MuchMore.ca

Tennessee Me-The Secret Sisters (2010)
Any young band or aspiring musician has at one time or another encountered the phrase “no unsolicited materials”. This is what most record companies, management companies, publishers or booking agents plaster across the contact section of their websites and sometimes they qualify it by explaining that they get so much music sent to them that they will never have a chance to listen to everything. Let me translate the phrase “no unsolicited material” into industry talk: “we don’t give a fuck about anything that hasn’t established a fan base already, anything that doesn’t have 50 000 hits on YouTube, anything that isn’t road ready and we don’t have to think about or anything that hasn’t already been brought to our attention by another person who has an established track record who also probably doesn’t accept unsolicited material. Don’t call us, we won’t call.”

“Making it” in the music industry has far more to do with who you know than how great you are, it’s a sad reality that the days of a romantic story like Johnny Cash pestering and begging Sam Phillips to let him audition and record for Sun Records are over. I’m not naive enough to understand why it doesn’t quite happen like this anymore; music has changed, the industry has changed, everything has changed, but it’s still a nice thought to believe that there is music out there that doesn’t fit the current hit parade but could very well change music and impact culture the way someone like Johnny Cash did; if it could only find it’s way past being just unsolicited material. It all makes this next find sound even sweeter to my ears:

A couple of years ago Laura and Lydia Rogers were just 2 sisters from a small town outside of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with music in their blood but the only experience they had was singing in church, in their homes and around their town. Now they are Laura and Lydia Rogers of “The Secret Sisters” with a debut album produced by T-Bone Burnett and a single released with Jack White. This has all happened because a record company decided it would be smart to hold some auditions in Nashville in the hopes of putting together a singing group. T Bone Burnett was eventually brought in to work with the girls and has compared this musical discovery to an era like the 1920’s when record companies from big cities in the US would go down south to towns that sometimes didn’t even have electricity yet and run ads in the newspapers that they were recording people in the local hotel; this is exactly how the Carter Family was discovered and this same idea almost 100 years later has now brought “The Secret Sisters”. Granted, Nashville is not quite a small town but it did give aspiring musicians from surrounding areas the opportunity to travel there and be part of a moment when someone in the industry realized the wisdom in soliciting that unknown unsolicited music they tend to ignore. There seems to be something in the air these days with the emergence of bands like The Avett Brothers and Mumford and Sons, people are gravitating to music that is rooted in the past and The Secret Sisters are an obvious throwback to classic country and folk but when country music was Hank Williams and Patsy Cline and not Toby Keith…much offence to Toby Keith.

Jinglin’ Baby-LL Cool J (1990)

I found an old LL Cool J interview on YouTube probably from the late 80’s/early 90’s where he said: “You rap about your environment, no doubt about it; your surroundings definitely have an influence on the music your make.”

This is not a revelation to anyone who makes music, it’s fairly basic, but I thought it interesting on the topic of LL because of the path his first 3 albums took him and how that path was digested by music critics and the hip hop community. LL Cool J’s debut album “Radio” is considered a landmark hip hop album (Rolling Stone actually puts it in the top 500 albums of all time) for a few different reasons; it was a springboard for Def Jam Records (Recordings), a springboard for Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons; and it was a springboard for hip hop in general because of the mainstream success it had specifically because it represented street culture for inner city kids and became an album that they could relate to. At 17 years old, LL Cool J was talking about what life was like for kids like him and it resonated on both a cultural and musical level. Like the quote says, LL was influenced by his surroundings which at that time was an emerging b-boy and hip hop lifestyle coupled with life of an inner city kid in Queens, and that’s what shaped the album “Radio”. The rawness and honesty of that album and how it described his surroundings was one of the main reasons it became a breakthrough for him and was so revered by critics.

A funny thing happened over the course of his next 2 albums however (Bad -1987, Walking With a Panther-1989) ; LL Cool J grew up a little bit and all of a sudden wasn’t struggling for money or having to rely on his grandfather to buy his equipment to make demos anymore. I only point this out to say that his lifestyle changed, I’m not suggesting that he lost touch with his neighborhood or his roots because nothing could be further from the truth, infact at the height of his early success LL still lived at his grandparent’s house, the same house where he made his first demos. The change was that all of a sudden girls were screaming for autographs and he was a rising star at a very early age which no doubt affected his writing because as he says: “your surroundings definitely have an influence on the music your make”. His next 2 records were commercially successful but the hip hop community had changed their tune and no longer was he the future of hip hop preaching the life with the rawness of a 17 year old street smart kid from Queens, instead he was selling out because of his slow love songs and party jams. Furthermore, with the emergence of N.W.A and Public Enemy, LL might as well have been a pop artist who was not staying true to hip hop.

