Pete Townshend's White City: Poetry and Ethnography

 A look back at Pete Townshend's 1985 concept album White City: A Novel

Remembering Peart: A Show of Hands and Visa Bands

A memorial post for Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for Rush, as well as some discussion on their live album A Show of Hands (1988).

Relevant posts

I did a text series a few years ago on Rush’s entire studio catalog. Start here.  

In the Wake of Greatness: Emerson, Lake, and Powell

Undoubtedly, music aficionados have suffered some incredible losses this year. From David Bowie’s artfully framed struggle with cancer to the startling passing of Prince, it seems like a whole generation of musicians are beginning to reveal their mortality. Every single one of these musicians deserve mention, but earlier this year, I thought that it would be a shame if the particularly tragic passing of Keith Emerson was eclipsed by more visible artists. I began a commemorative post that I procrastinated finishing and, like an embarrassingly large percentage of my writing, I abandoned it past its relevance.

Then I recently woke to find that his former bandmate and prog-rock icon Greg Lake had also passed. It seemed more pertinent than ever to revise and complete the post, particularly since the underrated entry in ELP’s legacy that I have the most connection with sadly has no surviving members.

Don’t panic, Carl Palmer is still going strong, at least at the time of this writing (fingers crossed).

My introduction to ELP did not come through their classic work, although I came to appreciate it.  I was a member of the MTV generation, so I came to know 70s progressive rock giants like Yes and Genesis through the lens of their 80s reinventions.  Emerson also sought to bring ELP back into the spotlight during this time, but to make a long story short, Asia's success with Heat of the Moment kept drummer Carl Palmer engaged. Cozy Powell (who passed away in 1998 due to a car accident) found his way into the throne, creating an alternative lineup that created one album, simply titled Emerson, Lake, and Powell.

ELPo was cautiously welcomed into this cadre of reinvented prog-rockers, and I still have memories of the brief time Keith Emerson took his turn telling me that he “wanted his MTV,” usually followed by the album’s powerful single Touch and Go. Although Touch and Go did not garner the same attention as, say, Yes' Owner of a Lonely Heart, I purchased the album back then on tape, and it slid effortlessly into rotation on the heels of Rush's Power Windows.



Throughout the next decade and a half, I collected a good portion of ELP’s back catalog and mostly enjoyed it. There is a lot of devastatingly beautiful music to be found there. There are also a few eyeball-rolling moments, particularly in their efforts to arrange orchestral repertoire. Emerson, Lake, and Powell, however, closed with a version of Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War that I would argue is the most successful transcription that ELP ever did (no matter which P you are referring to). It harnesses its energy and bombast of the original in a convincing rock setting without selling out the original piece.



No one who listens carefully can argue Emerson’s amazing prowess as a pianist and keyboard innovator. In recent years, however, his technique had begun to deteriorate due to an ongoing battle with carpal tunnel and nerve damage. Rumors also suggest that he suffered from depression, and was tragically unable to fully appreciate the inspiration that he brought to so many. He found it difficult to carry on, especially in the face on online criticism, making his suicide possibly the most heartbreaking loss this year.

Perhaps less heartbreaking, but no less tragic, was the recent news that Greg Lake had also passed after privately fighting cancer. In a very general sense, Lake’s role in ELP was to provide a folky, bardic counterbalance to Emerson’s bombast. The ballad Lay Down Your Guns is a tip of the hat to Lake's traditional role in the group, and although the song is not without merit, it probably isn't strong enough to represent the huge role that his distinctive musicianship has played in the history of progressive rock music.



While time may have revealed some low energy points on the album, I would argue that the stronger material on Emerson, Lake, and Powell represents some of the best prog-rock that the 80s had to offer.  It is unfortunate that, due to the technological limitations of the day, their brief existence remains relatively undocumented, short of a few low fidelity clips captured by a couple of fans brave and crafty enough to somehow sneak a bulky camcorder into the arena.



I wish I could have seen that.  I came close - I had a ticket for ELPo's show at the Erwin Center in 1986.  They unfortunately had to cancel due to a double-booking with ZZ Top, who was selling out arenas on their Afterburner tour.  The refunded money for the ticket did not come close to replacing the experience, which, in retrospect, would have been the only opportunity I would have had to see either Emerson or Lake.  They reformed, recorded, and performed with Carl Palmer on a limited basis in the decades to follow, but to my knowledge they never came back to Texas.

