VH1's "Seven Ages of Rock"

OK, I just finished the first episode of the seven part history of rock that VH1 produced and began airing tonight (Dec. 17, 2007). It was pretty much what I expected.

I love rock histories. I've got a bunch of them, and I'm a sucker for seeing it all played back to me. I love the music - in this case, the Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds, the Animals, the Kinks, Dylan and the Band and Cream - and I usually find at least one or two facts or video moments that I haven't seen before.

But not this time.

It was, as Al Kooper said at the coda, regarding Altamont and its supposed role as End of the Sixties, "Tie that up with a black ribbon, and that's it." Except it isn't, and this was a thinner history than normal.

If you missed it, you can watch the whole thing right here.

There's some cool stuff, especially early on, as when Keith Richards demonstrates the beauty of "the roots of 20th century popular music," i.e., the blues. The social history of pre-rock England is interesting (though better addressed elsewhere), and it's cool to see people like Shel Talmy and Al Kooper, who are usually absent from such documentaries. But the producers are trying to get too much into an hour-long show, and by the end, they are jumping from Monterey Pop to Cream's "Disraeli Gears" to the Stones' "Sympathy to the Devil" to the show's "black ribbon," Altamont.

It also focuses on British musicians' attraction to the blues, and selling it back to America. The Beatles get a pass, which sorta makes sense from the "blues-to-rock" storyline, but leaving Hendrix out...well, that's just weird. Of course, he's very likely to show up in a future episode - God forbid it should be episode 3 (Stadium Rock) or episode 4 (Metal) - but to emphasize Clapton and ignore Hendrix makes this profoundly incomplete.

That said, I have to admit that I may personally be reaching a point of saturation on this stuff. I've done a lot of my own research, and there's a lot of stuff that's secondary to the headlines, and thus must apparently be cut. But we've been reading and viewing and listening to the same "headlines" for years, and perhaps it's time to get a bit deeper into the subject. That's not what VH1 was attempting, but perhaps they should.

Hunting around the VH1 website, however, yields a few treasures that might otherwise not have seen.

There's a cool clip of the Stones on British TV circa 1966 and there's also a clip of The Who playing "Happy Jack" on British TV from roughly the same time.

Almost all of the other clips from that first episode are of much later performances, that, while they might be worthy, are not historically as significant ("Eminence Front" anyone? "Emotional Rescue"?)

All of that said, I'll be watching the second installment, "The Seven Ages of Rock: Art Rock," when it airs tomorrow night, simply because that time should produce some great Roxy Music and Bowie video, and I'm curious to see what VH1 does with it. I'm liable to be disappointed, but then, as I said, I'm a sucker for this stuff.

The Mother Hips rock - a little.

OK, so I was wrong about a couple of things: The Skinny Singers, featuring Mother Hips' Tim Bluhm and local boy Jackie Greene, did NOT open for the Mother Hips last night at Harlow's. Jackie played keyboards throughout the Hips' set, though, so perhaps I was only half-wrong.

I was wrong about something else, though: The Mother Hips weren't very interesting after all. I recommended the show based on the band's recent album, "Kiss the Crystal Flake," which is a very solid effort, with good songs and production. But live, the band underwhelmed me. And I had a lot of encouragement to like them. Peer pressure never dies!

For a band that's been playing live for about 16 years, these guys were pretty sluggish. A lot of the stuff sounded to me like Bachman Turner Overdrive at half speed, which may sound good to a lot of people, but...I just didn't find their musical interaction at all interesting or inspired. A few of the songs from the new album - they didn't play many - were good, but not great. Not virtuostic, not funky, Mother Hips was...well, as one young lady I asked about them said, "Well, if they were better, they wouldn't be playing here." Ouch.

I also heard from a friend that Lenny Kravitz' show at the Memorial Auditorium was only half full, which would probably surprise the people who thought the show was going to be at Arco! Only 2000 people? And that was promoted by a local radio station as it's big Christmas show. Now, this is not an official count, but it was done by a professional who I trust, and frankly, it doesn't surprise me. People aren't going to shows so much these days. I know people who got $100 GA tickets for Springsteen in Oakland for $20, and six friends and I got into the recent Arcade Fire show at the Shoreline for FREE. All of us. Free. People just handed the tickets to us.

As for the Hips show, Hips fans (Hipsters?), including some friends of mine, may think that this makes THREE things I'm wrong about: The Hips ROCKED, dude! But I don't see it - to me, it's a third-rate version of something 30 years old that wasn't often that great even then.

