In 1974, David Bowie asserted, “Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars…quite as good as Jagger…he staged a country.” With this statement, Bowie commented on how similar the showmanship of fascist leaders and rock stars could be. Many other artists made a similar commentary, often joined by criticism from a more detached perspective, an unfortunately large body of pro-fascist songs, and many songs viewing other trends through the lens of fascism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_2vfVxr3nQ&

Pink Floyd’s “In the Flesh” takes the idea of the rock star-audience relationship’s similarity to the fascist dictator-audience relationship to the extreme. It comments on how similar the dynamics of the crowd and communal feeling could be. Pink Floyd was far from the first band to make such a commentary. In 1976, the Residents’ album Third Reich and Roll, made some similar commentary, featuring Dick Clark dressed in a Gestapo uniform on the cover. It skewered catchy sixties pop songs, with the message that they simply made people complacent and controllable.  However, Pink’s transformation, additionally, brings forward the potentially dangerous effect that fans’ adoration could have on the psyche of a rock star.

In 1977, David Bowie said, “Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader,” and was caught trying to smuggle Nazi paraphernalia across the Soviet-Polish border. He later claimed regret at these incidents and stated that he wasn’t himself, strung out on cocaine and having become more his “Thin White Duke” character than himself. However, even before this his music had included songs lyrically inspired by Nietzsche’s Übermensch and the occult such as “Quicksand” and “The Superman.” While these songs express some of the ideas, which form the intellectual inspiration for fascism, the Thin White Duke’s characterization provides a latent criticism of fascism. As Bowie’s primary mouthpiece for this mindset, and the numb, emotionless singer of passionate love songs, he highlights – if inadvertently – the emptiness of fascism as an ideology.

In response to the, at worse ambiguous, picture David Bowie painted and the positive depiction many skinhead artists of fascism, the punk-era inspired some of rock’s most thoroughly antifascist works. The Jam’s “Down in a Tube Station at Midnight” attacks extremism through depicting the fear its victims feel, even in a non-dictatorial state. Similarly, the Clash’s “Clampdown” and Elvis Costello’s “Night Rally” and “Less Than Zero,” which reminds listeners of Oswald Mosley and the British fascists’ popularity during the 1930s, arouse the fear of a slow creep towards fascism.  The latter more adventurously used fascist imagery as a lens to look at relationships in the song “Two Little Hitlers,” even once planning to name the album Armed Forces, “Emotional Fascism.” In other songs such as “Oliver’s Army,” Costello made implicit connections between British overseas actions and occupations and fascism. Although this could make him seem slightly paranoid with his perception of fascism, it surely seems preferable to give the ideology its due fear rather than make irresponsible comments like Bowie.

– Robert Kaminski, host of Footnotes, Thursdays 11pm-midnight on WGTB

During much of this summer, I was out of the country with little access to the internet or news; thus, upon my return to the U.S. in August, I ended up sitting around for a while catching on things like the AV Club. Suddenly, sitting at my kitchen table I was overtaken by a wave of sadness, almost as hauntingly powerful as the saxophone solo in “Jungleland.” I had read the headline “R.I.P. Clarence Clemons.” It told me that the saxophonist had died of a stroke on July 18.

I’d never been the kind of person who takes personally the passing of public figures, whom I’ve never met. The death of Princess Diana elicited nothing but indifference from me; the same thing with Michael Jackson. No real feelings– even for the Pope. Finding out about the Big Man’s death was different. More than any other musical figure, with the possible exception of Bruce himself, he impacted my life. Back in ninth grade, I heard the album Born to Run. Having previously never really heard anything by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, aside Born in the USA’s singles, I was immediately drawn to one part of the album: Clarence’s sax. By tenth grade, I was trying (with only moderate success) to learn the saxophone. More importantly, however, the Big Man’s saxophone parts led me to appreciate the E Street Band, and many other similar bands. Since then, nothing’s offered a greater comfort to me, or provided quite as much sonically-inspired joy to me than hearing the E Street Band, the Asbury Jukes, the Hold Steady, or Titus Andronicus. By the time of his passing, the E Street Band had ceased to be my favorite band. I’d moved on to listening to the latter two more, yet without Clarence’s sax, I’d never have listened to any of them. For me, my musical taste, and much of my view of the world has been divided between two epochs: “Before Clarence” and “After Clarence” – the time before I heard the rapid-fire sax-break in “Born to Run,” the driving sax riff on “Sherry Darling,” or the simple power of the solo from “Badlands,” and the time after.

