Celebrating Tin Pan Alley

With Brian Wilson prompting a Gershwin renaissance in my listening habits of late, I reread Wilfred Sheed's delightful book, "The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole and a Crew of About Fifty." Just like the first time, I found the introduction tedious and overwrought and (again) felt like putting the book down. Thank goodness I didn't, for the riches beyond are immeasurable.

Once the reader adjusts to Sheed's breezy, smart-alecky style, the book is chock-full of insights about Gershwin, Porter, Berlin, Kern, Rodgers and the other great pre-rock American songwriters of the last century. Especially delightful to this reader is the chapter on James Van Heusen, as critical an element as arranger Nelson Riddle to Frank Sinatra's '50s masterworks, and how the microphone and radio influenced their sound.

Sheed's done a lot of thinking while he's been listening over the years, and it shows. Also, as Keith Richards notes in his newly released autobiography, "Good records just get better with age."

Mike Love, Part 2

Lest you need more convincing, Mike Love was at Rishikesh with the Beatles, Donovan and Mia Farrow. Brian wasn't.

And how many other musicians of the time had the Beatles write and perform a song about them? "Happy Birthday, Michael Love."

All you need is Love, indeed. J'ai guru dev.

It's All Right, Jack

I've never considered myself a Jack Kerouac fan. I've read "On The Road" and "The Dharma Bums" (the latter while hitchhiking through Mexico, of course), but that's almost required reading for anyone who claims to be an American. A recent trip to Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts (and his final resting place) gave me a little greater appreciation of the man, however.

Kudos first of all to Lowell, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the National Park Service for preserving Kerouac's legacy and providing a helpful map of historic points connected with his life.

Despite the unusually hot weather, it was a fascinating experience chasing Jack's ghost around town in the shadows of the enormous mills that were Lowell's lifeblood for a hundred years. Of course, this was the time in Kerouac's life when he was the local high school hero who scored the winning touchdown on Thanksgiving Day against a local rival. He returned to Lowell in his later years when he was drinking his life away and was buried here after he died in Florida. In between, he ran with Ginsberg, Burroughs and company and wrote himself into history.

But Kerouac's first major book, "The Town and the City," published in 1950, was largely autobiographical and is generally derided by critics as not up to the standards of his later, better-known works. Caught up as I was in all things Lowell, I searched it out. What a tremendous read. The story of the Martin (AKA Kerouac) family from the mid-1930s to just after World War II, it's beautifully written and an absolutely haunting study of one family struggling, often unsuccessfully, to survive the pressures of the modern world. Sure, it's overwritten at times, but it's also wonderfully unselfconscious in the way only a first-time writer can be. He wasn't writing for the ages - yet. This is a powerful, heartfelt narrative, not stream-of-consciousness rambling up from the bottom of a bottle. The book's closing pages, with the family gathered for a funeral, is powerful stuff indeed.

Give it a read. You won't regret it, even if "On The Road" isn't your cup of tea. "The Town and the City" - by an author still known then as John Kerouac - is a literary classic from a time when America was still capable of producing one.

The Word Is Love

Let me rise to the defense of Mike Love. Poor Mike was and is a huge part of the Beach Boys' history, and yet he's routinely been treated like dirt for years by fans and critics. Not fair.

Sure, the guy's notoriously hard-nosed and pushy. But he also wrote the lyrics for some of the band's greatest songs, which, by the way, are some of the best songs America produced in the second half of the 20th Century. Any guy who wrote the words to "The Warmth of the Sun" deserves a little respect, don't you think?

Let's not forget his lead vocals on "Surfin' USA," "I Get Around," California Girls" and, most notably, "Fun, Fun, Fun," either. Just for starters. Face it, Mike was a key player in the vocals department.

