Movies: Livin' Right Now (2005), and Love, Pain and the Whole Crazy World Tour (2008). Keith Urban.

Hello! It’s Rock and Roll Friday again here at The Memory Cache, the fourth Friday of each month, where for the past few months I’ve been posting reviews of books and shows about music, its history and some of my favorite artists and bands as a fan as well as a musician.

This month I don’t have any major new book or TV reviews, so instead today I’m going to talk about a couple of outstanding concert videos which are among the favorites on my bookshelf. These might be available from the library; otherwise they can probably still be found for sale on Amazon. I know that releasing full-length feature concerts on DVD is probably becoming a thing of the past for most music stars (along with DVDs!), but I want to share a couple of the best from my concert video library.

Today I want to talk about two concert DVDs from earlier in the career of my current favorite major rock star, Keith Urban. Keith Urban is technically considered to be a country music star, but his extensive catalog of music crosses over and includes influences from many strains of popular music, definitely including country and rock, but also folk and blues, pop, and in recent years, hip-hop, R&B and electronic dance music too.

I first discovered his music in 2016, already almost 20 years into his brilliant (and ongoing) career, when I took a listening foray into the world of modern country music after a family trip to Nashville. This was toward the end of Tom Petty’s career and life (my previous favorite), and I was feeling a need to explore some new music, and see if there were contemporary artists in country music that I might like, since there didn’t seem to be a lot new going on in rock music anymore. I actually listened to music from a half-dozen or so of the top country stars of the moment, including Blake Shelton, Thomas Rhett, Chris Stapleton and Brad Paisley, and liked several of them, but Keith Urban’s music stood out as utterly unique among them. It immediately caught my attention.

His songs had plenty of country elements, particularly during the early part of his career, like the sound of banjos and mandolins mixed in, but the songs were more complex in structure than most 3-chord country songs, the lyrics told emotionally appealing and relatable stories, Urban’s wonderful voice and delivery were captivating, and the lead guitar playing (also Urban) was absolutely thrilling to hear.

After I started collecting his albums, and becoming more familiar with my fast-expanding library of his amazing, memorable and addictive songs, I became aware of two full-length movies he had made of earlier concert tours, as his career was on the rise and gathering momentum. The first, Livin’ Right Now, was from 2005; and then he released another one, Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy World Tour, in 2008. I immediately ordered them both, and they were a revelation to see.

The thing I’ve come to believe about Keith Urban is that he is perhaps the most completely realized male rock star of my lifetime, in that he is the whole package of rock star skills and abilities in a single individual. If all we had were the large catalog of his songs and his studio recordings, we would already have more memorable and well-loved music than we have any right to expect from an artist or band. But to see him in a live concert performance setting is even better (even if on a DVD), because then you see the full range of the tools he has as a performing artist with which to work his magic on adoring crowds.

He is a charismatic showman. He is the riveting (and yes, very attractive) front man and leader of the band, generous and sharing with his audience, full of joy, funny, and energetic, running around the stage and out into the crowd, giving off so much warmth and fun, and singing those great songs, with his fans singing along to every word. That in itself should be enough to satisfy any rock fan or concert goer.

But then you see him playing his stunning guitar solos, like on the records but even better, often while he is also singing the lead vocals. I can’t remember ever seeing any other lead singer and front man for a great band who could also seemingly effortlessly play such dazzling guitar parts at the same time he was singing. It is awesome to behold, and I only realized that he could actually do that when I watched these two excellent concert videos.

A lot of folks by now are content to hear the classic songs from their youth (whenever that was), and maybe don’t believe there’s much new out there worth hearing or seeing. But I don’t agree. I believe that some of the greatest performing and recording musicians today, like Keith Urban and Taylor Swift, in fact put on much more amazing shows, and have much higher levels of individual artistic talent across a wider variety of media than the rock stars of decades ago, precisely because they are standing on the shoulders and the achievements of those great artists and music creators of earlier generations.  It also helps that they have far more and better technology at their fingertips, technology they've also had to learn to master.

Keith Urban regularly continues to deliver new bestselling albums, wonderful singles, and YouTube music videos, and continues to play sold out tours around the world. But for a time-capsule view of his live concert performances as a young breakout star, these two concert videos, Livin’ Right Now and Love, Pain and the Whole Crazy World Tour, are a treat. Highly recommended.

From Wayne: Blog News and Brand New Driver Song Release.

