Tell Me What You See

It doesn't declare a winner, nor does it even argue for one; rather John McMillian's BEATLES VS. STONES filters the story of the Beatles through the perspective of the Rolling Stones and vice-versa, examining the obvious and subtle ways they informed, influenced, imitated and irritated one another.

As a guy well-versed in Beatle history, I appreciated McMillian's telling of familiar material from a unique angle; and as a guy largely ignorant of the Stones' story, I learned a few things.

Central to the story is an examination of the paradigm of the respective group's origins and early marketing: The Beatles were minor criminals from hardscrabble Liverpool presented by manager Brian Epstein as the huggable moptops-next-door while the Stones, hailing generally from better homes, economic conditions and opportunity around London, cast as menacing rulebreakers by their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham.

These images were enduring, and played into a supposed rivalry fanned by the press. While the bands themselves largely got along, a bit of a frenemenship emerges. McMillian describes how John and Paul casually school the young Stones with an impromptu studio writing session, which no doubt sped the Stones' transition from blues interpreters to rock songwriters, which eventually, would spur the Beatles to new heights. Occasionally this would lead to the sincerest forms of flattery, as when the Stones followed SGT. PEPPER with SATANIC MAJESTY'S REQUEST, rankling the caustic Lennon in particular.

As their respective success and influence grew (not to mention their use of drugs), McMillian documents how they were perceived by the counterculture they played to ('Revolution' vs. 'Street Fighting Man'); and finally how their business interests collided, first when Paul and Mick pondered joining the band's interests; and finally when Mick enticed John to seek Allen Klein's representation despite knowing Klein to be a thief. This issue would eventually tear the Beatles themselves apart, just as the Stones enjoyed their greatest artistic triumphs.

Favorites of 2014

Nothing takes the fun out of determining a Top 10 albums of the year list like spending whatever free time you have in December desperately pawing through the albums on other people's lists you couldn't or wouldn't get to in an attempt not look so damned ignorant. So before that continues any further I have to make peace with my ignorance, and give what I got. As usual I spent considerably more time re-examining stuff from the 1970s than keeping up with the contemporaries this year. But who knows, those guys probably missed some stuff too.

As always, this list isn't "best," or even most worthy, just those that were released during the calendar year that I gave sufficient chance to, and enjoyed the most.

And now, on with the Dadrock Top Ten...

10. The Hold Steady TEETH DREAMS
It's missing the Roy Bittan-y piano that marked their best stuff but a nice comeback from their last record, with all the manic energy and shaggy doggedness, and when they rock out they almost kill me. I got the sense that some listeners were turned off by the massively hooky "Wait A While" but I can't imagine why.




9. Christopher Denny, IF THE ROSES DON'T KILL US
OK, so this is one of those I plucked off someone else's best-of list just a couple weeks ago and I'm a little suspicious of its new-ness to me, but there's no denying this guy, even if his songs aren't destined to last, has a voice I'll remember for a long time. Like John Fullbright (read on) Denny is probably best classified as a "country" artist but he's mixing in soul, gospel and rock, all of it a bit off-kilter.



8. The War on Drugs, LOST IN THE DREAM
Atmospheric, evocative and contemporary take on rock, a little more lustrous and hazy than I normally go for but I'll confess to giving them a shot mostly as a result of having come across a video of them impressively covering Springsteen's "The Ties That Bind." Speaking of legends, the chilly intimacy, chiming guitar and echo reminds me of Lindsey Buckingham's solo work.



7. The Both, THE BOTH
Veteran singer-songwriter Aimee Mann teams up with indy-punk guitar slinger Ted Leo for a set of charming power-pop duets. Suffers a little bit from that soft/loud thing but solid overall and at times catchy as hell. I mean, this song:



6. Bruce Springsteen, HIGH HOPES
When I heard this was a collection of leftovers, rerecordings and covers I was hardly excited (the shittiest album cover of his career didn't help) but Bruce is an exception to most rules, and naturally the political thread running loosely through this collection turned out to be especially prescient. The defining element of this album is the addition of guitarist Tom Morello who brings a blood-and-guts edge to Bruce's songs including vicious interpretations of "American Skin" and "Tom Joad." It doesn't always work when the Boss himself engages in profanity, but I get what he was going for here.

Bruce being Bruce, he soon issued a leftover-from-the-leftovers EP featuring the terrific, nonpolitical "Hurry Up Sundown" also worth a pursuit.

