The Holy Bee Retires…Sort Of (The Top 20 Albums of 2012)

Timeliness has always been a watchword here at Holy Bee World HQ, so it may seem odd to post my Top 20 Albums of 2012 in April of 2013. Ordinarily an eagerly-anticipated feature of January, there has been a bit of a drift around here, and I have to ‘fess up to what’s causing it.

Looking back on 2012, I see that the most acclaimed albums are from the likes of the xx, Swans, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, Shonen Knife, Flying Lotus, Cloud Nothings, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Bat For Lashes, Chromatics, Beach House, Purity Ring…

…and I’ve decided they can all go die in a fire. To my ears, they all kinda sound like shit, and wash by in a clatter of forced artiness, or smug haziness, or often, downright tunelessness. Sometimes all three. I blame Radiohead. Fuck those guys and what they’ve wrought. Someone needs to tell that emperor he’s buck naked.

I kind of hate them.

Yes, I’ve always been a proud classicist and defender of old-school dinosaur rock, but I felt I balanced that with an eagerness to explore other areas and a respect for those breaking new ground. But now, I can no longer pretend to be interested the newest and different-est. In fact, I may have been faking it for quite some time, because time spent trying to like the Mountain Goats was less time I got to spend listening to Led Zeppelin.

I realize that this is on me. I own this, it’s my failing. If you like the kind of music listed up there, I’m not judging your taste, I’m judging mine. You don’t have to write me to say “you couldn’t be more wrong about the xx.” I know I’m wrong. But my ears are now dead  to the sound of what is still frequently called “indie” music. Which is sad, because ever since I (and a lot of people my age) lost touch with the “mainstream” well over a decade ago, “indie” (which has, admittedly, lost any true meaning as a descriptor, but it’s handy) was the discerning music-lover’s haven. And now that has passed me by, too. It all leaves me cold. I guess there’s something to be said for the mainstream trending back toward roots music, but I can’t stomach Mumford & Sons either, so where does that leave me?

It leaves me as someone who no longer considers music a central facet of his existence, which is a difficult truth for me to face. I used to go hungry to be able to buy a CD. I’d have some sleepless Monday nights waiting to get Tuesday’s new releases. I have written more on music than any other subject, and had more conversations about it with more people than any other subject. But the flame has gone out. And it’s not an age thing. Several of my friends my age and a little older still have the passion. Great rock writers like Anthony Decurtis, Jim DeRogatis, Greg Kot, and many, many others are a decade or two older than me, and are still forward-thinking, ever on the prowl for the cutting edge. I think that’s fantastic…but they’ll have to carry on the mission without me.

The Spirit Is Willing…

From a lofty goal of writing roughly two essays per month, to having nothing new to offer since before the holidays, the Holy Bee of Ephesus has experienced an embarrassing plunge in productivity.

I have lots of ideas for future entries, a few paragraphs already written, but no discipline to realize them yet. Not when there’s Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to play (yes, I’m more than a year behind the curve on my fantasy video games), two volumes of Game of Thrones to get through before I watch Season Two and Season Three (yes, I’m more than a year behind the curve on my fantasy novel-reading), plus a stack of unread library books that I can only renew so many times, and hours and hours of PGA Tour golf to watch.

Something, however, is bound to show up here eventually…

Keep checking in.

Hot Pastrami with the Ghost of George Gobel: The Holy Bee’s Adventures in D.C. and N.Y.C., Part 3

When last we left the intrepid Holy Bee, less than two hours after arriving in the Big City, he and four of his students failed to make it off at the correct subway stop, and were barreling into parts unknown…

If I were alone, this moment would have produced a tingle of excitement. A challenge! But since I was nominally in charge of four eighth-graders who foolishly assumed I knew what I was doing, the moment produced nothing but a sort of grim, quiet panic. They were all relatively bright kids, but as far as navigating the perplexing N.Y.C. subway system, they were drooling idiots. (I found myself making a snap judgment of their intelligence to determine if they could be in any way helpful, as obviously my little miscue proved I was far from Mensa material myself when it came to urban public transportation.)

Luckily, the subway cars were copiously supplied with mounted and framed subway maps, so I pushed my way through to the nearest non-defaced one. Ah, a quick hop onto the Yellow Line at Queensboro Plaza should save our bacon nicely.  We could get off at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, and hoof it six blocks south to the Museum of Modern Art. A doddle, as the Brits say.

Maybe the fact that my plan worked so flawlessly caused me to have a moment of giddy euphoria as we emerged from the subway station into midtown Manhattan just south of Central Park. My earlier glimpse of Metropolis at Penn Station was hurried and distracted. Now I drank it all in. It felt like a movie set, as if the whole thing were created as a massive special effect. I loved it immediately. But we had to hustle — the MoMA closed at 5:30 and it was already edging past three. We all broke into a jog, slipping and squeezing our way through pedestrian traffic. At least one of us pretended he was a Ghostbuster. We arrived at the MoMA a mere fifteen minutes behind the main group, who’d used the “correct” subway connections.

