Larry Knechtel is dead. The name won’t mean anything to most people, but everyone has heard him play.
Knechtel was a leading Los Angeles session musician – one of the hired guns who are called in to play, usually anonymously, on other people’s records. He died on August 20 aged 69, apparently of a heart attack.
Even among his exalted peers, Knechtel stood apart by virtue of his versatility. That’s him playing piano on Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Trouble Water. That’s him playing bass guitar on the Byrds’ Mr Tambourine Man. And that’s him playing the distinctive wah-wah lead guitar break on Bread’s 1972 hit The Guitar Man. He also played on albums by Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Ray Charles, the Doors (for whom he played bass, since they had no bass player of their own) and more recently the Dixie Chicks.
Knechtel played the harmonica too. He was a member of an elite, “first call” group of LA studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, which included Glen Campbell (a sought-after session guitarist long before he attained fame as a singer), guitarists James Burton and Tommy Tedesco, sax player Jim Horn, drummer Hal Blaine, bassist Carol Kaye (yes, that’s Carol as in woman) and keyboard players Leon Russell and Mac Rebennack (aka Dr John).
In various permutations, the Wrecking Crew provided some or all of the backing on hit songs by the Beach Boys, the Monkees, the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas and the Carpenters, among many others. Producers didn’t have enough confidence in the musicianship of bands like the Beach Boys, the Monkees or the Byrds to let them play on their early records. The only member of the Byrds to play on Mr Tambourine Man was Jim McGuinn, who contributed the trademark 12-string guitar sound; otherwise they were all session musicians – notably Knechtel, Blaine and Russell.
Those classic Beach Boys hits California Girls and Good Vibrations? All session musicians. Ditto the Monkees’ early hits, though some of the band members – notably Mike Nesmith – acquired enough skill to play on their later records.
It’s only in recent years that session players have begun to emerge from the shadows and enjoy some of the credit for the huge contribution they made to pop and rock music.
The work of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, aka the Swampers, is now well recognised, as is that of Booker T and the MGs.
The Swampers backed Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and others on a slew of 1960s soul hits recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and later turned up on records by the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Joe Cocker, Tony Joe White and Bob Seger. Booker T and the MGs were the house band at Memphis-based Stax Records, where they backed Otis Redding.
Another illustrious collection of session musicians, known as the Funk Brothers, was celebrated in the excellent 2002 documentary Standing In the Shadows of Motown. These engaging virtuosos laid down the backing tracks on Tamla Motown’s hits during the Detroit label’s golden era. (Tragically the most brilliant of them all, troubled bass player James Jamerson, died in 1983 after an ill-fated move to LA.)
Country music had its own roster of A-list studio musicians, among them guitarist Grady Martin (that’s him on Marty Robbins’ El Paso and Roy Orbison’s Oh, Pretty Woman) and pianist Floyd Cramer. A later generation of great Nashville session musicians emerged from Emmylou Harris’s original backing group, the Hot Band.
For anyone wanting to develop an appreciation of American session musicians, the albums of Steely Dan are a good place to start. Steely Dan consisted of just two idiosyncratic perfectionists, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who surrounded themselves with a constantly changing roster of support players recruited from the most inventive studio musicians available. Fagen and Becker encouraged them to cut loose and the result was a series of dazzling records that showcased the session men’s extraordinary virtuosity and still sound fresh 30 years later.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
They don't get a second crack at it
What a fantastic breakthrough it would be for humanity if grown-ups learned to sort out their differences without making children suffer.
Today’s Dominion Post contains a heart-wrenching picture by veteran photographer Phil Reid of two small children at the centre of a domestic crisis that triggered a police callout in the Wellington suburb of Newlands.
The kids are being gently shepherded toward a police car. The accompanying story says a man, presumably their father, was to be charged with several offences including assaulting a female and threatening to kill. Radio New Zealand had earlier reported that he threatened to set the house on fire while he and the children were inside.
