By Don Jacobson

Back to the Egg was Wings’ swan song and, to me, always a criminally underrated record. But because it followed a true stinker, 1978’s soft-boiled London Town, the then-all-powerful handful of music critics of the day were predisposed to hate it, and to use it as an example of how the icons of ’60s rock were going corporate in an era when punk was redefining tastes.
And to be sure, there are a few fine examples of Paul McCartney’s soon-to-come descent into Michael Jackson-esque wankery here (such as “Baby’s Request” and the syrupy “Arrow Through Me“). But for my money, Back to the Egg is Macca’s final burst of unbridled rock energy, a fascinating coda to the part of his songwriting oeuvre that produced some of the late-period Beatles’ hardest-edged songs, like “Helter Skelter,” “Birthday” and “Back In the USSR.”

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Posted on January 29, 2008

A Tribute

“The song was originally intended to be about Ronald Reagan’s pride in America’s military power but Bono had been influenced by Stephen B. Oates’s book Let The Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as by a biography of Malcolm X. These caused Bono to ponder the different sides of the civil rights campaigns, the violent and the non-violent,” according to the song’s Wikipedia entry. “In subsequent years, Bono has expressed his dissatisfaction with the lyrics, which he describes, along with another Unforgettable Fire song ‘Bad,’ as being ‘left as simple sketches.’ He blames this on being swayed by Edge and producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who played down the need to develop the lyrics as they thought the impressionistic nature was more important to the songs’ ‘feeling,’ particularly when heard by non-English speakers.”

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Posted on January 21, 2008

By Don Jacobson

Oh, Canadian female rockers (CFRs). How we love thee.
Anyone who reads the Beachwood with any regularity knows that editor Steve Rhodes has a fascination with Avril Lavigne that at times goes so far as to confuse her with Paul Westerberg. While I’m not willing to go quite that far, I will admit that I, too, have a thing for Avril and her skull fetish. She is so rock ‘n’ roll and hails from the True North Strong ‘n’ Free. Oh, Avril, I stand on guard for thee.
But she’s not the only CFR on the prowl. Thanks to Canwest News Service, we have a list of what some of the other members of this coolest of all clubs are up to in this coldest of all months, as the Alberta Clippers whistle through the broken window glass in the Chicago tenements of our souls, chilling and thrilling us with their loon-like trillings. These ladies make me proud to be someone who wishes they were from Moose Jaw.

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Posted on January 17, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Originally published on January 4; now updated with comments from Patterson Hood.
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“I have never quite loved the Drive-By Truckers,” Jesse Fox Mayshark writes in the latest No Depression. “For one thing, I have always been a little put off by the awkward self-awareness of Patterson Hood’s ambitions. God knows the moral and cultural geography of the modern South cries out for cartographers, but it’s one thing to talk about a map – he talks about it a lot – and another to draw it.
“Hood is a messy draftsman, sometimes relying on broad lines when he needs shading, sometimes counting on vague gestures to carry meaning that he himself hasn’t really thought through. (‘The duality of the Southern thing’) sounds smart enough when you hear him say it, but it doesn’t actually communicate much.)
“And like Paul Westerberg, one of his obvious influences, he’s gotten less funny as he’s gone along, maybe mistaking a straight face for seriousness.’
Here, here, Jesse Fox Mayshark! Finally a critical word for the critics’ darlings.
I have never understood the appeal of the Drive-By Truckers; I watched in horror and depressing amazement as they rose in popularity and stature within the alt-country community. I mean, these guys?

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Posted on January 14, 2008

By Don Jacobson

Atlanta’s Ben Coleman is one of those musicians who seem to be at a vortex of a coolness swirly-gig. Not only is the native Londoner a member of two very active and well-received Atlanta-based bands, Judi Chicago and Early Modern Witch Trials, he’s also the best classic rock DJ on the Internet with his show Stonehenge, which is broadcast locally by WREK-FM, the student-run, non-commercial station at Georgia Tech University.
Stonehenge goes out live every Friday night at 7 p.m. CST on WREK-FM, and is also available after-the-fact here on the station’s mp3 show archives and as a podcast here.
Coleman’s live sets with Judi Chicago, a band that seems to be either an homage to or a spot-on, over-the-top parody of disco dance acts, have been described by Creative Loafing as spectacles of “sweat, booty-tight shorts and pasty-white legs,” dominated by much pelvis thrusting and shouting of garbled lyrics. Early Modern Witch Trials, meanwhile, couldn’t be more different. There, Coleman goes the shoegazy, psychedelic route, channeling the Monks and ’70s European avant-rock, complete with squawking saxophones and spacey keyboards.
Either way, it’s kind of strange that Coleman’s bands are so loud and dissonant when his Stonehenge DJ persona is so low-key, intellectual and laid-back as he unfurls an encyclopedic knowledge of the most obscure deep, druggy classic rock. One of the best things about the three-hour weekly show is that he starts it off with an album played in its entirety. In recent weeks, these have included such crispy classics as Fleetwood Mac’s first album (1968), Jethro Tull’s Stand Up (1969), and Gentle Giant’s Octopus (1972). All treated with the historic respect that they deserve!

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Posted on January 11, 2008