The Best & Worst of the Solo Beatles, Part 4: Ringo Starr

Part 1: John Lennon

Part 2: Paul McCartney

Part 3: George Harrison

OK, this is the one I’ve been dreading. Most folks who lead normal lives are blissfully unaware that the former drummer for the Beatles has released sixteen solo albums. That is not a typo. But the experience of listening to all of them actually turned out not to be excruciating. Read on…

Starr may have been the Beatle who least matched his public persona, a persona created out of thin air by the early-’60s media (especially the American media, who initially had trouble telling them apart) and reinforced by his “Ringo” character in A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, and especially the ridiculous Beatles Saturday morning cartoon. He was the mascot, the goofy dimwit, condescended to and put upon by the others, but always childlike and cheery. Out of the spotlight, however, the real-life Richard Starkey could be just as cutting and sarcastic as Lennon, as moody as Harrison, and as savvy as McCartney.

He was the oldest Beatle, and the others have all reminisced about how much more cool and sophisticated Starr seemed before he signed on with them. In fact, “Ritchie” was considered something of a tough customer, rising up from the lowest of the Liverpool slums (a place called “The Dingle”) to become the powerhouse drummer for the hardest-rocking band on the local “beat” scene, Rory Storm & The Hurricanes. He drove a sporty car while his future bandmates still scrounged for bus fare, wore flashy jewelry (hence the stage name, which close friends never referred to him by), and cultivated a cool bohemian beard as early as 1960.

The fact that the proto-Fab Three had coveted him and his drums for years should certainly say something about how his skills were regarded at that time, and the fact that the great Ringo Starr ditched his sweet gig with the Hurricanes and deigned to join these upstarts should say something about Starr’s own musical judgment.

Maybe his role as the “runt” stemmed from the fact that he joined the band at the last moment before they skyrocketed in late ’62. Maybe it was the fact that he was three inches shorter than the others, or wasn’t quite as handsome (that nose, y’know.) What seems clear is that the dismissiveness people sometimes projected onto Ringo as a personality began to spill over to his skill as a drummer, and that’s just plain unfair.

The Best & Worst of the Solo Beatles, Part 3: George Harrison

Part 1: John Lennon

Part 2: Paul McCartney

As a vocalist, he was nothing special. His voice was not as immediately powerful as Lennon’s nor as sweet as McCartney’s. In fact, it was kind of sub-par. Adenoidal and thickly accented, but I suppose he could carry a tune. As a guitarist, he was admittedly unable to improvise on the fly, definitely out of sync with his flashy Sixties peers, and not criminally underrated the way Ringo was as a drummer. (Relax, we’ll get to him in Part 4).  As a songwriter, he couldn’t hold a candle to the great rock poets like Dylan and Springsteen. Harrison’s talents in all these areas can best be described as “modest.”  One gets the impression that if there were no Beatles, Lennon and McCartney would have found another path and still be known to us in some capacity, but Harrison was in dire need of his Beatles background to launch his solo career.

But wait! Let’s examine all this again. Harrison’s voice was certainly distinctive and full of character (and blended perfectly with Lennon and McCartney’s to create that special Beatles alchemy, usually pinning down the tricky middle harmony). As a guitarist, it may not have been a bad thing to be out of step with his flashy Sixties peers. Blues-worshipers like Clapton and Hendrix (and a thousand others) soloed like there was no tomorrow, often forgetting they were supposed to be playing a song.

Harrison did not go down the very well-trodden blues path, but played in a much more country & western-influenced rockabilly style, patterned after guys like Chet Atkins and Carl Perkins. His major concession to R&B was a healthy dose of Chuck Berry, which is the one thing he had in common with all other Sixties rock guitarists. (Hell, even the great Keith Richards spent most of the decade recycling Berry riffs, until he discovered open tuning in ’68.) Every Harrison solo was short, punchy, and served the song perfectly. Re-listen to some Beatles songs (“Can’t Buy Me Love” and their cover of the Larry Williams scorcher “Bad Boy” come to mind) with an ear on the solos, and you’ll see what I mean. As a songwriter, neither Lennon solo nor McCartney solo were on par with Dylan or Springsteen, either, and the best of Harrison’s solo material certainly equals the best of Lennon’s and McCartney’s. As far as being unable to improvise, who gives a good goddamn? The Beatles were never a jam band, anyway (thank God.)

And when, on a whim, he decided to join American R&B act Delaney & Bonnie on their British tour in 1969, he finally embraced the blues, but in his own way, rapidly developing an almost Hawaiian-sounding slide guitar technique that became the defining sound of his solo career. I still doubt there would have been a George Harrison music career without the Beatles, but luckily for everyone, there was a Beatles. And there’s some great stuff in the Harrisongs catalog…and also some turkeys. That’s why we’re here.

Anything else I have to say about Harrison, I said in my 2010 essay “The Quiet One.” In fact, I’ve probably already repeated myself somewhat, so let’s get on with our examination of the solo Harrison.

The British Invasion Soldier That Didn’t Make It: The 1960s EP (Part 3)

Click here for PART 1

Click here for PART 2

All right, wake up, I’m almost finished…

The Kinks — Kwyet Kinks. (Tracks: 1. “Wait Till The Summer Comes Along.” 2. “Such A Shame.” 3. “A Well-Respected Man.” 4. “Don’t You Fret.” Released: September 17, 1965).

