Nothin' But A Good Time

On my birthday I received an Amazon eGift Card which is one of the best gifts you can get. It's almost overwhelming to visit Amazon with free money. Books, movies, music, clothing, monkeys, just about everything a consumer can consume is available, all with free shipping (even to Hawaii!). Feeling a year older, I overdosed on nostalgia and ordered two Greatest Video Hits DVD's, by Motley Crue and Poison.

The back cover of the Poison DVD talks about the band's "infamous reputation for sex, drugs, and - of course - rock 'n roll" as they "raised hell not only off screen but on." Huh? Poison? Such unadulterated revisionism might stand up against, say, a White Lion DVD showdown but the Motley Crue DVD was bouncing up and down on my desk, begging for a shot at Bret, C.C., Bobby, and Rikki. Ladies and Gentleman, let's get ready to rumble....

I narrowed down the bout to seven subjective categories that have no quantitative value (sort of like Bret Michael's reality show).

• Game One - Welcome To the Jungle
  
• "Talk To Dirty To Me" vs. "Looks That Kill"
• The "Talk Dirty To Me" video opens with an older couple watching television when Bret Michaels calls for their daughter. What makes this so ridiculous is that the parents are watching the band's "Cry Tough" video on the television. If a groupie's parents like your video, something is not working artistically. On the other hand, Motley Crue's "Looks That Kill" depicts the band using fire to herd tattered women into a pen. A princess warrior arrives to free the women and the remainder of the video is a power struggle between the band and the woman. She fakes impalement on a wall of silver phallic symbols and escapes the band's grasp until they surround her and she disappears in a plume of smoke. EDGE: Motley Crue
  

• Game Two - Life On the Road
  
• "I Won't Forget You" vs. "Home Sweet Home"
• A nail biter of a showdown destined to go into double overtime. Both videos (and songs) are excellent. Poison's captures more of a young band experiencing success for the first time as they opened for Ratt. The Crue were headlining by this time and "Home Sweet Home" showed the additional resources the band had when staging a show. The Crue DVD features a "remix" video which drains the life out of the song and ultimately tips the round to the boys from Pennsylvania. EDGE: Poison

• Game Three - The 70's Covers
  
• "Your Mama Don't Dance" vs. "Smoking In the Boys Room"
• Poison's choice of covers has always been suspect and the recent cover of "Sexyback" may be the worst one to date. The Motley Crue video opens with a Doberman wearing a pentagram running away with a teenagers homework. This metaphor for choosing rock and roll over education remains a thread throughout the video. The opening verse has the band watching a futuristic classroom through jail bars. It looks a lot like a clip from Duran Duran's "Wild Boys" video which is probably not what the band was shooting for. Still, the video routs the Poison offering which they left off their DVD. EDGE: Motley Crue
  

• Game Four - 4 - 1 + 1 = 0
  
• "Stand" vs. "Hooligan's Holiday"
• Poison and C.C. Deville parted ways and the band brought in Richie Kotzen to replace him. The Crue lost Vince Neil shortly after and brought in John Corabi to replace him. Both bands sucked with the replacements. Kotzen is surely a better guitar player than C.C. Deville and Corabi might be a better vocalist than Vince Neil (though he sounds like the chick in 4 Non Blondes at times). "Holligan's Holiday" dresses the band like the droogs in Kubrick's film version of A Clockwork Orange while Poison goes "roots" and adds a choir and mandolin to "Stand". Well, somebody has to win, I guess. The Poison song sucks less. EDGE: Poison

• Game Five - Sex
• "Unskinny Bop" vs. "Girls, Girls, Girls"
• I've always wanted to be in a rock and roll band. I'm a terrible guitar player, an average drummer, and a rookie bass player. If I could master any of them and join a band, I'd be down for meeting strippers. The Crue DVD comes with an unrated version of the video that shows some toplessness (is that a word?). I penalized the band earlier for the "Home Sweet Home" remix but I'll give them extra points here for delivering the video we all imagined in our heads when we watched the original. I've always assumed "Unskinny Bop" was Poison's sex anthem but I didn't really notice C.C. Deville's drastic weight problem until re-watching these videos. Maybe he was the unskinny bopper. EDGE: Motley Crue

