Midnight Rambler

Q:  What is the best live performance of a rock & roll song that steadily builds to a crescendo?

A:  The Rolling Stones, Midnight Rambler, 1972.

Mick Taylor makes the slide guitar cry.  Keith Richards lays down a lurching, pulsating rhythm.  Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts slowly build the tension.  Mick Jagger calls.  The crowd responds, claps, yells for more.  Jagger leers, prowls, threatens.  A TOUR DE FORCE.

This song brings to mind a passage in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, regarding the proximity of the sacred and the profane. 

"And some of them, by God, are not inferior to you in development, though you won’t believe it: they can contemplate such abysses of belief and disbelief at one and the same moment that, really, it sometimes seems that another hair’s breadth and a man would fall in."

This is art of the highest caliber- beautifully constructed, evocative, beyond reach of all but the most gifted musicians.  And yet it is one of the darkest, most brutal, evil songs I've ever heard.  Admit it, when it comes to music, the angels have nothing on the Devil's band.

Well you heard about the Boston...
Honey, it's not one of those.
Well, talking about the midnight...
Did you see me shut the bedroom door?
I'm called the hit-and-run raper in anger.
Or just a knife-sharpened tippie-toes.
Or just a shoot 'em dead, brainbell jangler.
Everybody got to go.

If you ever see the midnight rambler
Coming down your marble hall.
And he's pouncing like proud black panther.
Yeah, you can say I told you so.
Well, don't you listen for the midnight rambler.
Play it easy, easy as you go.
I'm gonna smash down all your plate glass windows.
Put my fist through your steel plate door.

Well I'm talking about the midnight rambler.
Everybody got to go.
Well I'm talking about the midnight rambler.
Did you see him slip inside the bedroom door?
And if you ever catch the midnight rambler...
I'll steal your mistress from under your nose.
I'll go easy with your cold fanged anger.
I'll stick my knife right down your throat. 

     

An article by Erik No Comments

Stones In Exile

From Stones in Exile, a documentary about the making of the Rolling Stones' classic album Exile on Main Street.  Recorded in the dank, musty basement of Nellcôte, a mansion Keith had rented in the South of France.

Keith, Mick, and Charlie discuss their love for black American music. The clips ends with Keith and Mick sitting around Nellcôte strumming guitar and singing the blues. So effortless and so, so good.

Interviewer: It's been said the Rolling Stones gave black music back to Americans.  What are the first black musicians that turned you on to black music?

Keith: Chuck Berry, Little Richard.  I guess Little Richard was the first one I heard that really knocked me out.  Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo... the list gets endless.  I guess the more you got into black music the more you followed it back to where it come from.  So eventually you're listening to Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, etc.  Everybody goes through it.

Charlie:  To me even now American players and singers always the best.  It is one of those things you have going.  It is for me... but then you know I'm a black American freak.  'Cause that's the music I like, primarily.  That's really the music I love.

Mick: It was a super eclectic band.  I was brought up in the '50s, you know.  I liked pop music.  I didn't just like blues.  I love blues but, you know, I love Elvis.  But I loved crap pop music.  I like acoustic blues music, country music, we like everything.  Plus you've got all these other people.  And you're kind of throwing this whole mishmash in.

[Keith and Mick strumming guitar at Nellcôte]

I don't want you when you have
Every man around this town.

You going to lose your reputation, baby.
Going with every man around this town.

     

An article by Erik No Comments

The Making of Metallica's Turn The Page

Written and recorded by Bob Seger in 1973.  Covered by Metallica on their Garage, Inc. album in 1998.

I love the tone of Hetfield's guitar.

     

An article by Erik No Comments

Metallica Deep Cut

If you're part of the Metallica family, you're well aware of the crowd that worships their first four albums and hates everything since the Black album (1991).  I am of the opinion one should never apologize for one's musical taste, but I find many of these people hard to take seriously because of the Napster controversy.  For those not familiar, back in 2000 Metallica found their entire catalog on the Napster peer-to-peer network, available for free.  They sued, a judge shut down the servers, and Napster settled out of court.  This offended some young people's sense of entitlement and they've hated Metallica ever since- "sell outs" is the refrain.  But really, what is the Napster crowd's argument other than "because it's cool it should be free."  They have none.  An artist decides what, if anything, to charge for his work.  Not a pissy college kid.

So this crowd pans Metallica's later albums- why, I don't know.  Perhaps out of a desire to portray the band's shifting style as a concession to pop taste and then argue the musical experimentation and Napster lawsuit prove the band lost its edge in a quest for fame and money.  Me?  I think the band realized there was no point in making the same album over and over again.  No point playing in one gear only.  They matured and their music had to reflect it or lose its legitimacy.

There are some gems found in Metallica's later albums.  If you open your ears and don't expect a remake of Battery or other thrash metal, you may like what you hear.  Listen to the band jam at the end of Fixxxer, off the Reload album (1997).

Blood for face, sweat for dirt.
Three Xs for the stone.
To break this curse a ritual's due.
I believe I'm not alone.

Shell of shotgun, pint of gin.
Numb us up to shield the pins.
Renew our faith, which way we can,
To fall in love with life again.

To fall in love with life again.
To fall in love with life again.
To fall in love, to fall in love,
To fall in love with life again.

So tell me, can you heal what Father's done?
Or fix this hole in a mother's son?
Can you heal the broken worlds within?
Can you strip away so we may start again?

Tell me, can you heal what Father's done?
Or cut this rope and let us run?
Just when all seems fine and I'm pain free
You jab another pin, jab another pin in me.

No more pins in me.
No more, no more pins in me.

To my ears, this sounds like a mature James Hetfield reflecting on his difficult childhood in a way that is not possible in a thrash metal song.

     

An article by Erik 1 Comment

Muddy Waters Is The Man

Listen to Muddy at 1:58:

I got a job.  I was working at a paper factory...  I worked there during the days and I played the weekends at house parties, just me and my guitar...  Finally it began to leak out, you know, they had a pretty good guy from Mississippi.  They called me the young blues singer then.  I think I'm responsible for Chicago blues.  I think I'm the man that set Chicago up for the real blues.

Yes, Muddy you are the man!  Listen to him moan and howl at 2:48.  My favorite voice in all of blues.

At 3:34 Muddy ruminates on what it takes to sing the blues:

The type of blues that I sing, you must pay the cost out there.  [Long pause.]  You just don't get up and walk the streets and get whatever you want to get ready to sing the blues like myself...  Plus you gotta go to church to get this particular thing in your soul.

A national treasure.

     

An article by Erik No Comments