I've posted a few times recently about my pal and TONY colleague Hank Shteamer's blog, Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches. When I dropped by there earlier tonight, I was reminded all over again why I hope everyone out there takes a minute to head over that way. The overall tone of Hank's posts is a lot less formal than most pro-written blogs, but don't be fooled: There's some serious meat in his long post from Tuesday night about jazz trombonist-composer Grachan Moncur III, the kind of detail that sends me scrambling to my record collection. The preceding post contains equally telling insights about the post-punk band All, wrapped in a blanket of personal reminiscences that just make Hank's point that much more salient, given how cuddly a band All tends to be.
But what really hooked me tonight was the post that preceded that one: a naked revelation of passion for Steve Perry, vocalist of the big-business '80s band Journey. To those of us who work late into Thursday nights with Hank, this comes as no surprise. But within this sweaty confession, you'll find a pithy argument as to why pop music writers ought to embrace and even celebrate, rather than scorn and seek to conceal, their so-called guilty pleasures -- or at least try to genuinely consider why music for the masses actually succeeds in penetrating, persuading and lingering with such a broad segment of the population. As someone who owns a complete set of Bangles CDs, honestly considers the early-'80s output of Hall and Oates (everything from Voices to Big Bam Boom) to be genune pop nirvana, and furtively skulked into Tower the day before yesterday hoping to score a discounted copy of the Genesis album Duke, I can only nod in humble recognition.
Of course, I came away from that Tower excursion with a big bag full of Can CDs, selected with a shopping list that my formidably tasteful pal Jon Abbey provided literally years ago. Can is one of those cult acts that critics are compelled to admire in order to keep up appearances, and just happens to be truly great besides -- which is something I actually did know prior to finally ponying up for the latest remasters. But would this have happened if the Genesis bin hadn't been thoroughly plundered, apart from a few stray copies of the band's self-titled 1983 release (the few truly fine songs on which are blighted by proximity to "Illegal Alien," the group's all-time bomb)? Probably not, I confess.
Maybe that's the real price of Tower's impending demise: the end of perverse last-minute alternatives for money already earmarked as "spent."
(For the record, I continue to not be the Buddy Rich-obsessed drummer who was Steve Perry's bandmate in Journey for a while. If I were, don't you think I'd have retired to some exotic island by now?)
Playlist:
Can - Delay 1968, Soundtracks and Soon Over Babaluma (Spoon)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mass in C minor (ed. Langrée); Masonic Funeral Music - Natalie Dessay, Véronique Gens, Topi Lethipuu, Luca Pisaroni, Le Concert d'Astrée/Louis Langrée (Virgin Classics)
Grateful Dead - Download Series, Vol. 4: Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, June 18, 1976 (Grateful Dead FLAC download)
Maria McKee - You Gotta Sin to Be Saved (Geffen)
Giuseppe Verdi - Rigoletto - Ekaterina Siurina, Joseph Calleja, Juan Pons, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus/Friedrich Haider (RealAudio broadcast via Metropolitan Opera website)
The Necks - Aquatic (Carpet Bomb)
Morton Feldman - Piano and String Quartet - Ives Ensemble (hat[NOW]art)
Masahiko Okura, Utah Kawasaki and Tetuzi Akiyama - Bject (Hibari)
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