Doug Collette

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir: (paperback)

Arguably the instrumental bridge to rock and roll music, the primal, repetitive urgency of what’s known as ‘the Bo Diddley beat’ is the blues condensed to its rhythmic essence. That may or may not be why Buddy Holly used the pattern as the basis for composing his “Not Fade Away,” but that hardly matters considering how infectious it is. Likewise, it’s no wonder the Grateful Dead applied it to so many extended set closers over the years, covering the aforementioned tune of the late lamented rocker and emphasizing that cadence? In this 1973 video, Bo himself plays it without irony or self-congratulation, embroidering upon the pattern to a great extent but hardly more so than the pianist. The effort the author expends is quite clearly grounded in how he and the audience are caught up in this visceral trance.

The precocious maturity Taste displayed on its 1969 debut album renders the subsequent accomplishment(s) of their second record all the more impressive. Having so fully documented their approach on the two LPs, the dissolution of the Irish blues-rock trio later in 1970 thereby seems inevitable.

The precocious maturity Taste displayed on its 1969 debut album renders the subsequent accomplishment(s) of their second record all the more impressive.

As with so many artistic efforts related to Bob Dylan, James Mangold's biopic A Complete Unknown may work best simply as the means to an end (and not just as inspiration to revisit the Nobel Prize winner's music). The film certainly benefits from not being taken too seriously, especially as it hardly pretends to be definitive, even in the designated 1961-1965 timeline of the screenplay by the director and Jay Cocks (based on the Elijah Wald book Dylan Goes Electric! (Dey Street Books, 2015). But it does deliver multiple epiphanies by the time its two-and-a-quarter-hour duration concludes.

On the front cover photo of the first Pretenders album (released 1/11/80), vocalist, guitarist, chief composer, and bandleader Chrissie Hynde looks like her best songs sound: decidedly stylish and with a purpose. That she and the quartet imbued their musicianship with those virtues as they played in the studio and on stage is a testament to their abiding chemistry, one that vividly evokes the atmosphere of “Swinging London” with which Chrissie Hynde became so enamored during her impressionable youth.

Fans of the R.E.M. guitar jangle may have rejoiced with the 1989 release of Toad The Wet Sprocket’s debut album Bread And Circus. With the issue of Green the year prior, the idiosyncratic Georgia quartet had begun to digress from the bedrock instrumental style of guitar/bass/drums/vocals for more elaborate productions (taken to an even further extent with 1991’s Out Of Time and the very next year’s Automatic for the People ).

The Silver Snarling Trumpet -The Birth of the Grateful Dead: The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter

In the half-century since the release of Blood On The Tracks, Bob Dylan’s fifteenth studio album (released 1/20/75) has been acclaimed as one of the milestone releases of his career. However, the record received somewhat mixed reviews at the time of its original issue. Now, with the extended perspective of five decades, the differing viewpoints more clearly mirror the ambivalence of the Nobel Laureate himself as he moved through the fitful creative process.

Notes from the Underground and the very next year’s It’s a Jungle in Here, Medeski Martin and Wood worked assiduously to forge their talents. Yet their individual and collective assets were still in the process of crystallizing into a distinctive personal style: echoes of Monk and Mingus were too obvious to ignore in these early LPs.