Chautauqua

The Chautauqua Center for Musical Activism recently concluded a project, inspired by the contemporary political climate. We undertook to revise “America the Beautiful”, amending the lyrics  initially composed by Katharine Lee Bates, while retaining the original score by Samuel A. Ward. We imagine this new composition will be performed unless and until it is deemed free speech, fishy, or otherwise in opposition to the present administration’s totalitarian agendas of any stripe. Then it will disappear like an anti-Stalinist dissident.

All together now:

Obamica the Beautiful

O beautiful for specious lies,
Audacious hope in vain,
For purple prose and promises
Deceitful and insane!

Obmica! Obamica!
God shed His grace on we
Who now endure your fatal cure
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for union fraud
Whose rife corruptions spread
From auto plants to public schools
To bleed incentive dead.

Obamica! Obamica!
You revel in self-awe.
In your new role you now extol
A mockery of law.

O beautiful for healthcare schemes
That tax the nation blind,
That leave us sick and doctorless,
But leave your pockets lined.

Obamica! Obamica!
You have us by the cubes.
But don’t expect us to accede
While we go down the tubes.

O beautiful for patriot dreams,
For cherishing what’s ours,
For challenging your senseless schemes,
Foreshortening your powers.

Obamica! Obamica!
Be careful where you delve,
Or you’ll be outside looking in
By year two-thousand-twelve.

Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou are an an unknowable individual; know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules!  That will be thy better plan.

(Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, 1843)

If Live! marked Leslie’s long-overdue coming out, Dodgin’ The Dirt marked his coming of age. This is vintage Leslie, harnessing the strengths of his youth with the assured self-confidence of hard-won adult maturity. With a steadfastness matched among his peers only by Eric Clapton and Robin Trower, Leslie has remained faithful to his sonic vision and his gifts, while accommodating the growing perspectives of age, the advantages of improved recording and instrumental technology, and the maturing of his song-craft. The print ads for this disc, and its liner notes, claimed this was Leslie’s best work (up to the time of its release). I’d been sure that was behind him. I didn’t thinks so after hearing Dodgin’ the Dirt.

Among the highlights of Dodgin’ The Dirt: First, the weakness of some of the vocal performances on Live! are redeemed here. This is the primal, cat-screaming Leslie of old – full, confident, tortured, and celebratory. Second, his song selection (those both covered and self-penned) showed a new and remarkable breadth and diversity. As an example, his cover of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” is a surprising take on a tune that Frank Sinatra once murdered, that I wouldn’t have cared to hear die at anyone else’s hands (or larynx). Leslie’s version is a singularly powerful treat.

But I don’t want to single anything out. This disc contains no ringers or filler. Among the highlights, “Sambuca” is a spirited run through Leslie’s riff-bag, featuring flights of melody, while joyously scraping the bottom of gut-bucket nasty. “One Last Lick” is an instrumental excursion over a standard (though menacing) blues progression – with some tasty surprises. “Cross Cut Saw” is a blues standard, given agile new treatment here. “Wasted Years”, by Van Morrison, is as much a biographical confession and a celebration of being alive as it is a beautiful cover of a touching song. In it – lyrically, vocally, and in his lead-guitar playing – Leslie acknowledges his own wasted years and touchingly celebrates his survival and arrival. And if “Wasted Years” is the pronouncement of that arrival, “Thunderbird” may be the proof.  This is as thoughtful and expressive as anything Leslie’s done post-Felix. He owns it; and he knows it. This just may be self-discovery as art.

Dodgin’ The Dirt’s final track, taped during the European tour from which Live! was compiled, is Leslie’s cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Red House”, which begins as a seeming knock-off of Live’s “Third Degree”. But the inclusion of this tune here is no afterthought. Despite forgetting the lyrics (again), Leslie uses everything from squealing bends to symphonic volume swells – from hair-raising single-note runs to chorused harmonics – to show why he’s always been the heavyweight champ of electric guitar: Anybody can plug one in. Only Leslie West is capable of this.

If the wait for this kind of work from Leslie was any indication, it had been a long road down the Mountain. If these two discs are any indication, it was worth every mile. The master had returned; and he’d never been better. It appears true from Live! and Dodgin’ the Dirt, just as Leslie sang in “Thunderbird” – “I’m stickin’ to my plan/I’ll be a happy man/While I can” – that he’d finally figured out what he canst work at. It’s clear now that his happy plan is to bring us much more music.

Long live the champ.

