Sure, the holidays are about peace, love, and understanding. What's so funny about that? But let's face it: They're also about wish fulfillment, fantasy, magic .
.. and presents!
With that extraordinarily self-serving purpose in mind - and wishes of seeing some of these actually come true - we asked some of our favorite musicians for a rock 'n' roll holiday fantasy. Then (because why should they have all the fun?) we added some of our own.
Enjoy...
JIM JAMES, My Morning Jacket: I'd like to find an old Victorian mansion that has not been remodeled and has only working gas lights and coal heating, tall ceilings and old wooden walls. I'd be rooting through the pantry looking for a match when I'd hear those members of The Band come back from the beyond the great divide to reunite with their mates ..
. and they'd team up with George Harrison to write some songs for Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye to duet on - they would all be practicing in the living room. I'd lay down next to the fireplace, with my head on the old wooden wall and learn a lesson or two.
COLIN MELOY, The Decemberists: I have three dreams: One, that I travel to whatever Hebridean hinterland currently housing the incomparable Anne Briggs and convince her to record a new record, with myself (and perhaps some friends) aiding in production and arrangement. I'd also like to collaborate on the drinking of a long, oaky bottle of old vin zin with Mike Scott in selfsame Hebridean hinterland, perhaps with a few guitars hanging close at hand. The third dream is that I manage to convince the three warring factions that once was Husker Du to drop their grievances and get back together for a triumphant reunion tour.
I'll drive the van. Yay!
EMILY HAINES, The Soft Skeleton/Metric: Here's what I'd like to hear: A recording of The Leader of the Pack by The Shangri-Las, produced by Jim O'Rourke and featuring Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young, both on guitars and vocals, singing the verses in unison and harmonizing throughout with Chan Marshall, Thorunn Antonia (from Fields) and .
.. Me!
Chan can play the piano chords off the top but I wanna be the one who gets to go, Look out! Maureen Tucker will be on drums, Brendan Canning from Broken Social Scene will be on bass. Howling Pele from The Hives Jarvis Cocker will be in the control room directing our vocal performances on the talkback mic.
Once we have the basic track down Pele Jarvis will go outside to record the motorcycle sound effects in the back alley with an emotional Bob Dylan consulting for authenticity. Jim will send the engineer out to get everybody sparkling water and record the motorcycle overdubs himself. Brantley Gutierrez Wendy Lynch will photograph the session for a spread in Under the Radar, a magazine whose circulation surpasses that of all other music glossies.
The recording will take place at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, and when we're all finished we'll hop on the tram and ride home together through the orange grove.
FRANK BLACK, Pixies: Scenario - present day. Gathered in a Paris recording studio after some weeks of rehearsing are Iggy Pop with all the original Doors, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, to create a record, it doesn't even have to be called the Doors, but in the spirit of the Doors.
In the producer's chair is Ian Astbury, and the executive producer of the project is there, too ...
ME! I can settle disputes, make Salade Lyonnaise, run for wine, etc. Opening warm-up number .
.. a rave-up version of Why Don't We Do It In The Road?
End scene...
CRAIG FINN, The Hold Steady: It is 1984, and I am 13 years old and waiting for the bus in south Minneapolis. I hear music and follow it to an unmarked building. An aspiring guitar player with little connection to actual musicians, I gather the courage to push through the door and find my favorite band, The Replacements, recording their greatest record, Let it Be.
They are not as drunk as they will be later, and are recording the album's first track, I Will Dare. Peter Buck from REM is doing the mandolin solo, and they let me shake a tambourine a little bit. Fast forward to 2007, and I can hear myself every time I listen to my favorite song of all time.
MARIA SCHNEIDER: I think my wish would be to see either New York City Ballet or the American Ballet dance to my music!
MARCO BENEVENTO, The Benevento Russo Duo: Dear Santa, I know I've been very very naughty this year but maybe, if you find it in your heart you can grant me this one wish. You know what I would like to see?
I would like to see them play all improvised music ...
at the Fillmore ...
2 nights in a row. (Except of course Larry Young and Tony Williams, who have both already passed away.) And if they were all into it, I'd REALLY like to join them.
BOB WEIR, RatDog/The Grateful Dead: I'd like my band RatDog to record with the Kronos Quartet. We'd spend a couple of days in rehearsal to kick ideas around, and then a couple of days recording in the Fillmore, all of both bands on stage, although from time to time breaking it down into different configurations. No tunes in mind - maybe an old chestnut or two, a new tune or two, whatever they'd want to bring to the party, and then the 1-2-3-Go approach.
Find a pulse, and then people start playing, and see if that suggests a key or a mode, and if that suggests a harmonic development of some sort. Secondly, our sound mixer Mike McGinn wants us to bring in Dolly Parton, specifically to sing Ripple, which seems to me to be an inspired notion.
Now for our own holiday music wishes.
