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 THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. Soundtrack. Integrity Music/Sony. In terms of classical music, it’s going to be pretty difficult for anybody to top this record in 2004. Like its namesake, the "The Passion Of The Christ" soundtrack is a remarkable record that has literally taken the nation by storm. As of March 3, the record was number one on both the Billboard and Contemporary Christian charts, while holding the number two position on the Internet chart. An auspicious beginning to say the least.
Passion, composed by John Debney, is a record that was presented with the task of measuring up to Mel Gibson’s magnificent film; in short, the music had to take the images on the screen and give them the real meat of voice. Many critics have said that "The Passion Of Christ" takes the suffering which Christ endured on the threshold of death and personalized it -- making it human ...almost comprehensible. When Jesus is nailed to the cross, Gibson wants us to feel every invisible morsel of pain and swim in his agony, stanching the blood of Christ with the arrows of our eyes, making his holy version of misery our very own.
And the film succeeds on this level, in part, because of Debney’s creation: "This score with its mix of ethnic authenticity and symphonic sweetness propels the brutal image[s] to a higher, almost lyrical plane," says Gibson, who also did some vocal chants on the record.
The lines of these compositions (from "Flagellation" to "Crucifixion" to "Jesus is Carried Down") simply soar -- this is music meant to pull your heart out of the cocoon of its chest and pull your ass out of its chair, sharpening the hollow edges of the conscience, reintroducing you to private ideals of beauty and faith and compassion. Rest assured, there’s blood staining this music: It drips from the half whispered eye of every echo and dances down the mirrored fingertips of the skin, these crimson pearl drops through the torn and transparent wounds of Christ’s palms.
In the end, music is a sensory experience that overwhelms the doors of the mind as it opens up the hearts of human animals to deep mysteries of memory and identity. And at its best moments, music will move the soul to tears. The Passion of The Christ is just such a score. ~John Aiello
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BEAT AVENUE. Eric Andersen. Appleseed Records. Eric Andersen was part of the emergence of the “singer-songwriter” in the 1960s and, along with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, John Stewart and Ramblin Jack Elliot, Andersen’s work has not only withstood the test of time but has grown more alluring.
Andersen’s music --like that of the aforementioned writers-- is deeply poetic, rooted in folk, blues and mid-sixties rock and roll. With Beat Avenue, Andersen presents his strongest record in years, expanding on the themes he first began chronicling over 40 years ago. Beat features an all-star band, including Eric Bazilian on guitar, Shawn Pelton on drums and Garth Hudson (formerly of The Band) on sax, accordion and keyboards. Beat is rich with many wonderful songs (especially the searching “Song For You and Me” which comes on like a storm, its sorrow born in the hollow ache of changing love). Also notable are “Rains Are Gonna Come,” “Salt On Your Skin” and “Under The Shadows” (as each of these 14 pieces build into each other like the separate scenes of a movie, building and growing, until we have drawn a full picture of this song-poet on his journey through our times).
Still, the best cut on the record remains the title track -- a 26 minute epic that recounts the events of November 22, 1963: the day President John Kennedy was gunned down. Andersen, only 20 years old at the time, was holed up in Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s house in San Francisco, socializing with Allen Ginsberg , Michael McClure and David Meltzer following a Ginsberg reading earlier that evening. “Beat Avenue,” which took Andersen 15 years to write, is a testament to how deeply Kennedy’s death affected a generation: In the hollow orange flicker of a bullet hope dissolved into despair and the path of a nation was permanently changed. And “Beat Avenue” captures it all -- holding the listener spellbound for nearly half an hour as we go back in time to re-examine ourselves and the state of our own lives.
Eric Andersen is a magnificent songwriter whose work defies all labels and categories. Moreover, Beat Avenue shows that Andersen is a survivor: a man who has withstood the impact of social and artistic change and emerged even more inspired. In the end, this record should serve as a model for all other singer-songwriters trying to “break in.”
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AN INTERVIEW WITH ERIC ANDERSEN
Tell me about the beginning of your career: Was it the Beat writers like Kerouac and Ginsberg who inspired your work the most?
