Right Minded Online

I am fascinated by the history and evolution of rock music, especially the various people who made contributions to rock-and-roll as a form of art. What is troublesome are the disproportionate number of famous musicians who died prematurely, often (but not always) as a result of their own excesses. Michael Jackson certainly wasn’t the first. The most important thing I’ve learned from these people is that money and fame cannot by themselves make a person happy. I’ve never been wealthy or famous, so I can’t say this from first-hand experience, but just observing the way these people lived tells us quite a lot. I’m sure a lot of ordinary people like me wish they could live like rock stars. But I’d wager that there are a lot of rock stars who wish they could go back to living like ordinary people.

Here’s a list of famous musicians who died too young. I’m sure I’ve left out several. Help me out if you wish.

Hank Williams - died 1953, age 29, possibily the result of a mixture of drugs and alcohol
Buddy Holly - died 1959, age 22, plane crash
The Big Bopper - died 1959, age 28, plane crash
Ritchie Valens - died 1959, age 17, plane crash
Patsy Cline - died 1963, age 30, plane crash
Jimi Hendrix - died 1970, age 27, possibly the result of a mixture of drugs and alcohol
Janis Joplin - died 1970, age 27, drugs and possibly alcohol
Jim Morrison - died 1971, age 27, possible drug overdose
Jim Croce - died 1973, age 30, plane crash
Cass Elliot - died 1974, age 32, heart attack
Elvis Presley - died 1977, age 42, overuse of prescription drugs/heart attack
Ronnie Van Zant – died 1977, age 29, plane crash
Keith Moon - died 1978, age 32, drug overdose
Sid Vicious - died 1979, age 21, drug overdose
John Bonham - died 1980, age 32, alcohol
John Lennon - died 1980, age 40, murdered
Dennis Wilson - died 1983, age 39, drowned
Andy Gibb - died 1988, age 30, myocarditis (following years of drug/alcohol abuse)
Stevie Ray Vaughan - died 1990, age 35, helicopter crash
Freddie Mercury - died 1991, age 45, AIDS
Dee Murray - died 1992, age 45, stroke
Kurt Cobain - died 1994, age 27, suicide
Selena - died 1995, age 23, murdered
Tupac Shakur - died 1996, age 25, murdered
Michael Hutchence - died 1997, age 37, suicide
Laura Branigan - died 2004, age 47, brain aneurysm
Michael Jackson - died 2009, age 50, ?

The Stoning of Soraya M.

My pro bono research assistant dug up a YouTube video of a high school orchestra playing Rush’s classic tune Red Barchetta (1981), which I consider to be the greatest song in the history of rock-and-roll. This is a very well executed performance. I don’t know how he finds these things. I’ve learned not to ask questions.

Grand Ol’ Gang by Andy Thomas.

My wife and I watched the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring several days ago. The film came out in 2003, and centers around a particular painting by Johannes Vermeer around 1665. Not much is known about the painting or the painter, and so pretty much everything in the movie is fictionalized. It’s set in the Netherlands back in the 1700’s, and tells a story of the events leading up to the creation of that painting. Of course, we don’t know how those events really played out, so we are only left to wonder. At any rate, the painting really does exist, and is currently housed in The Mauritshuis in The Hague.

My research assistant has passed along the link to a fascinating piece by Will Romano on all the mechanics that went into recording Rush’s 2007 seminal album Snakes & Arrows. (Actually, every Rush album is seminal, and do we still call them “albums?”) Much of it I simply don’t understand, but it is amazing all the work that goes into recording an hour’s worth of music.

Quotes:
“I challenged them to write the most screwed-up, complicated instrumental that they had ever written.” – Nick Raskulinecz

“The Taurus Pedals are on almost every song – which is something that hasn’t happened since 1985’s Power Windows.” – Nick Raskulinecz

“We really didn’t have a super-complex recording path. We were trying to maintain a simplistic, organic approach to recording so that we would not put ourselves into a phase nightmare when it came time to mix.” – Rich Chycki

“I’m not going to sit there and grid edit Neil Peart’s drum performance. That’s against the law.” – Nick Raskulinecz

“Every producer I work with has a new mic that sounds better than any mic ever made.” – Geddy Lee

“We paid careful attention not to beat the crap out of bus compressors, and we did take nuclear weapons to make sure they didn’t crush it to death at the mastering facility.” – Rich Chycki

Rush and Producer Nick Raskulinecz Reveal How They Recorded Snakes & Arrows

I was listening to 90125 by Yes earlier today for the first time in a very long time — so long, in fact, that I had forgotten just how good that album was. It was put out in 1983, but it’s one of those progressive rock albums that is so timeless that you can’t tell exactly when it was recorded unless you look at the copyright date. It’s an 80’s album that doesn’t sound like an 80’s album. Anyway, I got to the third track, It Can Happen, and I realized that Jon Anderson might as well have been singing about the Phillies resuming their pursuit of a World Series championship in just a few hours.

