nuTsie.com is our website, with a couple of million visits a month.

We recently changed our homepage layout to feature much more editorial content. I’m finding/editing/writing the content.

The biggest upside for me is that I now get to write in the royal “we.”  It’s as close as I’ll ever come to writing “Talk of the Town” bits for The New Yorker.

Much of what I’ve been doing here will now be at nuTsie.com.  I’m hoping I’ll have time for more posts here, but there are only so many hours in the day…

Les, Mary and the guitar that eclipsed both of them

And the rest of us who cherished, played, coveted or otherwise adored the guitar named after Mr. Lester William Polsfuss, better known as Les Paul.

He was a star in his day, initially due to his studio wizardry and longtime pop music collaboration with his wife, Mary Ford.

Those in my generation know him better as the creator of the signature guitar model from Gibson guitars that is the go-to choice for Jimmy Page, Billy Gibbons, Slash and a zillion other great guitarists.

I myself played a Les Paul on my favorite recording the Presidents ever made, our cover of Ian Hunter’s “Cleveland Rocks” for the Drew Carey Show theme.

A 21-riff salute to you, Les.

Hmmmmm. A perfectly temperate Seattle summer moment after a long period of very hot strangeness. The breezes rustled the poplars and there was just the faintest bittersweet tinge of fall melancholy in the air.  Brings to mind…

Burn, baby, burn

Maybe you grew up with one in your house.  Your elementary school music teacher played one while teaching you “This Land is Your Land.”  You might even be able to play one passably well.

The piano — 100 years ago, it was your home entertainment center.  A piano and a group of people willing to sing or dance and some sheet music and maybe a little wine, well, that’s a pretty good time.  I was lucky enough to participate in many evenings like this with family and friends when I was young.

In the hands of a trained professional, a piano is everything from a symphony in a box to a lethal weapon to a calming salve.  As in the Thelonius Monk clip below.

You’ll find more great piano in a jazzy context via the limitless musical bounty known as nuTsie.

Duff looks cool, per usual

The Vera Project is exactly the kind of place that didn’t exist when I was 15 years old.

All-ages shows, summertime rock school, lots of music for young people.

I’m all for it.

Last summer and again a few days ago, Duff McKagan, Mike McCready, Kelly Van Camp and I (collectively known as Bison) got together to play a few songs and answer questions for the kids who attend Vera’s Rock Camp.

One of the handful of known mammals cooler than Duff

We do it for two reasons.  One, getting together and playing some songs you like with guys you like is fun.  Two, I think we all feel some sense of responsibility or obligation to share whatever wisdom we’ve gained in our years in the rough-and-tumble music business.

Why Bison?  It’s an old joke band name that my friend Kermit and I came up with many years ago.  We also had a career’s worth of album names: Stampede, Put Your Ear to the Ground, Over the Edge, etc.

Vera is a community-driven project backed by the City of Seattle.  If we can do it here, you can do it in your town, too.

Beaumont stud

Or charisma.  Or energy.  Or work ethic.

There are so many incredible songwriters and musicians out there that you’ll never hear or even hear about.

One evening spent listening to pickers and singers in New Orleans or Austin or Nashville will tell you that.  So many guys and gals who can just plain rip.

Why do some become stars and some don’t?  I sure as hell don’t know.  Maybe ask Jesse Dayton.

I met Jesse Dayton sometime in 1995 or 1996.  He was friends with our friends the Supersuckers and he sang lead on a track we did for Twisted Willie, a compilation of younger artists doing Willie Nelson songs (that’s another story for another time).

I shan’t forget the first time I saw him play, at some bar in Hollywood.  Goddamn!  Here was a guy with George Jones’s voice, Elvis Presley’s supercharged sexual charm and guitar skills from James Burton to Jimmy Page and beyond.  He literally blew me away and I felt very small indeed as a singer and player myself for a long time after that night.

I was able to get Jesse on a bill with the Presidents a few months later, opening for us on a three- or four-show swing through his native state of Texas.  Our audience didn’t know what to do with him.  I couldn’t understand why people didn’t get it.  To me he was, and is, a huge star, just plain to see if you watch him for even a few minutes.

