American Tyler? Say It Aint' So, Steve

So this is what Steven meant by "Brand Tyler," then?

Look, I can forgive Aerosmith for participating in the Bee Gees' legendarily rancid remake of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band back in 1978...well okay, almost. Aerosmith's version of "Come Together" was actually one of the few highlights of that soundtrack (along with Earth Wind & Fire doing "Got To Get You Into My Life").

I'm also willing to give American Idol all due props for making the world a slightly better place by introducing us to the likes of Carrie Underwood and "Pants On The Ground" guy. Clay Aiken and Adam Lambert on the other hand, maybe not so much.

But one-time rock god Steven Tyler judging the world's greatest karaoke contest each week on national TV? You've got to be kidding, right?

Well, let's be honest here. Tyler's own once mighty rock-cred has been in jeopardy for some time now. Theme parks and SuperBowl appearances alongside Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears aside, Aerosmith's once mightily rolling train probably left the station for good back in the mid-eighties around the time they traded the cock-rock anthems like "Lord Of The Thighs" in for all of those horrid power ballads...and I'm not referring to "Dream On" either.

Speaking of "Dream On," let's talk about Tyler as a singer for a minute. Just how many decades has it been since he was able to hit those high-pitched screams on the aforementioned "Dream On" onstage anyway? That sarcastic giggle you hear is Simon Cowell laughing his ass off the first time Tyler has the stones to call one of his Idol hopefuls a little "pitchy."

Speaking of Simon, whatever happened to all the talk of bringing Howard Stern on board to fill his chair? Whether you love him or hate him, there's no doubt that Stern's caustic personality would have made a better fit. Stern would have also added some much needed humor to the mix, at exactly the time this once unstoppable, now precariously teetering franchise could most use it.

As for American Ty-dol? Sorry Dawg, Not buying it. There, I Said It!

This article was first published as American Tyler? at Blogcritics Magazine.

Three Sides Of Nils Lofgren Live At Rockpalast

Music DVD Review: Nils Lofgren - Cry Tough


Although not exactly a household name, Nils Lofgren has had one of the more amazing careers in rock and roll history.

Not many guitarists can make the claim of playing with both Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen on their resume. Nils Lofgren can.

Legend also has it that Lofgren was taught how to play the guitar by his neighbor, blues legend Roy Buchanan. Beat that if you think you can.

Asked as a mere teenager to join the sessions for Neil Young's After The Gold Rush album (by none other than Young himself), Nils was later tapped again by Neil for a number of tours — including the legendary shows premiering the songs from Tonight's The Night, and the infamous Trans shows of the early eighties.

Just a year after completing the Trans tour with Young, Lofgren would go on to fill Little Steven's considerable shoes in the E Street Band on the eve of Bruce Springsteen's star-making Born In The U.S.A. stadium tour.

What's less known though, is that Lofgren has had an equally impressive — if somewhat more sporadic — run as a solo artist.

Beginning with the four, now highly regarded albums he recorded with his first group Grin, and continuing on with albums like Cry Tough, I Came To Dance and the legendary "official bootleg" Back It Up, Nils Lofgren has also proven himself to be every bit as formidable a songwriter as he is a guitarist.

With songs ranging from beautiful ballads like "Valentine" to his rocking ode to Keith Richards "Keith, Don't Go," you can actually call Nils Lofgren a bit of a rock and roll renaissance man.

Many of these songs, including "Keith, Don't Go," "Back It Up," and "Cry Tough" show up as many as three times over the course of the four hour plus(!) running time of Eagle Rock's great new double-disc compilation of live performances taken from the German television rock concert showcase series Rockpalast.

Spread out over two DVD discs, Cry Tough (the title is taken from Lofgren's 1976 album of the same name), brings together Nils Lofgren's complete Rockpalast performances from three distinct periods of his career — from the years 1976, 1979, and 1991.

Of the three, it is perhaps the 1991 concert — which takes up all of disc one — that offers up the best overall picture of Lofgren's considerable prowess as a virtuoso guitarist.

Coming off of Springsteen's stadium tour for Born In The U.S.A., Lofgren nonetheless seems quite comfortable in the much smaller setting captured here, effortlessly switching from a tasteful acoustic reading of "Keith, Don't Go," to a full-on electric raveup of the song after being joined by the rest of his band halfway through.

