Alicia Silverstone & Aerosmith

Remember Aerosmith's classic album Get A Grip?

Remember Alicia Silverstone?



Ah, remember Alicia Silverstone AND Liv Tyler skipping out of private school?



Oh and the hope that Vitual Reality simulators could make these videos come true?



Man if you were a middle school-aged boy when these songs came out, you never forgot these videos.

Rocks Off by The Rolling Stones

What is the greatest opening song on an album?

My long-standing answer was “Second Hand News” by Fleetwood Mac from their masterpiece Rumours.



Even though it’s not my favorite song on the albums, “Second Hand News” perfectly introduces the musical landscape as well as complex emotional themes of the whole album. It’s the perfect opening chapter.  However, now my answer has changed. I got to give this one to “Rocks Off” the opening song of the Rolling Stones’ album, Exile on Main St..



Exile On Main St. is a double album the Stones released in 1972. Avoding paying taxes they owed the British government the Stones rented a villa in France near Nice and recording in legendary sessions what many consider the Stones’ masterpiece.

“Rocks Off” from a technical standpoint is a mess. The balance of instruments shifts unintentionally, Jagger’s singing is makes the lyrics even harder to understand than usual. However like my favorite Stone’s song “Tumblin’ Dice” (which I discussed on this earlier post) which is also from this album, what you need to do is focus on the single transcendent factor that makes this song rock SO hard: the feel.

It's in Keith Richard’s drunk sounding laid back guitar playing that seems to barely fit in the beat working against Bill Wyman’s steady bass line and Charlie Watts driving beat. It’s the nasty sounding horns that add colors of harmony in loud brash colors and of course it’s Jagger’s bluesy delivery of a man who still can’t find satisfaction.

At the end of the chorus (1:15, 3:07) my favorite parts of this song, we hear the most beautiful mess. Overdubs of back-up singers and Jagger make an incomprehensible mix covered up by brassy interjections, random sounding piano fills and the rest of the band playing with abandons seeming to be completely unaware of whatever else is going on in the band. For a moment it feels like that the band will actually fall apart during this but they don't.  It’s awesome, it’s musically astounding and one of the finest examples of what is Rock ‘n’ Roll.

The rest of Exile On Main St. follows a similar vein, diving deep into blues adding rock attitude and sensibility. What the Stones’ remind us that this idea of the Rock musician’s lifestyle including drugs and debauchery is about freedom and what makes this meaningful is not the fact that the Stones’ lived this lifestyle. Rather, it’s the fact that the created music that captured this feeling of youth, depravity but most of all freedom that makes it so feel good to be alive.

Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison

In 1967, radio stations banned “Brown Eyed Girl” from airplay on radio stations. Yes, one of the most beloved pop songs in our culture, a seemingly innocuous celebration of life and a quintessential “feel good” song was taken off the radio.



Why? Because the line “making love in the green grass” from the second verse was too explicit so it was overdubbed with a line from the first verse “laughin' and a-runnin', hey hey.”

As silly as that seems to us, it could have been a worse. When it was first being recorded Van Morrison sang this song as a “Brown Skinned Girl." In the 1960s there were many states that still had laws outlawing miscegenation (interracial marriage). That would have gone over REALLY well. Producers convinced Van Morrison to change it to “Brown Eyed Girl” inadvertently creating universal appeal to this song as most of the people on this planet have brown eyes.

What makes “Brown Eyed Girl” such a popular and meaningful song isn’t the once offensive reference in the second verse or even the fact that this song is about a girl that is characterized by a superficial feature. “Brown Eyed Girl” is a song that describes the great memory of sharing a song with someone that you love through a songs that we all can’t help but love.

The light and syncopated bass line creates a simple and relaxed groove. On top of this the guitar simply dances. After playing the opening, the guitar weaves and hops between the melody playfully outlining the chords expressing the feeling of freedom and joy that Van Morrison describes in the lyrics. If there were no singing in the song at all you would know exactly what this song was about.

It always gets to me when Van Morrison sings in the second verse “so hard to find my way, now that I’m on my own.” There’s a tint of frustration in his voice but he lets go when the chorus comes and he’s able to sing like he remembers in his memory.

The “Shalala” part is nonsensical but unapologetically joyful. When you sing along to this part you can’t help but smile allowing you to immediately understand what Van Morrison is singing about. Through this immediate connection to the music, we profoundly understand what is at the soul of this song.

Every time I listen to this song I can’t help but sing along. I know exactly what Van Morrison is singing about and because of his song reminds how great it is to share not only music but life with the people we love.

The only difference is I still have my brown eyed girl in my life.

