Brain networking among musicians

From Deutsche Welle:

When musicians play, what is happening inside their brains? Scientists at Berlin's Max Planck Institute for Human Development have discovered that while performing together, their neurological activity goes into a kind of synchronization mode - almost as though they were connected by a wireless network.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today is not only a day for chocolates & flowers, but a day for radical acts as we work towards a day free of violence against women & girls. Fifteen years ago Eve Ensler declared Valentine's Day, V-DAY. To celebrate 15 years, she's throwing a global dance party! 1 Billion Rising.


Chicago is in on the act too.




And friend of VLF, Alejandra O'Leary has a special Valentine's Day tune for us to dance to

How ever you celebrate today, I hope you are surrounded by love!

Long Live Rock 'n' Roll? Study Shows Risk to Stars (video)

A new study from the United Kingdom (BMJ) reveals just how risky rock-and-roll can be - WSJ:



The WSJ summarized the findings of the study published in BMJ:

The research examined 1,489 stars of pop, rock, hip-hop and punk, of whom 137, or 9.2%, died during the five-decade period covered by the study. Nearly 39% of those deaths were caused by factors related to violence or alcohol and drug intake.

North American pop stars were 87.6% as likely to be alive as normal people of the same age and ethnicity—the lowest survival rate of any group identified in the study.

In North America, 23% of solo performers died, versus 10% of band-only stars, the study found. The comparable figures for Europe were 10% versus 5%.

The study doesn't address a widely held belief that drummers are more prone to early death than other musicians.

References:

Long Live Rock 'n' Roll? Study Shows Risk to Stars - WSJ.com http://on.wsj.com/V8O79a

The longevity of a rock singer

Here is Ian Gillan (age 67) from Deep Purple in a recent interview:

You have been screaming rock music for over 40 years. How do you do it?

I think it’s quite natural, I do a lot of it, and so I keep myself fairly fit. My mates who were singers they quit to enjoy their success or raise families and they didn’t continue. Then they tried to come back years later but it was very difficult because vocal cords, unlike guitar strings, are unforgiving, you can’t change them. So I think I’ve been singing all my life, and therefore I’m pretty much fit, so to speak. Most things are within my scope, I sing pretty naturally so it’s not a strain, never has been.

Here is Deep Purple with Maybe I'm a Leo, Mainz, Germany, July 2011:



This is the same band 40 years ago, in 1972:



I have been to two concerts of Deep Purple, the last one was in June 2011 and it was quite impressive. The audience age ranged from 5 to 75 and everyone rose to their feet to the sound of Smoke on the Water.

Here is Mick Jagger on staying fit: "You watch what you eat, you exercise, you have a bit of fun. You keep on going forward. Don’t stop. Do what makes you happy. Don’t look at the clouds of tomorrow through the sunshine of today. That’s it."

References:

Deep Purple but no blues: US legends top Dubai jazz festival line-up | Al Bawaba http://buff.ly/V520RZ

Mick Jagger's new supergroup with Joss Stone and Dave Stewart. DailyMail.

Redefining age 65 - when your job description is "rockstar"

Jon Lord (71), legendary Deep Purple keyboard player, "passes from Darkness to Light"

Performed in front of a live TV audience, Deep Purple storm through 'Child In Time', featuring the classic Mark II line up of Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice/Blackmore:



From Jon Lord's official website:

Jon Lord has sadly passed away, July 16, 2012

It is with deep sadness we announce the passing of Jon Lord, who suffered a fatal pulmonary embolism today, Monday 16th July at the London Clinic, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Jon was surrounded by his loving family.

Jon Lord, the legendary keyboard player with Deep Purple co-wrote many of the bands legendary songs including Smoke On The Water and played with many bands and musicians throughout his career.

Best known for his Orchestral work Concerto for Group & Orchestra first performed at Royal Albert Hall with Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969 and conducted by the renowned Malcolm Arnold, a feat repeated in 1999 when it was again performed at the Royal Albert Hall by the London Symphony Orchestra and Deep Purple.

Jon’s solo work was universally acclaimed when he eventually retired from Deep Purple in 2002.

Jon passes from Darkness to Light.

Jon Lord 9 June 1941 – 16 July 2012.

Here is a short clip of Jon Lord receiving and responding to the presentation of the Honorary Degree (Doctor of Music) from the University of Leicester, 2011:



I had the chance to see Jon Lord at a Deep Purple concert in 2001, and he was truly amazing.