From there, Nils turns in some burning slide guitar work on "Cry Tough." By the time of "Gun And Run," he's playing behind his back and with his teeth Hendrix style.

It should also be noted here that Lofgren's band for this show — including guitarist and veteran Neil Young sideman Larry Cragg — is nothing short of top-notch.

The 1976 Rockpalast show which opens the second disc finds Lofgren doing a much rawer, funkier take on "Cry Tough."

For "Going Back," Lofgren gets behind the keyboard and proves to be every bit the house of fire that he is on the guitar (legend has it that Lofgren only learned the keys after Neil Young forced his hand for the sessions on After The Gold Rush).

Lofgren sounds absolutely amazing on the keys here, channeling the best barroom soul of a Faces-era Ian McLagan. Of the three complete concerts captured on this collection, the 1976 set is by far the rawest and most rocking, (and in the best Small Faces, Exile-era Stones sort of way).

For the 1979 performance which closes out the second disc, we find Nils Lofgren at the halfway point, performing before a much larger festival-sized crowd with a band whose look already seems to be anticipating the MTV eighties. Regardless, they still sound great.

Lofgren also rises here to the challenge of his impending rock stardom like a true champ — although of the three versions of "Keith, Don't Go" on this set, this is by far the most anemic — paling particularly in comparison to the rawer 1976 version.

Once again, he also turns in some amazing slide guitar work for the third performance on this set of "Cry Tough" — this time mugging like a true rock star before the TV cameras.

Oh yeah, and he also does a backflip off the trampoline too (during "Back It Up").

Can you say "awesome"?

Rodney Bingenheimer, The Runaways, And The Cult Of Personality

As a rock and roll kid growing up in the seventies, I was never a big fan of the Runaways. But I was still keenly enough aware of them — thanks to the constant hype they got through rock magazines like Creem, Circus and Rock Scene. I religiously devoured all of them from cover-to-cover each month as a sixteen year old rock fan.

Why exactly the Runaways slipped past my radar growing up as a teenage glam-rocker I couldn't really tell you. I was certainly into all the other seventies glam bands from Alice and Bowie to T.Rex and Mott The Hoople. But despite my own wildly raging hormones, the whole teenage jail-bait schtick of the all-girl Runaways just never did it for me.

Even so, I recognize and respect their influence enough today — paving the way for all-girl bands like the Go-Gos, the Bangles and The Donnas as they did — that I was probably as excited as anyone else to see their story get the Hollywood treatment with this year's rock-biopic The Runaways.

For those who missed The Runaways in theaters, I can't recommend at least renting the DVD highly enough. But I am also going to make an additional recommendation.

If you can find it, and if you have an entire night to devote to it, watch The Runaways back-to-back with the DVD Mayor Of The Sunset Strip as I did this week. For a complete picture of the seventies glam-rock scene that spawned the Runaways (among others), as well as how it was seen through the first-hand eyes of one of its primary scene-makers, Rodney Bingenheimer, you simply won't find a better twofer.



Bingenheimer's character appears only briefly in The Runaways film, in a pivotal scene that takes place outside Bingenheimer's English Disco club in L.A., as Joan Jett has her fateful encounter with future Runaways promoter Kim Fowley.

Surprisingly, given the enormous influence that both Bingenheimer and his English Disco club wielded in the seventies L.A. glam-rock scene back then, his character doesn't even get any lines. Bingenheimer was absolutely a major player in the development of seventies glam-rock, but you wouldn't know it watching The Runaways.

This, along with the fact that The Runaways focuses on Joan Jett and Cherie Currie to the near total exclusion of the other members, are probably the two most glaring omissions of this otherwise historically very accurate film. Even as the credits make mention of Jett's subsequent success as a punk-rocker, guitarist Lita Ford's own post-Runaways career as a heavy metal babe is simply ignored altogether. Go, figure.

Otherwise, the film mostly tells its story well, and the performances are all pretty great.

Kristen Stewart in particular nails Joan Jett — the tough-as-nails teen-queen whose heart bleeds rock and roll. Michael Shannon is also deliciously disgusting as the vampiric, bloodsucking scumbag Kim Fowley, and delivers what is arguably the best line of the entire film in "Jail Fucking Bait, Jack Fucking Pot." It's a little weird seeing former child-actor Dakota Fanning all slutted-up in garters and lace as sexpot singer Cherie Currie. But to her credit she pulls the role off quite convincingly.