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5. Weezer, EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT IN THE END
I understand where Weezer fans probably feel the joke is on them: They've been so disappointed waiting for a record that sounds like their classic "blue" album that when the band finally does so it comes with a glib apology: "Sorry guys I didn't realize I needed you so much. I thought I'd get a new audience. I forgot that disco sucks!" singer Rivers Cuomo confesses in the irresistable throwback "Back to the Shack." Weezer were so off my radar I hadn't realized they'd been out sucking, but I'm glad they're back anyway. This record, like "blue" is knowing and funny, and packed with angsty hooks. (See also the 50s inspired duet with Bethany Cosentino).




4. John Fullbright, SONGS
In a year without a great many revelations I was pleased to discover this Oklahoma singer/songwriter who sounds a little bit like a cross between Steve Earle and "Closing Time" era Tom Waits. The album's not perfect -- it drags at times and I recognized a guy acknowledging his own creative frustrations in "Write a Song" -- but his ability is plain as day as demonstrated in this crusher:



3. The Empty Hearts, THE EMPTY HEARTS
I was a born sucker for this supergroup including musicians from three turn-of-the-80s bands I've admired forever: Singer Wally Palmar of the Romantics; guitarist Elliot Easton of the Cars; and Blondie's great drummer Clem Burke. Together with bassist Andy Babiuk of the Chesterfield Kings they made a record based on the sounds they admired growing up -- not 80s new wave but pure 60s garage rock. It hardly breaks new ground but there's not a bad cut on it, and played exactly as you'd imagine old pros just doing what they love would.



2. Roddy Frame, SEVEN DIALS
The former Aztec Cameraman sings about a personal rebirth and practically has one right there on the record, his first in seven years. I don't know how much is autobiographical but if you told me he'd been through a soul-crushing divorce and went to find himself in San Francisco I'd totally believe you. You can practically smell the Pacific on "Postcard" referencing Fleetwood Mac with a chorus ripped right out of the Eagles' "One of These Nights." A sparkling, moving, grown-up record.



1. Chuck Prophet, NIGHT SURFER
"Look out all you losers, here I come!" Chuck Prophet warns the world on "Wish Me Luck" ("not that I really need it!"), an ironic keynote to a 13th solo album by a guy most people have never heard of. NIGHT SURFER isn't likely to break Prophet's remarkable obscurity, despite so much to recommend it. He's a strong songwriter, a wicked guitarist and an expressive, conversational singer with a gift of innovating his delivery in the manner of Jim Carroll. It's straight-ahead greasy rock-n-roll at its core but also well structured, with strings and precise background vocals counterbalancing Prophet's wild attitudes and observations.


I'd recommend going beyond the embedded vid for all of these records, and/or pressing the little blue triangle on the below mix of songs that caught my ear during 2014. Thanks to my tastemaking pals out there in the virtual world for the recommendations. What did you like this year?

Live a Little, Be a Gypsy, Get Around

What happens after you've accomplished it all and you haven't yet turned 30? The dilemma hangs heavily over Paul McCartney as he restlessly struggles to craft a post-Beatles life in Tom Doyle's biography MAN ON THE RUN. Based on a series of revealing interviews with the subject and richly detailed reporting, Doyle paints McCartney as far less calculated, and in a sense, more complex, than I would have guessed: In fact, Paul was adrift, depressed, and stoned for much of the 1970s even as he rarely dropped the jolly exterior and optimistic outlook he projected.

Cast as too domineering by George and too uncool by John (both accusations appearing accurate), the Beatle breakup left Paul with a kind of post-traumatic distress he medicated with pot, musical excursions both brilliant and banal, and life with a young family.

Periodic encounters with John Lennon recounted in the book illustrate a complicated and heartbreaking estrangement between the famed songwriting duo. John's public posture was many times more savage than what he'd share privately with Paul, whereas McCartney would frequently come off more flippant and careless than he'd intend, particularly his unfortunate "it's a drag, man" soundbite that carried the day upon Lennon's assassination. As Doyle tells it, Paul spent much of the 1970s in a vain search for a foil to provide the kind of competitive spark and counterforce that Lennon did, even if unconsciously so. The murder left him devastated and confused.