And, to be honest, I probably would not have traveled to see them.  I have a huge amount of respect for ELP and the innovative work that they did, but in the long run I ended up being a bigger fan of Wakeman than Emerson.  Still, when Emerson, Lake, and Powell was released it had an impact, and the music that came to the surface in its wake, like the rest of ELP's catalog, King Crimson's early work with Lake, and into Gustav Holst's orchestral masterpiece The Planets, was hugely influential in building the kind of musician I became.  I owe them quite a bit, and am sorry to see them go.

Fishbone's "Truth and Soul" and Excluded Middles

Back when I was in high school, desegregation of public schools through busing was still a unilateral practice. Based on my street address, I was bussed across town for three years as a representative of the middle-class, white population from the south side. At the end of my junior year, however, busing was deregulated, and I had the opportunity to attend a local high school for my senior year. The campus was about ten minutes from my house and had a quality band program at the time, so I was more than happy to make this change.

One of the last musical gifts I got from my crew before bussing ended was Fishbone. Fishbone is a band unlike any other, and Truth and Soul, my entry point in 1988, is the finest in their catalog. It’s where the band balanced out their disparate influences into a playful, but serious, mix of thrash, funk, and contemplative songwriting. The single from this album was a cover of the Curtis Mayfield song Freddie’s Dead, and if you were lucky you might have caught it on 120 Minutes at about 2:30 in the morning.  The charisma and oddness that the band naturally exuded in this video froze my idea of what Fishbone was.



They are still around (although in a slightly different form) and have done a lot of great work since, but in retrospect, I was fortunate to have been introduced to the band through Truth and Soul in 1988. The album had a devout cult following at both schools, so when I felt like an outsider walking into cliques that had already been in place for years, it served as a salve. In the long term, however, I can say I got on board with Fishbone before the music industry ground them down to a knub of what they could have been.

The story of their struggles with public visibility is well documented in the recent documentary Everyday Sunshine, which is quite extraordinary in its own right.  The movie's recounting of Fishbone's early days reveals that the band was a cultural product of the same desegregation and busing policies that had moved me across town. Their actual experience, however, was much different and more difficult than mine. Fishbone’s members were bussed across town as representatives of Los Angeles’ lower-income population. The band emerged in their local neighborhood garage, musically navigating their own exclusion and integration into a middle-class, primarily white population.



This situation is subtly documented all over Truth and Soul.  In addition to its brilliant pacing, quirky charisma, and astounding musicianship, it is also obvious that Fishbone actually stood for a certain mode of social existence under a particular historical condition. Their lyrics were often overtly political, but carried with it subtle overtones of hope for reconciliation.



Despite their genius, and the undeniable artistic success of Truth and Soul, Fishbone remained decidedly outside of the mainstream and they fell between the cracks in 1988. When No Doubt came on the scene in the late 90s, I was appalled at how readily the music press labeled them as innovators when they were so obviously copping Fishbone’s best work. However, the visibility that No Doubt brought to the post-punk ska sound has helped to preserve the freshness of Truth and Soul. After all this time, I consider it to be Fishbone’s classic, defining record.

The Year in Rush Part 6: Wake Up and Look Around

Because we were all bussed across town, there was a well-established tradition of carpooling among my fellow high school band members.  By the first week of summer band my freshman year I was already catching a ride with several other band students from my neighborhood. The driver and her boyfriend were unrelenting Rush fans, so when Power Windows was released later that year, it was a daily listen for several months. This was where I was first exposed to Rush, and although it wasn't the kind of teenage epiphany that is usually associated with the backs of cars, it was no less life-changing

Still today, nearly thirty years since its release, I insist that Power Windows is Rush’s finest artistic moment. In my eyes, it is where their musical intensity, atmospheric awareness, compositional strength, conceptual clarity, production value, and technical skill all peaked. The presence of synthesizers and sequencers is admittedly pronounced, but Lifeson's guitar cuts through like a surgeon's scalpel. To me, one of the most sublime and moving instrumental moments in the entirety of Rush's career is when his guitar roars out of the percussively agitated stillness during The Big Money's instrumental excursion.



I am fully aware that the album is shot though with sedimented layers of nostalgia, but Power Windows still brings a tear to my eye. I can accept that from some perspectives, there are more musically impressive albums in my collection, but none are more influential on me personally. It was a jarring wake-up call that illuminated a worldview beyond my immature middle school experience, bringing to light profound issues that I had only passively considered.



