j f l e c k : : a t : : i n k s t a i n

Jeff Baxter, Missile Defense Analyst

John Fleck — 2005-04-26T20:09:14-07:00

Via the Arms Control Wonk we learn that NASA has chartered a new Exploration Systems Advisory Committee whose members include "Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter, Missile Defense Analyst, Beverly Hills, Calif." As Jeffrey puts it:

Yes, that is "Skunk" Baxter of the Doobie Brothers. How the hell does a guy in a band called the Doobie Brothers keep a security clearance? .... Perhaps our missile defense policy makes more sense if you're high.

In addition to the Doobie Brothers, Baxter also did a stint with Steely Dan, where on Countdown to Ecstacy he "sheds his outer skin and stands revealed as a Wild Boy."

Lonnie swept the playroom, and he swallowed up all he found.
It was forty-eight hours 'til Lonnie came around.

I think there's little doubt that this is the only album I own by a bona fide Missile Defense Analyst.

"I hope we passed the audition"

John Fleck — 2004-12-29T09:55:44-07:00

Phil Spector was a very bad man.

Let's be clear here. The smothering wall of strings on The Long and Winding Road ranks well down on the list of history's great crimes against humanity. No one died. But a crime it is.

Daughter Nora was looking for "Please Please Me" for a Christmas present for me. When she couldn't find it, she asked me to suggest another record I'd like. I asked for "Let It Be."

When the "Let It Be -- Naked" was released a couple of years back, Paul McCartney said, "That was the thing about the Beatles, we were always a great little band." I agree, and I've always been fond of their music. I especially love the very early stuff, which is why I asked for "Please Please Me." It's fun. "Let It Be" is that way too, at least in part, a lot of the pretension pulled back off, a bunch of guys goofing in the basement with their guitars.

And then came Spector, creating something appropriate for background music while you're shopping for frozen peas.

I knew what I was getting into when I asked Nora for the album. When I was a teenager, my friend Danny Hogle had this fabulous collection of Beatles bootlegs, among them a bunch of stuff from the Let It Be sessions. There was Paul pecking out the chords for "Let It Be" for the band for the first time. And his naked version of the Long and Winding Road, sans Spector, sans the Wall of Sound.

It's a lovely little ballad, sad and sweet and pretty, just Paul and the piano.

The "Naked" re-release has it the way Paul sang it, but there are other problems with that album. The clowning on "Get Back," up on the Apple Studios roof with Billy Preston, has always been a favorite bit of business, and they cut it out of the version they included. So the original "Let It Be" is, on balance, my favorite of the two. But such a tradeoff. I suppose I'll have to acquire both, and make my own mix-and-match CD.

And I still need Please Please Me.

A Brick in the Wall

John Fleck — 2004-11-27T19:24:24-07:00

All in all, we just need to be paid for helping put another brick in the wall.

Moving to Montana Soon

John Fleck — 2004-06-20T21:40:01-07:00

I picked up a couple of live Frank Zappa CD's with the birthday gift certificate daughter, N, so kindly gave me and ran into a happy accident.

The Symphony

John Fleck — 2004-06-19T10:24:12-07:00

I have wondered what it must feel like to sit in the midst of a symphony orchestra, playing. Daniel Wakin explains (and gives a delightful account of his appearance therein):

A gleaming, sheer-cut wall of brass hit me from behind. Pounding timpani and crashing cymbals rattled my cartilage. A wave of woodwinds and strings swept me along. For a time, the monumental thrust and sharp rhythmic snap of the march in the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony made me feel as though the music were playing my instrument instead of vice versa.

And this....

.... a great orchestra, an organism that at its best has the might of a jet engine, the delicacy of an eye-surgeon's laser and the coloristic nuance of a Monet painting.

Dyin'

John Fleck — 2003-12-06T18:17:43-07:00

Had to go to work for a while on a Saturday, listening to Zappa on the drive in as recompense, I noticed Bobby Martin's odd turn on the final lyric of Gregg Allman's "Whipping Post":

You know sometimes I try to believe
That there ain't no such thing
As dyin'

Ya know, Bobby's wrong 'bout that, but that works in so many diffent ways anyway.

Howlin' Wolf

John Fleck — 2003-06-10T17:19:17-07:00

Today being Howlin' Wolf's birthday, I am led to remember the first album of my youth that doesn't embarass me now. It was The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, which my friend Roger Innes had. We'd sit up in his living room and play it. I knew who Clapton was, but I remember Roger having to explain who this Wolf guy was. It was one of those albums where a bunch of the British blues rockers got together with their
genuine blues heroes and made respectful noise, and it was a revelation for this little white boy from the suburbs of L.A. It would be too rhetorically effusive to say it changed my life, so I won't, but I still love that kind of noise today.

In Frank We Trust

John Fleck — 2003-05-24T17:56:17-07:00

Tom Mulhern: Maybe they mistook you for Duane Allman.
Frank Zappa: Oh sure they did. People do all the time.

Ferrying Nora to the record store this afternoon I scored myself. There were times when Frank Zappa had to just torch the place, to show that he could do the straight up guitar thing. One of my favorites is the Illinois Enema Bandit, another is Muffin Man ("Good night, Austin, Texas, wherever you are."). Today, I picked up Them or Us for cheap, which includes what the Rykodisc catalog rightly characterizes as "a straight-faced cover of the Allman Brothers' `Whippin' Post.'" The story goes that Zappa was playing in Helsinki when some guy in the audience yelled out, in ragged English, "Whipping Post". Frank was disappointed at the time that the bad couldn't just rip it out, so they made a point of adding it to their repertoire. The later were, in fact, able to rip it out. Plenty of other great guitar playing on the album, and do-whop.

Roach

John Fleck — 2003-03-15T18:36:56-07:00

I grabbed three CD's on my way out the door yesterday morning. (I've been using headphones to listen to music at work lately to drown out the chaos on days I need to write - mostly jazz, music without words.) I took Birth of the Cool, Brilliant Corners and Saxophone Colossus. I was looking at the lineup on Birth of the Cool and noticed Max Roach on drums. I grabbed the Sonny Rollins. Max Roach on drums. The Monk. Max Roach on drums.

So is there just one jazz drummer?

Actually, it was just a coincidence. I went through my jazz CD's when I got home and there were lots other drummers. But it made me think that I don't really pay much attention to the drumming. I pay attention to most of the other players, but the poor anonymous drummer....

So in tribute to Max Roach, I'm going to start paying attention.