I would have placed a few more exclamation points behind the header but that would be overdoing it and while Paul Revere would occasionally go over the top, it was usually onstage. No doubt about it, Paul Revere & The Raiders lead the all-Pac NW rock ‘n’ roll team, no disrespect to the likes of The Wailers, The Sonics, The Frantics and other bands of their era, nor to Heart and Nirvana and Soundgarden and others of the more recent past/present.
After ending this last year cranking out two long columns about musicians we lost, I feel the need to counterbalance. While I know that death is a part of life (indeed, life = death according to the laws of nature), it was not all that much fun to dig through the past year searching for musicians recently passed. It was, in fact, a bit of a downer. Reliving the news that I knew was not half as bad as discovering the news I had missed. All too many musicians I admire tripped off this mortal coil without so much as a thank you, Frank, it’s been fun, and I was more than a little unsettled with each discovery. But the past is the past, whether we like it or not, and it was not all bad.
But first, a word from our sponsor. Well, not sponsor, exactly. In fact, just the opposite. Well, not exactly opposite. A few weeks ago, you might remember that I posted a few words about Sheldon Gomberg, the man behind Sweet Relief III: Pennies From Heaven, an album recorded for charity (all proceeds will go to Sweet Relief, an organization committed to helping musicians in need), and before that, I devoted a column to that organization through an interview with Sweet Relief‘s Rob Max.
I’m going back to school. I’ve been going to school since I graduated, in fact, because if there is one truth in the world it is that as much as we know, we know too little. About people. About science. About truth. And about music, among a few thousand other subjects. We are a defective lot which is to say in vinyl terms that we are warped or scratched or that we skip. Us humans are, in effect, not the top but the bottom of the food chain as far as I can tell because we are the only species who think we know it all.I don’t know what youth wants from us old farts, especially when it comes to music. Many mock us for being Boomers, many laugh at our music. I can understand. I laugh at us, too. Our insistence that stars are gods, especially rock and movie stars. Our self-indulgence. Our knowledge that we more than any others are omniscient. God, but there have been times when I wished I had been borne of another generation (until I look at the other generations and realize that they are as fucked up as are we).
Boy, the things some of us have to do to find the free stuff, eh? I was sitting back enjoying college football Saturday when Erin Ivey busts down the door and starts screaming about this Emily Wolfe character and how I have to listen to her album and maybe I can get a free download or something. I was about to throw her out when she got to the “free” part and, well, you know me— cheapest sonofabitch in the lower 48— so I heard her out, checked out Wolfe’s music and then tossed Ivey out on her keister, after which I calmly downloaded Wolfe’s Director’s Notes. At least, that’s the way I choose to remember it and I’m sticking to it.
I’m sitting here piecing together the albums I think are the best of the year so far and ready to sing the praises of Sydney Wayser and her magic kingdom, Bell Choir Coast, when the Craig Elkins train t-bones me and scatters what could have been an easy column to the winds. Who am I kidding? It is never easy to write this column, especially when I’m comparing apples to oranges which is pretty much what any “Best Of” or “Greatest” list is. The Truth is, there is no greatest or best of because music is so intensely personal and of the moment that what anyone chooses today they might not choose tomorrow (or even one side) later.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 