The Jagger-Richards songwriting team

If you know anything about the musical philosophies of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, a.k.a. the "Glimmer Twins" and the songwriting team behind the Rolling Stones, you might be amazed the band has lasted as long as it has.

It certainly hasn't been without some turmoil...but then again, no long-lasting songwriting team has smooth sailing 100% of the time.

In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones were born out of American musical styles such as R&B and traditional delta blues. Their influences originate in American artists such as Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry, to name a few. They are graduate students of that genre of music, to say the least. The very name of the band was founded on a line from an song by one of those artists in the 1950s.

However, as time passed and the 1970s emerged, Jagger had the philosophy that the Stones needed to evolve and change with the times. It's Mick's direction that prompted the progress of the band into directions in the vein of "Dance Little Sister" from 1974's It's Only Rock and Roll, and "Miss You" from 1978's Some Girls.

Richard's philosophy was always more oriented in traditional blues, as he was less adventurous about noodling with the classic Rolling Stones sound that had ingrained itself in classic rock by the 1970s...songs that come to mind that are of the Richards forte might be things like "Sway" from 1971's Sticky Fingers and "Ventilator Blues" from 1972's Exile on Main St.

As the Stones entered the 1980s, these differences in musical philosophy -- in addition to a different philosophy of how to spend their time in their personal lives -- began to create a deepening rift between the two. As a result, the quality of output from the Stones in that decade suffered greatly...it got so bad that nearly all the material from 1986's Dirty Work was written independently, and even in some cases vocals and guitars were recorded in separate studios.

The results of this discombobulated approach reflected in the music, and the Stones essentially ceased for some time to be a living, breathing entity as they didn't tour for the better part of eight years.

Such a lack of exposure would normally mean certain death to most rock bands -- but hey, these are the Stones.

Luckily, Jagger and Richards realized that the results from working together was greater than the sum of its parts; so they had a reconciliation by the end of the 80s. By compromising on the makeup of songs on albums, agreeing to disagree, and utilizing their individual strengths, the band flourished once again. There is also no denying the mutual respect the two have formed for each other over the years as artists and friends.

While the material from the band since 1989's Steel Wheels has never really been up to par with their classic material from the 1960s and 70s, it has certainly produced some gems in their massive cannon and has given Stones fans plenty to chew on in the last 20-some years.

Hopefully we'll get a little more from this timeless and legendary songwriting team before their flame goes out.

ISSUES FOR IDIOTS -- Artist subgenre classifications with MP3 players

So this is an ongoing problem I seem to have...and it seems to have no end in sight.

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm generally not a fan of classifying music, as many artists defy category. I guess the fact that I listen to many artists that cross music categories I believe demonstrates how I have breadth and diversity in my music collection. That stated, my collection certainly can always use more (such as opera, classical, blues, and electronica).

As the line under the title of the blog states: "...the musical journey continues."

...but now we need you at the bridge, Captain! WE'RE HAVING ISSUES!!!

So, back to the subject of classifying artists. Those of us who have MP3 players (in my case, the 160GB iPod, of which I've filled so far with 104.90GB of music - that's 19,785 songs most of which are ripped at 192 kbps) obviously must deal with assigning a classification of music for our music artists when we helicopter the songs onto our computer program, which the MP3 device takes to set itself up.

Many folks don't care, or don't know to pay attention to those sorts of details and live in MP3 bliss without thinking about "music genres and subgenres." However, for those of us who have hundreds of artists and CDs ripped to our MP3s - and do actually care, because we know no other way - we have no choice. We must classify the artists by genre if we're to find them on the device...otherwise you'll grow gray searching for what you want to play.

So this classification of genre process has taken on a life of its own. Some of it's simple: John Lee Hooker goes under "Blues" while Louis Armstrong goes under "Jazz."

In other cases, I'll bump into an artist that was accidentally classified under one tab and recategorize them... for example I realized that my Joni Mitchell CDs Blue and Ladies of the Canyon were classified under Rock, when I thought that the Folk category was more appropriate - so after it passed muster with the music committee in my head, I issued an executive order and made the change.

The big issues I run into are with my extensive rock collection. The drama never ends, and some problems simply linger...so let's journey back to the beginning with this one.

A long time ago, in a land far, far away - an MP3 player was purchased...

To go back one step further to set up the rest of this post; my "physical" CD collection on my shelf has all rock artists together, alphabetically, without any rock subgenre divisions...so a punk CD by the Sex Pistols has a home next to a band like Santana, etc. Simple and easy...I know where to find the artist I want, when I want.