In the late summer of 1965, Kinks lead singer and primary songwriter Ray Davies was heading for a nervous breakdown. Nursing an extremely tender psyche pretty much since the day he was born, he was just not cut out for dealing with pop stardom, early 1960s-style. In addition to the eternal cycle of live appearances, TV and radio spots, interviews with clueless journalists asking the same inane questions about hair length and how long the “rock & roll fad” would last, the bands had to squeeze in recording sessions when they could, and if they wrote their own material, the pressure was even greater. Not only did they have to keep up with a brutal release schedule (their record labels expected at least two full albums and three  hopefully smash-hit standalone singles per year — imagine!), they were pushed by their management to provide songs for lesser-known artists who were not songwriters. (See Part 1 and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas.)

After a string of early hits such as “You Really Got Me,” “All Day And All Of The Night,” “Tired Of Waiting For You,” and several others, the Kinks cracked. Led by Davies (and aided and abetted by his rowdy kid brother/worst enemy, 17-year-old lead guitarist Dave Davies), the group attempted to sabotage themselves with an epic string of boorish and unprofessional behavior. Cancelling concerts for no good reason, often storming off stage mid-set when they did deign to show up, telling powerful musician’s union reps to “fuck off,” and becoming the very first band to make a habit of trashing hotel rooms, The Kinks were punks a dozen years before there was any social or musical cachet associated with the term. It all culminated with a disastrous American tour, where their antics resulted in a blacklisting from American venues for the next four years.

Due to Davies’ disappointment and suspicion towards all things American, the Kinks gradually turned away from American-influenced R&B. He soon came up with his first satirical character sketch, and harbinger of the “new” Kinks sound, “A Well-Respected Man.” Poking vicious fun the conservative upper middle-class, the acoustic-textured song was a throwback to old British music hall and traditional pub sing-alongs. These older, very English pre-rock institutions began dominating the Kinks’ sonic palette, giving the band a fey, campy, whimsical style totally unique in the British music scene. The punks became dandies.

The British Invasion Soldier That Didn’t Make It: The 1960s EP (Part 2)

Click here for PART 1

The Rolling Stones — Five By Five. (Tracks: 1. “If You Need Me.” 2. “Empty Heart.” 3. “2120 South Michigan Avenue.” 4. “Confessin’ The Blues.” 5. “Around And Around.” Released: August 14, 1964.)

This was not the Stones’ first trip to the EP well. That distinction goes to their self-titled disc released in January ’64. The Stones would not truly embrace songwriting until the following year, so that first The Rolling Stones EP featured the usual fare of Anglicized R&B covers from the sublime (Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On” is given a gorgeous acoustic treatment and one of Jagger’s best early vocals) to the typical (Chuck Berry’s “Bye Bye Johnny” is sloppily bashed out in a sped-up, amphetamine-drenched tangle similar to most British covers of the era, and both it and “Money (That’s What I Want)” strain the limits of the primitive mics and tape machines used back then), to the forgettable (the Coasters’ novelty hit “Poison Ivy” was once intended as the Stones’ second single — wiser heads prevailed.)

What makes Five By Five much more special than their first EP attempt is not just their growing musical prowess, which was audible with each release, but where it was recorded. At this time, British bands were content to record in British studios, whose limited technology and stodgy engineers simply couldn’t provide the muscle and bottom-end achieved in more forward-thinking American facilities. (How the Beatles wrung such sonic magic out of stuffy old Abbey Road Studios is detailed in engineer Geoff Emerick’s book Here, There, And Everywhere: My Life Recording The Beatles.) The Rolling Stones broke the ocean barrier, becoming one of the first British acts to utilize American studios almost exclusively through this early era.

And what a studio to start with! In the midst of their difficult first U.S. tour, the Stones took two days off to visit 2120 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. This was the home studio of Chess Records. Two vital elements, represented by two legendary studios and their associated labels, blended to become what we know as modern rock: Sun Records in Memphis focused more on the white, country-influenced sound of rockabilly, while Chess Records provided the raw, hardcore African-American blues and R&B. I’m over-simplifying greatly, of course, but I think it captures the essence.

The Chess artists were the ones who most inspired and influenced the Rolling Stones: Muddy Waters (whose song “Rollin’ Stone” gave the band their name), Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry used Chess Studios to record the songs that made them deities. Over the course of June 10 and 11, 1964, the Rolling Stones put their mark on the place, recording sixteen songs — more than enough for an album. Alas, no one thought to take advantage of the opportunity for a full-length “Chess Album,” and we have to be content with this EP of Chess-recorded material. (The rest of the songs were spread out over their next two albums and two smash singles, “It’s All Over Now” and “Time Is On My Side.”).

The upstart band even met their heroes in the process: Bassist Bill Wyman remembers Muddy Waters helping them carry in gear, Willie Dixon attempted to peddle them some songs, and Chuck Berry poked his head in during the recording of “Down The Road Apiece” and complimented their “swinging” style, which was a little different than other British bands of the era due to the jazz-based drumming of Charlie Watts.