your daily dose of rock and roll

Question: What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians?

Answer: A drummer (rim shot!).

If you're in the band (any band), you've no doubt heard that one and, hopefully, know it isn't true. Some drummers stick mainly to laying down the backbeat, keeping time and—except for occasional obligatory fills—eschew the frills. Some drummers are masters of texture as well as timing and seem to be able to almost coax melody itself from their kits.

Such was Mitch Mitchell who died on this day in 2008 at the age of 61. The last surviving member from the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mitchell was in that league of rock and roll drummers (along with Keith Moon, for another example) who could push the percussion envelope to the point where drums almost assumed "lead" status in a song (think of Moon's drumming in "I Can See for Miles").

Much is made—and for good reason—of Hendrix's chops, but the other two guys (bassist Noel Redding along with Mitchell) were not mere potted plants backing his mastery.

Examples of Mitch Mitchell's jazz inspired drumming genius crowd the three official studio LPs in The Jimi Hendrix Experience's discography. A remembrance of Mitchell on National Public Radio the week he passed away pointed out how he follows Hendrix's guitar work nearly note for note on "The Wind Cries Mary."

On Axis Bold as Love, Mitchell gets out his brushes to seems to strive to get in touch with his inner Max Roach on "Up from the Skies."

And one of my favorite moments on Electric Ladyland are the fills in between the verses—and that bridge from verse to chorus—on "House Burning Down." Listen to two examples of what I'm talking about at approximately :51 and 1:15 in.

Hendrix would have seemed garishly out of place (and no doubt would have been bored to tears) had he played with an average rhythm section. And if rock and roll trios are to be as incredible as Hendrix, Mitchell and Redding were, you can't afford to have the bassist and drummer satisfied with simply being "a rhythm section." Each artist needs to be a Jedi of instrumental interplay, alternately supporting and contrapuntally challenging the musical concepts of the other.

So today on the dose we salute the musical legacy of Mitch Mitchell who to this day is easily one whole third of the reason the Jimi Hendrix Experience's three official studio released albums are so damned good.

And lay off the drummer jokes. Try this one instead (dedicated to my buddy Tom, a musician who almost without exception hates harmonicas):

Question: How can you tell there's a harmonica player at your door?

Answer: They forgot the key and don't know when to come in.

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Happy 66th Birthday Phil May!

Hard to say why some Brit bands that really started to break in the early to mid-sixties—such as the Stones, the Who and to a lesser extent (at least in terms of widespread popularity and overall recognition) the Yardbirds and the Kinks—captured the imagination of so many of us in the States while some of their contemporaries aren't even given also-ran status on today's classic rock stations.*

But such is the fate of the Pretty Things (their earliest incarnation as Little Boy Blue and Blue Boys actually included Mick and Keith until Brian Jones recruited them away for his project). Vocalist Phil May joined forces with Dick Taylor (who earlier had played bass with the nascent Stones) and thus was born the Pretty Things. No cuddly, clean-cut Liverpudlians they, with Taylor now on lead guitar and May singing and blowing harmonica, they were a bluesy, rudely noisy, deliberately provocative looking, acting and sounding quintent of London boys (early press on the band included May's boast of having longer hair of any other Brit rocker of the day). They never had a single that did anything in the USA, although two of their first three were in the UK top twenty. Most people are far more familiar with those ("Rosalyn" and "Don't Bring Me Down") from David Bowie's tribute to music from this era on his '73 LP Pin Ups.

If you're not familiar with the Pretty Things, they're well worth a listen. Their eponymous debut features a dozen competent if simple songs, mostly covers of blues standards with a few of the groups earliest attempts at composition (the most fully formed example probably being Dick Taylor's "Honey I Need"). Their early sound really gels on their second LP, Get the Picture, released in '65. Ten of the 18 tracks on the expanded and remastered CD version are original compositions and all of the tracks easily stand with the early Stones' or Who's material as a no fop zone of straight from the hip rock and roll with treatments of R&B covers like "Come See Me"

or the alternately sly and manic "Can't Stand the Pain" written by May, Taylor and session drummer Bobby Graham.

Following the transitional and ill-fated '67 LP Emotions and roster changes that left only May and Taylor from the original line-up, the Pretty Things released one of the late sixties forgotten—and many have said "first"—concept albums, S.F. Sorrow.

Evolving into a psychedelic style that often sounds like Ray Davies meets early Pink Floyd, the album is based on a short story May had written and follows the narrative arc of one Sebastian F. Sorrow from his arrival in the world with the song "S.F. Sorrow is Born"

all the way to "Old Man Going" (performed here by the 21st century version of the band, featuring May and Taylor and with a David Gilmour cameo), the song showing Sorrow near death's door where he's empty, angry and—

in the album's coda—"Loneliest Person"—bleakly disappointed and alone.