Brian Wilson was the genius of the Beach Boys, but it's ponderable how far the band would have gone professionally without Mike's drive and ego. He was definitely the number two figure in the group, and when Brian bailed on live performances, it was Mike who kept them going in concert. He's still keeping them going, in fact. Plus all great bands need creative tension: Lennon vs. McCartney, Jagger vs. Richards, McGuinn vs. Crosby, the list goes on and on. Brian was consistently better when he had to fight back against Mike - and against his Dad - than he has been since everyone started kissing his feet.

Okay, Mike had reservations about some of "Pet Sounds" and all of "Smile," but so did lots of folks at the time. Yeah, he didn't want Brian to derail the gravy train with Van Dyke Parks' weirdness, but very few people like to kill a good thing. Brian also wasn't exactly the most stable, reassuring person to build your future around at that time either. Ask Marilyn. It's awfully safe years after the fact for critics to look down their noses at Mike, but if critics had one-tenth of his talent, they'd have their own bands and not be critics.

In short, Mike Love has become a convenient punching bag, much the way Paul McCartney has had to fight the critics' love affair with John Lennon for years when any objective reading of the Beatles' history is clear that the Cute One was the brains behind the operation.

Mike wasn't the McCartney of the Beach Boys, but he was a lot more than a go-fer for the great Brian Wilson. Come on, people, give the man his due.

Alexander The Great

Put Skippy Spence in the All-Wacked-Out Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he joins Brian Wilson, Peter Green, Syd Barrett, Sly Stone, Rocky Erickson and others, who discovered that indeed too much LSD can be too much of a good thing.

After a brief, curious stint as the first drummer for the Jefferson Airplane, Spence became the lightning rod of the late, lamented Moby Grape, arguably the greatest American rock 'n' roll band of the '60s that never made it. [I'd vote the Pretty Things that honor on the other side of the Pond.] A more powerful version of the Buffalo Springfield, the Grape combined great singing, great writing and great playing (especially with three lead guitars) into one s--t-hot cauldron of San Francisco R 'n' R. Their dedicated legion of fans (can you tell I'm one?) grab up every little morsel they can find.

On the sessions for their second album, which had been moved to New York to get them away from the drugs and babes in California, the Grape proceeded to record a series of legendary tracks while Spence began his long descent into drug-induced psychosis. This slow ride was highlighted by his attempt to end an argument with another band member by hacking through a door with a fire axe (here's Johnny?).

After being committed to Bellevue Hospital for six months, Spence jumped on a motorcycle in the dead of winter and went to Nashville where he spent a day recording his one and only solo album, Oar, second to none in spaciness and odd beauty. It sold a handful of copies at the time (1969) but has since taken up permanent residency on the Top 20 lists of most major rock critics. It's not for the easily entertained, but it's a gem.

From there, Spence drifted into homelessness and was even interviewed in a park in San Jose, I believe, where he was living in a cardboard box. He only very tangentially had anything to do with the band's reunion efforts but did record a song, Land of the Sun, for The X-Files movie, which typically was so weird they didn't use it in the film. He died of lung cancer about 10 years ago.

Sundazed Music recently released a Spence demo of "Just Like Gene Autry: A Foxtrot," which Moby Grape thoughtfully recorded at 78 rpm for the "Wow" album, making it a bit more difficult to play in a world when most turntables no longer play at that speed. Play that cut, and listen to that manic laughter. You'll understand why this guy was perfect for the '60s but doomed in terms of the real world.

God bless Alexander "Skip" Spence. He left a lot of joy in his troubled wake.

Putting an end to Camelot

Did Scott Brown’s election to Teddy Kennedy’s Senate seat finally break the spell?

A Night to Remember

Jimmy Webb has written some of the most memorable songs of my generation, including "Up, Up and Away," "By The Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston," "MacArthur Park," "Didn't We," "All I Know," "Crying In My Sleep," "The Highwayman" and many, many others. He's written, arranged and produced heart-wrenchingly gorgeous albums like Richard Harris' "A Tramp Shining," the Fifth Dimension's "The Magic Garden," "Reunion" with Glen Campbell in 1974 and Art Garfunkel's "Watermark," along with less-memorable records by Cher, the Supremes minus Diana Ross and others.