In the next three years, with my Reganomics-era minimum wage capital and the freedom of a 10 speed bike, I bought Rush’s entire back catalog. By 1987, I could perform a reasonable facsimile of most of their songs on bass. When Hold Your Fire came out late in that year, however, it challenged my idea of what Rush was. As a diligent fan that yearned to reproduce their songs with my garage band compatriots, its synth-laden and relatively mellow soundscape was somewhat hard to swallow.

I came to appreciate its nearly symphonic expansiveness, but even in retrospect, I think that Hold Your Fire was when Rush’s synth interests threatened to overtake their identity. Still, the distinctive instrumental voice that Rush began to cultivate on the 2112 Overture is evident. Anyone who has seen Rush play Mission in a live setting will attest that its inspired lyrics, orchestral texture, virtuosic musicianship, integrated use of technology, and brilliant instrumental bridge retread all of Rush's various musical paths in a familiar yet novel way.



Looking back, these albums served as bookends to my high school years, and bound me to a group of people that were equally attracted to the way that Rush spoke to them like adults rather than children. As this time drew to a close for me in 1989, I knew that life was about to change forever, and Time Stand Still served as a frame around my senior year. Admittedly, nostalgic feelings about a song about nostalgia may subvert any argument about the song's strength, but in any case, this track holds a special meaning for me.



Regardless, as inspirational as it was at the time, I secretly took exception to Aimee Mann’s backup.  Today, of course, I see it integral to the song, but back then her appearance was confusing. Was she in the band? Would she go on tour with them? It seemed that Rush was beginning to change, which was nothing new, but this time it was “my” Rush that was changing.  As devoted as I was to the band, I was a bit conflicted as to how that made me feel.

The previous post in this series is here.
Click here for the next one.

A Little More on King Crimson: Essential Bookends

People commonly observe that time seems to speed up as life moves forward.  In some ways, I concur: these days, a year does not seem like a long time, but a year is a lifetime to a one-year-old.  In the early days of high school, things moved at a slower pace for me, especially before I began driving.  I used to take off on my bicycle pretty regularly on afternoon excursions during the weekends.  Sometimes I would just ride around and enjoy the freedom of twelfth gear, and others I would visit friends, or maybe…. I would go to the library?

As uncool as it may sound, I admit that there was a brief period that I pedaled up to the Manchaca branch library on my weekend afternoon outings.  This was right after Rush’s Power Windows was released.  That album had singlehandedly opened my ears to progressive rock, and for awhile thereafter I really could not get enough of the stuff.  After devouring Rush's back catalog and discovering Yes and Genesis’ 70s work, I was keen to find more bands that shared their adventurously virtuosic approach to the rock idiom.  Somehow, and I don’t recall exactly how, I discovered a self-titled “Encyclopedia of Rock,” at the library, and I spent several weekends pouring over the entries under the “progressive rock” index, taking notes and cross-checking personnel – all in the name of rock and roll (or something like it).  This was where I first heard of King Crimson.

Once I found out about them I became oddly obsessed - despite the fact that I had not heard a single note of their music.  I even had a dream in which I came up with a King Crimson logo that began appearing on my notebooks, book covers, and quiz margins.  MTV’s agenda at the time did not include the radical musical experiments from the previous decade, so King Crimson’s catalog wasn’t exactly available at the Skaggs Alpha-Beta.  It would require a more extended bike trip up to Sound Warehouse on Ben White to get hold of any of their tapes.

The Encyclopedia indicated that their debut In the Court of the Crimson King was a critically lauded masterpiece, and so I bought it on blind faith.  It wasn’t what I expected.  21^st Century Schizoid Man had a few brisk technical passages that satisfied the testosterone-fueled musical concept of my teens, but overall the album was surprisingly mellow and ostensibly ponderous.  It seemed to have more in common with the Moody Blues (my parent’s music) than Rush (my music).  Initially, I did not dislike In the Court of the Crimson King, but it didn’t blow my mind like Discipline later would.

It took me awhile, but did come to see its genius when I eventually got over my myopic prejudice against 60s production.  In 1969, the mellotron was the apex of rock technology, as was multitracking and, in some respects, the electric guitar.  From this perspective, King Crimson’s 1969 debut is actually an astounding piece of work, but in the mid-80s I was too fascinated by pure technical prowess and shimmering production to appreciate its importance and brilliance.  I now view it as one of the band’s best works.