“Before Clarence,” I was enthralled by progressive rock, especially Rush. Suddenly, it felt sterile and detached compared with the organic liveliness that the Big Man brought to his performances. Performances in songs such as the E Street Band’s cover of “Quarter to Three” ooze a life that made even other saxophone work with jazz backings seem detached, as if strung-out on “Kid Charlemagne’s” stuff. This is what set Clarence apart from contemporaries. While Alto Reed of the Silver Bullet Band’s solo in “Turn the Page” creates a foreboding atmosphere, it never feels as immediate as “Spirit in the Night” does. The immediacy of his performances might have come from his ability to draw out the best of the musical traditions of blues, jazz, and gospel music. The latter was largely a by-product of his father having been a Baptist preacher. King Curtis, his favorite saxophonist growing up, provided much of the background in the former two. Additionally, Curtis inspired Clemons’ slightly growling tone. This growl added to the immediacy and desperation of his sound so evident in the solo of “Jungleland,” which also showed Curtis’ third major influence on Clarence, an economy of notes that adds to its power.

However, Clarence Clemon’s contribution went beyond being great saxophonist. There’s a reason “10th Ave Freeze Out” begins with a scene of “Bad Scooter searching for his groove,” with “all the little pretties rais[ing] their hands” only after “the Big Man joined the band.” Once Clemon’s background had cross-pollinated with Bruce’s rock background, the mixture created both the E Street Band’s sound and its aesthetic of rock as means to spiritual rejuvenation. Then, “Scooter and the Big Man bust this city in half,” and I can’t imagine the number of people who’ve felt joy as a result. So, despite it being almost two full months late, the first episode of Footnotes couldn’t have been anything but a Clarence Clemons tribute.

– Robert Kaminski, host of Footnotes, Thursdays 11pm-midnight on WGTB

For the most part criticism of radio tends to concentrate on the top 40 format stations (which they completely deserve). Today, however, I’m going to air a different radio related grievance – one with classic rock radio. Why not play a Warren Zevon song that isn’t “Werewolves of London?” Why not play a Troggs song aside from “Wild Thing?” Or a Who song aside from “My Generation,” “Baba O’Riley,” or “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” or the other couple of songs that they always play? When you consider that much of their listeners have been listening for years, it seems likely that they would appreciate a more varied playlist. Additionally, it seems like a sound business move to stave off some of satellite radio’s competition.  Admittedly, my show may tend to rely too much on band’s best-known songs, so to mitigate this, this week will be all about deeper cuts by band’s which tend to only get airplay for a few songs.

Since the Saturday Night Live sketch, Blue Öyster Cult, has been remembered mostly as “that band that played ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper.’” Classic rock stations tend to regularly play that in addition to “Burnin’ For You” and “Godzilla.” This limit to a handful of songs discounts their prolific career, which although including many uneven albums resulted in many other enjoyable tracks. The riff that forms the center of “The Red and the Black” creates a driving groove, which would fit well in any classic rock playlist.  This video of them performing “Dr. Music” and “In Thee” showcases another two songs, which deserve more play. The former is just simple classic rock fun in the vein of Boston’s “Rock n Roll Band,” while the latter is perhaps the most different of all Blue Öyster Cult songs, as one of the better songs about long distance love (not exactly an expected topic for the band) and one of the band’s only acoustic songs.

While many stations will include the late Gerry Rafferty’s hit “Baker Street” in regular rotation, you will never hear any of his other solo work (but maybe Stealer’s Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You”). Upon release, however, “Right Down the Line,” was also a hit, or for a true deep cut they could play “City to City,” neither of which would sound out of place on a classic rock station, but would add a greater variety.

