Knock and Knowall

Jackson Browne benefit concert for Exposher November 16, 2018 All Saints Church, Pasadena, California Jackson Browne with Chavonne Stewart, Alethea Mills, and Greg Leisz, with Mai Leisz Jackson Browne, Chavonne Stewart, Alethea Mills  Of all the boomer-era Los Angeles musicians, Jackson Browne has always been special to me. Most of the musicians in the Los Angeles scene came from other places - Roger McGuinn from Chicago, Gram Parsons and Tom Petty from Florida, Mama Cass from Baltimore, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell from Canada, Linda Ronstadt from Arizona. But Jackson was an L.A. boy, had been the places that I'd been, driven the same freeways. His picture was always on the wall at McCabes guitars, and I could always imagine he'd just left a little while before I walked in, which was entirely possible. And he sang of Silver Lake, and a house by the freeway, and the lights on the hills. He made me imagine that if I tried hard perhaps I could do what he did, make...

The Truth About Stan Lee Jack Kirby and Stan Lee Stan Lee passed away the other day. With his passing came an avalanche of news reports and tributes to his career that ranged from mostly inaccurate to wholly inaccurate. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have always been staunchly on team Kirby/Ditko when it comes to who created the Marvel Universe. But if you ask me who should get the credit for the success of Marvel Comics, the answer is Stan Lee. If you put aside his hucksterism, his shameless self-promotion and his dubious depiction of his role in the creation of these immortal characters, Stan Lee was one hell of an editor. He was the best comics editor ever to wield a blue pencil.  He may not have played the role attributed to him (mostly thanks to him) by mainstream media in the genesis of these characters but he sure knew what to do with them. One of the famous nails in the coffin of Jack Kirby's 60s tenure at Marvel was Stan Lee's appropriatio...

The Beatles  2018 Remix - Part Two I call this Disc 2 - but of course in the US release I had, Sides 1 and 4 were on one disc, and Sides 2 and 3 were on the other so you could play it on your automatic turntable and only have the flip the discs once. 45+ minutes of continuous music - what a deal! Anyway, let's call it the second disc - it's also the 2nd CD if you buy the box set. Birthday - A Beatles rock classic that holds up pretty well - and one of the most Beatley songs on the "The Beatles" since it was apparently a collaboration between John and Paul, and recorded by all four of them together. Remix highlights the very cool bass line played by George - Paul plays the lead riff. Yoko and Patty Harrison join in on the high response. The other Beatles may have been angry at John for bringing Yoko into the studio, but it didn't stop George and Ringo from getting vocal cameos for their wives. Yer Blues - This one has really grown on me over the years. I...

The Beatles (the White Album) 2018 Remix I don't think I had my own copy of the White Album when it came out - it was probably about 1971 that I managed to get it. And from then, I may have listened to it 100 times, on my old mono record player and later on a "hi-fi" turntable that an uncle of mine converted from mono to stereo. There was a time when I was the biggest Beatles fan I knew. I was just infatuated with their music and their image, and for me they could do no wrong. I often claimed I could sing all the words to every song they recorded - I could even do a passable rendition of the key parts of Revolution 9! Fast forward 50 years and I can say I still love the Beatles, but not ALL their songs. The White Album is surely one of their most uneven and diverse albums with higher highs than all but perhaps Revolver or Sgt Pepper - but also some LOW lows. I'm having a great time listening to the new mix from Giles Martin, which cleans off a patina of va...

Album Review Echo & The Bunnymen The Stars, The Ocean & The Moon BMG In the late 70s and early 80s I worked, off and on, at my friend Harold's Radio Shack franchise which doubled as the only record store on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a business which operates to this very day, boasting an inventory that rivals any hip music store found in the Research Triangle. I eventually settled in Greenville, NC after graduating from East Carolina University where I served as the first music director for the campus FM station WZMB. A radio promo 45 of Echo & The Bunnymen's "The Cutter" was in heavy rotation at the station during my tenure. "The Cutter" is a powerful and menacing slab of modern rock that belies the tuneful romanticism that pervades most of their work. In 1985, during a visit to my parents on the coast, I stopped by Harold's store and continued to act as if I owned the place by grabbing the special orde...

The Beatles The Esher Demos George & John - Photo: Michael Herring Never, in the history of repackaging classic albums to make a few extra bucks, has a bonus disc of demo recordings been this utterly mesmerizing and compelling. A distant second may be Roger Waters' demos for Pink Floyd's The Wall, included with the "Immersive" edition of that album several years ago.   Where those demos exposed a shambolic series of lyrically astute, albeit tuneless, sketches, which were developed (rescued) by the true genius of producer Bob Ezrin, the Esher Demos paint a picture of three complete songwriters laying down acoustic demos of songs that were striking and emotive long before they were arranged in the studio. Anniversary project producer Giles Martin chose to sequence the songs in the order they appear on the album, a thoughtful choice as it creates a bubble around the listener that dare not be burst until the last song plays. The sound quality is tremendous, ...