So here’s the thing, I’m not an expert on hip hop, I love it and I know the history of it but at the end of the day I am a white kid from St. John’s Newfoundland who was given a “Walking With a Panther” cassette for my birthday along with the many other gifts I’m sure I was showered with, and I was living a life that was a hell of a lot different than the one LL Cool J spoke about on “Radio”; but I was attracted to the music, I was drawn to his party jams which introduced me to the music and the culture, and in retrospect I would now say with a fair amount of confidence that LL wasn’t selling out, he was still writing about his environment and I have no doubt that a dude not even in his 20’s who was now a celebrity was spending more time at party’s and with girls than he did when he made that first album (name one young music star who didn’t do the same). It’s funny how the personal tastes or opinions of people who write reviews can cast such a firm shadow over someone who writes music. When LL released the album “Mama said Knock you Out” in 1990 he was once again “hard’ in the eyes of hip hop, this album was a commercial and critical success and ironically a guy in his early 20’s had lived enough life to honestly write “Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years, rockin my peers, putting suckas in fear”.

Jingling Baby is one of the tracks that got me and I would imagine a shitload more people into hip hop and I think that anyone who is publically critical of music (myself included) should realize that, for the most part, when we criticize the substance or the tone of someone’s music all we are really doing is criticizing the things that have influenced them.

Mary Lou-Ronnie Hawkins (1959)

Ronnie Hawkins (The Hawk) started a musical snowball that is more important to the history of rock and roll than most people might realize. Let’s just for a moment forget about his influence as a performer, forget that Elvis got some of his moves and swagger from Ronnie Hawkins and let’s just focus on the musicians who were drawn to the Hawk early in their career and what the chain of events to follow looked like.

After adopting Canada as his home in the late 50’s he started a band called Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks: they were gods in Toronto-he was the teacher, the Hawks the students. Starting with a young drummer from Arkansas named Levon Helm, Ronnie systematically surrounded himself with the best young musicians who were part of the bubbling Toronto music scene and pretty soon Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks were touring all over North America and recording for Morris Levy’s infamous Mob backed Roulette Records in New York City. Then The Hawks who by then, along with Levon, were Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson, had graduated from The Hawk and toured as Bob Dylan’s backing band in the years of his transition from folk to rock and roll…. THEN they eventually settled on the name “The Band” and made some of the most critically acclaimed and renowned music over the past 50 years. Publically, everyone from the Beatles to Eric Clapton has cited The Band’s influence and today bands like Kings of Leon and The Black Crowes owe them a musical debt. I could also go on and on about other musicians who got their start in the Ronnie Hawkins school of life and music like David Foster but I think you get the point: thank you Ronnie Hawkins.

Clueless Wonder-Joel Plaskett (2001)

From 1992 until about 1998 Joel Plaskett fronted Thrush Hermit: a band who probably would have been famous if they wanted to be, but they broke up and Joel began to make music as a solo artist and with his new band “The Emergency”. One of my favorite Joel Plaskett stories is how he almost got Tone Loc to appear on the track “Fashionable People” from his 2007 album “Ashtray Rock”, but rather than be disappointed at it ALMOST happening Joel was just happy that Tone Loc listened to one of his songs.
With or without Tone, he has amassed a huge catalogue of great songs and become a renowned and award winning songwriter bouncing between rock and folk with an ease and vibe that Bruce Springsteen would be proud of. Joel’s songs translate just as well with his full band as they do with his dad joining him on acoustic guitar and the thought of trying to pick a favorite Plaskett tune is like being asked to pick a favorite Spice Girl (something no one should ever be asked to do) but this week I like the track Clueless Wonder (I guess it would be Baby Spice).

Make you Crazy-Brett Dennen (2008)

I spend a lot of time looking for new music but sometimes it finds me, and I think I like that the best. A little while ago I was turned onto the legendary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti who passed away in 1997; I found him because his oldest son, Femi Kuti, is a touring musician who was coming through town and it was suggested I should check him out, so as I went on a trip through Femi’s music I stumbled upon a duet he did with ANOTHER guy named Brett Dennen. Femi Kuti appears on the Brett Dennan song “Make you Crazy”…..and now I pass it on to you.

thanks for listening,
=m