After S.F. Sorrow, the Pretty Things released Parachute in 1970. Although the tracks run an interesting range of songwriting from the wispy "The Letter"

to the muscular "Rain," founding member Dick Taylor had left and the absence of his expressive guitar playing is sorely missed.

The Pretty Things soldiered on through the last three decades of the 20th century in different variations revolving around May and, later, Taylor, too. They gig to this day and still go largely ignored here in the states. Phil May celebrates his birthday today, turning 66 years old.

_{*Please note that I've omitted the Beatles from this list because even though the Stones are often characterized as the yang to their yin, I think it seems fair, if only for reasons of sheer popularity and commercial success, to put the fab four in a class of their own.}

" ... a chord progression, a top musician. He's not paid to think, just play."

OK, I'm going to rattle off some songs I really like: The Kinks' Days, Girl from Mill Valley from the loner's Beck-Ola, Slip Kid from Who By Numbers, the Rolling Stones' She's a Rainbow, Donovan's Atlantis from the outstanding Barabjagal LP, Jefferson Airplane's We Can Be Together from Volunteers (hell, throw in the title track, too. Gotta love Paul Kantner using one riff for two songs on the same album), the Jayhawks' Waiting for the Sun from Hollywood Town Hall, John Lennon's Jealous Guy ... OK, besides the fact that I like all of them, what the heck do these songs have in common? Mr. Nicky Hopkins on piano, that's what. Legendary session musician, Hopkins was born on this day in 1944 and died far too early (plagued with poor health since childhood) at the age of 50. Ray Davies—who wrote in The New York Times in '95 that Hopkins "had the ability to turn an ordinary track into a gem"—was thinking of Nicky Hopkins and his vocation when he composed this song (with harpsichord and piano courtesy of ... well, you guess.).

Less Than Jake sometimes less than fun.

Athletically delivered power ska punk cover versions can sometimes be more fun than Mickey's Monkey with a buzz and sometimes be as uninspiring as Foghat stuck on repeat as demonstrated by the Floridian band Less Than Jake on Goodbye Blue and White, their hard to find rarities anthology released on this day eight years ago. The title is not a farewell to Penn State University, but a reference in homage to a faithful tour van that finally went kaput. Although they selected songs that were fist-in-the-air moronic/anthemic (Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It), raw and infectious (The Jam's Modern World) and bursting ripe with ironic potential (The Partridge Family's I Think I Love You), all the high energy's purpose seems to be put toward racing to the song's end to get it over with as soon as possible rather than fully exuberate in the joie de vivre of that ska punk slam and bounce.

For example:

They couldn't manage to do with the theme song from Laverne and Shirley what, for example, Husker Du was able to do with the theme song from Mary Tyler Moore? I can't put my finger on why, because they bring something heady to their cover of this Cheap Trick classic:

Is it because this song can easily be punked up, speeded up but not so much ska-ed up?

J.R. and Zimmy transform an oldie into a goodie.

On Bob Dylan's second studio LP, the song Girl from the North Country seems and even sounds a tad ho-hum and arid up against the magnitude of the other purely acoustic era tracks: the destined for greatness Blowin' In the Wind, the surreal epic crypticism of A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, the airtight aw shucks shrugging simplicity of Don't Think Twice, It's Alright, the relentless judgmental slow burn wrath of Masters of War or even the funny, folksy absurdity of Talkin' World War III Blues or Bob Dylan's Blues. But on this day in 1969 when Dylan and Johnny Cash went into a recording studio together, they transformed it into a musical moment that practically demands to be surrounded by a stillness while the listener waits for the verses to unfold with a deliberate, unrushed and inevitable pace that transports us to a place we always knew we'd end up anyway. It was released as the opening track on Dylan's ninth studio release, Nashville Skyline.

Blur releases Blur!

Thirteen years ago today, the Britpop band who always changed up styles through the arc of their discography released their fifth eponymously titled LP. Never attracting as much attention in the States as in the UK, much of that ungainly and oversimplified abstraction known as the American general public are at least familiar with the catchy Song 2 track from this LP. Either from radio airplay, a commercial for Intel's Pentium II processor, Nissan's Sentra,  Michelob's Ultra or maybe from Drew Barrymore's big fight scenes in Charlie's Angels. Rock critics have noted that songwriter and Blur vocalist Damon Albarn was probably consciously trying to parody grunge in general and Nirvana specifically with this song. Irony within an irony, it was no doubt the deliberate elements of the parody—a simple yet persistent beat, the Nirvana-esque (or, really, is it more Pixie-esque?) alternation between rickety quiet and then spine-crunchingly loud chords and the irresistible "whoo hoo!"—that fueled the song's success in America.

Click on the hypertext song title above to see Blur's original video for the song. Embedding was disabled on that YouTube clip.