It’s a constant fight
A constant fight
You’re pushing the needle to the red
Black and white
Who knows who’s right
No substitute you’re born you’re dead
Fly by night
Created out of fantasy
Our destinations call

Look up – Look down
Look out – Look around
Look up – Look down
There’s a crazy world outside
We’re not about to lose our pride

It can happen to you
It can happen to me
It can happen to everyone eventually

As you happen to say
It can happen today
As it happens
It happens in every way

I don’t watch MTV. Never watched MTV. We didn’t have MTV when I was growing up, but when I finally did have it, I wasn’t interested in watching it, so I have to rely on others to point out what goes on there. Michelle Malkin does just that. Here’s part of a transcript from the MTV awards show hosted by Russell Brand, whoever that is:

BRAND: “Now, as a representative of the global community and a visitor from abroad, I don’t want to come across a little bit biased, but could I please ask of you people of America, to PLEASE ELECT BARACK OBAMA. Please! On behalf of the world. (Camera pans to singers Chris Brown and Britney Spears applauding and cheering.) Some people, I think they’re called racists, say that America is not ready for a black president. But I know America to be a forward-thinking country, right. Because, otherwise, you know, would you have let that retarded cowboy fellow be president for eight years?

I got into rock music as a teenager for the simple fact that it was anti-authoritarian, and I was your typical anti-authoritarian teenager. I still am anti-authoritarian, which is why I am a conservative, and I therefore don’t want a bunch of busybody liberals running around telling me how to live my life. At some point between my teenage years and now, rock stars got into politics, and nearly all of them are liberals. Of course, liberalism is the very essense of authoritarianism, because liberals try to use the power of government to micromanage every aspect of our lives. I much preferred rock stars back when they fought authority, rather than now, when they advocate voting for authoritarians like Barack Obama.

If you recall, a couple of years ago, I covered the story of Greg McDougal, a musician who attends my church in Mt. Juliet. He launched a project called A House for My Kids in order to raise money to build his family a new home. His children have cystic fibrosis, or related illnesses, and he needed a mold-free domicile for their health. He has raised the money he needed, and is coming out with a new CD called Try a Little Kindness, and has established A House for My Kids Foundation in order to help other families in similar situations. Finally, here is Greg singing one of his songs.

I’ve been thinking about it for a few hours. Here’s my best answer:

I’ve been a Rush fan as a liberal in my 20’s, and after having been a conservative for several years following my conversion, I’m still a huge Rush fan. (We’re talking about the rock band here, not Limbaugh, although I love that Rush, too.)

Reason I loved Rush as a liberal: superior musicianship and thought-provoking lyrics.

Reason I love Rush as a conservative: superior musicianship and thought-provoking lyrics.

However, there are secondary reasons why I continue to admire Rush even as my values have changed dramatically over the years. As a result, there is music I listen to now that I didn’t then, and vice versa. But as far as rock bands go, Rush is squeaky clean. You don’t hear about them doing drugs, bouncing in and out of rehab, trashing hotel rooms, getting married and divorced every other year, attempting suicide, and all the other stupid things rock stars are known for.

The members of Rush also don’t go around trashing the United States, preaching liberalism and global warming, and telling us how we are supposed to live. They have never tried to glorify decadence through their lyrics or sing about how everything sucks. Their song lyrics are generally very positive, having transcended from science fiction idealism in the 1970’s to more down-to-earth pragmatism in the 2000’s. There are no drippy ballads or, to quote Paul McCartney, silly love songs.

In other words, Rush runs a pretty mean live-and-let-live libertarian streak, their words are generally quite encouraging, they don’t get preachy, and their work ethic is definitely worth emulating. In my opinion, they are the best at what they do, and I have great admiration for those who are the best at what they do, with few exceptions.