The book also provides a useful framework for understanding McCartney's inconsistent post-Beatle recording career, which even for us fans is something of a complicated narrative. McCartney's self-titled earliest effort largely resulted of therapeutic play in a home studio, while the 1971 followup RAM, conceived amid the legal unraveling of the Beatles, were both savaged by contemporary critics, although RAM's stature has greatly benefited upon reconsideration. "RAM was something of a marvel," Doyle argues. "Really the true successor to ABBEY ROAD, in its baroque detail and flights of imagination, it was variously funny, daft, touching and knowing."

Living a hippy lifestyle on a rural Scottish farm, Paul's next venture was, in his words, growing a band from a seed. Wings grew, all right, morphing from the dull, ramshackle outfit of the debut WILD LIFE, to the Peppery BAND ON THE RUN, to arena rockers of VENUS AND MARS to the radio popstars of SPEED OF SOUND and its successors. Part of this was Paul's unwillingness to reel in his outrageous versatility, but it was also his inability to keep another group together, with only himself, musically dubious wife Linda and ex-Moody Blues utilityman Denny Laine a presence throughout the Wings' career. One problem? He paid them too little.

The dissolving of  Wings Mark 2 (guitarist Jimmy McCullough and drummer Joe English, who joined following BAND ON THE RUN and accompanied the founding trio through the WINGS OVER AMERICA triumph) seemed to serve as another disappointing setback for McCartney, who even at the top of his game was always courting doubt. But, as Doyle points out, McCartney's growth from a guy who seemed lost without his Beatle bandmates to an artist who could fill a triple-live album almost entirely with non-Beatle cuts you know by heart in a matter of a only few years, is simply remarkable, even if it came with some filler.

The book takes us through McCartney's adventures in recording (the near-fatal chaos of BAND ON THE RUN's creation in Lagos and high-seas hijinx for LONDON TOWN); his idiotic drug busts in Scotland and in Japan; the deaths of Lennon and ex-Wingman McCollough, all leading to what Doyle suggests is the dawn of a calmer, more stable period to follow.

The below playlist includes representative cuts from Macca's singles, LPs and other projects during the decade:

Looking East

Sort of interesting thing I learned from Fink's AC/DC book.

There's no this:


without this:


Head East was a one of those Heartland boogie-rock bands who plugged away throughout the 70s but never broke out in the manner of contemporaries like REO Speedwagon. If they're remembered at all, it's for the enduring rocker above from their 1974 debut album FLAT AS A PANCAKE, whose syrupy cover I can picture from those Columbia House offerings. The riff apparently caught the ear of Malcolm Young, whose play on it blossomed into the ubiquitous AC/DC breakout. (We all know that jumped the shark years ago -- for me, it was when one of those "4 Jacks and a Jill" type bands performed it at a cocktail reception for real-estate executives I attended for work one time. Still get chills).

Head East had a second minor hit a few years later with "Since You Been Gone" but that song is best known for its 1979 performance by Rainbow. What I didn't know till just now was that Head East's version was also a cover of a song penned and performed originally by ex-Argent singer Russ Ballard. Ballard might be even less well-known than Head East, but his songwriting credits are many including the great power-poppy cut below, "Winning" later a cover hit by Santana and the great "New York Groove" made famous by Ace Frehley.

What's your favorite take of the three below?

Thunder from Down Under

In part because none of the subjects of the book's title are willing participants in the story it tells, Jesse Fink's THE YOUNGS concerns itself primarily with tracking down other biographers' stories on the elusive and secretive family behind AC/DC, and it might have helped to have read those first.

This is not a book for the casual or curious AC/DC fan; it drops right in on the arcane and detailed, probing into who really played drums on their earliest recordings; how much of BACK IN BLACK was composed before the death of vocalist Bon Scott; the story of the graphic designer who has never been properly compensated for his iconic band logo, on and on. It's not that these stories aren't interesting in and of themselves (some are, anyway) it's the fact that telling the story of George, Malcolm and Angus Young is difficult without examining such things because they're uncooperative, insular and probably don't mind that there's a bit of mystery and irreconcilable truths around them. That's how they are.

And, Fink would argue, the best rock and roll band ever, at least until Scott died. There's a ton of testimony -- from himself and other admirers -- to that account, and where Fink has succeeded is making that case behind a few truths emerging from the arcane: Original producer, songwriter, man-behind-the-curtain and older brother George Young was determined to direct his brothers' band free from the interference and influences that might have brought down his band, the Easybeats; middle brother Malcolm (maybe not exactly middle, there were I believe 9 Young siblings in all) helped the sound come to life behind singularly muscular and efficient rhythm guitar and has been the driving force in the band for much of its career; and Angus is the diminutive boy genius guitarist and natural showman.

