More Mixed Feelings About Buildings and Food

You'll hear songs by the best vocal groups, legendary artists and the top hits that dominated AM radio from the late '60s into the early '70s.

Hello!

Lots to cover at Please Take My Advice. First I want to highlight three recent articles I've published in the New York Times, Washington Post and Southwest Review. Let's call it a rundown. 

Over at the Times I wrote about television's fascinating fixation on generational wealth hoarding, and the many, many shows which marinate in it.

An excerpt:

"Advances in medical care and robust entitlements have made a vigorous old age not just viable but expected. That is a wonderful thing, but it does come at a cost for younger people — a pileup of housing shortages, slower career advancement and underinvestment in things like schools. Much has been written about why younger people are having fewer children, but seldom does the quiet part get spoken aloud: They face the daunting prospect of raising children with less money than their parents had, plus the task of helping to take care of those same parents during their decline."

At the Washington Post I reviewed Robert Hilburn’s new Randy Newman bio A Few Words in Defense of Our Country. Have a taste:

“More than any other songwriter this side of Leonard Cohen, Newman grasped and anticipated the slide into Reagan-driven consumerism — the endless graft and pointless excess, the 10-car garages and $10 trillion deficits — and decided that not agreeing with it was no excuse for not enjoying it.”

At the Southwest Review I wrote about Dylan, Tex-Mex, Los Lobos, The Plugz, Sam Peckinpah and the long and lonesome shared burden of the immigrant. An excerpt:

“It’s Easter. We don’t know how or why he crossed the border. On foot? In a bus? To see his “best friend” who is also his “doctor”? We’re not totally clear on these details, because, well, he isn’t clear on them himself. If he called you, to inform you of his situation, ten pesos on a pay phone, you might feel concerned, but you wouldn’t be able to fully understand the scenario. You might say, “Is there a chance of trouble?” And he would say, “Down here? There’s every chance of trouble.” And you would know then that the trouble had already begun.”

Check that out here, at this link.

But also there’s a new wrinkle in the ever-evolving history of Please Take My Advice. Introducing my new counting feature, “And I Love It.” Some critics have already called it “derivative” and the “Real World Top 5.” So harsh. Fuck them! Check this out — you’re going to love it. Step in.

And I Love It: Tonight’s Paranoid Style Top 5 — A New Feature

It’s been a long time since I ranked and rolled. Ranking stuff is pretty rough trade. My husband and I used to rank records by career artists for Stereogum and while that yielded some pieces I’m still proud of like this one on the Kinks and this one on Van Morrison and this one on Stevie Wonder and this one on Richard Thompson and this one on Merle Haggard, the outcome was always suboptimal. We’d work really hard on the narrative lede part where we discussed the reasons that the artist in question was fascinating, exhilarating, troubling and unforgettable. That was the part we cared about. And then we would try and quasi-comprehensively describe the albums in question — good, smart write-ups, roughly emulating Trouser Press style. And then, exhaustingly and largely-arbitrarily, we would rank them, per the editorial hook. And, inevitably, all anyone in the comment sections would care about is the fucking rankings. I would get, for days, emails asking how Hard Nose the Highway wasn’t in the top twelve, or at least ranked higher than Beautiful Vision. Pour Down Like Silver number one? You could go insane around this stuff, if you let it and I nearly did. So, you can see what I mean when I say I don’t tread lightly into the ranking game. This is a tentative toe in the water. 

1) Linda Ronstadt, the 1972 album by Linda Ronstadt

In so many ways the lodestar that launched LA’s Croesus-worthy ‘70s music gold rush, Linda Ronstadt’s reputation has been a work in progress for decades. Moving with seemingly irreverent ease between the rock, country and pop charts during her long run as a hitmaker, she was derided by principally male critics who suggested her flexibility in approach was somehow a negative reflection on her authenticity as an artist. Time has been extraordinarily kind to her work, with the genre-hopping she was once criticized for now seeming visionary in an era when hard genre distinctions feel more arbitrary and insensible than ever. This is a landmark album by a transformational interpreter of American song and I love it. 

2) The Concert For Bangladesh, the 1972 concert album by George Harrison 

George Harrison’s 1971 benefit concert for war-torn Bangladesh was star-crossed in a very real sense. While he succeeded in gathering a formidable cast of industry titans for the two-show, one-day Madison Square Garden extravaganza — including Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton and Leon Russell — the ensuing miasma of competing record contracts and other industry tangles delayed the planned soundtrack and movie of the event, and revealed the profound limitations of largesse in the music business when there is a dollar to be made. By 1972 when the film and soundtrack album was finally released, revenues from the concert were withheld in escrow and heavily levied by the IRS, resulting in a years-long delay before any money would reach those it was intended to help. It remains an extraordinary musical time capsule which serves as a weigh station between ‘60s utopianism and the emerging vogue for performative do-gooder colonialism. It don’t come easy and I love it.

3) The Blue Mask, the 1982 album by Lou Reed

In 1982 Lou Reed was recently sober, domestically settled for the first time and eager to make sense of what had just happened to him for the previous twenty years. With its loping paces, near-spoken vocal style and forensically personal observations, The Blue Mask sounds remarkably contemporary alongside the glacial confessions of Lana Del Ray and the relatable protest of Jason Isbell. Met with disinterest upon its release, its reputation has grown to the point where it is regarded amongst his finest literary achievements. Made me reread Humboldt’s Gift about Delmore Schwartz. And I love it. 

4) Slapshot, the 1977 film directed by George Roy Hill

In a crowded field of contenders, this insanely funny and profoundly disturbing George Roy Hill and Paul Newman vehicle possesses a legitimate claim as the weirdest sports movie ever made. Set in the sobering ranks of the minor league hockey circuit, the woebegone Charlestown Chiefs attempt to increase their fortunes financially by upping the ante on violence, hiring a cabal of terrifying goons to render carnage upon their opponents. The resulting sensation reveals the barely sublimated bloodlust looming in the heart of an increasingly fraught and frustrated America. ‘70s cinema meets the looming specter of ‘80s ultraviolence. And I love it. 

5) Band People, the 2024 book written by Franz Nicolay 

This very fine new book from the journalist and Hold Steady keyboard player is a wonderfully researched and reported account of the lives of side people in touring bands and the many ways in which that romantic-sounding job is not always the glamorous life it appears. Nicolay is a wry and efficient prose writer, and his impressive list of sources include favorites of mine like Janet Weiss, Scott McCaughey and Jean Cook. If you don’t get the part about middle class musicians being bankrupted by the streaming services at this juncture, then to paraphrase Carmela Soprano in therapy: “The one thing you can never say is that you haven't been told.” And I love it.