Office Space.

With no personal-injury settlements or government programs like they have in civilized countries to turn to, my only option has been to go to work every goddamn day like a schnook.  My longest-running day job was as a manager at Waterloo Records.  It was a good job for a young musician and record nerd to have. I got lots of records, heard lots of music, had a good time.  But I could see the writing on the wall.  After I used up all my accumulated vacation time (that took me two years to save up) to tour Europe, and then took a leave of absence (which I could only do once) to tour Australia, I figured the time was right to get out.

It didn’t help that I broke my arm in 2008, which meant I couldn’t play guitar for about six months.  The fact that getting a simple x-ray and being told “It’s broken, don’t move it for awhile” cost about what I spent to record my last album reinforced the importance of having health insurance.  Without music as a distraction, I had plenty of time to think about just what the hell I was doing all day.  Then, when I got healed up, I did another European tour, in which the van got broken into and I lost whatever money I would have made plus some extra besides.

Soon after that, I started grad school.

My original plan was that I would be able to work almost full-time, go to school part-time, and still play some shows.  But, it turns out that working full-time while going to graduate school takes up a lot of your damn time and creative energy (who woulda thunk?).  I also have to admit to some complacency, because I’m actually pretty happy with my two one man band LPs.  With the Revelators, we broke up to soon, and that lit a fire under my ass.  With the Hard Feelings, I was never completely satisfied with the records we recorded, which drove me to keep trying.  But my two Voodoo Rhythm albums are pretty representative of what I sound like live, I’m happy with how they turned out, and still most people in the world have never even heard them, so why record more?  Admittedly, this attitude hasn’t done much for my musical productivity.

"The financial crisis appears to be mostly behind us, and the economy seems to have stabilized and is expanding again." - Ben Bernanke

Back in 2006 or so, when I was first planning on going back to school and getting out of the record-store trade, I knew the retail music industry was in trouble, and I could see the housing bubble and some underlying structural problems in the economy, but I didn’t quite foresee the complete collapse of modern capitalism.  Turns out, I might finish graduate school and not be able to find any better job than the ones I had before I started.  We shall see.

I will finish school by the end of the year, at which point I hope to start playing out again, record another album, and do more tours.  In the meantime, here’s a newly re-designed website and blog for ya.  My old site was getting a little long in the tooth, anyway.  I hope to post some new songs, videos, and written screeds as time allows.  Watch this space.

Yours in art and labor,

- Schooley

-Schooley