This trend tends to be noticeable even with some of the best-known artists. For example, how often do you hear a solo John Lennon song on a classic rock station that isn’t “Imagine?” (No, playing “Happy Xmas (The War Is Over)” every Christmas does not count). He obviously wrote many other standout tracks, hell, many other hits, so why vary his representation in playlists a bit? “(Just Like) Starting Over,” “Jealous Guy,” or “Instant Karma” all could easily fit in an expanded playlist.

…and for the encore, I’ll throw out some Skynyrd…no not “Freebird,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” or even “Tuesday’s Gone.” How about “Every Mother’s Son,” off Gimme Back My Bullets?

– Robert Kaminski, host of “Footnotes,” Wednesdays 9-10pm on WGTB

In the last 50 years, the United States’ per capita real GDP has increased almost threefold. The largest factor contributing to this growth has been innovation – new technologies like cell phones and the internet, which have increased output and standards of living by essentially all quantifiable measures. Why then are there so many artistic efforts to depict modernity as a weight on humanity’s back?

One of the themes that runs through much of the Kink’s late 1960s-early 1970s peak is just this, the sense of modernity as destroying a more humane society. The most obvious example is their album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Its title track includes the lines “We are the Sherlock Holmes English Speaking Vernacular. / Help save Fu Manchu, Moriarty and Dracula. / We are the Office Block Persecution Affinity. / God save little shops, china cups and virginity. / We are the Skyscraper Condemnation Affiliate. / God save Tudor houses, antique tables and billiards.” In doing so, they sum up a position of opposition to modernity from the perspective of wishing to protect cherished old ways. While Ray Davies wrote this album with his tongue partly in cheek, he clearly also had developed a sense of nostalgia, which colored other tracks such as “Last of the Steam Powered Trains” and “Victoria.” On the other hand, other Kinks songs such as “Apeman” and “20^th Century Man” focused on the worse sides of modernity, with the former focusing on the increased speed of life being generally exhausting, while the latter focused on innovations that had allowed unprecedented state capacity to interfere in citizen’s lives and limit their privacy.

Other artist’s works voice similar concerns. For example, Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs featured a handful of tracks with themes that are at least ambiguous in their take on modernity. “I used to write, / I used to write letters I used to sign my name… Now our lives are changing fast. / Hope that something pure can last” sings Win Butler in “We Used to Wait.” Here he adopts the same sense of nostalgia, Ray Davies employs in “The Village Green Preservation Society.” In “Deep Blue,” the concern is more of being as obsolete as the “Last of the Steam Powered Trains.”

Additionally, Defiance, Ohio’s “Chad’s Favorite Song” offers a fantasy about pursuing a Thoreauean life of “build[ing] A-frames in the wood, and just liv[ing] there.” It questions if people were meant to live lives so far removed from nature and, like “Apeman,” offers that modern life and the city bring are too chaotic. “57 Channels” by Bruce Springsteen provides a counterpoint to it – in the regard that it claims that modern sources of entertainment and such offer no comparison to human interaction, instead creating a sense of ennui – “ There’s 57 channels and nothing on.”

To say that all artists create works that decry the flaws of innovation without looking at the benefits and optimism it offers. This was the basis of Donald Fagen’s 1982 solo debut, The Nightfly. Its opening track “I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)” is all about how innovation makes “The future look bright.” (I.G.Y. is short for International Geophysical Year, which took place over 1957 and 1958, when Fagen was growing up). It includes lines about superfast transatlantic trains, photovoltaic power, and healthcare innovations. Even the album’s track about seducing a girl in a bomb shelter – “New Frontier” – has a sense of optimism about it.

If the comparison between the outlooks the artist proves anything, it is that a godsend in the perception of some might be a terrifying concept to others. This is the case between Fagen’s “I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)” and the Kinks’ “20^th Century Man.” In the former there is a line looking hopefully forward towards there being “A just machine to make big decisions, / Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision” – a thought that would surely terrify Davies, who already bemoans the loss of privacy that modern society has caused. This shows how innovation and modernization, like everything else, brings both benefits and costs, but I doubt many including the above artists would truly give up the comforts afforded by modernization.