There is something terribly poignant about the photo. The kids are nicely dressed and look well cared for. One is wearing yellow gumboots. They look tiny and acutely vulnerable.
It’s apparent that someone has tried to give these two children a secure and loving home. But something awful has happened to disrupt their lives. They would have been bewildered and frightened, the more so because this crisis presumably involved the two people closest to them.
No child deserves the trauma and terror visited on them by fighting parents. Even in the worst circumstances, adults retain some control over their lives; some power to influence events. Children have none. They are at the mercy of grown-ups on whom they rely for love, affection and security.
The scene pictured in the Dom Post today is played out, to varying degrees, every day. The emotional toll on the children who are the victims of these parental disputes is incalculable. Who knows what long-term scars are created?
We owe it to children to let them enjoy their childhood without having to bear the heavy burden of their parents’ marital problems. They don’t get a second crack at it.
Today’s Dominion Post contains a heart-wrenching picture by veteran photographer Phil Reid of two small children at the centre of a domestic crisis that triggered a police callout in the Wellington suburb of Newlands.
The kids are being gently shepherded toward a police car. The accompanying story says a man, presumably their father, was to be charged with several offences including assaulting a female and threatening to kill. Radio New Zealand had earlier reported that he threatened to set the house on fire while he and the children were inside.
There is something terribly poignant about the photo. The kids are nicely dressed and look well cared for. One is wearing yellow gumboots. They look tiny and acutely vulnerable.
It’s apparent that someone has tried to give these two children a secure and loving home. But something awful has happened to disrupt their lives. They would have been bewildered and frightened, the more so because this crisis presumably involved the two people closest to them.
No child deserves the trauma and terror visited on them by fighting parents. Even in the worst circumstances, adults retain some control over their lives; some power to influence events. Children have none. They are at the mercy of grown-ups on whom they rely for love, affection and security.
The scene pictured in the Dom Post today is played out, to varying degrees, every day. The emotional toll on the children who are the victims of these parental disputes is incalculable. Who knows what long-term scars are created?
We owe it to children to let them enjoy their childhood without having to bear the heavy burden of their parents’ marital problems. They don’t get a second crack at it.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Key the risk-taker
As a high-stakes international currency trader, John Key must have had nerves of steel. This quality may be hard to reconcile with his amiable, bloke-next-door image, but it’s undoubtedly there.
We are seeing this side of Key – the big risk-taker who backs his own judgment – in the way he has responded to the smacking referendum.
Key is resolute that Parliament won’t revisit the issue, even in the face of a vote that shows overwhelming support for a law change.
He clearly trusts his own instincts, as he must have learned to do in his days with Merrill Lynch. More timid politicians, unnerved by the display of public wrath, would have capitulated. But Key, clearly, has made the call that it’s a temporary irritation rather than a crisis. He will have assessed the risks, much as he did with currency movements during his trading days, and will be counting on his personal popularity to carry him through unscathed.
He has shown a similar proclivity for politically risky behaviour before – for example, when he ruled out a coalition deal with Winston Peters, and when he courted unpopularity by breaking the 2007 impasse over the Bradford Bill in the first place, a move that many found inexplicable.
You can see why he used to be known on the trading floor as the Smiling Assassin. The term implies callousness and ruthless ambition, but in Key’s case it may simply signify that he’s able to maintain that sunny demeanour even when he’s taking a punt that would turn lesser men’s bowels to liquid.
We are seeing this side of Key – the big risk-taker who backs his own judgment – in the way he has responded to the smacking referendum.
Key is resolute that Parliament won’t revisit the issue, even in the face of a vote that shows overwhelming support for a law change.
He clearly trusts his own instincts, as he must have learned to do in his days with Merrill Lynch. More timid politicians, unnerved by the display of public wrath, would have capitulated. But Key, clearly, has made the call that it’s a temporary irritation rather than a crisis. He will have assessed the risks, much as he did with currency movements during his trading days, and will be counting on his personal popularity to carry him through unscathed.