I absolutely love this song (see bottom of post).  In fact, I absolutely love this whole album.  It’s magic.  Get over yourself and go buy it now.  Then listen to it from start to finish, in sequence.  On a summer afternoon in a sunny, warm bedroom with all the windows open and a breeze blowing the drapes around.

Except for doing a favor for someone, I never would have given Edie Brickell and New Bohemians a second listen, other than hearing “What I Am” on the radio.  When I was teaching high school English at the Kent Denver School in the late 80s, a student wanted me to back her up while she sang the song “Nothing” from this album.  She gave me a cassette of the album.  I learned the song.  I listened to the album.  And then again.  And again and again.

I have a massive crush on her voice.

My understanding of how the band formed is that the fellas were a bunch of loose jammers and Edie joined them impromptu and started making up words and the next thing you know they had an album or so worth of music.  Like most great albums, it’s a snapshot of a brief, beautiful moment.  You can tell that all the pieces just fell into place.

The fantastic guitar solo from Kenny Withrow (the greatest Jerry Garcia solo Jerry Garcia didn’t play) is icing on the cake.  Just added this song to my playlist from yesterday’s post on great guitar solos.

Underrated, overlooked

Just built a playlist of great songs with great guitar solos on nuTsie.

As opposed to just great guitar solos.  These are solos that take the song to another level.  Kick in the afterburners, so to speak.

I tried to avoid the obvious heroes and wankers, the noodly guitar workouts that hopelessly hopeless 14 year-old boys spend hours in their bedrooms trying to learn.

OK, there is one Stevie Ray Vaughan solo here, but it’s on a David Bowie song.  The great wankers are so often better on other people’s records.

These are real songs…mostly real POP songs…that happen to be set apart from the pack by containing incredible guitar solos.

Only one guy gets three tracks: Elliot Easton, from the Cars.  Hard to say enough good things about him or to describe how hard it is to do what he makes sound so easy, which is to create a tidy little musical statement within an already great song…and to take that great song to an even higher level of excitement and engagement.

Give me your suggestions and I’ll add them to the list.

If I were going to go for total guitar geekery, I would only make one stop, and that would be with Jeff Beck, who blows everyone else away.   Because he’s not a guitar geek, per se; he’s more virtuosic than any of his peers yet always sounds like he’s actually playing music instead of just playing the guitar.

This one is way out there on the taste scale.  Can’t help it.  When I hear this in the car, like I did today, I absolutely crank it.  Can’t get it loud enough, really.

This is a great sounding recording, great arrangement, super songwriting with a really memorable melody and the pre-chorus that builds up and up, blah, blah, blah.  It’s just one of those songs that jumps out of the radio and grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go for three minutes fifty-six seconds.

Pop perfection.

Great songwriting translates across formats and styles:

The most sparsely populated country in the EU

Real rock and roll still exists.  Just in funny places, played by funny people.

Places like Finland.  People like an Argentinian expatriate singing in English and Spanish in front of a bunch of Finnish guys with odd names (e.g., The Punisher on bass).

The Flaming Sideburns’ Save Rock and Roll is one of my top 10 albums from the last 10 years.  Here’s a live version of the lead-off track, “Loose My Soul.”  And, no, that’s not a typo.

This is the real thing.  Nobody does this to get famous or make money.  Just to rock.

Why would anyone move from Argentina to Finland?

rockers

I love Jack White so much I’m willing to send you to a player powered by one of our nuTsie competitors just so you can hear The Dead Weather’s new record streaming for free for the next 24 hours.

Since I was kind enough to do you this favor, plz promise to spend some time on nuTsie ASAP.

Led Zeppelin IV, side two, that’s why.

Just listened to it as an “album side” for the first time in many years.

Misty Mountain Hop > Four Sticks > Going to California > When the Levee Breaks

Perfection.  I laughed (”Misty Mountain Hop”), I cried (”Going to California”), I dropped my jaw in awe of the power and swing of John Bonham (”When the Levee Breaks,” my favorite Zeppelin song).

