Blister Soul

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Back at the beginning of 2008, I started listening to a musician who's been around since the early 1990s. Over the years I've seen reviews and articles about Bill Mallonee and his band the Vigilantes of Love but I had never heard any of his music until a few months ago. Following a link from a blog, I listened to a couple of VoL songs and was immediately drawn to Bill's style, both band-wise and songwriting. Bill's music has been categorized as everything from roots-folk-Americana to Brit-pop, and while the strong influence of artists like Bob Dylan and Neil Young is evident, VoL sometimes sounds like Tom Petty, R.E.M, the Gin Blossoms or even an alt-country band. Put all of that together and you get a hint of Bill's music, which I am enjoying as I try to catch up on 15 or more VoL albums as well as Bill's 10+ solo recordings.

As a songwriter, Bill is both prolific and quite interesting - deep, thoughtful, even spiritual, his songs reflect brokenness and struggles that relate in a real-life way, yet are not so depressing that the listener loses hope. In fact, I think many of his songs inspire hope because of their realism and sensitivity. I'm very impressed with his ability to be revealing and honest, and to put the honesty of his thoughts and feeling into his songs. I find music like this refreshing - because it's not the sugar-coated, false love, hyped sexuality that many "hit" records are made of. Bill is a song-crafter with years of good work behind him. And yet his story is not what many would call a success story. The Vigilantes of Love broke up in the early 2000s, mainly because they couldn't afford to stay together. They had been dropped by their record company, which, in spite of several very good albums, hadn't been able to "sell" them well enough. For a while the band did very well on AAA (Adult Album Alternative) radio, but exposure through AAA does not always translate into high sales. So Bill found himself without a label and without a band, and began a solo career that hasn't even always paid the bills. In an interview from October 2007 Bill talked about the 2006 Christmas season when he had to sell a guitar to pay the rent and couldn't get part-time Christmas work from a temp agency because the only experience he had for the past 10 years was "... I was a songwriter, I managed a band and made records". And I find it interestingly sad that a talented songwriter like Bill, someone who is obviously successful at writing good songs and with a catalog of good music to be enjoyed, is getting such a seemingly poor response to his work. It certainly deserves a lot more.

So I've been searching eBay and Amazon.Com for Bill's older albums, and many of them are also available for purchase and download at volsounds.com - if you've never heard Bill's music, this is a good way to get to know him and his songs for low cost. I fully recommend his music - I believe that you will enjoy it. I am, and this is what I've collected so far:

Blister Soul (1995)
V.O.L (1996 - compilation)
To The Roof Of The Sky (1998)
Audible Sigh (2000)
Summershine (2001)
Perfumed Letter (2003)

Take a listen - to pique your interest here are a couple of MP3s from the Vigilantes of Love albums Blister Soul and Summershine - just click to listen:

You Know That (Is Nothing New) from Summershine
Offer from Blister Soul

A sweep of a feather....

I Wish We'd All Been Ready

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You probably won't read about this on Yahoo! News or CNN, or see it on "Good Morning, America". It won't be front page news in your local paper and probably won't be the talk of the office at the water cooler tomorrow morning. But this morning at 2:45 A.M., Larry Norman passed away, a little over a month shy of his 61st birthday. Today, and for several days to come, there will be hundreds of blogs and articles written about Larry and his effect on modern Christianity and music as well as testimonies to the impact of Larry's music on individuals (and I am one of those individuals). But even with all that will be written, it will still be difficult if not impossible to fully express Larry's influence on several generations of musicians and believers. He is known as the grandfather of Christian rock, but he was never comfortable with the multi-million dollar industry that developed out of the ministries of musicians like himself who simply wanted to share their faith through their music. And that message of faith is the main message you got from Larry in everything that he did - he wanted the world to know about Jesus, and his music always expressed that. Of course, as with all who obtain some measure of fame, he didn't have a perfect life - he was an extremely talented singer/songwriter/musician who, while giving interviews, would brag about himself or drop the names of famous people like an insecure sycophant, as through he needed to validate himself in some way (he didn't need to). He had a 40+ year career of selling hundreds of thousands of records/tapes/CDs and influencing thousands more who enjoyed his music and admired and respected him, yet at the end of his life he struggled to pay his medical bills. He preached about the compassion of Jesus and and the importance of giving to the poor, and he criticized corporate greed and wealth, yet he offended and broke relationship with some of his musician friends by withholding their royalty payments and the rights to their music for decades (my understanding is that he finally resolved these issues in recent years). He wrote songs with lyrics like "watch what you're doing", yet he married the ex-wife of one of his best friends. He was a hypocrite, he made many mistakes and sometimes said foolish things, but maybe that's part of the reason his songs had such an effect on so many of us - because he was just like us.