However, where The Runaways succeeds in telling the story of how these five impressionable, and quite underage teenage girls were seduced by rock and roll — and subsequently criminally exploited by two-bit music biz hustlers like Fowley — there's also one big chunk of this story that's missing.

For one thing, what the hell were a couple of minors like Jett and Currie doing hanging out in a glam-rock sleaze-pit like Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco in the first place? Mayor Of The Sunset Strip not only fills in those holes, but in doing so, also tells the unexpectedly tragic story of Bingenheimer himself.

Reading about the decadence and debauchery that went on at Bingenheimer's club as a teenager, I would have never pegged him as a sympathetic character at all.

In fact, based on the stories and pictures in rock-rags like Creem back then, I'd have probably put him in the same morally bankrupt category as a sleazeball like Fowley. What I found instead in Rodney was what not only what seems to be a very likable, if clearly lonely guy, but a story which strangely moved and lingered with me quite deeply for several days afterward.



While its true that Bingenheimer was probably no angel back then — and the scenes of the seventies-era Bingenheimer groping topless teens at his club in Mayor Of The Sunset Strip certainly bears witness to this — a picture begins to emerge which contrasts sharply with a lot of the wilder stories.

Scenes from the glory days of the English Disco may show young, half-naked girls alongside glam-rock stars like Iggy Pop and David Johansen of the New York Dolls. Still, you can't help but think that some of the stories might have been rather exaggerated when it comes to Rodney himself.

Even as Fowley brags of Bingenheimer's sexual prowess — claiming he got more girls than even a seventies rock-god like Robert Plant — it's a picture that just doesn't quite add up. Sitting alongside Fowley, Bingenheimer cuts a diminutive, almost painfully shy figure that comes across as the polar opposite of Fowley's slimeball huckster.

The fact is, you get the distinct impression of Rodney as a guy who couldn't get laid in a brothel flashing a fistful of hundreds. These couldn't be two more different people.

In reality, the Rodney Bingenheimer seen in Mayor Of The Sunset Strip comes across as something more like a man out of time. He clearly still loves rock and roll passionately. But more than that, he seems to have become trapped by the same cult of personality that so many of those in Hollywood who've dedicated their lives to celebrity have before him. At times, Bingenheimer seems more like a ghost.

With his once trailblazing KROQ radio show Rodney On The ROQ now relegated to the graveyard shift on Sunday nights, Rodney still fights the good fight. But the position appears to be a largely ceremonial one. In one scene, a fellow KROQ DJ sums it up by saying that KROQ's target 18 to 24 year old audience isn't interested in hearing Sonny & Cher or The Beach Boys.

More often, Rodney is seen in private moments haunting a window booth at L.A.'s infamous "Rock And Roll Denny's" or at Canter's Deli (who have even dedicated a seat to him). He is also seen at his small apartment, tripping over the sea of rock memorabilia that make up this shrine to an era which all too sadly seems to have left him behind.

Still wearing his trademark spiked pageboy bowl-cut, Rodney seems more than anything like a figure tragically trapped by own his rock and roll past. His closest friends include a burned out space-cadet (complete with spacesuit), would-be rock star who sings songs about Jennifer Love Hewitt to the tune of old Moody Blues' hits (which Rodney dutifully plays on his radio show).

There's also a semi-girlfriend named Camille who clearly doesn't return Rodney's romantic intentions (as seen in one of this film's sadder scenes), but rather seems to be using him to satisfy her own hunger to get close to celebrities. Although Rodney is still acknowledged by some of the superstars whose careers he once helped shape like David Bowie, here again the debt appears to be one more of gratitude than anything more genuine.

In one of the more telling scenes from The Mayor Of The Sunset Strip, Rodney Bingenheimer is shown in a heated backstage exchange with Chris Carter, a former member of Dramarama (who got their first break from Bingenheimer) over the latter starting his own competing radio show. Carter is also one of the producers of this film.

Even more heartbreaking is a scene of Rodney scattering the ashes of his deceased mother in England, as the song "Good Souls" by StarSailor (another of the many bands Bingenheimer helped break in America) plays poignantly in the background.