He has shown a similar proclivity for politically risky behaviour before – for example, when he ruled out a coalition deal with Winston Peters, and when he courted unpopularity by breaking the 2007 impasse over the Bradford Bill in the first place, a move that many found inexplicable.
You can see why he used to be known on the trading floor as the Smiling Assassin. The term implies callousness and ruthless ambition, but in Key’s case it may simply signify that he’s able to maintain that sunny demeanour even when he’s taking a punt that would turn lesser men’s bowels to liquid.
Janitor's job axed in TV3 layoffs
The recession seems to be biting at TV3. They appear to have laid off the Ukrainian janitor whose duties, in between scrubbing the dunnies, included writing the captions for the six o’clock news.
The captions used to be habitually misspelled, a clear pointer to the fact that whoever was writing them had English as a second language; but at least captions appeared. Now 3 News seems to have dispensed with them altogether.
Night after night, talking heads flash on screen without being identified. Last night it was the turn of David Shand, a member of the royal commission that recommended Maori seats in the Auckland super-city.
Only those who remember Shand from the 1970s as a once high-profile Victoria University academic, Wellington city councillor and unsuccessful Labour Party candidate would have known who he was. The rest of the TV3 audience would have been left guessing, as they so often are.
Mind you, the soundbites on the TV news – and on commercial radio too, come to that – are now so brief and perfunctory that there’s barely time to register what’s being said, let alone who’s saying it. The fragmentary soundbite, like the fixation for pointless “live to camera” pieces, has nothing to do with informing the viewer. It’s merely a fashionable contrivance; a production device to keep the bulletin moving at a brisk pace so that feeble-minded viewers, who are known to have the concentration span of budgerigars, don’t lose interest.
The captions used to be habitually misspelled, a clear pointer to the fact that whoever was writing them had English as a second language; but at least captions appeared. Now 3 News seems to have dispensed with them altogether.
Night after night, talking heads flash on screen without being identified. Last night it was the turn of David Shand, a member of the royal commission that recommended Maori seats in the Auckland super-city.
Only those who remember Shand from the 1970s as a once high-profile Victoria University academic, Wellington city councillor and unsuccessful Labour Party candidate would have known who he was. The rest of the TV3 audience would have been left guessing, as they so often are.
Mind you, the soundbites on the TV news – and on commercial radio too, come to that – are now so brief and perfunctory that there’s barely time to register what’s being said, let alone who’s saying it. The fragmentary soundbite, like the fixation for pointless “live to camera” pieces, has nothing to do with informing the viewer. It’s merely a fashionable contrivance; a production device to keep the bulletin moving at a brisk pace so that feeble-minded viewers, who are known to have the concentration span of budgerigars, don’t lose interest.
Monday, August 24, 2009
More thoughts on that referendum ...
1. John Key and other supporters of the Bradford amendment to the Crimes Act keep referring to the fact that very few parents have been prosecuted since the law change. Police have looked into 279 reported “events” but there have been only 13 prosecutions. This figure is cited as proof that the law is working exactly as intended; in other words, that “good” parents aren’t being criminalised. But that argument can be turned around. It can be used just as effectively to demonstrate that the law didn’t need to be changed in the first place; that there is no epidemic of parental violence against children that required heavy-handed state intervention. The repeal of Section 59 of the Crimes Act was a solution in search of a problem. What’s more, it’s likely that the 13 cases that resulted in prosecutions were clearcut cases of assault that would have resulted in charges whether or not the law had been changed. Family lawyer Catriona McLennan, a supporter of the law change, seemed to acknowledge as much this morning when she said on Morning Report that Christchurch father James Mason’s punishment of his four-year-old son would have been treated as assault even under the previous law (a point also made by the police themselves at the time Mason was prosecuted). So what has the law change actually achieved, apart from mightily provoking an overwhelming majority of conscientious and loving parents?