I first heard of Larry Norman from the leader of the youth group I attended in 1972. I was one of the group's musicians, and our leader asked me to play "I Wish We'd All Been Ready" on guitar. When I told her that I'd never heard of that song, she looked at me with wide-eyed amazement and asked "You mean you've never heard 'I Wish We'd All Been Ready'?. You HAVE to hear this song!". So I listened, and although I wasn't impressed on first listen, I soon understood the impact of the song's concept. A while later I picked up my first Larry Norman album, a record I found at a garage sale and still own - Only Visiting This Planet. It's still my favorite Larry album, recorded in 1972 in the time period between Upon This Rock and So Long Ago The Garden - many fans consider these three albums Larry's best work. Larry continued putting out albums, and while many of them were just repackaging of his older songs, some newer albums like 2001's Tourniquet showed that Larry still had something creative to say. Larry lived in Salem, Oregon for the last several years - it's only a 6 hour drive from where I live, and I was tempted to drive there and try to meet him, but he didn't know me and had no reason to meet me, so I never made the trip. He suffered from heart problems and bad health for the last several years, and that is what finally got the best of him, although thankfully he is no longer suffering.

Larry, I know you're finally resting like never before. To your family I offer my condolences - your fans, me and the thousands all around the world, will miss you, but we've all "got to learn to live without you".

Nothing really changes, everything remains the same, we are what we are 'till the day that we die

Rock Show

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Every year in January I attend a music convention in Anaheim, California called The NAMM Show. It is a convention sponsored by the manufacturers of music products, and music store owners and other music retailers attend to see the latest offerings from the manufacturers. Even though the show is not open to the public, it is very popular among musicians and very well attended, to the tune of several thousand people each of the 4 days that it is open. The NAMM Show is where many manufacturers unveil their latest models/versions, and I find it both interesting and entertaining to walk the aisles and see all of the musical instruments, accessories, software and hardware. And there are usually many famous musicians and celebrities walking the aisles or demonstrating products. Over the years I have seen Joe Satriani, Lisa Loeb (very friendly, posed with me for a photo while Dweezil Zappa watched), Alan Holdsworth, Bob Moog, Michael Manring, Tom Scott (a very nice guy, called a friend over to take a photo of Tom and me), Joe Walsh, Nathan East (another very nice guy), John Hall (president of Rickenbacker Guitars), Gene Simons, Timothy B. Schmidt, and it seems that every year I see Stevie Wonder trying out a new product. A few years ago I was in the Yamaha display room looking at a new digital baby grand piano when I noticed a small crowd moving my way. It was Stevie with his entourage, and he came right to the piano I was standing next to and started playing. I ended up being about 4 feet away from Stevie as he tried out the piano, so I had a nice little private concert. It’s one of the frills of being at the NAMM Show.