Rush has never enjoyed the commercial success of, say, Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley, although they do have a string of gold records a mile long and pack ‘em in for their concerts. They have scored exactly one Top 40 hit. You will not hear them on Top 40 radio, which is why I never listen to Top 40 radio. However, if you ask musicians to list their influences, a lot of them will name Rush. They are pioneers — not pop culture icons. This is also a positive.

And so we get back to my original thought: I admire Rush for their superior musicianship and thought-provoking lyrics.

“One day I feel I’m on top of the world/And the next it’s falling in on me/I can get back on/I can get back on.”

Links: Rush official website | Rush Is a Band blog | Rush Wikipedia article

I would never have known about this had my friend Brad not sent me about 65 e-mails telling me. Brad is a Rush groupie who also owns a sizable estate just outside of Memphis, home of the Memphis Tigers, where we went to college, and who should have won the national championship back in April, but I’m getting off topic here.

“You are known for sometimes having long songs. Have you ever written a song that was so epic that by the time you got to the end of the song you were being influenced by yourselves from the earlier part of the song?”

My friend Brad shipped me the link to an excellent article on Neil Peart, the greatest drummer in the rock world, who happens to bang the sticks for the greatest rock band ever, Rush.

Peart, a mysterious personality even in Rush fan circles, became a sympathetic figure in the late ’90s when he was struck by a pair of personal tragedies. The deaths of his wife and a daughter, just 10 months apart, became the stepping stone for his well-reviewed 2002 memoir, “Ghost Rider,” which chronicled his therapeutic motorcycle journey across North America.

For fans, it was a familiar picture of intense self-determination — one they’d come to know well from Peart’s lyrics.

“The lyrics have been such a big influence on how I look at the world,” says Standridge.

“What I take from them is that it’s your life, it’s in your hands, you make of it what you want… So much of rock ‘n’ roll is about whining and complaining. Those lyrics say get up and do something about it.”

Which points me to a portion of the lyrics of Far Cry, the lead track in their 2007 release Snakes and Arrows:

One day I feel I’m on top of the world
And the next it’s falling in on me
I can get back on
I can get back on
One day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel,
And the next it’s rolling over me
I can get back on
I can get back on

[Link]

I checked iTunes yesterday afternoon to see when the new Rush album was due out. It’s May 1, but, lo and behold. their first release from Snakes & Arrows, a single titled “Far Cry,” is already out, so I downloaded it. It’s Rush’s first new music in five years. The song just flat out rocks. I don’t know how else to put it. So, now that I am finally out of my Rush doldrums, I’ve decided to make a list ten things I like about the band.

1. Intelligent lyrics – written almost exclusively by drummer Neil Peart. There’s a story in every song, and you won’t ever hear vocalist Geddy Lee sing the word “ho.” The lyrics are clean and free of vulgarity and slang.

2. Superior musicianship. The guys don’t need electronics or machines to pump out the sound. And Neil Peart is the greatest drummer in the world.

3. Uplifting songs. The tone is usually (but not always) positive and optimistic.

4. No drippy ballads or love songs.

5. A superior live show. I’ve seen them four times. Rush makes sure the fan gets his money’s worth. My friend Brad and I saw them the first time on their Roll the Bones Tour back in May, 1992 at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. We were on the fourth row. Every time Neil Peart hit the bass drum, it was like somebody punching you in the chest. We were on cloud nine that night.

6. No two albums are the same. To say that Rush has evolved would be an understatement. (By the way, why do we still call them albums?)

7. Big sound, small band. I remember the first time I ever listened to Rush it was early 1991. I was still in the Navy, overseas in Naples, Italy, and I was sitting in my friend’s room playing Nintendo. He dropped in A Show of Hands — their live CD recorded during the Hold Your Fire Tour in 1987-1988. The sound was very dynamic, and I remarked that there must be about eight people in the band to get that kind of complexity. But there are only three of them.

8. I’m sure the members of Rush have partied a little, especially when younger. But I’ve never heard stories of the band getting involved in drugs or anything else unsavory. (Although guitarist Alex Lifeson did get into a fight at a party a few years ago.) As far as rock-and-rollers go, these guys are squeaky clean.

9. It would have been easy for the band to hang it up ten years ago. During the late 1990’s, Neil Peart lost his daughter (car accident) and his wife (cancer) within about a year of each other. The band went silent for a long time. Both Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee branched out on solo projects. Then, in 2002, the band released Vapor Trails — its first studio album in six years.

