Where am I going to buy my guitars?

As a small disclaimer - I will admit right out that I have little to no understanding of economics on either a micro or a macro scale. What I want to express in this post is my personal experiences as an amateur musician in Sydney. I understand that as good as times may have been in a personal sense, sometimes these changes just have to come about for the world to roll on in an economically sustainable sense. This is just my personal ode to Rocco, from Music 101. 

Allans Billy Hyde - possibly the most ubiquitous 'modern' musical instrument store chain in Australia - closed its final store two weeks ago. I've been out of town for a while - so this blind-sighted me somewhat. The thought of not being able to say "well I can always head to Allans" if I can't find something in the guitar shack around the corner of my house makes me feel a bit lost and confused. 

Allans Billy Hyde Pitt St store closing down sale - original photo from flickr.

That said, I'm actually not particularly concerned about not having somewhere to buy my guitar gear  (contrary to the title of this blog post). If these fighting words from Gallin's Music are to be believed, the gaping market hole left by the liquidation of both Allans and Billy Hyde will be filled by Gallin's and its parent company. That is, Gallin's and its affiliates will pick up the market share of name brand guitar and band equipment and expand accordingly. 

My particularly visceral emotional response to this news came from one damn lousy afternoon I had about 3 years ago: when I found out Rocco's Music 101 had closed down.

Music 101 was a tiny little guitar store in the inner west of Sydney. It lay on a strip of Parramatta Road in the suburb of Annandale that I like to call "the guitar strip". That length of road had vintage guitar specialists, a dedicated instrument repair shop and a peppering of small independent guitar stores. It ended at Billy Hyde Camperdown - arguably the largest guitar store in Metropolitan Sydney and a commercial behemoth amongst the other smaller boutiques.

Music 101 was the smallest of these. The first thing you expect to see when you walk into most guitar stores is racks upon racks of shiny new guitars of all the famous brands. But the first thing you saw when you walked into Music 101 was a rack of music memorabilia (framed posters and the like), old records, two conspicuously half finished guitars, a stack of old guitar amplifiers in one corner and a rack of guitars (that almost no one has heard of) in the other. The centre piece of this wonderful store was a grey 1970s leather couch slap bang in the middle. This couch, of course, was positioned so that you had a front seat to an overused work-bench and the big curly-haired Italian man who inhabited it - Rocco.

Rocco, sitting behind his work bench - source

That couch summed up everything that was great about Rocco's store. When I walked into any guitar store as a young'un, I was terrified of touching any guitar for one reason - the salesmen. If you touch it, you had to have a pretty damn keen interest in buying it. The salesmen would either go all out with their sales pitches, or kick you out on your ass for wasting their time.

But when you walked into Rocco's store, without fail you'd be on that couch, playing some new guitar that he'd gotten in the week before and talking about how much it sounds like a Fender Stratocaster, but with a different texture. Or colour. Or clarity. Or aggression. Rocco was in the business not because he loved music, but because he loved sharing that music with other people.

His attitude is bessed summed up with this story: when I first met him, I was looking for a bass guitar. And it was pretty obvious that he didn't have a bass guitar that was suitable for me. But instead of trying to sell me what he did have, he took a full hour out of his day, sat me down on the couch and taught me how to pick out a guitar that would be perfect for me. And he did this so that I would have the right tools to buy the guitar from someone else.

And mind you this was all happening whilst other people were walking in and out of his store. They would pop in, either to say hello, look for a guitar or drop one off for servicing. Rocco would invite them in on the conversation, asking the passers by if they had any tips for the young'un sitting on the couch (in time, I too became one of those passers by, giving advice to other young'uns). He didn't care that you weren't in there to spend money, the only thing he wanted was to make sure that you realised your passion in music.

That he ignored how much money you would spend in his store, however, may have been his ultimate downfall. He knew that he couldn't compete with the Billy Hyde megastore down the road, so he tried to market himself on his alternative qualities as a vendor. Instead of going for the big name brands (Fender, Gibson etc), he went for the smaller, less well known but equally awesome brands.

The essential problem with this strategy, though, is that you have to do extra legwork to try to market your  product to most buyers. Rocco and others like him have to do a lot of extra convincing to prove that you don't have to buy a Gibson Les Paul to get that the guitar that suits you. This extra work, whilst an excellent investment in karma, doesn't yield good cash dividends.