• Game Six - We're Getting The Band Back Together
  
• "Power To the People" vs. "Hell On High Heels"
• I lost track of both bands after key members started disappearing and missed the return of each. Vince Neil was back behind the mic (though Tommy Lee was missing briefly) for "Hell On High Heels". The video is a cartoon the band presents as their "History Of Mankind" and opens with a gorilla eating a dead eel. He then tosses it to the sky in a shot transition stolen from Stanley Kubrick's version of 2001: A Space Odyssey (the second Kubrick heist by the Crue in this battle). The video presents different scenarios of men (caveman, Greek philosopher, Vietnam soldier, Washington D.C. politician) who have sex with a woman and are then killed. The clip feels misogynistic and bitter which may or may not have been intended. It certainly isn't fun. "Power To the People" is a low budget home movie from what I can tell. C.C. Deville is back and no longer unskinny bopping. The song bites (ironically, I think it would sound great if the Crue played it) but it's a lot more fun that a cartoon devil woman killing off everyone. EDGE: Poison

• Game Seven - Live One For the Fans
  
• "Ride The Wind" vs. "Same Ol' Situation"
  
• Autographing breasts, girls waiting in bed, an over sized drum kit, green laser lights, trashed hotel rooms, arrests and cool hats. "Ride The Wind" is everything you want from a rock and roll band. If anything, Poison is trying a little too hard in the video to capture every cliche in three minutes so Motley Crue should easily win this deciding Game Seven. The video for "Wild Side" blew my fucking mind as a teen. Tommy Lee's drumset spinning over the crowd, back-up singers clad in leather stripper outfits, explosions everywhere, and a band clearly living the lifestyle. In my adolescent mind, it defined the decade in terms of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Then they pulled a Chris Webber with the video for "Same Ol' Situation" which opens with scrolling text that dedicates it "to the fans." Well, ok, I guess that usurps "Wild Side" and puts it on the charity stripe with the game on the line. I love the song, it reminds me of Poison's "Nothin But A Good Time" (I imagine die hard Crue fans hate it with a passion) and the video is everything "Wild Side" is not. It looks well thought out and the band seems to be fairly healthy. It is Motley Crue the franchise not Motley Crue the careless rock and roll caravan. Good business makes for bad music more times than not. EDGE: Poison

The series goes seven games and Poison wins it when Motley Crue blows it. Where does that leave us? Nowhere, I guess. Poison is on the road with Dokken this summer and I'm missing them in Vegas by one week. It breaks my heart but sometimes you gotta cry tough.

Cowboy Junkies: Revisited

The following piece will live (and die) as my first published piece of writing. It appeared in the Arcata Eye a few weeks ago as Cowboy Junkies began a tour of California. It was a rush to correspond with a band I've admired for years. What a weird and wonderful world this is sometimes.

Cowboy Junkies: Revisited

A tour through Northern California is all too appropriate for Cowboy Junkies. Two decades into their career, the music sounds as alive today as it did when we first heard them on a college radio station. For Margo Timmins, brothers Michael and Pete, and lifelong friend Alan Anton, the music has always been the first priority. By making the music they want to make, Cowboy Junkies have filled the proverbial cellar with music that continues to age like, well, you know the saying.

The Trinity Session, famously recorded in a church in one day, became a critical favorite in 1988. The music channeled the soul of Hank Williams through the influence of the post-punk scene to achieve a sonic whisper of aching beauty. Major labels came calling. Lou Reed paid homage to their version of “Sweet Jane”.