However, an MP3 is more interactive and the selection of music is more handily at your fingertips...so when you have over 1,200 rock CDs on the unit, you need to break them down into subgenre. In addition, some of the smart features on MP3 players such as shuffle and playlist options make you want to divide things out a bit so you don't get an Aerosmith tune playing when you're in the mood for Dire Straits, let's say.

So as things have evolved, I've come up with 8 genres of rock music, and recently decided that in order to keep track of all of them I had to label them starting with the umbrella genre of rock... for example, if you want to hear Kiss you must look under "Rock: Hard Rock." To hear The Beatles, you look under "Rock: Classic Rock."

The subgenres under "Rock: " that I have are:

1. Alternative,
   
2. Art & Progressive,
   
3. Classic Rock,
   
4. Hard Alternative,
   
5. Hard Rock,
   
6. Heavy Metal,
   
7. Southern Rock, and
   
8. The 1950s.

Of course, much of this is dictated by the makeup of my music collection, and what I want to hear in a specific subgenre... however, there are some distinctions I ignore that might be important to others. For example, I don't recognize what some might refer to as "80s hair bands" or "pop metal," simply because I don't own enough of that sort of thing in my collection to dictate my rock genre expanding into those kinds of subgenres.

Then there's the artists who make a compelling case for being categorized into more than one subgenre. Neil Young comes to mind... I have his solo albums (despite their wide range unto themselves) under "Rock: Classic Rock" while I have his collaborations with Crazy Horse under "Rock: Hard Rock." There's an intended and obvious difference in his sound between those two worlds he roams between, so that's easy.

Other artists aren't so easy... for example, I still can't figure out what in the hell to do with Lou Reed, and the Velvet Underground for that matter. Currently I have solo Lou and VU under "Rock: Hard Rock," which I know is very disputable... I decided to put them there not so much due to their band sound being heavy as much as the heavy hit with their thematic elements. I find that the themes in the music do factor into the overall package, and therefore what classification I ultimately determine.

Again, the classification for Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground is totally disputable. In some ways, the VU may have been the Godfathers of alternative music, considering how outside the box they were at the time against the 60s counterculture...but did alternative music really spawn out of the mid-1960s? That's very hard to absorb, let alone believe.

All this considered, as an interesting side note; I believe I only have ONE artist filed into THREE OVERALL GENRES, which would be Bob Dylan (country, folk and rock: classic rock).

In the case of alternative music, I found I had to research exactly what "alternative" means in my subgenre accuracy endeavors on my iPod... and I got a VERY interesting overview of it on Wikipedia, which is totally worth your time to review, if nothing else you might learn something you didn't consider: Alternative rock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. In the end, I divided my alternative rock into two subgenres: "hard alternative" (to umbrella punk, grunge, and harder post-grunge alternative) and simply "alternative" (80s new wave, weird bands like They Might Be Giants, and bands like No Doubt).

So that's the deal...please feel free to comment with your MP3 classification issues, especially if you've spent as much time as I have pondering all the subgenres and experiencing the "Clash of the Titans scenarios" in your head. S

THE REVIEW CORNER -- Chrome, Smoke & BBQ: The ZZ Top Box. 2003 issue, Warner Brothers.

This was a boxed set I'd been eying for a few years now, and I finally picked it up today with some birthday cash.

I even found the limited edition box (designed to mock a Texas roadhouse shack), as you can see here... very cool, corrugated iron Tejas style, with a "menu" booklet inside and little figures of the band you can cut out to create a sort of mini-model scene on your work desktop... it conjures up a memory of models on my old HO train track set, where I built urban landscapes around the train track -- just to wipe everything out with a train calamity... you know, boy stuff.

So now I can harken back to my childhood and pair my ZZ Top action figures with my old eagle-eye G.I. Joe... there's even a little cactus and picnic bench included with the figures, for some real life ZZ Top scenarios. Great, it's so good that I now know how these guys live their day to day lives... that's soooooo important...

Then there's a flipbook showing the band twirling their guitars and doing that thing with their hands, like they did in the video of "Legs" back in the day... you know, the one with the flashy red car, remember?

Oh, and there's music in the box set too, I almost forgot. 4 CDs spanning the band's time with Warner Brothers...

However, I must admit that I did pick up the roadhouse shack box set partially with a purpose in mind---in that being the alphabetizing freak that I am, I can now place this nicely on the far right side of my alphabetized box sets on the shelf as a sort of "ZZ Top bookend." So I'm a happy camper... if there's room on the shelf I may even set up the action figures, along with my Rush and Dwight Schrute bobbleheads---a sort of "trio-off" if you will...