The Fender Stratocaster - every man and his dog knows one and wants one

So one afternoon 3 years ago, I brought my guitar to him for it's 6 monthly checkup -and Music 101 wasn't there. Another guitar store had bought Rocco out. Despite all of the friends and friends of friends I tried to point his way, it wasn't enough. His business lost out and he had to quit music.

Being an aspiring hippie (or hipster, take your pick), I was really angry at 'the man' for a long time. I blamed Allans Music and Billy Hyde. I was angry that commercial marketing won out over something that was special and unique and couldn't be replaced. In my mind, Allans Billy Hyde had won, and they didn't deserve to.

So imagine my shock when even they announced liquidation.

As I said earlier, the situation is by no means dire. Rocco's was an isolated case. There are other small guitar stores in Sydney that sell big name brand guitars - more than enough to fill the market gap. And if the analysis given by Gallin's Music is correct, Allans Billy Hyde went under due to shoddy management rather than market decline. On a positive note - these other stores do tend toward the passionate side of music - preferring discussion to sales. But you can always spot the glint in the salesman's eye. And when you do, it has the potential to ruin what might have been a sincere exchange.

When I heard that Allans Billy Hyde were going under, I felt a pang of sadness and disappointment. But it wasn't for them, it was because I remembered Rocco. Coming to that store, sitting on that couch and watching that man at work is what I miss the most.

I hope that someday he'll open up a store again. I'll bring all my friends. Bring yours.

Popra

When I walked into uni this morning, I was accosted by a good friend of mine with "Dude, I went on Youtube and looked up Kimbra and it was all girly pop stuff". 

Well, yes.

I would be lying if I said that I had no shame about my love for Kimbra. I'm young, and therefore I have a deep seated desire to be alternative. As wonderfully interesting as her music is, Kimbra is not alternative. This fact was made abundantly clear to me by the demographic of the attendees of her concerts and by the weird looks that my colleagues gave me as I was blaring her music from open-back headphones.

If one were to scroll down and read other articles I have written, you'd see that my music taste is borne from the 'alternative', or rather, music that is not 'pop'. Although Muse, the Arctic Monkeys, Oasis and Led Zeppelin were always hugely popular, they've never been labelled as true 'pop'. Aficionados of this music tend to look with some slight disdain at the throes of young girls flocking to see artists like, well, Kimbra.

As much as I do have a desire to be alternative, I enjoy Kimbra immensely. I even listen to Amy Winehouse, Duffy and even some of Adele - all music that is 'pop'. The very nature of this fact, though, inspires a prejudice against musical integrity that is somewhat unwarranted. And more to the point - pop seems to be dragging itself out of the blandness and back into something a little more interesting.

Kimbra's first album, Vows, is unambiguously a pop record. The production quality, synth tracks, layered vocals, abundance of sounds (that would be hard to recreate live) and general fun air about the music betray it as such. The music has an undeniable flavour about it that appeals to the majority of young people - she came to prominence within the US after one of her tracks was featured on Grey's Anatomy and The Sims.  It's fun and emotionally is accessible enough to quite a lot of people. Such is pop.

There is a stigma, though, that detracts from the fun you can take away from this music. Pop is called pop because it is exactly that - popular. Ergo this music is always a sure money maker for your clichéd record executive who cares not for musical integrity. Two very negative conclusions about pop music are drawn from this fact: 1 - that the music is produced primarily for the purpose of money making and 2 - that it is therefore exploitative of its captive audience.

The alleged malice of 'the corporate machine' aside, the essential gist of the issue that hipsters have with pop music is that musical interestingness is cast aside for a focus on crude and catchy tunes. This point has varying levels of truth with the different examples you choose to examine.

Take your Americana country pop-rock - Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus et al. I don't believe for a minute that these artists set out to be intentionally bland. In fact there's a quiet tragedy to their misguided belief in the idea that their music is powerful, poignant and/or mind-blowing. If anything, though, these artists maintain integrity because for the most part they create music which they truly enjoy. That they are not pushed to be more creative than their peers is the fault of us, our culture and what we choose to accept and pour money into.

The trashier artists, Lady Gaga, Ke$ha and Britney Spears are somewhat exploitative. The lyrics and the beat of the music are meant to appeal to a very visceral and basic part of our minds. The music of large parties and dance floors where you don't want to think, you just want to move. The ability to create this effect is a musical skill in its own right. Again, it's not that it's terrible, it's just never appealed to anything inside of me.