But Webb's also chafed for years at not being able to stand alone as a performer, an interpreter of his own songs. Despite the release of solo albums sporadically since 1970 and live shows every now and then, his gangly, aw-shucks persona has never translated successfully into widespread commercial acceptance.

Webb has continued to write very beautiful material over the years - songs like "Adios," done memorably by Linda Ronstadt with vocal backings by Brian Wilson, "Lightning in a Bottle," a little-known release by Campbell in 1988, and "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress," covered by Joe Cocker, Michael Feinstein and others. Like many who came of age in the mid- to late 1960s, however, he is forever branded by his earliest material. Undoubtedly, his bank account is quite satisfying, but his artistic side has gone begging.

Which brings us to last night and a small theater out in the middle of nowhere in southern New Jersey where Webb and a beat-up old grand piano captivated a couple hundred people for nearly two hours. Sitting in rows of equally old, beat-up church pews, no less. At 25 bucks a ticket. Now Jimmy Webb is 63-years old, wearing a nicely tailored double-breasted suit with an eye-catching Art Deco tie. Tall and slightly pudgy, like many of us, he's clearly comfortable in his skin, determined to show himself as the keeper of the flame of the Great American Songbook. No band, no back-up singers, just the boy from Oklahoma, the son of a Baptist minister, who is following in the footsteps of Berlin, Porter, Gershwin, Rodgers, Arlen and Kern. And you know, he's got something there.

Webb's voice, at times over the years a strangled, off-key vehicle at best, has weathered nicely, and the man has lived quite a life. He spun delightful tales of his collaborators like Waylon Jennings, Frank Sinatra, Ronstadt, Harris, Campbell and others, along with a devastating putdown of what the Grammys have become (he's won, so he's entitled). Each story elicted a laugh before he began performing the song most closely identified with that artist. The exception was Ronstadt, whom he explained he had recently recorded a duet of "All I Know" with, noting that she had just announced her retirement for unexplained medical reasons. An obviously very-moved Webb said, "I'll try to get through this," and then sang and played it beautifully. The song will be on an album coming out soon, he said.

It was the kind of intimate evening that fans live for. Telling us that against his better judgment he'd let his doctor talk him into getting a flu shot, Webb complained that now he was sick for the first time in a couple years and begged forgivness for his vocal limitations. But he seemed in fine form all evening, and the upshot is we all had to kick in to hit the vocal highs of the chorus of "Up, Up and Away." It wasn't a hard sell: We all bellowed along enthusiastically. Webb stuck to the classics for most of the show, but kicking off with a story about how he and drummer Russ Kunkel basically grossed out the prissy, proper Ronstadt, he did a wonderfully funny obscurity from his enormous catalog entitled, "What Does A Woman See In A Man." Indeed.

In recent years, Webb has been honing his live act in England where he has an enthusiastic following. (Why do the British always have more sophisticated musical tastes than we do?) To get a flavor of the show we saw, I highly recommend "Live and At Large," a CD of Webb performing in the UK. He has a deep catalog of stories as well since only one on the CD was repeated at Saturday night's show. "Ten Easy Pieces" is the CD for those who want to hear Webb sing and play his classics in a studio setting.

Someone who's written what Webb's written isn't doing gigs for money. He even mentioned at one point that he had driven to the show through the snowstorm just like we did and didn't seem to have any handlers with him. Although clearly tired from his performance, he was very generous with his time afterwards, staying around to sign things and just talk with the fans. A class act all the way. Although last night's show is only one of three he has scheduled so far this year, I suspect this may be a warm-up for a larger tour in conjunction with "Just Across The River," the new album that will include the Ronstadt duet.

For those who treasure watching the creative spark right from the source, go see Jimmy Webb if he comes to town. The stories are great, the singer reaches down deep, and the songs are timeless. Oh, and did I mention? He's a helluva piano player.