Yeah, to a degree I’d say that. During my younger years I read a lot of Russian literature, and also the French Symbolists like Baudlaire and Rimbaud. You might say I had a Russian soul and a French Symbolist mind. (laughing) The friends I was hanging out with in high school were reading the same kinds of books as I was. We loved both music and writing. We were reading Allen Ginsberg’s poetry and singing Weavers’ songs. But I was actually "discovered" by Tom Paxton, and through him I learned about music and met a lot of people in the music business. That was in late 1963, early ‘64...
In my mind, your writing and the way you structure a song resembles some of the early stuff Bob Dylan was doing. How much of an influence was Dylan on you as a young musician?
Wow ..... that’s a great compliment...... (Pauses) I think he [Dylan] was the first one on the scene in terms of writing songs in a certain kind of poetic way. But my biggest influence in terms of the craft of writing a song was Tom Paxton. Dylan opened things up in terms of theme and poetics but Paxton opened things up in terms of craft. I heard more of Tom’s stuff early on than I did of anybody else’s music.
How often do you see Dylan now?
I see him whenever he’s in Norway. I usually see him whenever he’s here -- he loves to talk shop. He loves to talk songwriting and music. Actually, we’ve been talking about working together on a few things, including the record I’m currently in the studio recording [tentatively titled "The Street Was Always There" -- due for a late summer release].
I know you did a lot of work with Rick Danko (formerly of The Band). How did his death impact you?
Well, I wrote a long open letter to him after his death called "Good-Bye Rick." [SEE: http://www.ericandersen.com/Letter]. Actually that letter is worth more than a thousand pictures. It explains how I feel. But when Rick died -- that was a terribly rough and painful time. Losing Rick ...was very sad. Like losing Caruso. The world will never hear a voice like that again, now it’s only preserved on the records. It will never be replaced. It’s a great loss and I miss him terribly. But that’s all part of this life: we come and then we depart. It’s all on borrowed time.
On this same note, many of the writers with whom you had relationships -- I’m talking about people like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs -- have died recently. Can you describe what that’s been like for you: How have those losses affected your writing and the themes you’re delving into as an artist?
What a question.....It may sound strange, but I don’t think about things that way. In my consciousness, when you’re close to somebody and you lose them, it’s like somebody shot you through the crosshairs of your heart. I mean -- you thought you knew their souls, and then they’re just gone. It’s a terrible thing. Like a chunk of you peels off. Like losing a hand or arm. But some of those people are still standing: John Sebastian. Bob Dylan. Tom Paxton. But in the end, we have the sound of their voices [referring now to Danko and Ginsberg]. That was their ‘instrument’ and they wanted us to know them on that level. It was about getting their music and message out.
The song "Beat Avenue" from the last record is magnificent. Can you describe the circumstances behind how you wrote that piece?
Well, it’s important to remember that when [those events] happened I wasn’t actually writing anything, I was experiencing it. Durng the night that would become the antecedent for "Beat Avenue" I wasn’t reading or writing a poem. I was just experiencing the things that were happening. In "Beat Avenue" I am recapturing the night when Kennedy was killed. I started the piece in ‘85 or ‘86 as one of the cinematic narratives that I like to do. Also I had been reading James Joyce and exploring the idea of how a whole book could take place in one day. Joyce made me want to look at that concept more closely, and "Beat Avenue" grew from that. And after I finished the song I had to look for a place to put it. It’s a hard song because of its length [close to 30 minutes]. I see "Beat Avenue" not as a jewel, but rather as a whole necklace, a real jewelry ensemble.
How was it received by the poets you were with that night?
Great! Ferlinghetti really liked it, and I think I was able to capture a lot of what was going on at that moment with us.
What’s next for you now? Where do you see your music going from here?
We’re currently at work recording a new album. ["The Street Was Always There"]. It’s being produced by Robert Aaron and we’ve already cut 19 songs. The record is comprised of covers and two originals. I’m singing the songs of people I knew on the street -- Phil Ochs, Dylan, Paxton, Fred Neil, Peter La Farge. I really think La Farge was the unrecognized genius of the group, and in many ways, he could have been the best. (pauses) This was ground zero. The birth of the singer-songwriter. The record’s not about going down memory road or making a museum piece, but about radiating the vitality of the writers. It’s very fresh and powerful. And I think it will have a lot of meaning for a lot of people, because it’s not a tribute album, but music with a very personal approach.
This sounds wonderful - turning the mirror back in time to reflect how music got "here" ...