2. Does the government now risk tying itself in knots finding convoluted formulas and guidelines to make a bad law palatable, simply because John Key is determined not to back down? Wouldn’t it be simpler to acknowledge that National badly cocked this one up and start again?
3. One News on Friday night devoted more than eight and half minutes to a studio interview with referendum opponents Sue Bradford and someone called Anton Blank. An interview with referendum organiser Larry Baldock, conducted in a noisy, crowded room, ran for less than three minutes. Did someone say media bias? Nah. Get away with you.
2. Does the government now risk tying itself in knots finding convoluted formulas and guidelines to make a bad law palatable, simply because John Key is determined not to back down? Wouldn’t it be simpler to acknowledge that National badly cocked this one up and start again?
3. One News on Friday night devoted more than eight and half minutes to a studio interview with referendum opponents Sue Bradford and someone called Anton Blank. An interview with referendum organiser Larry Baldock, conducted in a noisy, crowded room, ran for less than three minutes. Did someone say media bias? Nah. Get away with you.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Losing 40-nil and blaming the ref
A few thoughts about the provisional result of the anti-smacking referendum ...
Sue Bradford says it’s inconclusive.
No it’s not. A “no” vote from 87.6 per cent of respondents, in a poll that 54 percent of enrolled voters participated in, is about as a conclusive as you can get. That level of participation is considerably higher than the number of voters who took part in last year’s local government elections. It’s probably a bigger “no” vote than the backers of the referendum dared hope for.
Bradford is reported as saying: “When you add the yes vote and the spoilt vote to the number of voters who didn’t vote at all the figures are about even.’’ But she can indulge in mathematical contortions until the cows come home. It won’t alter the fact that the result represents an overwhelming rejection of her amendment to Section 59 the Crimes Act.
The sanctimonious coalition of Wellington-based organisations that mounted a concerted propaganda campaign against the referendum is having trouble accepting the result too. They’re still whingeing about the wording and trying to discredit the referendum by suggesting people didn’t understand the question.
This is like a rugby team being thrashed 40-nil and blaming the ref. It won’t wash.
The words “sore losers” keep reverberating. The backers of the “yes” vote – Bradford, Barnardos, the Parents Centre and others – would be well advised to pull their heads in, show some humility and gracefully accept that they lost. They might also show a bit of respect for the democratic process and perhaps ask themselves how they managed to get so far out of step with the communities they ostensibly serve.
Bradford claims people who wanted to vote “yes” voted “no” because they were confused, but she doesn’t produce any evidence. Like many left-wing politicians who know what’s best for everyone else, she inadvertently displays a very low regard for the intelligence of her fellow citizens - to say nothing of her apparent lack of respect for public opinion.
Claiming the referendum question wasn’t understood, after all the debate that has raged for the past few months, is an insult to voters. Few issues have been thrashed out more thoroughly. The news media, while displaying a marked bias in favour of the “yes” vote, did exactly what the media in liberal democracies are supposed to do – namely, provide a forum in which the protagonists could argue their cases. It was a textbook case of the “marketplace of ideas” – a concept that is anathema to the neo-Marxist academics who furtively read this blog – in action.
One last point. I heard a talkback host, clearly disgruntled with the referendum result, suggesting that religiously motivated “no” vote proponents had hyped up the smacking issue to the point where it seemed the very future of Christian civilisation was at stake.
Well, it’s possible that some Bible-inspired advocates of the right to smack defined the issue in those terms, but I don’t think ordinary New Zealanders were remotely influenced by extremist positions. New Zealand, after all, is one of the most secular societies in the world, with a marked aversion to theocratic tendencies.