In a nutshell, pop music for the most part represents music that has gone far enough for us to accept it. It's only unfortunate to people with particular tastes that this is either not far enough, or is an entirely different place for them to enjoy the music.

So why my love for Kimbra?

I have a weakness

It becomes apparent in live performances how much of a musical tour-de-force this young kiwi girl is. Her contemporaries, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and others, for all their vocal talent, are never able to actualise that individuality of voice or performance in any musical way. Lady Gaga is very much a performer who relies upon the visual spectacle of her shows and her person. She is someone who must be in costume everywhere she goes. This, ultimately, is why many people are attracted to her and listen to her music.

On the other hand, Kimbra's musical offerings are laced with genuinely quite amazing vocal acrobatics and personal flair. Yes, her music like all other pop music is laced with back-up vocal tracks and effects. But those vocal tracks are all her - and they're amazing. Her vocal control and range aside, what she is able to sing, the varying texture of her voice and the energy that she very obviously puts into every performance is similarly amazing. 

Prominence and uniqueness in vocal ability is seemingly making something of a comeback in pop. The late Amy Winehouse being the prime example, and the somewhat mixed Duffy and Adele following in her wake. These artists, like Kimbra and unlike the others I've mentioned, place a strong emphasis on being able to sing in a unique and ultimately very pleasing way. Such that Amy Winehouse recorded a live cover of the motown classic "I Heard it On The Grapevine" and Adele regularly performs soul legend Sam Cooke's "That's it, I Quit, I'm moving on". These are classic, blues and soul pieces relying on their singers' command of the scale to make the song interesting.

What set's Kimbra apart, though, is that she can compose. A quick examination of the CD jacket from Vows (which, yes, I own), reveals that she is the chief songwriter for almost all her songs. This, from a 22 year old singing her debut album is quite impressive. Considering the quality and variation of the music on the record, it speaks of a musical creativity to be reckoned with. Vows is a collection of the most diverse and varied songs I've ever seen on a single CD for a fairly long time.

Yes, Kimbra is pop music. But pop music can be good, and this is it.

PS - Yes. It's been a while. Dw I'm back. Weekly.

The Ocean

On a whim, I bought the Led Zeppelin live DVD one afternoon on one of my ritual after-school visits to the CD shop in the city. I had seen the rendition of Moby Dick that was played at the Royal Albert Hall in 1970 and figured that it couldn't be a bad thing to pay 20 dollars for 2 DVDs worth more of a good band. 5 hours later and I became the prophet of Zeppelin you all know and love today.

'The Ocean' is what Led Zeppelin affectionately called the seething mass of fans they would greet as they walked on stage to play gig after gig after magical gig. It's no secret that Led Zeppelin were one of the most prolific gigging bands of their era - and with good reason. Aside from their growing underground popularity, what the band appreciated was the magic of on-stage performance. The electric spontaneity that came with the ability to move an audience at your will was a rush that was almost as exciting a trip from a colourful stimulant.

I have developed a firm belief that the mettle of a band is only truly tested in their live performances. To grind an old gear, too much of modern music places too much value on image manufacturing and clever marketing. The common indie-hipster adage is that big record companies are too focused on what constitutes good business and that in this process, musical integrity loses merit. (This, though, is part of a larger cultural phenomenon that I have a rather significant beef with. I'll maybe talk about this in another post).

All of this comes out in the wash, however, when you begin to examine the live performance of a musical act. Live and in the moment, you can see the artist for what they are, get a chance to really feel their music and, in many cases, come to appreciate their musical integrity. On-stage, musicians are aren't just performers who are showing off how well they can perform their craft, they're also entertainers and experimenters. 

  

Led Zepplin - Live and in the moment

By and large the best concerts I have been to or watched are concerts where either the band actively interacts with the audience or deviates significantly from their original source material. 

The first kind makes for entertainment that is genuine in a way which is rare amongst other forms of stage-craft. In these cases, the artist is reacting to feedback from their audience - a process which is intensely emotional for anyone who takes pride in their work. The result is that we can witness how self-effacing, comically-egotistical or entertainingly bizarre some bands and their frontmen can be. It provides us  with an entertaining window into what must be rather complex and artistically creative minds.

Some examples: Jarvis Cocker of Pulp likes to drape himself over pieces of sound equipment whilst relaying tidbits of wisdom to his audience. Linkin Park got an entire audience to sing happy birthday to a roadie at a concert that a friend of mine went to.  And Oasis... well it was fun to see two idiots from the north of England bicker and fight.

