Dire Straits were a British rock band that formed in 1977. It was comprised of Mark Knopfler, on lead guitar and vocals, his brother David on rhythm guitar and vocals, John Illsley on bass and vocals and Pick Withers (who gave the band its name) on drums. From what I understand, the band was formed to be a good pub band. They insisted that the sound be turned down while they were playing to the bar goers could hold a conversation without shouting. They always wanted to be the band they wish they themselves could check out at a bar. It also sounds to me that they listened to a lot of JJ Cale.
Mark Knopfler was the man behind the band as far as songwriting went, and it was his vision that steered the band through the early MTV years when they were still known as a music station and made the band of of the most popular rock bands in the world.
There's a joint in Chicago that's just about three blocks south of the Loop on Wabash Street. If you walk in on many nights, there's a good chance you'll notice a man sitting towards the end of the bar, many times by himself. That man is Buddy Guy. The place is called Buddy Guy's Legends.
Buddy Guy was born in 1936 in Lettsworth, Louisiana. He taught himself guitar, of sorts, on a two string diddley bow, which is basically a board nailed to a hollow wooden box with a couple of strings across it. (Bo Diddley had a guitar built to resemble one of these devices).
Guy moved to Chicago in 1957 and soon met Muddy Waters. He entered a guitar competition with Magic Sam and Otis Rush and received a recording contract as a result of winning the contest. These contests were a big reason he developed such a strong sense of showmanship and such a flamboyant style of playing guitar. People such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and many others soon took note of this new guitarist and began co-opting his style.
Buddy Guy met and recorded and performed many times with Junior Wells who was one of the top blues harmonica players ever to play in Chicago. Buddy Guy was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. Clapton 's called him his favorite blues guitarist, as has quite a few other prominent musicians. It's been said many times that if there were no Buddy there would have been no Jimi.
After the Black Crowes and Them Crooked Vultures you might be a little afraid of the bird flu, which is actually different from the H1N1 flu going around these days. Here's the Cure.
The Cure is an English rock band that started up in 1976 by Robert Smith and others. Smith has been the only constant in the band. In fact Smith began with the band as a guitarist only, but had to assume the role of singer after some member changes. After the first couple of album releases, their music turned darker in nature, so along with Siouxsie and the Banshees and Bauhaus, they were one of the first of the so-called gothic bands. This nihilistic style of music also employed bass guitars often taking the melodic leads, drum machines programmed to play dirge-like rhythms, and guitar and synthesizers playing patterns more for effect than melody.It got to the point that it wasn't unusual for Smith to be in tears at the end of shows.
This perception that the Cure was just a dark band worried Smith, so he began to lighten up the songs he wrote shortly after the release of the album entitled Pornography, and shortly began to garner more and more air play for his work. The Cure were one of the most popular alternative rock bands in the world. One thing Smith didn't change was his heavy stage makeup.
Here they are in Spain performing Inbetween Days and Just Like Heaven:
I mentioned Robert Fripp in an earlier post about Brian Eno. Fripp and Eno were pioneers in the genre of electronic music. Like Eno, Fripp also wasn't afraid of coloring outside the lines.
Robert Fripp was always at the center of the seminal progressive rock band King Crimson. He is a technically great guitarist and is named in Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 greatest guitarists of all time at number 42. King Crimson broke lots of new ground musically, incorporating jazz, rock, experimental, psychedelic, classical, new wave, heavy metal, folk, and electronic genres into the band's mix. At the band's beginnings, the songs were written by other band members as well as a songwriter who was otherwise not affiliated with the band. The band members changed rapidly during these early years, with personnel changing not only between albums but also during the recording of some albums.
In mid to late 1972, a percussionist left the group to supposedly enter a monastery and left Crimson with a four piece group. It was around then that Fripp took responsibility of writing the music for the band, although he still retained a lyricist. Here's that version of King Crimson playing in June of 1973 in NYC's Central park:
Easy Money
Improvisation
(Note - Youtube as a limit of 10 minutes 59 seconds as the maximum length of videos. This video started out at about 11:30 so I cut out the last 30 seconds and faded to black at 10:59. Sorry)
The Fab Four used to record a Christmas message every year for their fan club. If you look around you can actually buy this on Amazon or some other retail sites. Don't. This is a bootleg and the people selling it have no rights to it.
Here it is. Download it and burn it or load it onto your MP player. Give it to a friend.
As always, to start downloading click on the divShare logo.
Lou Reed was born Lewis Allan Reed in Brooklyn, NY on March 2, 1942. He taught himself guitar by playing along with the radio. As a teenager, he joined a doo wop group. In later years he wrote a song called Kill Your Sons about his parents trying to cure him of homosexual feelings by taking him to a mental hospital and having electroshock therapy performed on him. Reed later enrolled at Syracuse University and took a job as a radio deejay. His program featured doo wop, rock and roll, and jazz. It was during this time that some of his musical techniques came about a a result of listening to free jazz.
Reed moved to New York City and took a job at Pickwick Records as a staff songwriter. It was here that he met and befriended Doc Pomus and where Reed gained a great deal of appreciation for the songwriting craft. It was during a studio session while at Pickwick that Reed met John Cale, who later joined Reed in the Velvet Underground.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time going over the Velvets - I'll do that another time. I do want to say that the Velvet Underground were probably the most influential group of all time. I believe they showed more young musicians than any other band that you didn't need to be a technically good musician in order to be in a band, nor did you have to have great singing talent. You needed guts and a song. The Velvets proved that a good song could carry itself. Lou Reed provided most of those songs. After four albums, the Velvet Underground broke up.
Lou Reed proceeded to release solo albums over the years, and often changed musical styles. His second album, produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson was called Transformer. That title sums up his career. He's changed with the times and has always challenged himself and his audience. I can think of no one else, with the exception of Neil Young, who came out of the 60's and who remains relevant and vital. Lou constantly proves that rock and roll isn't just for kids.
Here's one of my favorite recorded shows, whether it's by Lou Reed or anybody else. Its from April 13th of 1989, recorded at the Paramount Theater in Denver:
Don't forget, if you'd like to download this, click on the divShare logo and you'll have to grab it a track at a time. (If I'm wrong, please let me know). If you burn it onto a cd, remember to remove the gaps before you press burn.
"He's probably the most underestimated musician on the planet and also probably one of the most advanced, and it puts me to shame" - Eric Clapton
Clapton was talking about Sonny Landreth, one of the world's premier slide guitar players. Landreth hails from Louisiana, and many of his songs are about his home. His interest in the guitar began from listening to Elvis Presley's guitarist Scotty Moore as well as Chet Atkins. He played music with his friends as a teenager and according to Landreth, they were terrible at first but managed to get a lot better as time passed. Landreth is a pretty good conventional guitarist, but when he slips a slide on his finger he becomes great. He developed his own style as a slide player. He frets the fingergoard behind the slide, unlike anyone else I've ever seen or heard. He also picks and strums in a wide variety of ways.
Landreth's played along side a Who's Who of rock and blues musicians, but to this day is waiting for his number to be called into the rest of the recognized greats. Do someone a favor this holiday season and buy them one of the many fine albums by Sonny Landreth, even if that someone is you.
Here's Sonny Landreth back on 2003 on the Mountain Stage playing All About You and Hell At Home:
More Lost and Found?
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Exceedingly random music continues to turn up in the most unexpected places
around here. Most of these discs don’t have titles or identifying logos so
I’ve...
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