I Can’t Make You Love Me by Bonnie Raitt

“Finding someone that you love isn’t the hard part, it’s finding someone that loves you that is the challenge.”

This is one of the many pieces of advice that my father has passed down to me. This one could not be truer. Everyone has crushes that are not reciprocal and we all have experiences or know of situations where one person loves their partner more then they love them.

While there are many reasons that people use to explain why relationships break up most of these are symptomatic of an inequality of how two people feel about each other. This is put more lightly as “he’s just not into you” or more devastatingly as Bonnie Raitt mourns “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

Bonnie Raitt is a lot of things.  She’s one of the best slide guitarist you will ever hear and simply one of the best guitarist you will ever hear.



With a voice full or soul and blues, Raitt is an amazing musicians with impressive range. My entry point to Bonnie Raitt wasn’t through her amazing guitar playing or even her singing, it was through George Michael covering “I Can’t Make You Love Me” on his MTV Unplugged Concert.



Okay first off, George Michael’s performance here is beautifully heartbreaking, nuanced and subtle. The purity and clarity of his tone combined with the ease of his voice moving through his range softly proves his vocal artistry and prowess.

Then I found Bonnie Ratit’s version, my God. . .



Whoever came up with the idea of having Raitt put down the guitar and sing a pop ballad is genius. Raitt is a blues singers but rarely are the blues framed in such a main-street kind of way. While her performance doesn’t initially sound like one of a blues singers, the soul of blues shines right through every note she sings.

This song is heartbreaking. Here’s a person who has accepted that her partner does not love him but just wants to forget that for one night. She’s not mad, rather she's disappointed at the tragedy of the situation, “I’ll feel the power but you won’t.” What makes this song transcend into a higher level is the line “I’ll give up this fight.” It’s not only a surrender of the heart but of the spirit.  This line is also a statement of strength accepting that there are things that we can’t control in life.

True love is something that people come to, not persuaded to.  If someone doesn’t love you, as hard as it is to accept let them go. Is this your fault, is it something that you’ve done? No. Love embraces who you are flaws and all and if someone doesn’t “love” you because of something that you did, then they never really loved you in the first place.

We often focus too much on our own feelings when we get to know people.  Instead think about how the other persons feel about you and when you find someone who truly loves you as much as you love them hang onto that person and don't give up the fight.

I’ve Got a Rock 'N’ Roll Heart by Eric Clapton

I’ve never really been big into cell phones. I don’t really care about having the newest one with the camera and the mp3 player and the touch screen and the lotion dispenser. I just want a phone that works, one I can make calls on and send texts. The only times I’ve gotten new phones are when my old one has died but after seeing this commercial for the first time in my life I was excited about a new cell phone.



Yes, the only reason I want this phone is because of Eric Clapton, the fact that it has a the classic Fender Stratocaster sunburst design on the back and because this ad features my new favorite Eric Clapton song, “I’ve Got a Rock ‘N’ Roll Heart.”



So after finding this commercial on youtube.com and watching this 30-second clip about 43 times I broke down and downloaded the song on itunes. On what sweet, bluesy ecstasy.

This is Clapton pre-“Tears In Heaven” (which I wrote about in one of my first posts). Clapton had great success in the 1960s and 1970s but as the 1980s began, things were not going so well. After battling a heroin addiction and admitting that he was an alcoholic, Clapton went into the studio to produce what he considered most forced album, Money and Cigarettes. You wouldn’t have known this if all you knew from Clapton was the lead single from that 1983 album, “I’ve Got a Rock ‘N’ Roll Heart.”

The instrumental introduction with the organ pouring in like sunlight with soulful guitar licks set a warm and optimistic tone for this song. You know the first twenty seconds of this song how good its going to feel.

Clapton’s voice quietly creeps in describing how serious this relationship is getting. He feels need to warn his love interest before it gets any further how much music is part of his life and with that we have the laid back and inspired chorus that is featured in the cell phone advertisement.

I get off on 57 Chevys,
I get off on screaming guitars.
Ike the way it hits me every time it hits me.
I’ve got a rock and roll, I’ve got a rock and roll heart.

The way the song leads up to the chorus there’s a sense of warning, “there’s something baby that you got to know.” And while Clapton explains the way he feels about music, it quickly switches from a warning to an declaration of love. It’s not so much that these are things to be fearful of but that his woman has to understand how great these things makes him feels.

The best thing about this song it expresses that feeling that Clapton so perfectly sings about. Simply close your eyes, turn up this one and my God it’s the perfect combination of rock, blues. It’s simply righteous. I understand Eric, I don’t want to change either.

