I’ve added an index page that lists out all of the artists that have been mentioned on this blog, with links out to the list of all the posts that mentioned them. This should make it easier to browse by artist, since the tags in the sidebar only show the artists that get written about the most. This list will be maintained to include a listing for everyone.
Of course, I’ve probably missed at least one, so please leave a comment here if you catch a reference to an artist not listed.
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Album: Led Zeppelin IV
Actually, I could get a complete post out of every track on this album, but for today, I’ll focus on “When the Levee Breaks”. This was one of the first hard rock albums that I actually owned. Like many other albums that I bought during that time in my life, listening to this was an enlightening experience. (I think it was also a relief to my parents when I brought this album home too.)
This song stood out to me in particular at the time because it managed to bring in the harmonica and other blues elements without making the song sound like a a parody of itself. It was really the first time that I had encountered music created by people with a strong background in blues music. Up to that point, all of the rock music that I had heard was pretty far removed from its roots. This was different.
At one point in time I could listen to this song on repeat and hear something new on every time through. Even though the lyrics are extremely simple, the outstanding musicianship on the track brought the song to life for me. The vocals blend perfectly with the rest of the track, and were part of what cemented my fascination with hard rock. This song was astounding in what it made me feel–even in the parts where I couldn’t make out the lyrics. And then when I actually looked at the lyrics to the song, the words fit perfectly with the feel of the song.
Like the rest of the tracks on Led Zeppelin IV, this song is nothing short of a masterpiece.
According to the Examiner.com, two tracks from Tom Petty were added to the Rock Band store yesterday. (My Xbox still isn’t talking to Xbox Live though, so I won’t be getting them today at least. I’m pretty sure it’s the router that’s the problem.)
In terms of the challenge of playing these songs, they probably made solid choices. Both “I Won’t Back Down” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream” have decent guitar parts. “Runnin’ Down a Dream” has a drum track that I know I won’t be able to follow, and the guitar work in the solo is pretty impressive. “I Won’t Back Down” will probably be more of a fun party track.
Unfortunately, I would have preferred different tracks–personally, I think singing “Free Fallin’” and “Refugee: would rule. Unfortunately neither is actually a very complicated song, so no matter how much I would enjoy singing them, I don’t think they’re going to make either available as a download.
I’ll post again with my review of the tracks–when I can get them to download.
This has been a hectic week–between work and family issues, I haven’t been able to get online to do much more than moderate comments and purge spam for the last several days. So I haven’t gotten to hear the new track until this afternoon. (Finding it turned into a bit of a bugger; my home connection seems to have on-and-off problems with content networks, including Xbox Live.)
The first thing that I noticed about the song was that Jon’s voice seems to be all nasal again. I’m not sure if this was recorded before or after the performance of ‘Stand By Me’ that was released earlier, but Jon’s voice seemed to be a lot stronger on the recording of Stand By Me. I’d guess before–’We Weren’t Born to Follow’ is a fully produced album track and was probably already in the can and being mixed by the time the whole fuss in Iran started. I’ll be interested to see if any of the other tracks on The Circle show the stronger, smoother vocal performance from ‘Stand By Me’. I hope they do; I much prefer that sound over the nasal twang on this track.
Subject matter is standard issue Bon Jovi fare; their song topics don’t often shake up much. I find the lyrics to be slightly more in the vein of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ than they are like ‘It’s My Life’–more about hope in the face of adversity, rather than the raw defiance of ‘It’s My Life’ and its sequels ‘Everyday’ and ‘Have a Nice Day’. Also, the lyrics of the verses are a tad bit flat and don’t say much at all. All the punch seems to have been put into the chorus of this song, but at least it’s a very solid chorus.
Soundwise, this is not the rock sound promised in the weeks leading up to this release. This is, if anything, even more of a pop sound than ‘It’s My Life’ and ‘Everyday’. Richie’s talent does not shine in this song. The lead guitar seems a bit lost, and they didn’t use the talkbox or bring Dave’s keyboards to the front to make up for it. The guitar solo is so short as to be almost nonexistent, and having Jon yell “Guitar!” before it just makes it seem shorter than it really is. (Also, yelling “Guitar!” before the solo always seems like more of a Bret Michaels/Poison thing to me and kind of sticks out funny in a Bon Jovi song.)