Just callin' it as I see it. Feel free to chime in.

WorldFest 2008

WorldFest honcho Dan DeWayne dropped me a line yesterday to let Noisy Artifacts and its DOZENS of readers know that tickets are now available for next year's 12th annual WorldFest, which will take place on July 17-20 at the Nevada County Fairgrounds in Grass Valley. Among the artists announced so far are Israel's Moshav (pictured from last year) as well as the Waifs, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Fishtank Ensemble, Baka Beyond and other bands that no, I've not heard either.

But big names is not the point at WorldFest, though they've had many, and those named above are just the first to be announced. (I'd never heard of fiddler Eileen Ivers until I saw her last year, and she was spectacular.) WorldFest is a wonderful complement to High Sierra Music Festival, and the Strawberry Festivals, and is, above all, fabulously family-friendly. In fact, if you don't have kids, you should borrow some just to take them to WorldFest. Unlike the late-night, all-night party of High Sierra, the music stops by 11 p.m. at WorldFest, making for a much more peaceful atmosphere.

Shows take place in small buildings and stages around the fairgrounds, and the main concert area is across from an enormous kids play area, with giant balls, inflatable slides, jugglers, frisbees...parents can watch the show and keep an eye on the kids at the same time. And the food is great!

So, here are the basic details: Tickets don't go on sale "to the general public" until Jan. 12, but they are currently, uh, for sale to those "in the know" at discount prices at the website. If you know you're going, now would be the best time to buy.

For now, each adult four-day camping ticket is $120, three-day tickets are $110 and on down. Kids 13-16 are $65 for four-days and kids 5-12 are $35. Under five kids are free. You can also buy tickets without camping for lower prices still. I would recommend all four days if you can possibly swing it, it's so much fun and so relaxing at WorldFest. To buy tickets and keep up with the names being added to the bill over the next six months, visit their new website at www.worldfest.net. You can also order tickets by phone at (530) 891-4098.

Your first concert...

OK, Randi just sent me a great bit from SFGate: the First Concert Quiz. The theory is you can tell a lot about a person (or yourself) by what your first concert was, and how you went. Here's where you can take the quiz...

I want to hear about other people's first concerts (thanks, Dusty Giraffe, for your story on the Zeppelin post below). Please comment below.

But OK, I'll go first; but it ain't pretty. Well, not SO bad. Blood, Sweat and Tears at Sacramento's Memorial Auditorium in...1970? 1971? I remember them playing "Colour My World," but that's unlikely, since that was a Chicago song! So, memory is funny here. All I can say for sure is that I was in the very back row of the entire place, and that even then, the Memorial sounded like shit.

And I'm not sure how I got there, but I think I was part of a church group. Ewwww....

But wait! That's not the first concert I WANTED to go to. That one was Jimi Hendrix at the Cal Expo Grandstand, in summer of 1970, I believe), and I was invited by the girl across the street, who was a total slut and three years older than myself. My parents wouldn't even BEGIN to consider it, and I wasn't ballsy enough to go against their wishes. Besides, even I was a little scared of this girl across the street. Fascinated, but scared.

She did, however, tell me about it later: She said she wore her yellow sundress, and no panties (I don't use the word "slut" lightly) and she said that she sat in the front row and spread her legs to Hendrix, who acknowledged her by dedicating "Foxy Lady" to her. Which may or may not be true, but it was a visual I will carry to my grave.

By the way, the same girl had asked to accompany her to ALTAMONT, which my parents ALSO nixed. At least I've forgiven them for that one. Sorta.

Spinal Tap for jam band fans!

Les Claypool is a staple of the jam band scene. So who better to produce "National Lampoon presents Electric Apricot: Quest for Festeroo"? This should do for the jam band scene what "This Is Spinal Tap" did for British heavy metal. (But what's with all the Burning Man references? That's a whole different scene...)

See the promotional trailer here.

And if you look closely, you can see scenes filmed at our beloved High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy, CA. Speaking of which, tickets just went on sale for that event, which will be held July 3-6, 2008. No names announced yet, but the names aren't why we go, right? And THAT is why the jam band scene is STILL cool in ways that metal is not. And never really was...