They found themselves on Saturday Night Live.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of The Trinity Session, the band returned to the small church cloaked in the shadows of downtown Toronto. Rather than recreate the first experience, they brought in Ryan Adams, Vic Chestnutt and Natalie Merchant to explore new textures. The resulting CD/DVD package, Trinity Revisited, captures the understated essence of the band’s core sound with 20 years of experience swathing the songs in new colors.

Apart from a few select live shows to promote Trinity Revisited, the band remains firmly rooted in the present and their most recent album At The End Of Paths Taken. For two decades, the band has expanded and contracted their sonic palette, and Paths again rewards the attentive listener. A tightly thematic album, it explores the concept of family and introduces a string section and children’s choir to the Junkies’ trademark sound.

The band’s penchant for memorable covers remains an essential part of every live show, and their progressive outlook on the world around them inspired the 2005 release Early 21st Century Blues. The collection included the songs of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and John Lennon and delivered a message of hope to a world held hostage by a war of fear and greed. For a band once labeled depressing, their music-inspiring hope reminds us that November can’t arrive soon enough.
I caught up via email with guitarist and songwriter Michael Timmins as the band prepares for the upcoming tour through California.

JL: The last year has mixed a tour promoting the most recent release, At The End Of Paths Taken, while revisiting Trinity Session for special shows. Has it been challenging to balance promoting the new album while also revisiting Trinity Session, sometimes within the same run of shows?

MT: It hasn’t been difficult; it just means that the shows have two focuses, Paths and Trinity. The few Trinityshows that we have done have been fun but I’ll be glad when we finally put those behind us.

JL: How difficult was it to settle into playing the album as a live set?
MT: It’s a little odd. An album is sequenced different than a set list, so the Trinity shows don’t necessarily flow like I would like. There is a real lull in the middle of the show, which is where you are supposed to flip the vinyl.

JL: I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Hawaii downloading some acoustic tracks that you recorded just a few weeks ago in Canada and released on your downloading site (latentrecordings.com). How exciting was it to resurrect Latent Recordings and how important is a project like this in a rapidly evolving music industry?

MT: Well, Latent has never really gone away – it goes through various periods of dormancy. We have been using it as our imprint for our recording for the past seven years. The launch of the downloading site definitely signals a new phase of Latent and you will start to see more albums by other artists released on Latent. So it is an exciting time… now if I could only find the time to do something with it.

JL: You’ve begun working more as a producer for other artists. What’s the most rewarding part of working outside of Cowboy Junkies?

MT: I just love listening and watching as someone else’s song blooms. Recording can be such an exciting process and I feel that my number one responsibility as a producer is to make sure that the artist is experiencing that excitement and not being intimidated, in any way, by the process.
JL: How far along is the band with the next album and will this tour “test” out some of the new material? How much influence does the band’s lineup have on the songs the band takes on each tour and vice versa?

MT: The material has some influence on who we bring, but that is balanced by economics. It would have been nice to bring out a string quartet for some of the Paths material, but we need to eat. I am hoping to start playing three or four new songs on the upcoming leg in Northern California and continue to add new material through the summer. So we are at that stage with the next album: I have a bunch of songs (but not all of them) and the band is just being introduced to them.

JL: How has parenthood changed the band’s approach to touring?

MT: Touring is constantly evolving, especially as the ages of our kids change and their needs change. We tend to spread the touring out over longer periods of time, so instead of going out for four weeks in a row, we’ll go out for four weeks spread over four months.

JL: Early 21st Century Blues was a critical look at the decisions our current leaders have made around the world. Looking down from Canada, how closely are you following the upcoming election and what do you see as the best possible outcome?

MT: Well, if it was the year 2000, I might be OK with having McCain in the White House, but I really think that the old white guys (from any party) have had their chance and its time to move aside. My preference is Obama. If for no other reason, that the country (the world) needs to be inspired and the first few years of an Obama presidency would be very inspiring.