Like The Runaways before him, Rodney Bingenheimer's story as told in Mayor Of The Sunset Strip is proof that the rock and roll business often eats its own, particularly in Hollywood. Taken together, The Runaways and The Mayor Of The Sunset Strip offer two opposing, yet strangely complimentary sides of the same story. In Hollywood, and in rock and roll, there are victims and there are also those who survive.

Watch them together in one sitting if you can. You won't be disappointed.

This article was first published as Rodney Bingenheimer, The Runaways, And The Cult Of Personality at Blogcritics Magazine.

Tom Petty's Damn The Torpedoes Gets The Classic Albums Treatment


DVD Review: Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers: Damn The Torpedoes (Classic Albums Series)

Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers' classic third album, 1979's Damn the Torpedoes, is the latest to receive the in-depth, behind-the-scenes treatment of Eagle Rock's excellent Classic Albums DVD series. Previous entries in the series include everything from the Doors' landmark debut to (most recently) Black Sabbath's heavy metal masterpiece, Paranoid.

What makes this series so great is the way that it gives you a ringside seat into the way that such groundbreaking rock and roll albums were created in the studio, as well as filling in the blanks of exactly how the artists involved got there in the first place. This entry for Petty's Damn The Torpedoes is no exception.

With this roughly one-hour presentation (not counting the extras), brand new interviews with producers Jimmy Iovine and Shelly Yakus, as well as with Petty and members of the Heartbreakers themselves, transport you back to the heady late seventies period when the band was making what was then their "make or break" third record — which would ultimately come to be regarded, and rightfully — as a rock and roll classic. Producer Jimmy Iovine, who was an obvious believer in the Heartbreakers' potential from the get-go, provides particularly revealing insight.

"I'm a great believer in third albums," the producer explains, pointing to Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run and Patti Smith's Easter (the latter of which he was directly involved in) as just two of the more obvious examples.

Petty himself describes the album's subsequent success as the point where "the dam burst, and nothing was ever going to be the same again." At another point, keyboardist Benmont Tench describes calling the local radio station and disguising his voice in the process to request his song, only to be told "we don't play that shit."

Although the details of what got Petty and his band of "goober rednecks in velvet clothes" (Tench's description) there in the first place are a little less telling here, the basic story of Petty's journey from Gainesville, Florida to L.A. in search of a record deal is retold in brief, but vivid detail.

Interspersed with all of the in-studio details of the recording process (which, as is the norm with this series, take place behind a recording console) are some all-too-brief snippets of Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers live from this same period performing such chestnuts as "Even The Losers," "American Girl," "Listen To Her Heart" and "Refugee" in concert.



The DVD extras here (which most likely wont be seen when this airs as the inevitable one-hour special on VH1 Classic) include the original TV commercial for Damn The Torpedoes and Heartbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell discussing the 12-string Rickenbacker guitar that Petty is pictured holding on the now iconic album jacket ("probably the best $150 I ever spent").

To be sure, a lot of this is mostly nerdy stuff that will appeal mainly to tech-heads and rock historians who uniquely appreciate what goes into the making of a rock and roll classic. But there is just enough of the backstory here to appeal to the rest of us as well.

In short, this is another fine entry in Eagle Rock's Classic Albums DVD series, and Tom Petty's Damn The Torpedoes is the sort of rock and roll classic that more than warrants the inclusion.

Neil Young Is Chasing Double Rainbows

Mark Olson's Quietly Elegant Romantic Folk-Pop

Music Review: Mark Olson - Many Colored Kite

For his first solo album since 2007's The Salvation Blues — as well as his first since reuniting with ex-Jayhawks partner Gary Louris for 2009's Ready For The Flood — Mark Olson seems to have rediscovered his inner romantic.

Many of the songs on Many Colored Kite share the same themes of heartbreak and regret that dominated The Salvation Blues, an album at least partially inspired by his divorce from ex-wife and Creekdippers bandmate Victoria Williams. But even on these, Olson colors this regret with a new-found, almost glowy sort of optimism. His voice also sounds better than ever.

Part of this could be due to the fact that on many of these great new songs, the sweet-sounding, Burritos-era Gram Parsons inspired folk-pop harmonies are shared with his girlfriend, multi-instrumentalist Ingunn Ringwold.