Let us clarify what we mean by wishes : Founded in 1846, The Associated Press is the backbone of the world's information system. It is the largest news organization in the world, serving as a source of text, photos, graphics, audio and video for more than one billion people a day. If these musicians do not do as we say we will first weep, then crush them like bugs.
Happy Holidays!
MEDESKI MARTIN AND WOOD W/ MOS DEF: Call us crazy, but MMW may be one of the great untapped resources in hip-hop. They develop ideas coolly and carefully, have an incredible sense of space, and when they improvise - with Medeski's keys skipping and dancing flirtatiously through Martin's drums and Wood's elastic low-end - they do so together, pushing and teasing each other's solos rather than merely framing them.
In short, they pump out more pressure-cooker grooves by mistake than most overpaid beat-makers do in a lifetime. Mighty Mos, always two feet in the pocket, has just the jazzy, seductive delivery to embroider their streamlined funk. He's also open-eared and creative enough to activate those grooves instead of just surfing them.
For seasoning, add saxophone great Maceo Parker and Marc Ribot, both longtime MMW collaborators. Title the album Sample This (Add Expletive Here). Serve hot.
Enjoy.
BOB DYLAN AND THE WHITE STRIPES: In March 2004, Jack White joined Bob Dylan onstage for his second encore in Detroit. Surprisingly, they played Ball and Biscuit - a White Stripes tune, but one that sounds so much like something out of Dylan's post-apocalyptic trilogy ( Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, Modern Times ) that's almost beside the point.
Dylan didn't just sing the song straighter and stronger than he sings most tunes live, he actually sounded like he was having fun, if you can believe that. A year later, White told Rolling Stone he considered Dylan one of his three fathers. Here's our dream: Bob stands hunched over his keys like a drunk over a urinal, casting his laryngeal wheeze through Jack's guitar squeal and Meg's ramshackle drums.
The album is a survey of dustbowl Americana: They cover everything from slow-burn blues hollers to pornographic ditties, and even play a few ballads. After all, we've always thought Jack has a Blood on the Tracks in him. They make mincemeat of Outlaw Blues and Lovesick is a show-stopper.
Shows open with Little Bird. I got a little biiiiiiird, Dylan sneers. I'm gonna take her home, and put her in a cage and disconnect the phone.
Cue White's slide guitar tantrum. Jack White, meet Jack Frost.
RYAN ADAMS AND NORAH JONES: Associates from the New York music scene, each is steeped in classic country music and frequently lets it show.
For starters, Adams produced Willie Nelson's latest, Songbird, with his Cardinals band, while Jones fronts a Nelson-inspired side-project called The Little Willies, which recently opened for Adams. They've also each recorded a Hank Williams' tune - Adams' took on Love Sick Blues while Jones broke into I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive. Their own songwriting often traffics in love and reverberating heartbreak, souls and skeletons laid bare for examination.
Given the country tones of last year's Willies debut and Adams' Jacksonville City Nights, we think a collaborative album recasting the Louvin brothers and June Carter and Johnny Cash material is just what the love-worn ordered.
TOM WAITS AND THE BLACK KEYS: To begin with, there's a biological connection here. Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney is the nephew of longtime Waits sideman Ralph Carney - a rock-steady sax player whose deep bag of obscure instruments and bizarre sounds has made him a fixture in Tom's twisted journey through the sewers of American culture.
To be honest, his nephew's band could use a bit of his weirdness to flesh out its sound: They don't really write songs as much as decorate thick guitar riffs with words and scuzz. It's fun, but it can get tedious. No need to worry!
As it happens, uncle Ralph's pal tells a good story, he's spent more than 30 years defiling all manner of vintage Americana, and his scrap-heap growl suits their sound perfectly. Maybe the four of them could round up fellow Waits-stooge Les Claypool and break some stuff together - or at least stomp around a little in that space where music and medicine meet. Think I Cry Alone meets Make it Rain.
Feel the filth.
THE BENEVENTO RUSSO DUO AND EMILY HAINES: Sure, they cop improvisations from Brad Meldhau and Matt Chamberlain as fluently as they quote Radiohead and Broken Social Scene. But somewhere along the line, post-jammers The Benevento Russo Duo - organ-and drums set-up be damned - became, unmistakably, a rock act.
Whether they're drowning their hooks in shimmering distortion or just breaking them to pieces, their music is about churning simple melodic ideas into category-five sonic squalls. Emily Haines' breathy vocals sound as gorgeous wrapped in white noise as her words and images do. This is a killer noise-pop outfit waiting to happen.
Lay a few guitars over Benevento's wacked-out soundsculpting (Stephen Malkmus, Thurston Moore), and this could sound, well, rather ripped - a modern revival of Loveless with Haines at the helm. We're ..
. dreaming of a ..
. white ..
. noise ..
. Christmas!
JEFF TWEEDY AND BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Unabashed folk fans, they've each paid homage to the movement's forefathers.