10. They keep getting better. Take something from each decade during which Rush has produced an album – 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s – and you will find that the musicianship keeps improving. I realize that styles change, but the songs keep getting more complex and intricate. Rush pushes the boundaries farther out with every album. Neil Peart does things that seem supernatural.

A group of rock stars who are intent on lecturing the rest of us how we should live are set to give a concert on behalf of Mother Earth.

More than 100 rock and pop stars will perform during the 24-hour live concert.

But green campaigners called the stars’ involvement hypocritical last night saying their lifestyles which demand they jet themselves and their huge entourages on world tours give them enormously large carbon footprints.

Last year, for example, they report how Madonna flew as many as 100 technicians, dancers, backing singers, managers and family members on a 56-date world tour in private jets and commercial airliners.

Madonna herself also has a collection of fuel-guzzling cars, including a Mercedes Maybach, two Range Rovers, Audi A8s and a Mini Cooper S. Yet she will headline the London concert to “combat the climate crisis”.

“Madonna’s Confessions tour produced 440 tonnes of CO2 in four months of last year. And that was just the flights between the countries, not taking into account the truckloads of equipment needed, the power to stage such a show and the transport of all the thousands of fans getting to the gigs.

“The Red Hot Chili Peppers produced 220 tonnes of CO2 with their private jet alone over six months on their last world tour which was 42 dates.

“The average a British person produces is 10 tonnes a year,” said John Buckley, managing director-of CarbonFootprint.com.

He added: “It’s great for the celebrities to come out and support the cause, but they then have to follow it up in their own lifestyles.”

The irony here is that rock-and-roll cut its teeth on a sort of anti-establishment nonconformity that by its nature rebelled against political systems, governments, and authority in general. Nowdays, rock musicians have to a large degree been integrated into the left-wing political establishment, having become what rockers used to rebel against. Indeed, the Live Earth concert is the brain child of Al Gore, a politician, who remarks “By attracting an audience of billions we hope Live Earth will launch a global campaign giving a critical mass of people around the world the tools they need to help solve the climate crisis. But ultimately, corporations and governments must become global leaders taking decisive action to stop global warming.”

Indeed, the global warming hoax is nothing more than an attempt by leftists to confiscate more taxes and increase government control over our lives. Authoritarian mainstream rock-and-rollers have become part of that attempted power grab.

And so I leave you with the lyrics to John Mellencamp’s Authority Song:

I fight authority, Authority always wins
I fight authority, Authority always wins
I been doing it since I was a young kid
I come out grinnin’
I fight authority, Authority always wins

Boy, those sure were the days.

With the release of last year’s movie The Da Vinci Code, the works of Leonardo da Vinci, including his rendering of The Last Supper, gained increased popularity. Da Vinci’s Last Supper is probably the most famous in the world. It is actually a mural inside the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. I had the priviledge of seeing this painting in person back in March, 1991 when I visited Milan. (That’s my photograph there on the right. As expected, photography inside the building is verboten.)

Da Vinci’s Last Supper is indeed a masterpiece, not only for its artistic quality, but also for its symbolism. But it is not my favorite rendering of The Last Supper. I’m sure its colors were once brilliant, but it is largely faded now.

My favorite Last Supper is that painted by another famous Renaissance artist, Domenico Ghirlandaio, a Florentine, who painted a mural of that famous event on a wall inside the small Church of Ognissanti, which I was lucky enough to photograph when I visited that church back in September, 1989.

About three years ago, when the Roses were making one our many visits to Dollywood, I bought my first bluegrass CD. At Dollywood, they play bluegrass constantly, and it sort of wore on me, so I picked up an instrumental compilation put together by Craig Duncan. A few months later, I bought another, then another, and decided to branch out into some of the earlier bluegrass recordings by charter members such as Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and Lester Flatt. Then it was on to newer artists, such as The Seldom Scene, Allison Krauss, and, of course, Ricky Skaggs.

I saw Ricky Skaggs for the first time back on June 25 when he and his band, Kentucky Thunder, played about a 35-minute set in a patriotic service at First Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tennessee, where Skaggs and his family are members. (My mother-in-law sings in the choir there, which is how I knew they were going to be playing.) Upon leaving the stage that night, Skaggs announced they would be playing at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on July 27, as part of the Ryman’s bluegrass series. My wife and I decided to buy tickets to that show, which, of course, was last night.