As most readers know, The Memory Cache blog is my personal platform for sharing my writing, ideas, useful information and reviews with a reading audience.

Since I launched it back in February, I've been very pleased to see that there does appear to be a small but regular group of people who are coming back regularly to see what's new, and what books, movies and TV shows I've reviewed recently.

I noticed the other day that the site's page view count has gone over 2,500 since I launched it. It's not millions, but it's still gratifying!

Thank you so much for your interest, and please let your friends and family know about the site too, if you think they might enjoy reading it, and using its categorized lists of different types of content to find good books to read, good shows to see, and interesting topics to discover and learn about.

Meanwhile, some readers may not know that the other creative project I started early in the pandemic, as a new hobby, was writing and recording my own original rock, country and folk-influenced songs.

I released my first three singles last year, with music videos, which you can hear on all major music streaming services, and also see on my YouTube channel, which you can find by clicking on the link to my music under the Favorite Links heading on the right side of the page. You can also find my artist social media accounts on both Facebook and Instagram at @wayneparkernotes. Please feel free to follow me there if interested.

In that vein, I'm delighted to announce the release today of my latest song, Brand New Driver, which is now available or arriving soon at all major music streaming services, as well as on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Check it out! And I do hope you enjoy it.

Have a great day, and rock on!

TV Review: McCartney 3,2,1 (Season 1, 2021). Hulu.

I recently had the opportunity to watch a marvelously understated little documentary mini-series on Hulu called McCartney 3,2,1. The “McCartney” in the title refers to Sir Paul McCartney, one of the two surviving Beatles, Wings bandleader, genius songwriter (with and without John Lennon) and legendary solo artist throughout the past fifty years of rock music history.

The documentary itself is incredibly spare in action, setting and appearance. It was shot in black and white, mostly in a simple music studio with a mixing board and not much else, and features nothing more than two people talking for the entire six sessions of the mini-series. One of them is McCartney, as he is now, the elder statesman and extraordinary maestro of the rock and roll music world that he and his band-mates in the Beatles played such a profound role in creating.

The other person is the interviewer, Rick Rubin. Many readers may never have heard of him, but for popular music historians and enthusiasts (present company included), he is also a legendary figure, for Rubin has produced best-selling records for and by many of the top stars of rock, country and hip-hop. He is a brilliant sound engineer, with a deep appreciation for the artists, studios, recording history, sonic qualities and music trends which have shaped popular music over the past 50 years, many times with his hands at the controls of the mixing boards during the recording sessions.

Rubin is the perfect interviewer to ask McCartney fascinating and in-depth questions about how some of the greatest Beatles’ songs and albums were created. He has a warmth and sense of humor which draws McCartney out, leading to fascinating personal anecdotes, and so many surprising stories about how iconic sounds in different Beatle songs came into being.

The two of them are also aided in this exploratory process by the fact that Rubin has some of the Beatle's multi-track song recordings loaded into the mixing board, so he can actually play and separate out the sounds in particular song mixes, and then talk with McCartney about how and why things were done as they were.

There are also plenty of personal reminiscences from McCartney about the Beatles’ experiences and influences at different stages of their years together, and their relationships within the band, especially his close personal and creative connection with John Lennon.

This may not be fascinating to people who aren’t Beatles fans, and particularly not if they also don’t know or care anything about the creative process by which original music is made. But for anyone who loves the Beatles and their music, and wonders how on earth they were able to write and record so many different kinds of timeless songs in a few short years, this is all very revealing, and it's an amusing, animated conversation between two old pros that we are privileged to see and hear. Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Storyteller (2021). Dave Grohl.

For those who don’t know who Dave Grohl is, he might say facetiously that he “was that other guy in Nirvana”, that is, the power drummer behind the drum set, who provided the pounding beat while Kurt Cobain was out front, playing guitar and singing the generation-defining Nirvana songs he had written, for those few short years until Cobain took his own life at the peak of the 1990s Seattle-based Grunge rock era.

As the band-mate and close friend to a tragically and prematurely deceased rock superstar, Grohl could easily have self-destructed, retired and vanished from the music scene, or chosen to switch to a different career. But he did none of those things. Instead, after a brief hiatus, he re-created himself as a guitar player, lead singer, songwriter, front man and bandleader for another top rock act of the 2000s era which he founded, The Foo Fighters.