Man if that cell phone makes me feel as good as this song I’ll buy a dozen. Talk about the perfect song to for that commercial. God I love music.

Maybe I should have warned Diana about my rock ‘n’ roll heart. . .

My Father's Gun by Elton John

When I was in elementary school life was simple. There were good guys and there were bad guys. It until late in middle school that shades of grey entered my mind as the true depth of human conflicts began to reveal itself to me.

My understanding of history reflected this naivety and with the American Civil War it was pretty cut and dry. The South used African Americans as slaves. Slavery was evil, so therefore the South, the grey coats were the bad guys. The North, who believed slavery was bad were freedom fighters and they were the good guys. As in every human conflict that I had studied, the good guys won, slavery was abolished and racial harmony ensued immediately after the war.

My firm grasp on the American Civil War soon started to fall apart when I was told the there were other reasons in additional to slavery that were issues, however this idea that the South were the bad guys persisted.

I’m from the Northwest born and was raised in Mercer Island which is a suburb just east of Seattle, Washington. Growing up, something I was very conscious of was not only a social stereotype of southern people (Jeff Foxworthy was just breaking into the pop culture when I was in middle school) but also the culture. It seemed that nobody listened to country music around and no one ate southern food.

When I went to Chicago for college I entered a city that owes much of its cultural roots to the south. I ate southern food for the first time and loved it. Began listening to country music and fell in love with the spirit and soul of the music. And it was in college when I finally watched Gone With The Wind one of my mom’s favorite films of all time and the grandeur and majesty of southern culture came to life.

During my time in college I was just discovering Elton John’s music beyond his greatest hits albums. So when I saw this extended trailer for I was floored.



I had no idea what the song was about when I bought Elton John’s 1970 album Tumbleweed Connection, I just knew I had to get a copy of this song after the chorus had been haunting me for a week.

To my surprise, as I began listening this song, I realized it was a song about a son who lost his dad in the Civil War fighting for the south, swearing revenge on the North. Rather than portraying the south as the enemy, the song takes the side of the south and offers a heartfelt and powerful expression of what this war meant to the south.

The first verse talks about laying his father to rest and burying him. The mournful melody is filled with grief. Elton injects a little bit more energy and motion in his voice in the second verse when the song vows to “wear the colors of the greys." He swears to keep his father’s gun, memory and spirit with him until he dies.

The chorus begins with a question “I’d Like to know where the riverboat sails tonight.” The next line is a response to someone who explains to him where it goes, “To New Orleans well that’s just fine alright.” He continues to tell us “‘cause there’s fighting there and the company needs men, so slip us a rope and sail on round the bend.” He’s not even sure where exactly he’s going or how to get there, but he knows that he has to do something.

The last verse doesn’t sound like the words of an evil slave owner but rather of a freedom fighter.

As soon as this is over we'll go home
To plant the seeds of justice in our bones
To watch the children growing and see the women sewing
There'll be laughter when the bells of freedom ring.

Justice, freedom, slavery?!? If you were raised being taught that the sky was red and then all the sudden someone comes and tells you that it’s actually blue, whose fault is it that you had it wrong? This son was raised believing that what is just is to have the right to own slaves and that freedom is not having the tyranny of the federal government telling you what to do. Freedom and justice are what we define them to be and if someone has a different sense of these things, that doesn’t necessarily make them evil Do I think slavery is wrong? Yes, of course, but do I also understand and on some level sympathize with our protagonist? Very much so.

For the last half of the song, Elton John sings the chorus six times. In some ways it is excessively repetitive but it also gives the opportunity for Elton to express to us the inner conflict within the son, unsure about his actions, in pain from missing his dad and committing to joining a fight that may lead to his own death.

It took two British guys Elton John and his lyricist Bernie Taupin with an epic and beautiful song to show me that there weren’t good guys or bad guys fighting in the American Civil War, there were simply Americans, fighting for what they believed in and honoring their families.

. . . so slip us a rope and sail on down the bend . . .

Gimme Some Lovin' by The Spencer Davis Group

What was your greatest accomplishment when you were 18 years old?

When Steve Winwood was 18 years old, he helped write one of the greatest rock songs of all time, “Gimme Some Lovin’”. Well, so what when I was 18, I finally beat Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past on my Super Nintendo. Well, I also graduated from high school, but somehow that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time especially since my history teacher told me that the only thing you had to do to graduate from high schools was to breathe in and breathe out.

As a member of the British band, The Spencer Davis Group, Steve Winwood helped define the term blue-eyed soul, responding to the rock music of America with a fresh blues influenced rock.