On songs like the title track and "Bluebell Song," these same harmonies also recall those between Olson and Louris on such Jayhawks albums as Hollywood Town Hall and the best songs from them like "Take Me With You (When You Go)." The arrangements may be a bit smaller here, but there's no mistaking the same lush romanticism found on those great records.

On "Wind And Rain" Olson splices lines like, "I won't ever deceive you babe," with spoken-word memories of a drive through rural Nebraska, conjuring the sort of pastel images of a distant, but simpler time found in the paintings of Norman Rockwell's America.

Mostly, though, the songs found on Many Colored Kite find Mark Olson walking a fine line between wistful yearning and guarded optimism. On the opening "Little Bird Of Freedom," for example, he views his life through a rear-view window in lyrics like, "These are the days we remember," even as he eyes the open road ahead when he sings, "Our life is a river." He takes this sentiment deeper still on "Morning Dove," a beautiful solo acoustic performance, with the simple lyric, "Be still, we can know our lives are true."

Mark Olson's Many Colored Kite is beautiful, quietly elegant folk-pop at its finest, painted with all the strokes of a true Americana master. Maybe we should just make this guy an ambassador or something.

R.I.P. Ben Keith 1937-2010

Ben Keith, the multi-instrumentalist and producer best known for his work with Neil Young for nearly four decades, has died at the age of 73.

In addition to being Neil Young's pedal steel guitarist on albums like Harvest and Harvest Moon (which he also co-produced with Young), Keith was the primary musical collaborator on a number of albums spread throughout Young's legendary career, including Tonight's The Night, Time Fades Away, American Stars And Bars, Comes A Time, Prairie Wind, and Chrome Dreams II. Keith also played pedal steel with a number of Young's touring bands including the Santa Monica Flyers, International Harvesters, and most notably the Stray Gators.

Ben Keith was first tapped in 1972 by Neil Young to work with him on what would end up being Young's biggest selling album, the worldwide #1 smash, Harvest. After a chance meeting in Nashville, where he was taping a broadcast of The Johnny Cash Show, Young was introduced to Keith by bassist Tim Drummond.
Along with Drummond and drummer Kenny Buttrey, Young and Keith then formed the Stray Gators and began a concert tour to promote the Harvest album, which later carried over into shows featuring the newer, less radio-friendly songs eventually documented on the 1973 live album Time Fades Away.

Keith stayed on with Neil Young for the dark masterpiece Tonight's The Night and remained a constant on his albums from that point forward. Eventually the Stray Gators officially reformed for the Harvest "sequel," 1992's classic Harvest Moon album. At the time of his death, Ben Keith had been staying at Neil Young's California ranch and working on Neil's upcoming new album with producer Daniel Lanois.

In addition to his work with Neil Young, Ben Keith has worked with such artists as Todd Rundgren, Waylon Jennings, Linda Ronstadt, The Band, Ringo Starr, and Jewel (Keith produced her multi-platinum seller Pieces Of You). Most recently, Ben Keith played on the Foul Deeds album by Neil Young's wife Pegi and had just last month completed a short West Coast club tour with the Pegi Young Band supporting Bert Jansch.





As early reports of Keith's passing first began surfacing on the Internet late yesterday, there were few details about the nature or even the exact time of his death. However, in a Los Angeles Times report published earlier today, film director Jonathan Demme, who filmed both Young and Keith in the concert documentaries Heart Of Gold and Neil Young's Trunk Show, says that Keith died of a heart attack.

Speaking about Ben Keith in the same article, Demme said that Keith was “an elegant, beautiful dude, and obviously a genius. He could play every instrument. He was literally the bandleader on any of that stuff… Neil has all the confidence in the world, but with Ben on board, there were no limits. Neil has a fair measure of the greatness of his music, but he knew he was even better when Ben was there.”

Neil Young himself acknowledged Ben Keith's passing onstage at a concert in Winnipeg this past Monday night. Dedicating the song "Old Man" to his friend and longtime collaborator, Young said "This is for Ben Keith. His spirit will live on. The Earth has taken him."

As of this writing, there has been no official statement from Ben Keith's family, or any word on a funeral service.

This article was first published as R.I.P. Ben Keith 1937-2010 at Blogcritics Magazine.