– Robert Kaminski, host of Footnotes, Wednesdays 9-10pm on WGTB

On a rainy night in August 2009, a man sporting a beard, dark-sunglasses, and a hat pushed down to his eyes was looking around Long Branch, NJ. Afraid, a local family called the police, who questioned and then detained the man, when they did not believe his claims to be Bob Dylan. Eventually, at the station the policewoman’s superior recognized him and sent him on his way. Why was Bob Dylan skulking around the New Jersey suburbs during a storm? The block was where Bruce Springsteen lived during the Born to Run era, and Dylan had been visiting former homes of his favorite contemporary artists. During the year prior, he was noticed on a public bus tour around London sights related to John Lennon and visiting Neil Young’s former house, showing that Dylan was seeking to understand what they were thinking. Other artists have explored similar themes, without police confrontation and braving stormy nights, though song.

The Drive-By Truckers are amongst the best examples of bands that explore such themes. Their great album Southern Rock Opera is an exploration of both the meaning of “The Southern Thing” and the career of Lynyrd Skynyrd — better they imagine what Skynyrd was thinking through song than getting in “Double Trouble”. One strong example of this is their exploration of what must have been on the band members’ minds as their plane was crashing in “Angels and Fuselages.” The Drive-By Truckers additionally sang about some of their other musical hero’s thoughts through “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac.”

Additionally, many artists have written songs about people working in other media. For example, both the Hold Steady and Okkervil River recorded songs, “Stuck Between Stations” and “John Allyn Smith Sails,” about poet John Berryman’s suicide over thirty years after he “ended up on Washington Avenue, talking to the river.” On a more lighthearted note, as the leader of the Modern Lovers, Jonathan Richman, questioned what it might have been like to have Pablo Picasso’s charisma with women in “Pablo Picasso.” Neil Young took this style of musical exploration of others’ lives, even further to question what the Lewis and Clark expedition must have been like for Pocahontas (resulting in one of the weirder groupings I’ve ever heard in song, “Marlin Brando, Pocahontas, and me”).

– Robert Kaminski, host of “Footnotes,” Wednesdays 9-10pm on WGTB

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I did a show on seminal folk-punk band The Pogues for their work throughout the 1980s combining Irish folk music with the punk scene from which their leader, and former frontman of  the Nipple Erectors, Shane MacGowan emerged. From Shane’s sometimes slurred brogue to Spider Stacy’s tin whistle to the large number of traditional songs that they played to their name – a corruption and shortening of póg mo thóin (“kiss my arse” in Gaelic) –  everything about the Pogues smacked of Ireland. However, the band’s members were essentially all drawn from the English punk scene. Thus, they bridged a gap between folk and punk that has created two, mostly distinct subgenres as their legacy. Irish or Celtic Punk, typified by bands such as the Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly, further adapt Irish themes and instrumentation into essentially a punk rock style. On the other hand, less obviously, but much closer to the Pogues’ actual sound is the folk punk scene, which combines traditional instruments with the fast freewheeling play, with bands including Defiance, Ohio; early Against Me! ; and Andrew Jackson Jihad.

While there was nothing inherently innovative about singing about traditional themes from Irish folk music, the Pogues were the first band to apply them and traditional instrumentation to a more punk style of playing. This can be seen in comparing the Pogues and Dubliners versions of the song “The Wild Rover,” where the Pogues speed up and simplify the song into a more punk direction. The Dropkick Murphys version brings this stylistic change to its logical extension. Similarly, Flogging Molly owes the Pogues for its up-tempo, electric version of Irish punk. While the Pogues were the largest influence for bands such as this in combining rock and punk with Irish folk, earlier bands such as Thin Lizzy did point in that direction with versions of traditional tunes such as “Whiskey in the Jar.”