Along the way, he did quite a few other interesting things too. He has produced several music-related documentary movies and TV shows, including a fascinating movie he made for Netflix, Sound City (2013), about a legendary old Los Angeles music studio, the stars who had recorded there, and the marvelous obsolete analog mixing board he ultimately rescued for his own home studio; a TV mini-series, Sonic Highways (2014) documenting a 20th anniversary recording tour for the Foo Fighters, during which they recorded at eight famous studios across the country; and a mock horror movie with the band, Studio 666 (2022).

He has also had various collaborations with other famous musicians, including a memorable performance on Saturday Night Live playing drums with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which led to an offer from Petty to join the band, but which he ultimately declined in order to pursue his plans for the Foo Fighters band he had just started.

In The Storyteller, Grohl doesn’t write a straight narration of every twist and turn along his path, or provide a precise chronological account of his career and life. Instead, he tells stories: anecdotes of different things he experienced, and things that happened to him that impacted him personally, emotionally and professionally. It’s occasionally a little confusing, because he sometimes jumps back and forth in time, but ultimately it allows him to connect the dots, and paint a convincing picture of himself as a man and an artist.

This is a worthwhile and self-reflective autobiographical sketch by one of the leading and most popular men of the contemporary rock music world, who survived a devastating personal and professional loss early in his career, along with outsized fame and celebrity at an early age, only to start over and succeed again on his own terms. Recommended.

Book Review: Unrequited Infatuations (2021). Stevie Van Zandt.

This rock and roll autobiography is an unusual one, in part because it is told by someone who is not the “front man” for a band, or a major solo act himself.  This is a “sideman’s” story.  

For those who don’t know, Van Zandt, also known as “Little Stevie”, is a close friend and confidante of Bruce Springsteen.  He became a founding member, guitarist and backup singer of Springsteen’s E Street Band, and Springsteen’s right-hand man in the early years, only to quit in the 1980s, just as the band was reaching its peak years of popularity. 

As he recounts, he returned to the band many years later, but only after building his own separate life and identity as a musician, political activist, actor, script-writer and producer, as well as a celebrity gadfly, solo artist, band-leader, project organizer and friend to many other stars.  

His style of story-telling seemed to verge at times on the bombastic, self-admiring and grandiose, and might have been intolerable except for the fact that all the outrageous claims he makes and the crazy stories he tells are apparently true, and are often very funny.  It also helps make it more bearable that he openly shares his failures and insecurities too.  

But yes, he did play a huge part in organizing financial, political and celebrity support in the U.S. against South African apartheid, and in support of Nelson Mandela.  He did become an actor, and a major star in The Sopranos, one of the top TV series of all time.  He did star in and help produce another improbable but popular gangster-related Netflix show set in Norway, Lilyhammer.  And he does seem to know just about everyone in the celebrity world, and has wild stories and gossip to share about his interactions with many of them.  

If you’re looking for a fun read, and lots of tall tales from the life of a high-powered Forrest Gump of the entertainment world, this book might fill the bill.  Recommended.

Book Review: Born to Run (2016). Bruce Springsteen.

The Boss's long-awaited autobiography finally appeared in 2016.  It explores in the first person the same kind of personal and emotional territory as was covered in the Tom Petty biography Petty, which I previously reviewed.

In fact, Springsteen and Petty, the two most beloved and iconic American rock stars of our age,  have similar stories in so many respects:  growing up poor, surviving abusive and neglectful fathers, youths spent in 1960s garage rock bands, struggling with depression throughout their careers, and tending to the difficult process of building and managing extraordinarily tight-knit bands of gifted musical subordinates and collaborators over long periods of time. 

They both experienced the incredible highs of performing live in front of huge adoring audiences, writing hundreds of popular songs, creating great records in the studio, and working with many of the other luminaries of the rock music world over their respective 40+ year careers.

Yet at the same time, in both these books, we see them going through many of the same kinds of personal and family ups and downs that we all have in our own lives. 

Fortunately for the millions of fans worldwide of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, he's still here, and still making great music, as he demonstrated last year with the release of his first rock album and accompanying movie in seven years, Letter to You, also previously reviewed here.  Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Letter to You (2021). Apple TV+.

Letter to You, the most recent Bruce Springsteen documentary, is about the four-day recording session with his beloved E-Street band which produced this same-named new album, his first rock album in seven years.  

Clips of recording studio performances are mixed with interviews, and reminisces by Bruce, the band members and other friends and family who were present.  Recommended.

