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Jeff "Skunk" Baxter playing a Gibson Super 400 during an Iridium Club gig on February 22, 2010

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From John Bohlinger's LAST CALL column



I recently read an interview where Richard Thompson said, "Songs like to be together." It got me thinking about our current single-driven music industry and how much I miss albums. Albums like Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, the Eagles' Hotel California, Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Pink Floyd's The Wall, Prince's Purple Rain, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, U2's The Joshua Tree, the Beatles' Abbey Road, Dire Straits' Making Movies, and Cat Steven's Tea for the Tillerman were a journey, a movie, a grand experience. Like a novel, they had a pacing to their flow that took the listener through a series of emotions. Regrettably, that's all but gone from popular culture today. Young music buyers tend to download the songs they know either from radio or music videos, building their own very limited playlist like a child planning his diet bassed entirely on commercials he's seen-Skittles with a side of Oreos, whased down with a Monster Energy drink. Gone are the sweet surprises of finding those unexpected, wonderful, weird songs that fly under the radar of hit radio.

When I was a kid, "Refugee" made me buy Tom Petty's Damn the Torpedoes, but it was "Even the Losers"-the track sandwiched between the hits-that changed my life. That song was a sonic vision of the tortured life my middle-class teenage self yearned to live. Even now, I just want to spend some nights outside with my girl smoking cigarettes and staring at the moon-even though I swore off those little death sticks years ago-because this song made it all feel so ineffably cool. Those songs that speak to us on such a perfectly personal level rarely become singles, because they're the songs that won't relate to everybody. Conversely, the songs puched for mass consumption are not necessarily terrible songs, but they are, for the most part safe, unoriginal, simplistic, devoid of metaphor or simile. They are boring, forgettable, and basically interchangeable. They will not be here in two years, much less 30 years, like some of the cuts from the albums listed above. Yes, this is a sweeping generalization and, yes, you will find many, many exceptions without looking too hard.

Full article here: http://www.premierguitar....tinct.aspx
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Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records

theAudience said:

I was listening to some early ' Dan, wondering where Skunk has been.....




...

paligap said:

I guess he's still doing occasional gigs in between his secret work for the "gummint" ...


Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records