First heard this record when I was about 10 years old, 1974 or so.  It was in my mom’s boyfriend’s record collection.  A friend saw it, put it on the turntable, dropped the needle on “Black Dog.”  Holy shit.  But side one gets old after a while — you have to listen to “Stairway to Heaven” to close out the side.  I soon discovered side two.

When they were fab

U2 is launching an app for the BlackBerry to accompany their U2 360 tour, which kicked off June 30 in Barcelona.

App users can stream the recent No Line on the Horizon album, get news updates and share user-generated video footage of concerts on the 360 tour.

As noted in the linked CNN article, we were ahead of the curve on this at Melodeo/nuTsie HQ, with apps for The Presidents of the USA and Nettwerk Records artist State Radio that stream the artists’ entire catalogs.

I think this is a huge opportunity for major artists and labels.

Imagine the 15 year-old who hears “Like a Rolling Stone” on the radio.  “Gee, Dad,” he says, “that song is f#@%ing amazing!  Who is that?”   Dad:  “Well, son, that’s Bob Dylan.” Kid:  “Wow, Dad, when we get home I’m going to use my iTunes allowance to buy some Bob Dylan songs.”

Kid gets on the computer.  Kid sees that Dylan has something like 93 albums available from Columbia Records on iTunes and has no idea what to buy.

But WHAT IF there were a Bob Dylan app for $9.99?  His whole catalog in streaming mode.  Links to buy every song and album.  Bio and history, a few videos.  The app is updateable and becomes an open conduit to market to this new fan.   Everyone wins:  Kid learns to love Dylan and buys more songs and concert tix and merch.  Columbia gets $9.99 off of a new fan plus the opportunity to market directly to that fan through the app.   What’s not to love?

Where else but in America can the singer who sang that protest song turn the song, album and images associated with that song into one of the most durable and iconic brands in American commerce?

Where else but in America can an already-successful entertainer transform himself from a scrawny New Jersey street rat speaking out for the underdog into a buffed-out, Okie-wannabe superstar well-loved for his wholesome “American-ness?”

America is dead. Long live America. It’s a beautiful place.

Every so often I hear a song that’s so good it makes me pull over in awe, ecstasy, tears or some other form of driving paralysis.

The last time (before this time) it happened was my first listen to The White Stripes’ “Icky Thump.” I just couldn’t believe the way it sounded and further couldn’t believe something so bizarre was in heavy rotation on commercial radio.

A few days ago I was driving into Seattle across the 520 floating bridge when a song came on the radio that I’d never heard before and that completely blew me away.  I didn’t think anyone made rock music like this anymore…bold, expressive, unpredictable and virtuosic.  It was Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia.”  I bow down to Muse.

Which you can also get for FREE on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Some of you out there will remember Todd Snider’s “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues.” It would be sooooo funny if it weren’t sooooo painfully accurate.

The part where he sings about blowing away the people at the Grammys by not playing and not even going really strikes home. I went to the Grammys one of the two years the Presidents were nominated (two-time losers!). Pearl Jam won a Grammy that year.  Ed Vedder got onstage said, “I don’t know what this means. I don’t think it means anything.” WTF?!  Why the hell did you show up, then?  Why not give me the damn Grammy?

Sweet inspiration

Hard to believe.  My first response was a sense of relief for the man’s restless, troubled soul.

I would not have wanted to play music if not for The Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson.  I still have my vinyl copy of the Got To Be There album.  Hearing him on Casey Kasem’s Top 40 and seeing him on TV made me want to do that.

He was a skinny little kid with an afro and a high voice. I was a skinny little kid with an afro and a high voice. I had no idea of the gaps (in culture, class and, most importantly, talent) that separated us. He was like me.

Here’s a playlist you can listen to that offers a sampling of stuff I really like.

No accounting for the mix — just things I like.   Included in the list is at least one Muddy Waters recording.  I saw Muddy Waters in 1980, at the Showbox.  Sat right in front of the stage in a big old armchair and was one of 5-6 people able to shake his hand when he reached into the crowd after the show.  Any talent or luck I’ve had as a musician I attribute to that moment — being touched by a true prophet.