This year I knew that a favorite guitarist of mine, a chap by the name of Phil Keaggy, was going to be playing at a special concert called “The Acoustic Cafe” on Friday night, so I went to the display booth of L.R. Baggs, who were one of the sponsors of the concert, and asked for tickets to the show. As the sales rep was giving me tickets he mentioned that Phil was going to be playing at the booth later in the afternoon, so my friends and I got back to the L.R. Baggs booth about 20 minutes before Phil was due to start. Phil was a little late - apparently he didn’t have the proper entrance badge to allow him to bring in his instruments - but when he arrived he set up quickly and played for about 35 minutes. Being that my friends and I were there early, we had front row views - we were about 6-8 feet away from Phil as he played. I’ve seen Phil a few times in concert, but never that close. After he finished, Phil stayed and chatted with many of the guys there and even posed for photos with a few of us. One of my friends was in a wheelchair, and Phil stepped out of the booth and posed with my friend for photo. I noticed that Phil took time to listen to everyone who spoke with him, and considering that he probably gets this kind of demand for his attention everywhere he plays, he was very gracious and patient. When I stepped up for my photo op with him, I mentioned that the first time I saw him play live was with a group called Love Song in 1973, and he responded that he is still in contact with some of the guys from that band because they live near him in Nashville. All in all, Phil was very cool, as you can see.

The concert that night was very good - alot of very good players. One of the guys playing was Fred Eaglesmith, who is from Canada, has a nice-sounding band, and is pretty funny. Phil played with his looping pedal and sounded good, even though the mix wasn’t great. He broke a string during one song, but someone handed him a guitar and he carried on playing while his guitar was being restrung. John Mayer was set to play right afterwards, and as he was getting a very poorly-executed introduction by someone from Martin Guitars, a guy in the row directly in front of me yelled, or maybe it was more of a scream, something about John being “the best”, and for a moment I though I was at a sports event and sitting in the face-paint section. Anyway, John came out, solo, and I left after 2 ½ songs (not being a big fan of John, or of face painting). It was a good day - I hope Phil felt the same.

Spin It On

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For Christmas, my son Danny gave me a Best Buy gift card, which I immediately cashed in for Paul McCartney’s latest DVD, The McCartney Years. This is a 3-DVD set consisting of most of Paul’s music videos (including early 70s tunes as well as MTV’s Unplugged and recent videos such as “Fine Line”), concert footage from several concerts (including the 1976 Wings Over America and the 2002 Driving Rain tours) and a few interviews and documentaries. For someone like me who’s been buying Paul’s albums since 1971, this is a very cool addition to my collection of Beatle and solo Beatle videos. For those not as connected to Paul or the Beatle years, some of the videos are not going to be very entertaining. For example, Emily was not at all impressed with the video for London Town, which I have to admit is unreasonably terrible. And if I were in Paul’s shoes, I sure wouldn’t have included Say, Say, Say, although it is nice to see Michael Jackson when he looked normal. On the other hand, I do like having the video for Coming Up, with Paul in different costumes and makeup acting out the parts for the whole band (Emily didn’t even notice that all of the band characters were Paul until I pointed it out to her). What I’m saying is, if you’ve always followed and enjoyed Paul’s music, or at least most of Paul’s music, you’ll like this DVD set, so go buy it right away. If you like some of Paul’s music but are not a big follower, you will be skipping over a lot of the videos, but you will probably enjoy the live performance videos and the extra features, so pick up this DVD when you have some extra spending money, or ask for it as a gift. If you are in neither group and you simply hate Paul McCartney, you probably shouldn’t buy this DVD. HTH. HAND.