Fall Of The Glam Rock Gods

I never trusted Def Leppard. The songs from the Pyromania album captured a band with no agenda and they rocked. When Hysteria was released four years later, there was a little too much polish to the “Pour Some Sugar On Me” video. Producer Robert “Mutt” Lange had tweaked the formula and it had a New Coke aftertaste. Everything sounded overly calculated and designed to penetrate new demographics. Despite all that, I was not prepared to stumble across the blokes from Sheffield, UK performing with Tim McGraw.

Time has not been good to my glam rock gods. First, I had to take VH-1 off my favorites list out of fear that I might come across Bret Michaels sifting through the used stripper bin on Rock Of Love. Perhaps as a result, I channel surfed my way to CMT one night and witnessed Bon Jovi sharing a stage with Sugarland. A little fearful research unearthed their new album included duets with Big & Rich and Lee Ann Rimes. Lee Ann Rimes? She’s the little runaway?

True, Whitesnake’s Slip Of the Tongue rarely pushes aside Arcade Fire on my i-Pod these days. However, there are days when nothing sounds better than a quick drive down the Sunset Strip of my memory. Glam rock served as a musical bridge between my early teen Duran Duran phase and the hipster cool Cowboy Junkies college phase. Besides, you just don’t see beautiful women humping cars these days. Well, unless you’re Stephon Marbury.

That brings us back to Def Leppard. Lange pushed Def Leppard’s sound closer and closer to the pop mainstream and then moved to Nashville and did the same with Shania Twain. Listen to Twain’s “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and throw some distortion over the whole affair. It rocks like a lost b-side from Leppard’s Adrenalize. This homogenization of glam rock with country should be a lamentable affair. After all, this process eventually gave birth to the stupefying Big & Rich who managed to add hip hop to the equation and cover all possible music buying demographics. Note, I write that it "should" be a lamentable affair. Is it? I'm afraid I might like some Shania Twain songs more than most of what Warrant recorded at the peak of glam.

All hope is not lost. My favorite rock album this decade is Chinese Democracy by Axl Rose and whatever fast food packaging wearing freaks he calls Guns-n-Roses. I have not heard any songs from the album. I’m not even sure the album will be released this decade. However, I am quite sure that Kenny Chesney will not be appearing on it when it surfaces. For this wistful glam rock fan, that’s about as close as it gets to good news.

Opening The Set...

Just returned from a week in California. A few uber-fans and I followed Cowboy Junkies from show to show. Fuel prices were higher than Hawaii but beer prices were substantially lower. You win some and you lose some.

Seeing eight concerts in eight days was nothing short of fabulous when you live on an island that gets less than eight worthwhile shows each year. Over the course of the tour, the band never opened with the same song which had me thinking about opening songs.

The first show I scalped tickets to was Billy Joel (which felt lame in high school and seems even less cool now). His show went Storm Front -> Allentown which I remember only because my friends and I had a pool on the opening song. I had my money on Allentown. Looking back, this seems the most logical approach to set list building. Promoting a new album can be delicate when fans want to hear popular songs they can sing along with. Everybody is on their feet and excited when a band hits the stage. It's a great time to "slip" a new song through and then transition right into a hit.

My favorite concert opener (off the top of my head right now) would be Bon Jovi in 1989. After Skid Row opened (and my mom left to stand in the lobby), the boys from New Jersey opened with "Lay Your Hands On Me" which blew my Catholic school socks right off. The keyboards and drums build and build and then the band explodes on stage. The rest of the show was pretty disappointing and ranks near the bottom of my glam rock phase. But the opening song killed.

With set lists hitting the internet shortly after each show, bands should be more anxious than ever to keep it fresh and surprise the fans. After all, it would be pretty lame to play the exact same set list each night when everyone with a ticket could Google what you played last night. It would be even lamer if you did that after charging $250 for a ticket. That would mailing it in. Even if it's in a bottle, Sting.