I didn’t know it when I bought the tickets, but a group calling itself “Cherryholmes” was scheduled to open for Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder. At first, I was hoping to just go to the concert and see Skaggs play for a couple of hours. I could have done without an opening act. Boy, was I shocked. Cherryholmes tore it up for about 50 minutes (the only opening act I’ve ever seen do an encore), and at the end of the night, I honestly cannot say who the better performers were. Cherryholmes, as it turns out, is a family of six — father, mother, two sons, and two daughters — who have only been playing bluegrass for about seven years.

During the intermission, the group went out into the lobby upstairs to sell their own CD’s, so I wandered up there, bought one, and had them sign it. That’s always a neat experience.

Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder came out just before 9:00 to start their set, which lasted a full two hours. They brought in several guests, including Andy Statman, who played the clarinet in a way I’ve never heard it played before, plus Skaggs’ own two children, then The Whites, to one of whom Skaggs is married.

Skaggs began his music career in the bluegrass genre back in 1970 at the age of 16, crossed over to country, than back over to bluegrass about ten years ago. Skaggs is also a Christian who talks about Christ very freely, and has a disdain for the country music world he left. To quote Skaggs, “I left the wilderness of country music for the promised land of bluegrass.” And when announcing that he and his wife were soon going to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, he quipped, “You can tell we ain’t no country stars, been married 25 years.”

So, we bought tickets for one concert, but ended up being treated to three hours of the best bluegrass music you will ever hear. I’m always intrigued by people who are the best at what they do, and Cherryholmes and Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder are certainly among the very best at what they do. Although I consume music across a wide range of genres, if I were going to be a professional musician, it would be in the bluegrass field. I’m a Tennessean right to the core, and there’s no music any closer to Tennessee than bluegrass. Plus, I really like the acoustic instruments, the generally clean-cut artists, and the fact that bluegrass artists often reflect on God in their music.

I had known that Rush’s lead singer and bassist Geddy Lee is Jewish. I had not known that his mother, Mary Rubenstein, is a Holocaust survivor.

In fact, when Rubenstein looked out the window of a camp building she was working in on April 15, 1945 and saw guards with both arms raised, she thought they were doing a double salute just to be arrogant. She did not realize British forces had overrun the camp. Rubinstein and her fellow prisoners, says Lee, “were so malnourished, their brains were not functioning, and they couldn’t conceive they’d be liberated,” because they thought civilized society no longer existed.

(By the way, my friend Brad also sent along a link to a bunch of Rush .mp3’s and photographs.)

My brother asked me a few days ago about the early Elton John recording Tumbleweed Connection (1971), which was really the last album he released before becoming a megastar. I have to admit that I didn’t care much for Tumbleweed the first few times I heard it. It is so different from all the other Elton John recordings, even from that era. As the title suggests, though, the album has sort of a Country & Western feel to it. A friend of mine bought me an original vinyl copy of Tumbleweed at a yard sale several years ago for next-to-nothing. Even the jacket is full of stagecoach-and-saloon designs. Anyway, it wouldn’t be so remarkable if Elton John were from Nashville and had cut his teeth on that genre, but he’s from England yet still managed to capture a glimpse of the Country & Western sound. Another indicator of the quality of the musicianship is that if you listened to Tumbleweed without knowing the year it was recorded, you’d have a hard time pinning it down. That’s because, unlike other early recordings by Elton John, Tumbleweed doesn’t sound 70’s-ish, not that there’s anything wrong with sounding 70’s-ish. There’s some very good rock-and-roll that sounds 70’s-ish. But Tumbleweed is what you would call “timeless,” I suppose. And even though no top 40 hits came off Tumbleweed, I would rate it among Elton John’s very best albums, which is not a choice that’s made easily.

Unlike Pablo Picasso (not impressionist), it is difficult for me to choose my favorite Monet and Renoir paintings because they did so many that were extraordinary. But I must highlight Monet’s “Poppies at Argenteuil” as being among the best of the best. I honestly cannot explain what it is about this painting, or impressionism in general, that causes it to stand above the rest. On the other hand, the music of the impressionist period (Claude DeBussy, for example) is not my favorite, but is still certainly listenable. Perhaps that’s just the way art is, though.

And then there’s “The Luncheon.”

With Renoir, it’s just as difficult, so I’ll simply point out “Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre” as being a top-shelf Renoir. Heck, they’re all top-shelf.