“Gimme Some Lovin’” is a party song that has simple components that are masterfully arranged to reveal the groove of the song and express the righteous feeling that permeates every note of this song.

“Gimme Some Lovin’” begins with a bass line that has a huge accent on beat four. Four fast notes lead up into beat 4 building momentum throughout the measure to the last beat which abruptly drops down an octave. Your body can’t help but feel this beat four as the main back beat of the groove. It’s primal and in your fact and making you instantly feel the outline of the groove.

As the drums enter the accent on beat two becomes apparent, creating the standard rock groove which accents the off beats (beats 2 and 4). The song seems to speed up at this point as the back beats seem to double in time, going from a strong accent on beat 4 to two accents on beat 2 and 4. This opening propels the song forward into one of the greatest organ lines in rock history.

The organ is a primal call, starting with a simple sustained chord that is to another sustained chord by a simple descending line. The organ is an instrument that was innovated and used mostly in religious settings. It’s hard to hear an organ sound and separate it from its roots, so when is used rock it brings together the joy of religious spirituality with the youthful and liberated spirit of rock. Many have made the argument that this is wrong, but God know it feels right.

Other artists like Ray Charles combined religious and popular music taking Gospel songs and changing the lyrics to talk about sexuality. In a similar way, Steve Winwood, brought the organ, an instrument used for hundreds of years to celebrate the glory of God, to call out to people to get on down.

The sound of the organ in “Gimme Some Lovin’” is raunchy, dirty and full of soul. The sustained sound doesn’t shimmer like light coming through a church strained glass window but rather permeates like a spotlight bathing a crowd of people partying in dark club. There is atmosphere, emotion and style in the sound of that sustained chord, it’s like experiencing something that you know is not good for you but disregarding your conscious and exclaiming to the world “Glory Hallelujah.”

Steve Winwood, the keyboard player for The Spencer Davis Group sang the incredible lead vocals to this song. At times, he sounds so much like a grizzled old man in his sixties singing about the blues in his life, it’s easy to forget he’s a British kid who is 18 years old. At the edge of yelling with a youthful exuberance, Winwood manages to express the struggle of a hard days work in the verse with the euphoria of partying in the verses. This vocal performance is raw and real, proving that you don’t have either black nor American to have soul.

I don’t know if Winwood considers “Gimme Some Lovin’” one of his greatest accomplishments as an 18 year old. Regardless, “Gimme Some Lovin’” is one of the greatest rock songs of all time.

Really, if Winwood doesn’t consider this song his greatest accomplishments as a 18 year old, I’d really like to what else he did during that year of his life, because it must be something unbelievable.

Under My Thumb by The Rolling Stones

I’ve never seen my relationship with my wife as a power struggle. We have disagreements but these issues aren’t really related to the power structure in our relationship. We’ve been married a little under a year, so some of you who have been married longer may be thinking, “just wait” and you may be right but for now it’s not really an issue.

I’m very conscientious of not giving my wife, Diana any unsolicited advice or insisting that she do something a certain way. There’s a lot of little things that we do differently. For example, we have different approaches in loading the dishwasher. I like to keep the same type of cups in a line and give each dish plenty of personal space. My wife on the other hand puts as many dishes in the dishwasher as possible.

Now, are the dishes less clean when my wife loads the dishwasher? Not really, am I wasting tons of water and space by not packing the dishes in as tight as I can? Maybe, but I doubt it. The bottom line is that we just feel comfortable loading the dishwasher in different ways. Really, after a long day at work, if she says that she will load the dishwasher, I could not care less how she does it.

Part of the reasons I’m so careful about the way I treat Diana is because I don’t want to be controlled myself. I don’t want to have a wife that spends all her time telling me what to do. I know it might just be this “guy thing” this fear that our girlfriend or wives are trying to change us but I think it’s something more.

When you are constantly told what to do and how to be by someone who is suppose to accept you for who you are, there is a feeling a resentment and anger that grows in response. I know what this is because once upon a time I had a girlfriend in high school who I resented for trying to change me. She was probably just trying to expand my horizons but I didn’t see it that way at the time and I probably didn’t communicate to her how this made me feel. What is scary is how much I envied the voice in “Under My Thumb” and how much I wanted to have power over her.

The protagonist in “Under My Thumb” is celebrating the fact that he’s girlfriend is no longer controlling him and pushing him around. The tables have turned and now she is under his thumb. He controls what she wears and compares here is a “Siamese cat” who is the sweetest “pet" in the world. These misogynistic lines continue as he states that “her eyes are just kept to herself” while he can still look at other people. This line implies a level of promiscuity that he is engaging in while she is devoted entirely to him.