Anyhow...

For those who know ZZ Top through their 70s pre-long beard period, or through MTV and the flashy red car videos of the 1980s, this box will cover the whole spectrum for you and showcases the growth of this bluesy Texas trio.

Here's a review of the box set from the All-Music Guide. Since I hit a bit of a wall, not being very familiar with their early material, I'll let them take it from here. S

Prior to 2003's Chrome, Smoke & BBQ, ZZ Top's catalog was crying out for a comprehensive retrospective.

Not that the band hadn't been anthologized before: they had two hits collections, with notably different track listings, and in 1987's Six Pack, they even had a makeshift box set, but all three of these were hampered by limited focus and haphazard execution.

Chrome, Smoke & BBQ addresses both of these concerns by focusing on the trio's 20 years at Warner -- from 1970's ZZ Top's First Album to 1990's Recycler -- picking the best 70 or so songs from these ten albums and spreading them over the course of a lavish four-disc, 80-track box set.

This is the first logical approach to ZZ Top's career yet, and while it isn't a perfect collection, it comes tantalizingly close to that ideal. The primary problem is that by the time the fourth disc rolls around, the collection has lost considerable momentum -- and that's without even touching any material from the forgettable albums the band waxed for RCA in the '90s.

With its robotic beats and flattened production, Recycler pointed the way toward those RCA records, yet it did have some excellent songs -- "Give It Up," "My Head's in Mississippi," and "Doubleback" -- that harked back to the group's strengths, something that would have been more apparent if these songs appeared at the end of disc three, after the Afterburner material.

Instead, they're stranded on the fourth disc, along with four other songs from Recycler, for a grand total of seven of ten songs from that album, to which are added six "Medium Rare" tracks -- the obligatory obscurities that are included on each box set, this time being a pretty cool Spanish version of "Francene," an OK live take on "Cheap Sunglasses" from a 1980 promo single, and four 12" remixes, none of which are very good. This disc is required listening only for diehards.

Fortunately, the other three discs are damn near perfect, containing six to seven songs from each of their albums except their debut (nearly all of those records had a mere ten tracks, making this a very generous sampling) along with three tracks from guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons' first band, the Moving Sidewalks, and a single, "Miller's Farm"/"Salt Lick," from the "embryonic" ZZ Top, before bassist Dusty Hill or drummer Frank Beard joined forces with Gibbons.

All the hits and classic rock radio staples are here, of course, along with a wealth of album tracks that illustrate that even if the band didn't have much range -- whether the production was raw and greasy as it was on "La Grange" or clean and sleek, like the Police playing the Rolling Stones, as on "Pearl Necklace," they rarely strayed from either fast blues boogie or slow blues -- they did have strong songwriting chops, witnessed by such buried treasures as the raucous "Brown Sugar" and "Just Got Paid," the monster groove of "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide," the sweet "Leila," the crawling "Blue Jean Blues," and the unspeakable sleaze of the oozing "Mexican Blackbird" and smirking "I Got the Six." All this and more (including a radio commercial for Deguello) spread out over three addictive discs that truly do condense ZZ Top's records to their very best.

It would be nice to have the good Recycler songs sandwiched onto the third disc and top the set off at three discs -- it would have been a nice symmetry, with one disc for each band member -- but it's easy enough to ignore the last disc and revel in how good the rest of the set is. Basically, Chrome, Smoke & BBQ is all the ZZ Top you'd ever need. [Chrome, Smoke & BBQ was released in two editions, both containing a terrific book, filled with great photos -- including early shots of Gibbons in the Moving Sidewalks, without the beard -- testimonials by the likes of Billy Bob Thornton, Dwight Yoakam, Ann Richards, and of all people, David Lynch (who immortally proclaims "ZZ Top = the fast track to cool"), an excellent history by Tom Vickers, and track-by-track notes by Gibbons, Hill, and Beard, as told to Bob Merlis.

The limited edition is quite fancy in its own right, encased in a mock roadhouse shack and containing a booklet shaped as a menu, a sheet of ZZ Top paper dolls (no perforations, however; this is for display purposes only), and a flipbook that finds the trio doing their signature twirling guitars and hand gestures. It's a little elaborate, but it's fun, particularly because the four discs are in jewel cases and can be transported while this sits on the set, next to the other impractical, oversized box sets, such as that Charley Patton box designed as a fake album of 78s, in your collection.]

~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

THE REVIEW CORNER -- The Band: A Musical History box set is the "dark horse" cornerstone to any rock collection. 2005 issue, Capitol Records.