The second kind evokes a different kind of magic. Bands are able to take their original music, and not only evolve it, but evolve it spontaneously and evolve it because they are inspired by the live atmosphere and playing to a live audience. The on-the-spot nature of this improvisation and evolution speaks of a level of musical prowess and creativity that you hardly ever see in modern music. It shows a creative drive that proves that the band doesn't stagnate, even when they choose to play the same songs.  These changes take their music to an entirely different place and can drastically change your experience of the original song or piece. All you have to do is youtube concert versions of Zepplin's Dazed and Confused or Jeff Buckley's Mojo Pin to feel what I mean.

Jarvis Cocker during a recent Pulp concert - known for his on-stage antics and toying with the audience.

I love live music. It's an experience which can inject a vigour into love of a particular music that you never knew you had. To go to a concert and see performers react to you and play for you creates an excitement and a rush that sweeps you into the moment and has you dancing and singing along to their music with energy that would be embarrassing in every day life.

It's worth remembering that it should be live gigs that form the backbone for the music industry and not the other way around. Past the marketing, the promotional interviews, the auto-tune and sound production, truly good music finds its grip on us when it's laid bare and sung to our faces.

Fun Links:
Jeff Buckley - Mojo Pin (live at Chicago, audio only)
Led Zeppelin - Dazed and Confused (Live from the Royal Albert Hall, 1970)
Led Zeppelin - No Quarter (Live from the Song Remains the Same)
Pulp - Live at Reading 2011 (entire set)

Arctic Oasis Monkeys

Recently, Noel Gallagher released an album that would mark his first solo work since the disbanding of Oasis, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. Much to the chagrin to my friends, Oasis holds something of a special place in my heart. Wonderwall made me first pick up the guitar and actively want to learn music (a path that would eventually end in Zeppelin). So what do I think after a month of listening to the much praised High Flying Birds? I think that the Arctic Monkeys are pretty damn good.

Allow me to explain. Listening to High Flying Birds made me nostalgic for britrock (or 'britpop' to its deriders). The Arctic Monkeys had tickled my fancy a little when I listened to Whatever People Say I am, I'm not and Favourite Worst Nightmare back in high school. I figured that after however many years of not following them, I'd give their two recent albums, Humbug and Suck It and See, a try.

The result of the last month's worth of listening to these three albums on repeat is that I have struck upon exactly why Oasis whimpered out after What's the Story Morning Glory (a behemoth of a second album).

In High Flying Birds, Noel continues upon the path that Oasis would have trod if they had simply agreed to Noel's songwriting leadership. You can hear that Noel is trying to make himself mature musically by breaking out of the rock and guitar based framework that Oasis was steeped in. Gone are the heavy guitar riffs, the wall-of-sound power chords and simple-ass basslines. Tracks like The Death of You and Me and Soldier Boy and Jesus Freaks now incorporate keyboards, big bands, string ensembles, backup singers and almost dance-like beats.

To be fair on Noel, it's not a bad effort. The songs come out as being catchy, well produced and well executed. Reviews to his album have been quite welcoming in light of the burning pile of fail that Beady Eye (Liam Gallagher's little side project) turned out to be. It is solid, well executed and all those other adjectives that, sadly, fall short of what really good music should be - captivating, impressive, infectious, intense, and make you put songs on repeat. This is where the Arctic Monkeys come in.

The Arctic Monkeys had the same 'musical maturity' mantra that Oasis and Noel Gallagher were trying to aim for. The difference with the Monkeys, though, is that they didn't feel as they needed bells and whistles in the form of strings and trumpets to make their music interesting. Thanks in no small part to the influence of Josh Homme (of Queens of the Stone Age fame) Humbug and Suck it and See achieve musical maturity with just guitars and drums.

A case study: All My Own Stunts, Track 7 off Suck it and See. Here is a track where everything comes together and does what all rock music should be doing. The guitars aren't just playing three power chords and there is more than just one riff through the whole song. The drums don't just keep the beat, they speak with the guitars and define the pace of the song. The song isn't just chorus-verse-chorus-verse, it changes mood, moves into sections and takes you on a ride. And the bassist isn't just the kid drooling in the corner who couldn't play guitar.

