| The song is the center of everything. |
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| String theorist: David Lindley in Tokyo, March 1977. |
| (Koh Hasebe/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“The song is the center of everything.”
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- David Lindley, 1944 – 2023
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| rantnrave:// |
Up on the Sun
Today’s newsletter goes out to the memories of DAVID LINDLEY and GLEN “SPOT” LOCKETT, two insufficiently heralded giants of two very different LA rock scenes who I originally knew as little more than names on the inner sleeves of a bunch of records I loved, but who I eventually came to recognize as monumental creative forces.
Today’s newsletter also goes out to the very idea of album credits.
The sound of Lindley’s slide (and non-slide) guitar and fiddle and mandolin (and another dozen or more stringed instruments) is deeply embedded in the sound of ‘70s-ish singer/songwriter rock and all that sprung from it in later years and decades. I used to think this lap steel and this slide, for example, is what guitars on rock songs inherently and automatically sounded like, which of course isn’t true. They were choices made by one adventurous and curious player who so deeply understood what songs needed that he made his parts seem inherent and automatic. Which is why everyone from JACKSON BROWNE (with whom he’s most associated) to LEONARD COHEN to WARREN ZEVON to LINDA RONSTADT to RY COODER to JOHN PRINE wanted him on their records, which is where I saw his name in small print over and over again (along with various permutations of these guys, his peers). And why he’s still being widely copied today.
But you don’t learn how to play various guitars and mandolin and banjo and fiddle and bouzouki and oud just to play with every singer/songwriter who’s ever set foot in Los Angeles. In addition to forming EL RAYO-X, a kind of blues-reggae-rock party band, in the ‘80s, Lindley went on to make a series of albums with experimental guitarist HENRY KAISER, in which they explored the music of Madagascar and, later, Norway with local musicians, and with Jordanian hand-drum master HANI NASER. He spent his life looking not for songs where “David Lindley” lines were needed, but rather songs where David Lindley could discover something else that needed playing. He was never much for parties, Jackson Browne once said: “He was always in his room with his instruments.”
For a long time I wasn’t sure if Spot actually existed. There wasn’t an internet back then, nor any other obvious place (to me anyway) to find out why that anonymous-sounding name kept showing up on albums by BLACK FLAG, the MINUTEMEN, HÜSKER DÜ, the MEAT PUPPETS and others that were shaking up my world on a seemingly weekly basis, as punk-rock spiraled out in a thousand directions in real time. He was, it turned out, the house producer/engineer at SST RECORDS, working out of a studio in Redondo Beach, 20 very long miles from the Hollywood studios where Lindley plied his trade.
The house/producer engineer for ‘80s punk and indie rock was a jazz hound raised on THELONIOUS MONK, post-bop and jazz fusion. He found an army of kindred souls in the bands trying to break away not only from the bloat of commercial pop and rock but also from the strictures of punk. “I like listening to really out-there jazz... where people really took chances,” he said in 2018. “Suddenly, the chances were happening in a different way, but they were *big* chances that people were taking.”
SST's microscopic budgets, which required him and his bands to work fast and efficiently, with minimal if any overdubs, played to his jazz sensibilities, too: “Everything was based on the idea of playing the music right when you were playing it live, and then recording that.”
Spot, who was also a writer and accomplished photographer, didn’t move on to become a big-budget rock producer or punk-rock label boss, and nothing in his bio suggested he ever wanted to. He wasn’t a bizzer. He was an artist to the core. A Celtic and folk artist, to be specific, at his next stop, Austin, Texas, because punk means never having to do what everyone else thinks you should do. “I thought, ‘Jesus, Spot is like swimming upstream backwards through the history of American music,’” said JOE CARDUCCI, an old friend from his SST days. Is there a better way to swim?
Traveling on Now
And while we’re swimming upstream backwards through American music, let’s offer one more dedication, to the last surviving original member of LYNYRD SKYNYRD, GARY ROSSINGTON, who we also lost this weekend. There are two signature guitar parts on “FREE BIRD,” the epic closing song on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s first album. There’s the scorching four-minute classic-rock hall of fame solo that ends it, which is the work of ALLEN COLLINS. But first there’s the heart-on-its-sleeve slide-guitar lead that introduces the main melody and then duets with singer RONNIE VAN ZANT throughout the song’s first half. That’s Rossington. “The lap steel,” David Lindley once said, “was my way of singing—of playing a vocal.” Same principle. That slide guitar is Rossington’s lead vocal. And it’s amazing.
Rossington also co-wrote several Skynyrd songs, including “Sweet Home Alabama,” “What’s Your Name” and “Simple Man,” and was one of the survivors the 1977 plane crash that killed lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines. He and Collins, who also survived the crash, went on to form the short-lived Rossington-Collins Band, after which Rossington returned to a regrouped Lynyrd Skynyrd, with which he played for most of the rest of his life.
These Days
New York Times money columnist ANN CARRNS’ tips for buying in-demand concert tickets (in short: ignore the on-sale date and wait until prices plummet closer to the show date) won’t be breaking or shocking news to anyone who’s tried to finesse their way into a stadium or arena in recent years. But it raises, or at least implies, questions that don’t often get raised in the mainstream debate about ticketing that I’ll be circling back to later this week... KAROL G’s MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO is the first all-Spanish album by a female artist to hit #1 on the BILLBOARD 200 (the first male artist was BAD BUNNY, in 2020)... Fifty best songs by fake bands... SIRIUSXM laid off 475 employees Monday, 8% of its staff... The JAZZ JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION reports that JAZZTIMES magazine has been sold and the entire staff has been laid off—but it's still publishing, leading to this embarrassment... SCREAMING FEMALES finally make it to Alaska... EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE and ELVIS were among the winners at the GUILD OF MUSIC SUPERVISORS AWARDS... SOY BOMB reveals all.
Rest in Peace Also
Prolific Nashville session bassist MICHAEL RHODES, who played with basically everyone who ever recorded in that city, including Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Elton John and Etta James... Renowned Architect (and amateur pianist) RAFAEL VIÑOLY, whose commissions included Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia... RHONDESIA BELTON, one of two women killed in a stampede at a GloRilla concert Sunday night in Rochester, N.Y. (the second woman has yet to be identified)... Multi-instrumentalist ERIC ALAN LIVINGSTON of San Francisco experimental metal band Mamaleek... STEVE CAIN, singer of Cincinnati thrash band Critical Khaos, who was a victim of a horrifying and heartbreaking murder-suicide on Feb. 27.
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| - Matty Karas, curator |
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Rochester Democrat and Chronicle |
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| Two women killed in stampede at GloRilla concert in Rochester |
| By Victoria E. Freile |
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The New Yorker |
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| Can Hardy Revive 'Butt Rock'? |
| By Kelefa Sanneh |
| Onstage, the musician plays the role of a small-town boy who is too rock for country, and too country for rock and roll. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Ambilanao Zaho” |
| Henry Kaiser/David Lindley/Rossy |
| From "A World Out of Time: Henry Kaiser and David Lindley in Madagascar" (1992). |
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| Music | Media |
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Suggest a link  |
| “REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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