When I was in high school, the song was a male empowerment anthem. Here’s a guy who was controlled by a girl but now it’s all different, it’s changed, he’s the one in charge. What could be bad about this situation? Now, many years later I noticed something sad about this song, almost regretful.

The marimba and the fuzzy bass line create a dark and smoky atmosphere like that of a dive bar. Mick Jagger’s voice has a uneasy shake in his voice when he sings “it’s down to me.” This is why I now hear this song as a guy bragging to his friends about how much control he has over a girl when in reality he is still under her thumb.

If the tables truly have turned and he has tamed that shrew then it really isn’t something that will bring happiness. If I somehow exerted the control over my high school girlfriend that I felt she had over me it would probably leave me feeling hollow and alone.

Sometimes when people around me are talking loudly, I talk softly in the hope that they will notice and start talking softer, but sometimes I speak quietly simply because I don’t like yelling all the time. Sometimes when we do things for other people we are truly doing things for own my soul.

If you feel that relationships are about power, take another listen to "Under My Thumb." It's a dark place to be.

There's no room in love for power.

Sunshine Of Your Love by Cream

"Sunshine Of Your Love" live performance
"Sunshine Of Your Love" Clapton solo acoustic performance

If you’re going to form a band and name it Cream, you had better be good and the rock supergroup Cream was better than good, they were unbelievable. Before becoming Mr. “Tears In Heaven,” Eric Clapton had earned a reputation in the 1960s as one of the best blues guitarists alive. His virtuosic playing inspired the graffiti “Clapton is God” on the wall of an underground train station. Formed with Jack Bruce on bass and Ginger Backer on drum critics and musicians alike truly considered these three musicians the cream of the crop.

Cream’s best-selling song in their brief three-years as a band was “Sunshine Of Your Love” a showcase of the skills of all three musicians that set them apart from music at the time and from anything that has produced since.

What was amazing and unique about Cream’s style of rock music was the how grounded the songs were in the blues and jazz tradition. This fusion of these styles influenced bands like Led Zeppelin all the way to Aerosmith adding a dirty primal soul to the rock voice.

Though there are only three musicians playing on “Sunshine Of Your Love,” there are many more musical voices that make up musical landscape of the song. There is Bruce’s voice, Bruce’s bass, Clapton’s guitar, Clapton’s voice and Ginger’s drum set. With many rock groups there are guys playing guitar and singing and really if you just listened to the guitar playing it wouldn’t be that interesting. What is awesome about Cream is that each individual musical voice is a masterpiece in of itself.

The song opens with Bruce’s aggressive blues voice fueled by desperation is answered by Clapton’s more subdued voice filled with regret and heartbreak. When these voices combine in the chorus there is a powerful energy that builds through “I’ve been waiting so long” that reaches a euphoric release on when they moan the words, “sunshine of your love.”

Most of the time in jazz and rock the bass line is the foundation of the groove outlining the strong beats of each measure. Bruce’s descending bass line spends more time on the off-beats than on the beat. Though it may seem simple to play notes on the beat, it takes a years or practice for a bass player to master playing on the beat. Now to have the audacity to create a groove with a bass line that is centered off the beat is insanity. What is unbelievable is not only that he can keep the time playing mostly off the beat but that he plays with the time relaxing the time against the driving drums. This tension creates the truly magical groove in this song.

What is Ginger Backer doing in this song? Nowhere in this song do we hear a regular rock beat, jazz pattern or blues beat on the drum-set. Instead of accenting the off-beats which is typical of rock and jazz drum beats Backer pounds on the on-beats with an almost cave-man like intensity.

In Backer’s hands the drum set becomes much more then a way to keep time but to express emotion. The primal beat pattern he uses may go against convention but as an expressive device is pure genius adding to the dirty torn-down desperate feeling of the song. His fills between phrases which are just plain sick, perfectly in time adding to the line of the melody while keeping the momentum of the song moving forward.

Then there’s Clapton’s guitar solo. It starts with a quote from “Blue Moon” contrasting the idea of the sun and the moon. Like a human voice singing, Clapton creates phrases within his guitar solos. The phrases have breaks like a person taking a breath. The genius of Clapton, it’s not about how fast he can play but how he uses his technique to tell a story through his solos.

What’s inspiring about watching masters artists at work is that everything they do seems effortless. It’s making the difficult seem easy so that we forget how hard something is for a moment and simply enjoy the beauty of what is created. Sometime I listen to “Sunshine Of Your Love” and I’m in awe of the musical virtuosity but more often I’d let it wash over me and feel the primal groove and perfect expression of blues that really is the cream of the crop.