This holds true for almost every track off Humbug and Suck it and See. And they're not all in the same style of 'desert rock' that the Arctic Money's direction has been labelled as. Reckless Serenade manages to combine pub and surf rock into quite a nice and lackadaisical piece. And they go into high school prom territory with Piledriver Waltz.

So, what's the point? The point is that Noel Gallagher has done okay, trying to become better at music the way he has - but only okay and not in a way that injects any great deal of hope into the genre. Whether this is because the medium of his improvement is slightly unfocussed or because he himself is limited as a musician, I'm not entirely sure. The Arctic Monkeys, on the other hand, have been quite ambitiously unambitious and managed to prove themselves a great deal more than Noel has, while sticking to the same instruments. It's proof that good musicality can be achieved by being more creative with ordinary tools, and that you don't need the bells and whistles, or rather, record scratches and sampled synth that dominates a metric ton of other popular music.

I don't listen to music because of cool sounds, catchy rhythms or even technically complex guitar solos. I listen to music because it takes me on a ride.

Be simple, be good.

Arctic Monkeys - garage band

There Will be Wood

Up until recently I only thought of Jonny Greenwood as 'that awesome guitarist from Radiohead'. Consequently I chiefly associated him with bizarre, dissonant but very awesome guitar riffs and tones. When I had heard that he had composed the score to the film adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, I thought that it would be similar to the prevalence of Radiohead's music in Linklater's A Scanner Darkly (ethereal, esoteric sort of electronica).

Imagine my surprise, then, when I watched a movie with some of the most jarring and emotionally wrought classically-based string compositions I have ever heard.

For those who are acquainted with Haruki Murakami's novel and the works of Radiohead, it actually isn't overly surprising from a thematic point of view. Norwegian Wood deals with a young and profound tragedy that pervades the existence of the novel's protagonist, Watanabe Toru. The subsequent sense of (almost) hopeless depression and discord in Watanabe's life is not an uncommon theme in Radiohead's music.

Hence, it's not entirely unexpected that Jonny Greenwood should compose a score to reflect the same set of emotions.  Sure, his compositions are strongly string based, but it's not such a stretch, given previous demonstration of his musical finesse in Radiohead, that he would be capable of composing pieces for a string orchestra. Not to say that the music was by any means simple - it was powerfully moving. Without it, scenes in Anh Hung's faithful film adaptation would be lacking in a lot of emotional power.

The real shock came when I sat down with a friend and watched Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film, There Will Be Blood. The film portrays the rise of a successful Oil Baron (played by Daniel Day Lewis) and his descent into madness as he lusts after money and power.

The key to understanding this character and the movie, though, especially within the early scenes of this film, is Jonny Greenwood's score.

The beginning scenes of this film could rather be innocently confused with 'just' another film portraying the somewhat repulsive nature of big corporations. The dissonant and darkly foreboding nature of Greenwood's score, however, do an amazingly effective job of conveying how deeply disturbed the events unfolding in the film are.

Greenwood's composition is, in a word, wrong. The broken rhythms, the string sections not agreeing with each other, the dissonance and sparseness of the music - they all alert you to the fact that something is very very wrong. Daniel Day Lewis's character is so good at acting like he's honest that without the music, you would believe that he was a good man. Such is the power of the score, however, that you can't shake the feeling that something deeply, deeply wrong is happening.

This sense of dissonance pervades the entire film and eventually builds to the point where what is happening on screen finally fulfills the promise put forward by Greenwood's haunting score. The effect is powerfully disturbing.

The music in this movie is beautiful, moving and complex. Most of all, it comes from a completely different direction to  Radiohead's Punk-Rock based roots.

There Will Be Blood went on to be nominated for eight Academy Awards. Best Original Score was not one of them.

The reason cited for Greenwood's disqualification was that his work for There Will Be Blood did not contain a large enough ratio of music developed specifically for the film to music taken from elsewhere. This was in no small part due to Greenwood adopting many of the themes from his score directly from a previous string composition of his, Popcorn Superhet Reciever - a piece he composed whilst the BBC Concert Orchestra's 'composer-in-residence'

When Thom Yorke did work independent of Radiohead, he made The Eraser, a mainly electronic album that reflected a lot of where Radiohead were going anyway. When Jonny Greenwood went solo, he became the BBC Concert Orchestra's 'Composer-in-residence', composed three piano and symphony based pieces and wrote the score to two of the best movies I've seen in recent years.