Book Review: Life (2010). Keith Richards and James Fox.

Last month, I started a new tradition here at my blog: Rock and Roll Fridays!  Every fourth Friday of the month, I intend to share a review of at least one good artifact of rock music, including biographies, concert videos, and television specials.  It's Rock and Roll Friday again, so today I'm sharing my short review of Keith Richard's autobiography Life. 

I bought this 2010 rock star memoir by Richards (guitarist, singer, co-songwriter (with Mick Jagger), co-leader and founding member of the Rolling Stones) years ago, then never actually read it until much more recently (in 2020).  

 

I think I was reluctant to get into it, because Richards is pretty much the personification of the depraved, bad boy rock star in the popular imagination.  His drug use and addictions, frequent arrests, and outlaw persona are legendary; in fact, he writes that during the 1970s he consistently topped lists of "ten rock stars most likely to die this year".  But he didn't. 

 

And after reading his story, he turns out to be a much more complex, intelligent, thoughtful and even perhaps kind person than I had expected.  Of course, he's still outrageous, but he’s also a genuinely authentic and sympathetic character, who has a lot to say about the Rolling Stones, his relationships with Mick Jagger and the other band members, and their iconic music. 

 

He also delves deeply into his guitar playing techniques and songwriting, along with many of his legendary life experiences and relationships.  He recounts the many celebrities he's known, and partied and played music with, and shares other unexpected anecdotes from his long life and enduring career as one of the most notorious stars of the rock and roll era. 

 

I thought I wouldn't like this book, but I did.  "It's Only Rock and Roll, But I Like It!"  Recommended for rock music fans, and the celebrity-curious.

Book Review: Petty: the Biography (2015). Warren Zanes.

This book claims to be the 'unvarnished truth' about the life of Tom Petty, resulting from Petty and his whole circle of friends, Heartbreakers band members, fellow stars and family members opening up to the author about all the private emotional turmoil and personal ups and downs of one of America's greatest ever rock and roll legends and his band.  That seems to be a well-founded claim, as much as any biography can claim to be the ‘truth’ about anyone’s life.

A nicely-written and intensely revealing look behind the scenes of one of rock's most epic, beloved and habitually private figures, published shortly before his tragic death.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: Play It Loud: An Epic History of the Style, Sound & Revolution of the Electric Guitar (2016). Brad Tolinski & Alan Di Perna.

This book is a surprisingly engaging cultural, musical and technical history of the electric guitar.  It includes stories of the individuals who designed and built the iconic guitar models, the companies they created, the trend-setting musicians who used and altered the guitars, and what it all meant. 

It is interesting that there is or was an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and then at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the similar name “Play It Loud: The Instruments of Rock and Roll” which by sheer cosmic luck I was able to attend on the opening day (at the Met) in 2019.  It is full of the actual instruments played by many great rock stars, many of them much the worse for wear. 

I don’t know if the exhibition still exists, or whether this book was in any way connected to it (other than by the fact that it covers much of the same history), but you can still find references and some videos online related to this marvelous museum collection of instruments.

A fun read for any electric guitar player or recent American music and social history fan. Recommended.

Movie Review: Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions (2020). Disney +

This unusual concert video of Taylor Swift caught my attention toward the end of 2020.  I had not been a long-term Taylor Swift fan, but it would be hard to live on this planet and not know by now that she is one of the most iconic and popular songwriters, singers, musicians and performers of our era.  

So I took note when I heard that she had released a new album in July, 2020, a total surprise even to her record company, which she produced entirely under COVID-19 isolation conditions.  The album, Folklore, had very strong reviews, due in part to her departure from previous music styles (teenage country music star, then mid-20s-aged pop diva) toward a more ethereal folk rock sound and style.  I listened to it, and was immediately taken with it – it’s a truly great album, full of ear-pleasing sounds and haunting stories.

That's all backstory to this concert film, which was recorded in a rural home studio by the Hudson river, with just Swift, her small group of musical collaborators, and a large supply of guitars, pianos, mixers and other instruments, performing stripped-down versions of every song on the album.  In between songs, there are clips of them sitting around talking and reminiscing about their process of writing and recording the songs. 

It was fascinating to me, and very impressive, particularly when we find out that Swift (like so many other musicians, from famous to amateur and recreational) had to figure out how to do home recording, and remote recording collaboration (not to mention performing!), while also creating all the beautiful new songs she wrote.  Highly recommended.