Led Zeppelin: the ultimate noise

Oh man. It's like 1969 again.I'll never forget the first time I heard Led Zeppelin, but I won't bore you with that. Because all day, Dec. 11, 2007, in a dark time for our culture and on a gorgeous fall day, I'm getting emails from my pals who are just thrilled that Led Zeppelin played a full concert in London last night, their first concert since 1980.
What is thrilling me about this day, and about all the email, is that the fire is still there. Not in Zeppelin - anyone who's heard Page and Plant's occasional projects, together and separately, know that these two haven't lost a step, and may even be better than they were in the '70s - but in my friends. Goddamn, we still have the fire! We love rock 'n' roll music, we always have, and it is clear that we always will. Music was my first love, and always will be. Our lives were built around it; our friendships, too; even my career, and those of some of my friends.

And that we didn't get to see yesterday's show only underlines this. I remember when bands were mysterious, where the sound came from far away (and over the hills) and sounded like it. Rock 'n' roll wasn't much on TV, and certainly Led Zeppelin wasn't. There was no My Space page for every musician you'd never heard of, and no live concert DVDs after one hit single, and no "Behind the Music" episodes or top-notch biopics. There was just this fuckin' crazy wild exotic music. I was 12 when LZ I came out, and 13 when LZ II came out a mere eight months later, and I was absolutely floored. I still am.
Led Zeppelin was the "new Beatles" when everyone was looking for someone who SOUNDED like the Beatles. Zeppelin MEANT it like the Beatles, Zeppelin aimed that high, as U2 would do a decade later. So what if they didn't sound like the Beatles? Abbey Road came out as Zeppelin was ascendant, and they busted the whole thing wide open. Again, in a way roughly analogous to the Fabs.

And now, with this concert in London - and please God, a tour - it is becoming apparent to all that Zeppelin was bigger than anyone thought at the time, even as they were filling stadiums. And not just because some guy paid $168,000 for two tickets, though that certainly qualifies as putting your money where your mouth is. It is apparent because you can just tell, from the pictures, from the freakin' SET LIST, how great this band is. Still. Even without Bonham the Elder.

Ah, the set list. My friend Jeff sent it out first thing - he's still a maniac about this stuff, too - and just reading it gave me chills. I immediately made an iTunes playlist out of the set, and it's blasting now. And I am reborn in my faith in the music of my youth. Not that I ever lost that faith. But you don't want these guys to fail. It would feel like my own failure. That's how closely we identify with these guys. We always will.

“Good Times, Bad Times”
“Ramble On”
“Black Dog”
“In My Time of Dying”
“For Your Life”
“Trampled Under Foot”
“Nobody’s Fault But Mine”
“No Quarter”
“Since I’ve Been Lovin’ You”
“Dazed and Confused”
“Stairway To Heaven”
“The Song Remains the Same”
“Misty Mountain Hop”
“Kashmir”

Encore:
“Whole Lotta Love”
“Rock and Roll”

I wish I was there. I wasn't. (I did hit Live Aid in '85, and it was HORRIBLE.) But really, starting with "Good Times Bad Times," the first Zeppelin song I ever heard, the first Zeppelin song most of us heard...brilliant!

But David Fricke of Rolling Stone was there, and he posted about it on the magazine's website, because he knew that we had to know NOW how it was. There will no doubt be a DVD, an album, etc. And we will buy it. But right NOW is the magic. Knowing that it was there, and we weren't, which is a delicious torture like I felt in 1969, missing something huge, something on fire, and caring so fucking passionately about it. About classic '70s rock 'n' roll.

Like I always have. And always will.

This is the official launch of NoisyArtifacts.blogspot.com. I have been planning to start this "website" for about 10 years, and I always stopped. It's so big, I know so much, and I care so much about it, I couldn't start. I have been looking for a place to start, and this isn't as good as any, this is BETTER than any. Because this show is a concrete demonstration of how much MANY of us care. We don't care if other people think it's nostalgia or retro or just classic rock again. It's not that I don't care about contemporary music - I love Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, The Shins, The Mars Volta, Nickel Creek, Basement Jaxx - but this music speaks, to me, to my friends, to millions of people I've never met, and to their offspring, who recognize something in Zeppelin that they don't hear in contemporary bands. A wildness, and solidity, a virtuosity and a rootedness that, despite all the money involved, still feels pure. And dirty. And feral. And heavenly.

Rock 'n' roll. A noisy artifact from my youth, but no longer just an artifact, and me no longer feeling quite so not-youthful.

I could ramble on for quite a bit more, but they tell me that brevity is the soul of the internet. OK. But there will be more in this space, and I want to hear from my brothers (and sisters) who grew up with this fine shit and want to keep it going, keep loving it, keep reveling in it. Because that's what we do.