The Pogues were also influential in a less distinctly Irish way by creating the more general folk punk, which brings a punk ethic to the traditional instrumentation. Where the above bands took the next step and electrified the traditional Irish sounds, bands such as Defiance, Ohio; Andrew Jackson Jihad; and very early Against Me! retained the more traditional instrumentation of folk styles, while moving towards a punk ethic, while not specifically maintaining an Irish element to their sounds. Perhaps the best example is Defiance, Ohio. Their song “Old Dead Tree” continues the Pogues’ move into a more punk ethic (offering all their music free online before Radiohead made it cool and maintaining a strict DIY ethic), while retaining traditional instrumentation. Additionally it references Ewan MacCall’s “Dirty Old Town,” made famous by the Dubliners and later reworked by the Pogues.  Similarly, Andrew Jackson Jihad takes folk instrumentation from a more Americana tradition to make an acoustic punk sound in such songs as “Rejoice.” Originally strictly following in this acoustic version of punk – Florida punk-rock band Against Me! occasionally sticks to their older Pogues-influenced folk punk sound, with acoustic versions of songs like “Miami” and “High Pressure Low.” Actually, Perhaps the most appropriate song with which to close on St Patrick’s Day is an early Against Me! favorite – “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong.”

– Robert Kaminski, host of Footnotes, Wednesdays 9-10pm on WGTB

Complicated folklores tend to lend themselves to being adopted with a religious-like intensity by a cult audience. This kind of fan devotion and the complexity of the folklore can easily become baffling or off-putting to the uninitiated. Sometimes, parsing through the folklore rewards the reader/viewer/listener/etc. with a more meaningful, literary experience that explains the devotion of the fans. This is the case with the Hold Steady, a band whose songs, in addition to having a deep literary bent, have included a story arc expanding over songs on multiple albums.  This includes the entirety of 2005’s Separation Sunday, which stands out as one of the only concept albums/rock operas that has a coherent sensible plot (I’m looking at you Pete Townshend). It culminates in one of the most dramatic closing tracks the author has ever heard, “How a Resurrection Really Feels,” but without the context of the album it loses much of its power. Thus, since Separation Sunday stands out as one of my favorite listening experiences and the depth of its story might dissuade some from wanting to give it a listen, today’s article is a cheat sheet to remove that excuse for not listening.

The album starts out with the lines, “She said always remember, never to trust me. She said that the first night she met me. She said there’s gonna be a time when I’m gonna have to go with whoever’s gonna get me the highest.” This sets the tone for the album’s central character, Halleluiah – or, as “her friends called her, Holly.” While she had been mentioned on the Hold Steady’s debut album, Almost Killed Me (“she licked her lower lip and then she kissed that halleluiah chick”), nothing more than snapshots of her appear until the band’s sophomore outing. From the album’s opening moments, she is developed as a lapsed Catholic, who becomes “Your Little Hoodrat Friend,” with influences pulling her both in the direction of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll (“Your little hoodrat friend got me high though / We were seventeen and stuck up in Osseo”) and of religion (“tiny little text etched into her neck it said ‘Jesus lived and died for all your sins.’ / She’s got blue-black ink and it’s scratched into her lower back. It said: ‘Damn right, I’ll rise again.’”).  The next track, “Banging Camp,” further develops this contrast, including the lines, “He was breaking bread and giving thanks / with crosses made of pipes and planks leaned up against the nitrous tanks / He said ‘take a hit, hold your breath, and I’ll dunk your head / Then when you wake up again, you’ll be high as hell and born again.’” This introduces her dealer and potential pimp, Charlemagne, whose appearance intertwines the notions of a drug-filled party lifestyle and religiosity.

Charlemagne’s name is a reference to the Steely Dan song “Kid Charlemagne,” which tells an account of the rise and fall of a San Francisco LSD dealer. He first appears in the song “Hostile, Massachusetts,” where “he was gushing blood from wide open wounds and she decided that she loved him. They put the screws into Charlemagne. He had a detox dream he saw Christ in all his glory. Charlemagne didn’t feel any pain. But he’s bleeding from the holes in his story.” This establishes both how “Charlemagne’s got something [something to ‘makes her feel tall then it makes her feel small.’] in his sweatpants,” and his sense of Christianity, however skewed.