Yes, The record is eerie -- like there’s an echo in the room (laughing). The songs resonate with what’s going on -- both "yesterday" and today. Looking back, it’s unbelievable to see how rich some of this stuff was. Personally, I never thought I could sing a Phil Och’s song or a Dylan song or a David Blue piece. There’s some amazing pieces of work on this record, and it’s a fascinating situation for a singer to go into -- going into the soul of a song and trying to express it. Dylan was the hardest to do. SO many words! So much language. And so much attitude -- twisting and turning. But then there was Fred Neil: in Fred’s work a word is like a thousand pictures. But in the end, it’s about the writers and how redolent these songs are. A lot of feeling comes out of this record, and in the course of that, it sounds like something completely new.
~John Aiello
STANDING AT THE EDGE. Casey Stratton. Odyssey. Standing At The Edge marks Casey’s Stratton’s debut on Odyssey, marking the emergence of a major new singer-songwriter. Stratton, who is only 25 years old, plays piano and writes the songs he performs. Many will immediately notice a connection between this work and the young Elton John, but multiple listenings go a step further, proving that this is an artist with personal motivations and a unique vision: "Writing songs is, for me, like keeping a journal - it charts my progress as a human being,’’ Stratton has remarked. "I tend to talk about my life not by age or by years, but by the songs I’ve written. I write very quickly, usually in a day, starting with the melody - the music always comes first. But once I get the basic idea down, I become a professional musician, shaping the melody, building the song, figuring out what the lyric should be."
What’s most impressive about Standing At The Edge is the diversity of the music and songs -- this record isn’t about rewriting the same riff over and again (as many young players get caught up doing), but instead about breaking new ground, inspecting the deep scars of the psyche and then trying to make some sense about what is seen there: "It took me a long time to be comfortable in my own skin when I sang my own songs," notes Stratton. "When I first started playing them live, my feet would shake on the pedals of the piano. I felt so transparent, like everyone knew what I was thinking and feeling. The courage to take the plunge came from my influences - Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Joni Mitchell. I thought, ‘Well, they’re doing it.’ And the more I did it -- the more I forced myself to explore my own songs before an audience -- the more empowering it became." Standing At The Edge, produced by Patrick Leonard (Madonna, Elton John) has many rich moments on it -- the pieces melodic and driving and piercing, owing as much to Stratton’s classical influences as they do to soft rock. Several cuts standout, but none more so than "Bloom" -- a throbbing and deeply haunting song, so sensual in its sadness, unraveling in spools before us like the new shape of a hymn. Ultimately, "Bloom" affirms that Stratton is a writer with a lot to say and his own way of saying it. Based on what I’ve heard here, I think we’re going to be listening to this guy for years to come.
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WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? Van Morrison. Blue Note Records. Van Morrison’s prowess as a musician is simply legendary . After more than 40 years at the helm, he needs to make no more statements about himself or his career -- his place in history is absolutely secure. But then again -- Van Morrison hasn’t ever made such statements. And that’s what I’ve always admired about him. For Morrison, it’s about the sweet poetry of mind building into brilliant individuality. In the end, Morrison doesn’t make records for corporations or for his fans: he makes them for himself and to feed his own deep musical vision - and all the rest be damned. In the end, Morrison isn’t about money or rock and roll fame. He’s about speaking to the soul through the holy gift of music (as he so beautifully tells us in"Get On With The Show").
And get on he does! What’s best about This Picture is its vastness -- with these 11 originals, Morrison covers the four corners of his songbook, touching on all his signature styles. Veteran vans will smother the dulcet tones of "Blue Moon" and two-step to its sensual rhythms; however, there’s so much more here. Absolutely great Blues licks (odes to the spirits of John Lee Hooker, as well as Terry & McGhee). And wonderful interplay between instruments-- sweet and graceful saxophone lines interwoven with guitar and drums create the ultimate jazz/blues/rock fusion.
This Picture marks Morrison at his most varied and profound -- voice into the beaded shape of a knife cuts skin from bone and leaves the heart exposed, rising above these hollow walls of mist. Taste the anthem "Little Village," sinking far into the misty mouths of the music ("There’s only/Two kinds/Of truth baby/Let’s get it/Straight from/The start/It’s what/You believe/And what/You hear/From your heart." As the sax fills the borders and bellies of the room, rising and throbbing beyond human breath, we suddenly understand just what Morrison means.
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