In the long run, I think this song won’t be a favorite of mine–it just doesn’t have good enough lyrics, and it doesn’t leverage Richie’s ability to play the guitar. On the other hand, I don’t see it ending up on my permanent skip list like the ‘Mystery’ tracks on Crush.
There was a recent flap over the amount of money that U2 spent on the stage rig for their new tour. There’s a good article on it over at the BBC site.
Personally, I find Bono’s reasoning for the elaborate stage perfectly fine. A big chunk of what makes a great rock concert is a certain degree of spectacle. That’s not to say that one guy on a bare stage with one guitar can’t hit the ball out of the park. But personally, I like the spectacle. It’s part of what I pay for when I shell out over $100 for a ticket. The design of their elaborate stage should help enhance the fan experience, especially for the fans in the cheaper seats.
Plus, the number of people that U2 must be employing in the towns where they play must be fairly high. That’s a lot of stage to assemble and disassemble on the timetable of a world tour, so the amount of both local and traveling labor needed is going to be pretty large. That’s a nice infusion of cash straight back into the local economy, and it would go straight into the hands of working class people. Those are the people currently being hardest hit by the current state of the world economy. Even though it’s a one-time thing, it’s more than a lot of people would otherwise have had.
So rather than looking at the U2 stage as being environmentally damaging, I personally see U2 helping to keep the money supply churning and generating wealth.
I’m not sure if The Circle is a better or worse title than We Weren’t Born to Follow. The main thing about it is that unlike Bon Jovi’s other two one-word album titles, it doesn’t have much in the way of associations. Both Crush and Bounce were active words with a host of associations to go with them, making them evocative album titles titles. (The masters of the one-word album title have to be Def Leppard with their “ia” fixation though.)
I guess a “return to the beginning” interpretation might not be incorrect, given the type of album promised. Right now the acoustic versions of Work for the Working Man available on Youtube still sound like they have a more Nashville vibe to me, and Jon said after Lost Highway that they were done with that. So hopefully they’ll ditch the country sound when they turn it into a rock song. I just hope that the version of Work for the Working Man that I’ve heard was deliberately structured to blend with the acoustic version of Livin’ on a Prayer after it, and the real song doesn’t sound so similar to Prayer.
We Weren’t Born to Follow, which we now know will be a song, has a bit more promise as a solid rocker. A little bit of egotistical swagger in the song lyrics works well if the band can pull it off. I think Jon and Richie have it in them to swagger their way through this one as a rock number. We’ll see.
Les Paul died today. Perhaps this doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to some others out there. (I’m sure Richie is probably feeling this quite a bit more than I am.) But in some way, this man managed to touch the lives of almost every music lover in the world, either through his own musical talents or through the amazing things he invented.
In my case, almost all of my favorite music was made possible by Les Paul’s inventions–both the solid body guitar and multi-track recording. These are the two fundamental inventions without which modern rock music and especially hair metal would not have been possible.
This man, directly or indirectly, gave me one of the things in life that I enjoy most–the distinctive sound of rock music. This is something that I both love and treasure. Thank you, Les Paul.
There’s a lot of fuss being made about Shanks’ Twitter announcements. I personally am not particularly worried–song titles don’t really mean much, and some of Bon Jovi’s best songs have goofy titles anyway. It’s the sound of the song that counts. If it’s an album title–well, Bon Jovi haven’t really had a good album title since These Days, so there’s no news there. And calling the album ‘We Weren’t Born to Follow’ is in keeping with the recent ego trip that Jon seems to be on. Look at what they called their documentary–’When We Were Beautiful’. That smacks of ego too.
It’s the songs in the album that count. I think I’ll wait to hear the songs and see how they come out. It’ll be interesting to see if they can produce a ‘real’ rock album as promised.
Also, I hope that none of the videos are in black and white this time around. Please.
8/22/09: My actual review of the song ‘We Weren’t Born to Follow’ is up now.