Tag: music

It always was the sax line that got me, like the sax in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” a rare sax solo that captures the memory.

And while Gerry Rafferty didn’t play the solo, he wrote the basic melody and the song the sax made famous. “Baker Street,” though, was more than the solo; it was a shimmering bit of mid-’70s pop that stands among the best music of its decade. That Rafferty managed only a couple of minor hits from the same album — the underrated City to City — ultimately doesn’t matter. What matters is that he gave us “Baker Street” and “Stuck in the Middle” (recorded with Stealer’s Wheel), a feat few can claim.

Rest in peace, Mr. Rafferty.

• Read poetry at The Subterranean. 
• Send me an e-mail.  
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.  
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Rolling Stone lists the Princeton Record Exchange among the top 25 places in the country to find vinyl. And, yes, I wholeheartedly agree.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

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As we walked through Charlotte’s downtown — called Uptown — we were serenaded by this local band of street musicians. They packed some pop. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the band’s name.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

I picked up the reissue of Exile on Main Street, the classic double album that I’ve always viewed as the Rolling Stones‘ last masterpiece. (The band has released some real good music since — much of the ’70s catalogue, Some Girls, Emotional Rescue, Tattoo You, A Bigger Bang — but nothing with the sustained brilliance of Exile.

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The decision to buy the reissue was not taken lightly because I generally am not one who likes to spend money on music I already own, but the band’s inclusion of a 10-song second disc, with a brilliant alternate take of “Loving Cup” and a couple of unfinished songs now finished by the band, altered the normal calculus.

This is an album that the so-called jam bands should study, a loose, instinctive romp through a highly personal take on American blues, R&B and country by a band at the absolute height of its powers.

The remastering is a plus — the sound is vibrant and electric — but it is the other material that made it a worthwhile purchase. (Apparently, the rarities disc has been released separately, as well, so people uninterested in the remastered album an still get the material; there also is a weird collector’s box that includes the rarities disc and a T-shirt — leave it to the Stones to milk it for all the cash it can generate.)

In any case, the reissue is not a disappointment, though it is not on a par with Let It Be … Naked, the interesting and flawed rethinking of The Beatles’ Let It Be issued a few years ago (that offered a few good alternate takes, including a cleaner, less sappy “Long and Winding Road,” new sequencing and a new edit of “Get Back” that strips it of the chatter).

Nonetheless, the release got me thinking about the double album, something that has become unusual in the digital age. The few double discs worth buying — Wilco’s Being There, Nellie McKay’s first two, Outkast’s Speaker Boxxx/Love Below, Sonic Youth, a handful of others — are rare because the compact disc allowed artists to go much longer. Think of all the discs out there with 70 minutes of music, a time span that would have required two vinyl records back in the old days.

Exile is, for me, one of the great examples of the double album, easily in the top three of studio doubles (as compared with double live albums, which were more prevalent). Off the top of my head, this is my top 10 — understanding that I probably forgot something and that I’ve used 1990 as an arbitrary cutoff:

1. Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde
2. Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
3. The Clash, London Calling
4. Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland
5. The Beatles, The Beatles (the white album)
6. Derek & the Dominoes, Layla
7. Bruce Springsteen, The River
8. Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti
9. Prince, 1999
10. Funkadelic, America Eats Its Young

Other notables: Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road; Genesis, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway; PiL, Second Edition; Erik Burdon and War, The Black Man’s Burden; The Who, Tommy and Quadrophenia; Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life; XTC’s English Settlement and Oranges and Lemons.

Some notable doubles not included: James Brown, Sex Machine (it is live); George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, which would have been on the list except that it includes a third disc of jamming; The Clash, Sandanista! (a triple album); and material by Frank Zappa, who I can appreciate but have never connected with.

Some readers will note the exclusion of Pink Floyd’s The Wall — an album that many view as a masterpiece but that I think is incredibly pretentious and overrated. Those are fighting words, I know, so let the battles begin.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.