I recently picked up this 5 CD /1 DVD career-spanning set from the local library, and I have to say I'm definitely impressed. I plan on owning it for myself someday.

Until recently, this rock "band" was mostly a mystery to me---sorta like the shadowy figures of THE BAND depicted on the cover of this handsome box set (the hardcover "music book" that you see here to the left). Over 100 pages of stories, rare photos, and anecdotes are included along with the 6 discs nestled nicely in pages at the rear... gives it an old family photo album sort of feel.

Gracing us with perhaps the simplest name in rock history, THE BAND even predated the Beatles in an early incarnation known at The Hawks. Comprising of Canadians and Americans, the changed and final name you know them by today came from the time that they backed Dylan on his tours in the mid-60s. At that time Dylan was billed as "Dylan and the band," so afterwards the name stuck.

They didn't last long, disbanding in 1976 due to internal conflicts over songwriting credits; Robbie Robertson (lead guitarist) I guess decided to take all the credit. From what I can gather, it seems like an unfair maneuver of an egomaniac; as many of the other members were stated as having contributed to the music if not the overall songwriting process. This fact is only proven in the DVD, which shows the band at a pink house in Woodstock, New York (not the actual music festival) "woodshedding" to craft their sound. Hence, the name of their debut album, which we'll get to in a second...

Listening to their sound, one can tell that more than just Robertson contributed to it. It's one of those situations in which they were definitely greater than the sum of their parts.

...and for what it's worth, these guys are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They were one of its first inductees, going in in 1994.

These guys are very rootsy, salt-of-the-earth and unpolished---which acutally is very refreshing. They're like a can of soup, as I hear lots of elements fused together when I put these guys on. I hear a hodge-podge of the blues, rockabilly, country, folk, gospel, soul, funk, southern roots, psychadelia, a little jazz, and I even heard some ragtime piano somewhere in there. They also sport 3 singers; my personal favorite being the bass player Rick Danko, who died just before the turn of the new millennium in December 1999. I also totally dig their keyboard /organ player Garth Hudson---if you get your hands on the box set, check out "The Genetic Method" (live) on CD 4---noodling on that funky Lowrey Organ. Ohhhh yeahhh.

Check out their site The Band, or just check them out at your local library if you're curious. If you go for individual albums, the big 3 by them would be their first album Music from Big Pink (with the famous abstract album cover painted by Bob Dylan, pictured to the left), their eponymous second album The Band, and the album showcasing their final live performance in 1976, The Last Waltz (available in both 2 CD versions and a 4 CD deluxe edition set)... and of course the career-spanning box set shown at the top of this post, which makes for a handsome "music book" if you will on your shelf. All their old albums have been digitally remastered for optimal sound quality. The latter live classic has guest performances by several folks including Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Neil Young.

THE BAND were more popular with journalists and fellow musicians than the general public. Their talent, virtuosity, and the multi-instrumental abilities of the individual members cannot be denied.

However, unless someone had an older sibling to dial them in, it's understandable how anyone born after the mid-1960s would fail to have this rock group on their radar. I consider myself quite a music buff, and an armchair historian to boot---and it basically took me until now to check these guys out. I'm puzzled as to why they never made much more of an impression; I'm guessing much of it had to do with their short successful run, their grassroots sound, and the fact that they're mainly resigned to the 1960 and 1970s.

You probably know the song "The Weight" from the radio---but that's about all you'll hear these days of THE BAND on the airwaves---at least in my experience... Maybe "Stage Fright," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Don't Do it," or "Life is a Carnival"---but I can't conjure up a radio memory of those latter songs.

They're definitely a throwback. They wouldn't really appeal to a youngster growing up in the 70s as much as more in-your-face bands like Kiss, Aerosmith, or David Bowie. You have to dig a little deeper to discover these guys---plus in my opinion their name throws off many folks today and puts them in the position of getting dismissed more than they should.

When you first hear them, they may remind many of you of a Saturday Night Live house band---probably because they played in the mid-70s on the show---and I'm guessing the show modeled their house band after THE BAND, something that continues to this day (or at least they still attempt to, in a cheesier and more bastardized fashion).

That is in no way a dig to THE BAND, as they were true originals.

Anyone who likes "southern rock" should definitely take to these guys... I hear where Skynyrd got some ideas, and I hear some Phish... and newer bands like My Morning Jacket... but they're sound goes way beyond that.

Don't make the same mistake I made by dismissing them and waiting to check them out---they're worth your time. Put something by them on your holiday wish list.

I give A Musical History by The Band 4.5 out of 5 stars. S