Ashes, The Rain And I

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California Girls wasn’t the only song that my high school buddy Tom and I recorded together. We both were very interested in learning about audio recording and we experimented with recording ourselves on our acoustic guitars in Tom’s bedroom. We started off recording with two Sony stereo reel-to-reel tape recorders… I believe that Tom bought his Sony 630 when we were 16, and I already had an older Sony that my dad had given to me. We also had available to us a Radio Shack 6-channel stereo microphone mixer that Tom had modified by adding pan pots - the mixer belonged to our youth group, but we were in charge of the sound equipment so we were able to use it for our projects. And we picked up recording tips where ever we could - sometimes we would hang out at recording studios in Hollywood, but also at that time there was a new audio recording periodical called The Mix, which was published on newsprint. We would get the latest issue from our local music stores and study it intently. We spent hours and hours experimenting, recording ourselves - although most of the tapes have not survived the ensuing years. A few did survive however, like California Girls and a few other songs, like Tom and I with two other friends from high school playing Jumpin’ Jack Flash - although that wasn’t one of our better recordings. One of the songs that did turn out well was Ashes, The Rain And I. This is a song that was originally recorded by The James Gang, one of our favorite bands at the time, and although it featured an orchestra section, it was basically a song played with acoustic guitars, so we decided that we could record our own version. We recorded our guitars - Tom playing his Ventura 12-string and me playing my Ventura 6-string - in stereo (Tom panned towards the right, me towards the left) on one of our tape recorders. Then we played the recorder back through the 6-channel mixer, with Tom singing along and me adding bass guitar, and recorded the whole thing onto the second tape recorder. The final result sounded pretty good, but we were trying to keep the bass guitar mixed pretty low, so it wouldn’t overpower any other instrument and, unfortunately, we mixed it a bit too low - you can only hear the bass on a real good music system, and only very slightly during the verse. But still, the recording came out pretty good, considering our available resources and location - this is the result of two tape recorders, two seventeen-year-olds and their guitars:

Ashes, The Rain And I

California Girls

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Tom was my best friend on high school. We hung out together so much that when our friends would see one of us, they would ask where the other one was. We met when we were 15 - I had just learned to play guitar and Tom was already playing. We played guitars together, listened to music together, worked at his father’s mushroom plant together, made dorky high school movies together. And we learned about recording music together - we would use two Sony reel-to-reel stereo tape recorders to record ourselves playing guitars at Tom’s house - but while I was spending my 20s and 30s working for the government, Tom was working in music and television studios gaining more and more experience. These days he runs a recording studio, which was our dream as teenagers.

In late 1975 Tom was working part-time in the recording studio of a local college. Since he had access to the studio during off hours, we decided to record a Beach Boys song. So we got together with some friends, spent a few evenings practicing, and recorded “California Girls”. And while I think we did a fairly decent job - sometimes people hear it and say that it sounds alot like The Beach Boys. I don’t think it’s all that close… there are some pretty glaring differences if you listen. First of all, none of us sounded a whole lot like the Wilson Brothers, and The Beach Boys used an organ on their version, but we didn’t have access to one, so we used a harpsichord instead. All in all though, it ended up sounding pretty nice. I sang lead and Tom sang the high harmony part. Tom and I are doing the vocal repeats at the end of the song - I still remember being crammed into the small control room with Tom, crowded around a single mic, singing those parts. Our friends Dale Dimmick and Steve Kiger sang the other vocal harmony parts. Tom played the guitars at the beginning, I played bass, and our high school friend Steve Bollinger played drums. There were a few other musicians (like the guy who played the harpsichord) but I forgot their names long ago. This is what we put together on a Tascam 4-track reel-to-reel:

California Girls

Listen To The Band

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My first job was being the newspaper delivery boy for my neighborhood. I wanted to deliver for The Press-Courier, the local newspaper in my city, because it had the largest circulation (which meant making the most money), but I had to start off delivering papers locally for The Daily News, a newspaper from a smaller neighboring city (with a smaller customer base) while I waited for the Press-Courier route on my street to become available. Every few weeks I would call or ride my bike to the P-C offices to see if there were any routes opening up near me. One weekend the newspaper held a flea market in the parking lot behind their office building, and being interested in working for the company I decided to ride my bike downtown to check it out and hopefully meet someone responsible for hiring paperboys. There were dozens of tables filled with various items for sale and I think that the proceeds were going to help some sort of charitable organization. I remember that it was a bit of a carnival atmosphere, with food and game booths and top-40 music blaring out of the speakers that circled the parking lot. But what I remember most about that day is a song I heard over the parking lot speakers, a song called All My Loving. It is the first song I remember hearing by The Beatles.