I was shocked by how different this music was from what I expected when I thought 'Jonny Greenwood' and I am in awe of precisely how much of a talented musician this man must be.

The world needs more creative forces like this one.

And yes, I am well aware that the title of this post sounds somewhat like the title to a porno.

Plant, Buckley, Bellamy and Yorke

I first came across Jeff Buckley in the musty AV studio in the attic above my high school library. A member of our school's meek (but oh so cool) Rock and Roll club had brought in  Grace as the album of the week. I found myself quite surprised that an album by someone whom I hadn't ever heard of had ended up being voted Australia's 2nd favourite album on the My Favourite Album special over on the ABC.

And to be honest, I didn't take to it quite yet. I'd spent the first half of my childhood listening to whatever pop invaded radio stations in the late 90s (let us never speak of N*Sync) and had only just begun getting into the good stuff.

It would take me about 3 years to come full circle, hear the album being played in a music shop and buy it on a whim. Several playthroughs and many hours of internet research later, I found myself quite profoundly depressed that he wasn't able to do more. And in defiance to those who say that his music and legacy has been hyped up as a fad, I do honestly believe he was about to give so much more to music.

It wasn't until I started to try to sing Lover You Should've Come Over that I realised how much of his vocal mannerisms matched that of another one of my heroes - Robert Plant. Listening to and playing more music, I ended up seeing how Robert Plant,  Jeff Buckley,  Matt Bellamy and Thom Yorke represent a beautiful sense of connectivity as strands of music through time were tied together into points, from which creativity could be woven into some fairly spectacular songs and albums.

Plant, Buckley, Yorke and Bellamy

Before I got into Buckley, I was (and still am) a massive Zeppelin nut. I still believe that they are the greatest rock band, ever. Once I really started obsessing over Jeff Buckley, reading that Physical Graffiti was his first ever album may have sent me into erratic fanboy convulsions.

If you dig a little deeper though, you start to see how much Led Zeppelin and their whole musical mantra pressed themselves upon Buckley's work and style. The extended release of Buckley's EP Live at the Sin-e contains a cover version of Night Flight where, as my musically superior friend so aptly put, he "out-Plants Robert Plant". The vocal acrobatics, rising flourishes and long sustains manage to take the music to an entirely new place - and yet, like going to an old friends house or hanging out in your favourite park, it still retains a smokey and distinctive blues flavour.

That flavour is a large part of what makes Led Zeppelin so mesmerising. They took music from all around them -  the Blues, Folk, Psychedelia and Rock 'n' Roll - and not only managed to pull all different genres off individually well, but also combined them and took them into an entirely new place. Zeppelin are seen as one of the main players in giving birth to Progressive Rock and with good reason - they did things with the music around them that no one had ever thought to do before. Listen to all the different recordings of Since I've Been Loving You, and you'll start to get what I mean.

It's this kind of synecdoche that exists in music that Jeff Buckley captured so well. Buckley took the Zeppelin, The Blues, Bob Dylan, Vocal Jazz and even a little Edith Piaf and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and combined them into one big melting pot of musical creative fun. When I dug deeper and found out about all these influences, it made Buckley's music much more poignant and fascinating.

When you listen and read further, you unconsciously begin to dissect where certain music comes from and start to see how the fabric of music over time converges into points, like Led Zeppelin and like Jeff Buckley.

Where do Matt Bellamy and Thom Yorke sit? They sit for Jeff Buckley where the successful and creative progressive rock bands of today sit with respect to Led Zeppelin. There's no denying that both of these quite talented singers take a lot of inspiration and cue from Jeff Buckley. Both of them have said in their interviews that Jeff Buckley fundamentally changed the way they tried to vocalise. Thom Yorke said that in an interview that he saw Buckley perform right before recording Fake Plastic Trees - a fact you can most certainly hear in the original studio recording.

Sure, both singers have evolved since the days when Jeff Buckley was large and when they both first came across him. But that's the point. From a point of musical clarity that someone like Buckley or a band like Zeppelin is able put forward, artists are able to take and put forward into their own styles and make their own good music.

Sometimes, when the night is quiet and I sit lit by the glow of my computer, I find myself quite upset that Jeff Buckley died the way he did.

To good music.

Fun Links:
Led Zeppelin's original 'Night Flight'
Since I've Been Loving You (Madison Square Garden '73)
Fake Plastic Trees (Glastonbury '03)