Related reading:

Music Man http://goo.gl/8aYk0
Jon Lord obituary | Music | The Guardian - http://goo.gl/sohGI
BBC News - Deep Purple's Jon Lord dies at 71 - http://goo.gl/qvhiq
Malc Deakin talks to Jon Lord on Vimeo - http://goo.gl/cDvjU
Jon Lord death: Deep Purple founder dies aged 71 | Mail Online - http://goo.gl/G9FzX
Jon Lord & Steve Balsamo "Child In Time", May 2010 - YouTube http://goo.gl/SU231
BBC's Last Word: Ritchie Blackmore, Rick Wakeman, Geoff Barton pay tribute to Jon Lord. Also, Jon on how he'd like to be remembered. http://goo.gl/fW3VT
GTFM's Jon Lord Special by Andy Fox http://goo.gl/WqAcc
'80s - Jon Lord Interview - Anne Carlini - Exclusive Magazine http://bit.ly/Uoex79

Fair And Unbalanced Radio 9

Here is the ninth edition of Fair and Unbalanced Radio, consisting of ten previously posted songs:



1.   Neil Young and Crazy Horse:  Oh Susannah
2.   Wilco, Nick Lowe and Mavis Staples:  The Weight
3.   Jack White:  Love Interruption
4.   Real Estate:  Easy
5.   Cloud Nothings:  Stay Useless
6.   The Walkmen:  Heaven
7.   Alabama Shakes:  Hold On
8.   The Shins:  September
9.   The Kills:  Baby Says
10.  Bettye Lavette:  I'm Not The One

You can always click the radio icon on the right of the blog for the latest playlist.

[Here are the previous playlists:  Fair and Unbalanced Radio, Volume 1; Volume 2; Volume 3; Volume 4; Volume 5; Volume 6; Volume 7; Volume 8]

Ray Charles: "America The Beautiful"

(More on Ray Charles here.)

Palate Cleanser: Bettye LaVette

Bettye LaVette covers the Black Keys' "I'm Not The One."  Here's what she had to say about this track:  "I find it interesting and thoroughly entertaining to add age and experience to young writers’ songs and inhabit them myself.  I’m not sure what he was talking about, but I’m saying don’t fuck with me."

Palate Cleanser: The Kills

An acoustic version of Baby Says by The Kills.

Womack Comeback

Bobby Womack, the iconic soul and R&B artist -- and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer -- released his first album of new material in almost twenty years.  On The Bravest Man in the World, Womack collaborates with Damon Albarn and XL Recordings' Richard Russell in what NPR's Ann Powers describes as less elegiac than "another step in the fascinating dance of someone who will keep kicking until he can kick no more."

Powers recommends that "anyone who discovers Womack through this fresh start should go back and explore his many other lives and resurrections; one of American music's feistiest survivors, he's brought the world plenty of trouble and delight."

I would start off with Womack's 1968 cover of The Mamas & The Papas' California Dreamin':



Pitchfork has dug into the archives to "revisit some visual highlights from the man's 50-plus-year career."  Here's what they came up with:  (1) Communication, performed on Soul Train in 1971; (2) Across 110th Street, from 1972, heard here on the opening sequence of Quentin Tarantino's 1997 film Jackie Brown; (3) Lookin' For A Love, originally a hit in 1962 when Womack and his brothers were The Valentinos.  This version is from 1974, with three of his four brothers; (4) I Wish He Didn't Trust Me So Much, from 1985; and last, but definitely not least, (5) an acoustic version of (If You Don't Want My Love) Give It Back, a 1971 song performed with Gorillaz in 2010.



OK.  Now we're ready for the new one.

Palate Cleaner: Cloud Nothings

Stay Useless by Cloud Nothings

Palate Cleanser: The Walkmen

Heaven by The Walkmen

Peace, Love And Understanding

Birth(day) Of The Cool

Miles Davis was born on May 26, 1926 (and died in 1991).  Click on these links for earlier posts on two of my favorite recordings:  Great Jazz Albums:  Relaxin' and Great Jazz Albums: Walkin'.

And here he is in 1964, performing Autumn Leaves with his second great quintet (Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams):

Happy 71st Birthday To Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan turned 71 this week, on May 24th.  Here is the post I wrote last year on his 70th birthday:

Forever Young: Bob Dylan Turns 70

Bob Dylan, born on May 24, 1941, turns 70 years old today.  I agree with historian Sean Wilentz that Dylan is "the most important and influential songwriter" in the second half of the 20th Century, and perhaps the most influential artist.