Discovering The Beatles had a tremendous impact on me. Listening to the radio, I began to recognize that several of the songs I liked were Beatle songs, which led me to buy one of their albums… I believe the first one was “Yesterday… and Today”. This led to more Beatle album purchases - “Rubber Soul” and “HELP!” came next, and quickly after that the rest of their available catalog. I would lay on my bed in my room for hours with my headphones on, playing Beatle albums over and over. For me, listening to their records was like going to school - I studied what they were doing, the makeup of their songs, their instrumentation, their recordings, their songwriting style. As a teenager I would learn to play guitar, piano and bass guitar and also begin to write songs, and The Beatles would be my biggest musical influence - and they still are. I still listen to and enjoy those records CDs.

And I finally got that paper route with the Press-Courier, although The Beatles didn’t help much with that.

Throwdown At The Hoedown

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Last Sunday night Emily and I saw Bela Fleck and The Flecktones. Simply amazing! This is one of those bands that, if you ever get the chance to see them live, you should do it. All four instrumentalists are quite accomplished and as a unit they completely compliment each other. Each of them is amazing - Victor Wooten is well known among bassists as an incredible player, and this show was a live testimony to his expertise. Jeff Coffin’s sax and flute work was perfect - a real pleasure to listen to. “Futureman” (the percussionist, who is also Victor’s older brother) played his drum solo thru a MIDI controller called the “Drumitar” which he wore around his neck like a guitar… he’s quite an interesting character to watch as well as a first-rate musician. Bela is an outstanding player who can make you forget that he is playing a banjo. A very enjoyable concert, and I discovered that I really enjoy their music. So the next day I ordered their DVD “Live At The Quick“.

Listen To The Music

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I did not have a lot of choice in the music I listened to as a kid growing up in the 60s. By fifth grade my friends were listening to the latest rock and roll songs on their AM radios, but my dad wouldn’t let me or my brother listen to that “crap”… we couldn’t listen to the radio when he was around, and we certainly couldn’t have any rock record albums, so all that was left was to listen to what my parents were listening to. Dad had his own record collection, which consisted of albums by musicians like Percy Faith, Herb Albert and The Tijuana Brass, Johnny Mathis (great voice), Hugo Montenegro and Petula Clark (which, at the time, was the most modern record my dad owned). For lack of anything else to listen to, I would sometimes play my dad’s records when he wasn’t home, picking out the songs I liked and playing those songs over and over. My mom liked country music, but my dad hated it, so my mom would only listen to her country records when my dad wasn’t home. Some of Mom’s favorites were Hank Williams, Charlie Pride and Loretta Lynn as well as Jim Reeves and Marty Robbins, who were also my favorites. Mom would also listen to the country radio station while driving in her station wagon, singing along with Charlie or Loretta. This was always a problem when my dad needed to use her car, like when our family was taking our bi-monthly trip to San Pedro to visit relatives. He would get in her car and start it, and suddenly the radio would blare out an earful of country music… to say he was annoyed would be putting it mildly.

Of course, the older I got the harder it was for my dad to control the music I was listening to, and eventually I discovered rock and roll. And I soaked it up - 60s rock, Motown, British Invasion - so much really good music to take in. And I discovered that most of the songs I had picked out as my favorites from listening to my dad’s albums were actually songs that had been originally written and recorded by people like Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Smokie Robinson, Neil Diamond, and the team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland… it seems that out of the highly orchestrated cover songs of my dad’s record collection I had instinctively gravitated to the music of my generation. I also discovered the beginnings of my musical ability, which revealed itself in the way I heard music, the way music affected me. For me listening to music was like the enjoyment I got from reading… or even better. And the music that affected me the most, that I enjoyed the most, the music I listened to the most and studied the most, was the music of The Beatles.