Readers will actually learn more about Scott, whom Fink argues was the soul of the band until drinking himself to death in 1980, citing his cheeky, clever lyrics that gave way to clunky, childish double-entendre in the Johnson era. The swift change to Johnson and the ensuing BACK IN BLACK tribute (if it was that and not leftovers packaged that way) was shrewd. "No replacement vocalist has given a band a better second act that Johnson did for AC/DC," Fink writes, although he adds it was only a couple of records before Johnson's vocals were shot and even less before he ran out of ideas as a lyricist. The Youngs eventually shut him out entirely from the songwriting process, repeating a pattern they'd exhibited with dozens of sacked band members, producers and associates throughout their career, many of whom make an appearance in Fink's book.

 Some time ago I came around to the conclusion that AC/DC wasn't the garbage Rolling Stone told me they were when I was an impressionable kid (Fink in fact tracks down and interrogates critic Billy Altman in his book, to little avail). If nothing more they're about the very best practitioners of the kind of thing they do. Fink's book helped to put its development into context, arguing the band's sound as a kind of unreached destiny of the Easybeats and other projects bearing George's influence along the way including a new-to-me project called the Marcus Hook Roll Band, whose "Natural Man" (above, featuring teenage Malcolm and Angus) was AC/DC/BC as the below cut clearly illustrates.


Filled with passion for the subject and dogged reporting, "The Youngs" might be the best AC/DC bio out there, but the definitive tale may still await.

Play Ball

Just in time for Opening Day, the Baseball Project is back. To say this thing is up my alley is a gross understatement: It's not only the old white-guys-from-the-80s musicians played in that power-pop-to-folk-rock style I like, but it's funny and baseball literate in the best way. I feel like they had to be thinking of me when they wrote:

I keep my eye on the sparrow
Keep my focus pretty narrow
I listen to the music and read books about its makers
I read books about baseball, the swingers and the takers
But what I love even more, is poring over box scores

Thirty seconds into this piece of power-pop homerism from R.E.M.'s great Mike Mills and I was already reconsidering my position:
Elsewhere the band writes about Pascual Perez, Lenny Dykstra, Dock Ellis, the Oakland A's, Henry Aaron...

Life is so Strange

A singer with multicolored hair and fishbowl bikini cups made quite the initial impression but I wouldn't have guessed back then that Missing Persons' SPRING SESSION M would hold up as well as it does 30+ years down the road.

The band consisted of squealing singer Dale Bozzio, a Playboy Bunny who stumbled into rock through husband Terry Bozzio, who was Frank Zappa's drummer. Dale became the delivery system for songs written by Terry Bozzio and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, another of Zappa's players. They recruited bass/synth player Patrick O'Hearn from Zappa, while keyboardist Chuck Wild arrived through a want ad. Originally known as "U.S. Drag" -- also a song title on the SPRING SESSION album -- the Missing Persons name referred to its members' commitments to other acts and might never have been a longterm project were it not for the fact this sexier Cyndi Lauper was fronting a creative, but very consciously new-wave band that could really play, and their shows around L.A. and a 4-song EP recorded at Zappa's studio became an early-80s phenomenon.


Debut album SPRING SESSION M (it's an anagram!) featured the spooky but exciting "Destination Unknown" -- a kind of fight song for my life and so many things in it (I'm reminded of its themes every spring when I take in the Mets' prospects). The guitar was clipped and new-wavy while the synths were complex, spacey and warm; Dale's vocals are appropriately quirky and the background singing and Terry's drumming are just outstanding. I posted a lip-synced performance above because I think it gives a better picture of what went into the song than the "official" video. They worked the same elements in different settings on songs like "Words," and "Walking in L.A.," crafting a record that was textbook new-wave without the shortcuts and cheap tricks (fake drums, labored detachment) that marked many of its contemporaries. It was really a kind of progressive pop that wasn't so disposable, only hidden behind sex and hairspray.

The band wouldn't hang on for long. Neither of their two follow-ups, RHYME & REASON (1984) or COLOR IN YOUR LIFE (1986) produced a hit and the band, built upon a marriage, didn't survive that breakup. Today those efforts live on only as parts of compilations dominated by SPRING SESSION cuts. Terry Bozzio went on to a lengthy jazz career; Wild and O'Hearn separately made marks in new-age; and Cuccurullo joined Duran Duran.

 You can't be sure of any situation. Something could change, and then you won't know.