Rolling Stone published lists of the greatest Dylan songs, and it is hard to argue with their top 10:  (1) Like a Rolling Stone; (2) A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall; (3) Tangled Up in Blue; (4) Just Like a Woman; (5) All Along the Watchtower; (6) I Shall Be Released; (7) It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding); (8) Mr. Tambourine Man; (9) Visions of Johanna; (10) Every Grain of Sand.  On the other hand, with so many incredible songs over so many years as Dylan constantly reinvented himself, countless other top ten lists could have been made that would have been hard to dispute.  So, rather than debate which are Dylan's best songs or albums, I thought it would be better to just savor the music.  Here's a playlist with some of my favorites, beginning with an extraordinary version of Dylan rehearsing If Not For You with George Harrison prior to the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, the movie and album which provided me with my first real exposure to Dylan.  Happy  Birthday!

Palate Cleanser: Mick Jagger with Arcade Fire

Mick Jagger and Arcade Fire perform The Last Time on SNL

Henry Saint Clair Fredericks Jr. AKA Taj Mahal Is 70

"Taj Mahal opened the untapped potential of the Delta Blues, felt the connection to African soul and island rhythms, and became one of world music's first proponents and champions."

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/16/4495523/happy-70th-birthday-taj-mahal.html#storylink=cpy

I first saw Taj Mahal perform in the late 1970s, and have enjoyed his unique blend of roots-blues-world music ever since.  In addition to his role in "revitalizing and preserving traditional acoustic blues," Taj Mahal has taken "a musicologist's interest in a multitude of folk and roots music from around the world -- reggae and other Caribbean folk, jazz, gospel, R&B, zydeco, various West African styles, Latin, even Hawaiian."  This "global perspective," while still rooted in the "African-derived heritage of most of those forms," allowed him to "present the blues as part of a wider musical context."  

Here's some exciting news:  Sony's Legacy Recordings is celebrating this "groundbreaking artist with a major catalog reissue project beginning with the release of the newly-curated The Hidden Treasures of Taj Mahal, 1969-1973, an extraordinary two-disc collection of previously unreleased studio and live performances, available Tuesday August 21."  

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/16/4495523/happy-70th-birthday-taj-mahal.html#storylink=cpy

Taj is 70 years old today.

Palate Cleanser: Alabama Shakes

Hold On by Alabama Shakes

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot At 10

I've previously written that Wilco is one of the truly great rock bands and their front man, Jeff Tweedy, is the most compelling singer/songwriter of his generation.  (See Wilco Rocks -- And Not Just For Dads.)

Tweedy is an elegant lyricist who crafts deeply effecting, unsparingly honest songs, often about pain and loss, self-doubt and self-destruction, and sings them with his nasally but soulful and quite captivating voice.  I don't think it is too much of a stretch to consider putting him in the pantheon of older (North) American rock musicians who have not only captured the spirit of their time but have left a legacy well beyond, a group that includes Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is now ten years old, but it remains for me one of the greatest rock 'n roll albums of all time.  As the notoriously stingy Pitchfork beams:  "Complex and dangerously catchy, lyrically sophisticated and provocative, noisy and somehow serene" it is "simply a masterpiece."

Spencer Kornhaber recently wrote a piece in the Atlantic to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this legendary album, what he refers to as the "best rock record of the new millennium."  As Kornhaber writes, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot comes freighted with a mythology that can overwhelm the music:

The way it was rejected by one Warner Bros. subsidiary only to be bought by another; the fact that it was streamed online at a time when doing so was unheard of; the acclaimed documentary about its creation; and the spookiness of the fact that its songs—replete with references to falling buildings, charred flags, and nameless dread—were originally set for a Sept. 11, 2001 release.

 But it is the music that endures:

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's triumph was in how it captured a facet of human nature: the way we all send signals, hoping that someone will understand them but also anxious about what happens when someone does. You'll sometimes hear the album get called cryptic, or self-conscious, or difficult. And that's fine. It's really a soundtrack for the ways in which people ask to be misunderstood. 

Don't believe me?  Check it out:

Americana That Still Resonates

Hey, Hey, My My.  Neil Young first started playing with the "garage" rock band Crazy Horse in 1968, and they have backed him on several of his greatest albums, including Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, Zuma, and Rust Never Sleeps.   Americana, which is due out next month, will be Neil's first recording with the full Crazy Horse line-up since 1996.  

Rolling Stone reports that the songs on the album are all classic American folk songs, including "This Land Is Your Land," "Gallows Pole," "Tom Dooley" and "Clementine."  "They're songs we all know from kindergarten," Neil said, "but Crazy Horse has rearranged them, and they now belong to us."

The press release explains the concept behind Americana:

What ties these songs together is the fact that while they may represent an America that may no longer exist, the emotions and scenarios behind these songs still resonate with what’s going on in the country today with equal, if not greater impact nearly 200 years later. The lyrics reflect the same concerns and are still remarkably meaningful to a society going through economic and cultural upheaval, especially during an election year. They are just as poignant and powerful today as the day they were written.

Here's the video for "Oh Susannah."