The third major character is Gideon, Holly’s one-time love interest (“I heard Gideon did you in Denver.”). “Gideon’s been living up in Bay City, Michigan. He’s been working at the Michelin. He got messed up with some messed up magicians. We got so high some nights Michigan looked just like a mitten; some nights we got fried.” Since his involvement with Holly, mostly predates the story it is likely that he was the one who introduced her to the world of drugs. The lines, “Charlemagne pulls street corner scams, Gideon’s got a pipe made from a Pringles can, Holly’s insatiable…” essentially sums up their three roles.

I hope this piqued your interest in one of my favorite bands. Their albums are far too dense with literary and musical references for me to come close to covering it all here. This article provided the loose inspiration for my show/articles; additionally, there’s an entire wiki devoted to the Hold Steady, but it’s a bit undeveloped at this point.

– Robert Kaminski, host of Footnotes, Wednesdays 9-10pm on WGTB

There has always been a business side to music. Even during the time of Ludwig van Beethoven, composers depended on income from public concerts and the publication of their works. While the business behind music is its furthest part from pure art, it has provided ample fodder for lyricists as both the promise of fame and fortune and the collapse of such promise have inspired countless songs.

The chorus of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Workin’ for MCA” goes: “Want you to sign your contract/ Want you to sign today/ Gonna give you lots of money/ Workin’ for MCA.” This sums up the promise that record labels make to bands. This promise has inspired many hopeful songs by bands taken up in the whirlwind of rising stardom. Boston’s “Rock and Roll Band” sums up this optimism, in the lines, “A man came to the stage one night/ He smoked a big cigar/ Drove a Cadillac car/ And said, ‘boys, I think this band’s outta-sight/ Sign a record company contract/ You know I’ve got great expectations/ When I hear you on the car radio/ You’re gonna to be a sensation!’” Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Rush, and Blue Öyster Cult demonstrated the same fame and fortune-praising attitude in their songs “Takin Care of Business,” “Limelight,” and “The Marshall Plan.”

While this optimistic attitude about potential success was more prevalent than disillusionment towards the music business during the classic rock era, the latter inspired its share of songs. Billy Joel penned “The Entertainer,” as he skirted the margins of success before breaking through with The Stranger. Its first person account focuses on the dull day-to-day business and cold-heartedness of the music industry. The latter comes to light in such lines as “And I won’t be here/ In another year,/ If I don’t stay on the charts,” and “It was a beautiful song/ But it ran too long/ If you’re gonna have a hit,/ You gotta make it fit–/So they cut it down to 3:05.” (Another version with a set of alternate lyrics). The Kinks’ “The Moneygoround” follows their song “Top of the Pops,” which presents the classic hope of fame and riches, questioning “Do they all deserve money from a song that they’ve never heard/ They don’t know the tune and they don’t know the words/ But they don’t give a damn.” This shows the path from hope to disillusionment with the industry. The Clash’s “Complete Control,” recounts their anger at their label for releasing their song “Remote Control” as a single despite their objections. This demonstrates an antipathy between labels and bands that escalated during the punk era and would continually inspire more songs.

“Label wants a hit/ and we don’t give a shit” sings Paul Westerberg in the Replacements’ classic “Treatment Bound.” That statment goes directly against the classic quest for fame narrative of the classic rock era, summing up a major source of conflict between labels and bands in the punk and indie scenes, as labels push for more accessible fare and bands resent losing artistic freedom. This conflict between accessibility and artistic purity has been a major tension in Against Me!’s career. They began with a DIY folk punk vision laying out an ethos in songs such as “What We Worked For” and “Reinventing Axl Rose.” They then moved in a direction of greater accommodation with more practical concerns and attempts to balance commercial appeal and artistic integrity, with the former’s influence evident in their later song “Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners.” This commercial-artistic balance is likely a relatively new tension between  business and art in music. It hardly seems likely that anyone pushed Beethoven towards a more accessible style or seek a greater mass appeal. However, although practical business concerns often are targeted as a force of evil in music, they have provided inspiration in doing so – as seen in the case of Spoon, who wrote two songs inspired by their acrimonious split from Elektra Records.

– Robert Kaminski, host of “Footnotes,” Wednesdays 9-10pm on WGTB