What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a Billy Gibbons throwaway track is more memorable than the complete album ZZ Top did with Rick Rubin?
One in which music has ceased being spontaneous and is over-written, over-rehearsed and over-managed to death.
Feel the GROOVE!
And listen to Billy's guitar work. He's positively wailing, inspiring all the young 'uns to pick up a guitar and the oldsters to take theirs down off the wall to learn the parts. Oh, when he goes down and starts picking from the bottom it's got the feel of those early Beatles changes.
And then Allen Toussaint comes in and adds unexpected funkiness from New Orleans. It's amazing this guy is still alive, never mind still functioning at the top of his game.
Then again, we put all our oldsters in a box, refusing them to grow, take chances, be new. And that's death for a musician. If a musician is not exploring, improvising and taking chances he might as well be dead, or in a drug coma.
"Come on, get up, get out of my life!"
Billy and Will vocalizing together, with Allen and then Billy adding instrumental accents. This is all done in the great tradition of music past.
That's the way it used to be. Recording was an effort to capture something, lightning in a bottle. You went into the studio and tried not to get it perfect, but get it right.
Now I'd say to put these guys together in a studio for forty eight hours and see what results. It'd be a modern day "Super Session." More covers, like this Allen Toussaint song of yore, would be just fine, because an arrangement can make a track sound brand new.
Wouldn't you go to see this concoction live?
Not in the arena. But in a low-ceiling place where you stood because you wanted to, because you needed to dance, not because the promoter is trying to squeeze in more people.
This is the way it used to be.
And can be again.
Really.
After a magical intro guitar sound that only Billy can deliver, the band settles into a groove and Billy's vocal is so expressive, like he really wants the woman to get out of his life, because when you auto-tune and comp vocals you get them perfect but they lose all their soul, all their humanity in the process.
But the essence of this track is the soloing, the noodling, the sound. It's Phish...if the players in that band were stars in their own right.
Maybe that's what this concoction of players should do. Go out with America's foremost jam band and show what riffing and taking chances is all about.
This is the anti-Katy Perry. The anti-Top Forty.
This is the music baby boomers grew up on, playing ad infinitum in their bedrooms and testifying about.
And going to see live.
Can't we make the music first?
It's enough.
If done right.
And this is.
P.S. Be sure to listen to the initial hit version of this song, by the Leaves, from their album "Hey Joe," it's positively lost in the sixties, but it'll illustrate what Will and Billy and Allen are referencing (YouTube, not on Spotify): http://bit.ly/zT29as
P.P.S. And be sure to play the 2009 live iteration from Allen Toussaint's recent album "Songbook", it positively swings, even though it's just him and the piano.
P.P.P.S. And play the original Toussaint take, with the sampleable beat.
P.P.P.P.S. This is the way it used to be, an infectious record put you in the wayback machine. You read the credits and were stimulated to go back and discover artists and renditions, you became fans of others along the way, according to Toussaint this is his most highly covered song, go on Spotify and have a field day!
Spotify playlist: http://spoti.fi/H0QGX8
I love great art no matter the medium