No, the issue was much simpler than that. Many of those who voted “no” wouldn’t have been seeking the legal entitlement to physically chastise their own children (many, like me, wouldn’t have children of smackable age), and they certainly wouldn’t have seen it in terms of a God-given right. It’s my guess that many of the “no” voters would have felt distinctly uncomfortable about being in the company of religious fundamentalists, and would have winced – as I did – at some of the ill-chosen cases highlighted as examples of supposedly “good” parents being punished under the new law (like the moron who repeatedly pushed his small son to the ground because he refused to play rugby). But they voted “no” nonetheless, because they saw the referendum as a litmus test of the extent to which an increasingly intrusive state should be allowed to trespass in areas historically regarded as the domain of the family and the individual.
Chris Trotter, in a perceptive and eloquent column in the Dominion Post yesterday, saw this perfectly clearly. Sue Bradford should read it.
Sue Bradford says it’s inconclusive.
No it’s not. A “no” vote from 87.6 per cent of respondents, in a poll that 54 percent of enrolled voters participated in, is about as a conclusive as you can get. That level of participation is considerably higher than the number of voters who took part in last year’s local government elections. It’s probably a bigger “no” vote than the backers of the referendum dared hope for.
Bradford is reported as saying: “When you add the yes vote and the spoilt vote to the number of voters who didn’t vote at all the figures are about even.’’ But she can indulge in mathematical contortions until the cows come home. It won’t alter the fact that the result represents an overwhelming rejection of her amendment to Section 59 the Crimes Act.
The sanctimonious coalition of Wellington-based organisations that mounted a concerted propaganda campaign against the referendum is having trouble accepting the result too. They’re still whingeing about the wording and trying to discredit the referendum by suggesting people didn’t understand the question.
This is like a rugby team being thrashed 40-nil and blaming the ref. It won’t wash.
The words “sore losers” keep reverberating. The backers of the “yes” vote – Bradford, Barnardos, the Parents Centre and others – would be well advised to pull their heads in, show some humility and gracefully accept that they lost. They might also show a bit of respect for the democratic process and perhaps ask themselves how they managed to get so far out of step with the communities they ostensibly serve.
Bradford claims people who wanted to vote “yes” voted “no” because they were confused, but she doesn’t produce any evidence. Like many left-wing politicians who know what’s best for everyone else, she inadvertently displays a very low regard for the intelligence of her fellow citizens - to say nothing of her apparent lack of respect for public opinion.
Claiming the referendum question wasn’t understood, after all the debate that has raged for the past few months, is an insult to voters. Few issues have been thrashed out more thoroughly. The news media, while displaying a marked bias in favour of the “yes” vote, did exactly what the media in liberal democracies are supposed to do – namely, provide a forum in which the protagonists could argue their cases. It was a textbook case of the “marketplace of ideas” – a concept that is anathema to the neo-Marxist academics who furtively read this blog – in action.
One last point. I heard a talkback host, clearly disgruntled with the referendum result, suggesting that religiously motivated “no” vote proponents had hyped up the smacking issue to the point where it seemed the very future of Christian civilisation was at stake.
Well, it’s possible that some Bible-inspired advocates of the right to smack defined the issue in those terms, but I don’t think ordinary New Zealanders were remotely influenced by extremist positions. New Zealand, after all, is one of the most secular societies in the world, with a marked aversion to theocratic tendencies.
No, the issue was much simpler than that. Many of those who voted “no” wouldn’t have been seeking the legal entitlement to physically chastise their own children (many, like me, wouldn’t have children of smackable age), and they certainly wouldn’t have seen it in terms of a God-given right. It’s my guess that many of the “no” voters would have felt distinctly uncomfortable about being in the company of religious fundamentalists, and would have winced – as I did – at some of the ill-chosen cases highlighted as examples of supposedly “good” parents being punished under the new law (like the moron who repeatedly pushed his small son to the ground because he refused to play rugby). But they voted “no” nonetheless, because they saw the referendum as a litmus test of the extent to which an increasingly intrusive state should be allowed to trespass in areas historically regarded as the domain of the family and the individual.
Chris Trotter, in a perceptive and eloquent column in the Dominion Post yesterday, saw this perfectly clearly. Sue Bradford should read it.
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