The above video is an incomplete performance of 21st Century Schizoid Man, but one of the few with original audio.  Its a pretty interesting snapshot of the devastating potential of that first King Crimson lineup, as well as their late 60s audience.

Much, much later, in 2003, as an assistant band director, I was teaching AP music theory.  King Crimson’s most recent album, The Power to Believe, came out that year.  Between solfedge drills and part-writing I tried to win over these students to the nuance of King Crimson’s work, using excerpts from Level 5 as examples of polyrhythmic cycling (in particular, the section that starts up at 3:00 or so).

I hope that The Power to Believe will not be the final King Crimson recording, but if it were it would be an excellent curtain call.  In this incarnation, the band was melding the intense proto-metal of Red with the rhythmic cat-and-mouse textures of Discipline.  Virtually every note felt like a culmination of the breadth and depth of the band’s four decade career (especially Fripp's guitar solo at 4:15!), but the overall work was hardly a “best of King Crimson” rehash.  In fact, I struggled to come to grips with the intense virtual drumming style that Pat Mastellotto developed for this version of King Crimson.  The band still strode forward, informed by the momentum of their most successful works.  It seems odd to suggest a place to start is at “the end,” but The Power to Believe truly is one of my favorite King Crimson albums, probably right behind Red.

It’s kind of amazing to think about the arc of experiences I have had because I stumbled across King Crimson’s entry in that library book.  My portal to the band was the material from the middle of their career, but in context, these bookends offer compelling innovations in terms of texture and technique.  For the expanding King Crimson collection, they are fundamental additions – perhaps even interesting places to start.

"Dream of the Blue Turtles" in Chapman's Class

As a student at Johnston High School in the mid-80s, I, like many other students, aspired to be in Mr. Chapman’s physics class. Mr. Chapman was a younger, “cooler” teacher whose inspiring intellect was offset by a casual, but serious, demeanor. He was an avid fan of the Police, counting Ghost in the Machine as one of his all-time favorites. By the time I had reached my junior year in 1987, however, the Police had broken up and Sting’s first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, had been on the shelves for some time. I remember being involved in several distracting discussions in Mr. Chapman’s class about the literary innuendos embedded in Sting’s lyrics and the virtuosic interactions of the band he had assembled for the album.

That, of course, was a while ago, and revisiting The Dream of the Blue Turtles yesterday was somewhat of a bittersweet experience. Although Sting jumped the shark in the mid-90s, in the mid-80s he was at the height of his creativity and popularity, and his work was impassioned, believable, and relevant. Today, however, some of the songs from Dream of the Blue Turtles are noticeably dated. Russians, in particular, is circumscribed by a cold war ideology that simply does not exist anymore. Having lived through that particular flavor of propagandized paranoia, however, the song does ring naively with the confused echoes of the era.

There are some moments on Dream of the Blue Turtles, though, that I think transcend the time in which the album was released. During his time with the Police, Sting had professed a longstanding admiration for jazz, and to explore this interest, the band he assembled for Dream of the Blue Turtles was purposefully comprised of accomplished jazz musicians. Magic regularly occurred when Sting gave them space to cut loose. For example, when Branford Marsalis takes the reins on soprano sax during the solo section of Children’s Crusade, it is a sublime and intense moment that elevates the entire track.



Although Sting was clearly playing with politics at the time, he also had some more philosophically inspired work. At the time that it came out, Fortress Around Your Heart presented itself as a haunting song with thoughtful, intellectual lyrics, and it strongly appealed to the person I was in high school. I still connect with the song today, but I wonder if the part of me that is still sitting in Mr. Chapman’s class pondering its lyric nuance on the back of a physics notebook is reaching back from the past to move my present-day self. I think it’s hard to say, but my present-day self got a kick out of trying to catch the egocentric Sting blinking in this video – how many times can you count?



It is difficult not to listen to Dream of the Blue Turtles without a small bit of cognitive dissonance. Although he was striving for a jazz-rock aesthetic in this particular album, Sting would later turn towards a clear penchant for adult contemporary soft rock, and the seeds for that eventual change in his approach were unfortunately sown here. Still, for those of us that were there, it was a meaningful and timely album. So much so that the memories I have surrounding The Dream of the Blue Turtles include the many people playing with its meaning in Mr. Chapman’s class. Again, I think that this sense of community that mediated music can cultivate has become less pervasive as the privatized nature of earbuds and playlists encourage us to isolate.