Saturday’s post about Bill Chinnock got me thinking about my old guitar heroes. So, I trotted out two sort of comeback discs from the early ’90s by Leslie West, one of the three guitarists who helped shape my young life. B.B. King and Johnny Winter are the other two. The listening inspired these notes.

Leslie West is the Larry Holmes of rock guitar. The heavyweight king since his early days in Mountain, Leslie remained uncrowned for having reigned in the shadow of others (Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton in the blues/rock arena; Richie Blackmore [in Deep Purple's heyday] and Tony Iommi [with Black Sabbath] in early conceptions of “metal”). But with the release of two discs, more than ten years after the death of his Mountain bandmate and creative protagonist, Felix Pappalardi, the pretenders abdicated; and Leslie assumed his rightful place among rock’s guitar royalty.

Because of the power and sheer volume of his playing, Leslie’s artistry was seldom acknowledged, let alone heralded. And Mountain’s work is seldom weighed on the relative scale of rock’s accomplishments and milestones. But consider: The release of Climbing in 1970 marked, not only an inimitable achievement, but the realization of the talent hinted at on Leslie West: Mountain (a solo album, which preceded Climbing) and the creative potential of Leslie’s collaboration with Felix Pappalardi (which began with that earlier album).

Even as the mutually affectionate, sympathetic spontaneity of Leslie’s concert performances with Felix were both emotionally touching and aurally breathtaking, Mountain’s subsequent albums continued to fulfill the potential of their first: As isolated examples (and at the risk of seeming to slight anything else), Leslie’s impassioned vocals and lyrical fills on “Flowers of Evil” (the title track from the album) have been perennially overlooked; and the narrative mastery of his solo in the live version of “Dreams of Milk and Honey” from that same album remains spellbindingly unmatched. Even Mountain’s post-West, Bruce, and Laing album, 1974’s Avalanche, is an under-valued gem, expanding, as it did, the sophistication of Mountain’s song craft (”Sister Justice” and “Last Of The Sunshine Days” are exemplary) and adding the interaction of David Perry’s rhythm guitar with Leslie’s, in place of Steve Knight’s keyboards.

In addition to the bewitching brew of power and poise Leslie’s playing always comprised, there’s evidence here that Leslie had finally stepped out of Felix’s shadow and filled the creative void left by Felix’s death (shot through the neck by his wife, graphic artist and Mountain album-cover illustrator, Gail Collins). The first of the discs, Live!, is culled from a series of European dates. Leslie’s band, Richie “The Bat” Scarlet on bass and “The Right Reverend” Paul Beretta on bass, serve as the immovable object for the irresistible force of Leslie’s singing and playing, providing ample room for his commanding improvisations. Live! lacks inspiration in some of its execution (ironically, the Mountain classics “Mississippi Queen” and “Nantucket Sleighride” satisfy least – probably because they’ve been done better elsewhere); and Leslie borders amnesia in his retention of lyrics (this has always been true of him). Nonetheless, this disc marked a return to unabashed form for the champ.

No one’s ever used an amp’s power any more fully than Leslie. There are ways in which he seems to use volume as an instrument, playing it with equal parts overwhelming abandon, deft touch, and poetic finesse. (When he digs into “Third Degree”, a grinding blues he also covered with West, Bruce, and Laing, the dizzying thrill of his bass-note harmonics and the visceral glide of his power chords suggest he alone knows how nasty and forbidding Eddie Boyd intended this song to be.) And no one has ever matched the economy of Leslie’s lead lines: no blazing runs or speed-metal tapping here. This is musical story-telling – mega-watt vignettes, in which Leslie never loses a sense of narrative to the seductions of flash and trickery.

Live! also began to manifest an interpretive conviction Leslie hadn’t shown before. That may be attributable to nothing more than age, maturity, and contemplation; but it’s a strength that carries through both discs. On Live!, Leslie’s poetic re-creation of “Theme For An Imaginary Western” is a fitting tribute to Felix, whose inimitable vocal interpretation of this song Leslie wisely refrains from imitating or suggesting. His alternating between the delicate picking of some chords (embellished by the artful dips and vibrato of his whammy-bar) and the brutal crashing of others adds to the dramatic majesty of his reading. Likewise, in Live!’s Hendrix/Beck tribute, Leslie does justice to vintage renditions of “Voodoo Chile” and “Goin’ Down” while making them unmistakably his own.

Notes on the second disc, Dodgin’ the Dirt, tomorrow.