Tweedy's Wilco joined forces with British punk-folk artist Billy Bragg to record unreleased Woody Guthrie material for what became the two Mermaid Avenue albums. Meanwhile Springsteen released The Seeger Sessions last year, a ramshackle acoustic collection of Pete Seeger compositions. Going back, Seeger and Guthrie first came together in The Almanac Singers in 1940 and toured the country for several years, giving voice to various labor movements.
Given that Springsteen and Tweedy have both toured solo and feel comfortable armed only with an acoustic guitar and harmonica, we'd like to see them team up for their own version of The Almanac Singers, which would have them calling upon folk's deep catalog to create that old-time camaraderie with a dash of well-placed chest-pounding. Perhaps Gillian Welch could jump on board too, playing Baez to these two Dylan disciples. If only.
PHISH AND MARIA SCHNEIDER: A year ago, Trey Anastasio gave us a little lecture on favorite composer Maurice Ravel: It was a breakthrough, that impressionist movement, he said. Basically, he took baroque form and added this new harmonic concept - it was different, but so light and elegant in a butterfly wings kind of way. There's this lilting, yearning quality that's expressed in the actual language of the music.
Sadly, though, it's gone. Reflecting on this assessment, he then suddenly brightened up. Well, not totally gone.
...
I know of one musician who's doing it, and that's Maria Schneider. Anastasio's comments weren't just a laudatory gesture to a kindred spirit. They were also a nostalgic ode to a decade in which the music he was writing was characterized by the same obsession with flight.
Early Phish tunes like Divided Sky and Slave to the Traffic Light were about a kind of explosive levity - one which bound their intricate passages together, poured out through improvisations, and, generally, welded rock ideas of dance and fun to what was essentially classically orchestrated music. But that was then. Anastasio's solo albums - well meaning, but ultimately reactionary - have submerged his gifts as a composer and a guitarist beneath a confused attempt to write the same rock 'n' roll as everyone else.
Not so in our fantasy. Here, Anastasio and Schneider collaborate on compositions, while a reunited Phish acts as ensemble. Brian Eno produces.
The music is distributed solely through Schneider's ArtistShare website, which allows fans to fund their favorite artist's projects in exchange for mediated participation in the creative process. Can a band achieve grassroots success twice? Maybe, if it can get back in touch with itself.
CSNY AND PINK: We know it's shocking, but trust us - it'd be brilliant. While moving into their twilight years, CSNY are hardly a nostalgia act when they get together. Last year's Freedom of Speech tour featured much of Neil Young's recent anti-Bush Living with War material alongside political classics like Long Time Gone and Ohio.
Pink, while initially pegged as another run-of-the-mill pop star, has proven herself anything but. Pop's anti-diva delivered her fourth album last year, which included the song Dear Mr. President with the Indigo Girls.
It's potent, particularly given that her brother is in the Air Force, and one the most acute Bush attacks from a Top 40 artist. If there is any woman who could belt out vigilant rockers like Ohio and the next minute harmonize sweetly on Teach Your Children, it's Pink (sorry Joni). We'll keep our fingers crossed for a 2008 election tour.
BJORK/RADIOHEAD/STEVE REICH: Yes, this is an obvious one. In 2001, Thom Yorke and Bjork recorded a duet called I've Seen It All for Selmasongs, the soundtrack album to Lars Von Trier's award-winning film Dancer in The Dark. The track, a kind of haunting show tune, was nominated for an Academy Award, and the two were supposed to have performed it together at the 2001 Oscars backed by a 55-piece orchestra (Bjork performed solo).
More recently, Yorke called Unravel his favorite song of all time and speculated that Radiohead might cover it. It also seems pretty likely that Homogenic was a significant influence on Kid A. It makes sense that the king and queen of humanoid rock should record something: Both have been at the forefront of electronic music's surge into the rock aesthetic.
Both make love songs sound apocalyptic and funeral dirges sound like lullabies. No other musicians have addressed the tension between touch and technology as dramatically. There's an android sterility which stalks their entreaties for love, but ultimately their music, however coldly rendered, is almost always about human connection - a classical form echoing within a universe of computerized postmodernity.
Imagine: Ethereal falsettos float and tangle overhead, while bustling electronics and Greenwood-conceieved strings jostle below. Think There There meets Human Behavior. Think How to Disappear Completely meets Unravel.
Now involve Steve Reich in the process, conceptually. Don't look at us like that. Radiohead is no stranger to the electronic avant-garde, especially its minimalists.
The band lifted a sample from computer-music composer Paul Lansky's Mild Un Lese (which itself samples Wagner's Tristan Und Isolde ) for Ideoteque. While we're on the subject, a few more York-related requests. First, we'd like to see him collaborate with Swedish synth-pop horrorshow The Knife.
Second, we'd like to see him produce a hip-hop record with Nigel Godrich (possibly with The Roots, who copped a Radiohead sample for Game Theory ). This is all.
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