Robert Baird

August 2023 Rock/Pop Record Reviews

Music and Recording Reviews

Robert Baird, Ray Chelstowski, Andrey Henkin | Aug 10, 2023 | 0 comments

Metallica: 72 Seasons; Joy Oladokun: Proof of Life; Mike Gordon: Flying Games.

Vince Mendoza's Learning Laboratory

Aural Robert Interviews

Robert Baird | Aug 02, 2023 | 4 comments

Photo by Reinout Bos

Audio engineers never get the credit they deserve. The same is true for music arrangers, who are also an unheralded but hugely fundamental part of any musical success. As a composer, conductor, and inventive arranger of popular music, the modest but multitalented Vince Mendoza says he's most focused on enhancing the song he is arranging and the story it is trying to tell.

"Young arrangers are very concerned with their own voice and spinning their own melodies and turning things upside down and backwards, and they forget what a song really is about," he told me in a recent Zoom conversation from his home in Los Angeles. "You could be writing about heartbreak, and there are a million and one ways to tell that story, but the listener still has to feel it."

Revinylization #43: The Original Jazz Classics label label rises (yet) again

Revinylization

Robert Baird | Jul 02, 2023 | 0 comments

Liner notes from jazz albums of the 1950s and 1960s can be shot through with naivete, hipsterism (usually faux), and callousness toward the abundance of musical talent then working. Few though are as shortsighted as the original essay by Jack Maher on the back of 1960's Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet. Opening with "Miles Davis is the most maligned and idolized musician in modern American jazz today. He is at once the saint and the sinner," he goes on to cite a dynamic that literally all musicians experience, especially when playing live: "He has been accused of being lackadaisical and unconcerned about his playing. When the spirit moves him, he plays with warmth and lyric beauty, at other times he plays with vague disinterest."

Once the tape was running, however, Miles rarely missed a step. Among all of Davis's recording triumphs, the pair of sessions with Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack, New Jersey, his May and September 1956 sessions with saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones, remain among his finest moments on record.

Elton John's Magic Year

Aural Robert

Robert Baird | Jul 01, 2023 | 2 comments

In 1973, Elton John and Bernie Taupin capped one of pop music's most epic periods of sustained creativity by writing, recording, and releasing the 10-track single disc Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player and the 17-track double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, both of which are now celebrating their 50th anniversary. As two of the strongest entries among the many classics that make 1972–73 the peak years for rock albums, both went #1 in the US and UK and arguably stand as the dual highpoints of John's recorded legacy.

Rabbit Holes #4: Elvis On Tour

Rabbit Holes

Robert Baird | Jun 05, 2023 | 0 comments

FLASH! Record Business Conquers Death! Musicians Live Forever! There is life after death in the world of recorded music. Elvis left the building 46 years ago. Jimi Hendrix has been absent for 53 years. Yet both continue to release albums of unreleased material. Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen wisely recorded much of their music throughout their careers, live and in the studio; they'll continue to release "new" music long after they pass.

Keeping fans satisfied but also looking forward is an effective marketing tool, one that Ernst Mikael Jørgensen, the guru of all things Elvis, has mastered. His latest project is the six-CD box set Elvis On Tour, which is connected to the 50th anniversary of Presley's 1972 US tour and the rerelease of the MGM documentary/concert film of the same name, a Blu-ray of which is also included.

ReDiscoveries #5: Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies

ReDiscoveries

Robert Baird | May 30, 2023 | 5 comments

1972 is widely praised as the most fertile year ever for rock albums, notching such classics as The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and Neil Young's Harvest. But albums released in 1973 and currently celebrating their 50th anniversary may be even better: Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, ZZ Top's Tres Hombres, and Bruce Springsteen's The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, among others. But of all the enduring albums of '73, the most exotic, audacious, and ultimately entertaining must be Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies.

May 2023 Rock/Pop Record Reviews

Music and Recording Reviews

Robert Baird, Phil Brett, Anne E. Johnson | May 11, 2023 | 0 comments

John Lee Hooker: Burnin'; Paramore: This Is Why; New Order: Low-Life (Definitive Edition); Yo La Tengo: This Stupid World

Bob (Baird) Meets Burt (Bacharach)

Aural Robert

Robert Baird | Apr 25, 2023 | 0 comments

Back in 2003, in an uptown New York City studio, a man who epitomized cool in the 1960s waited patiently for my next question. Well into his 70s but still thin and handsome, Burt Bacharach was casually dapper in his contrasting sweater and polo shirt. In town to perform with Ronald Isley in support of their new record together, Here I Am—Isley Meets Bacharach, the songwriter extraordinaire is warm and approachable, wary but unusually guileless when answering the questions of a lifelong fan of his melodies, a fan who's trying hard to be professional and hide the fact that he's utterly starstruck.

As rhythm has become predominant in pop music and melody has receded in importance, Bacharach and lyricist Hal David's brand of sleek, memorable tune craft has slipped into history. Yet despite Bacharach's death in February 2023, at age 94, their body of work is timeless.

April 2023 Rock/Pop Record Reviews

Music and Recording Reviews

Robert Baird, Phil Brett, Anne E. Johnson | Apr 06, 2023 | 0 comments

Weyes Blood: And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow; Gina Birch: I Play My Bass Loud; Rick Rosato: Homage.

Revinylization #40: Beck & Croz

Revinylization

Robert Baird | Mar 13, 2023 | 4 comments

Turns out rock stars are human after all. Which means music fans should prepare themselves for the coming toll. The next few years are certain to be brutal: Bob Dylan, 81; Paul Simon, 81; George Clinton, 81; Brian Wilson, 80; Carole King, 80; Keith Richards, 79; Jimmy Page, 79; Sly Stone, 79; Rod Stewart, 78; Neil Young, 77; Pete Townsend, 77, and the inexorability rolls on. The news is even worse among the pre-rock era stars, where it's a matter of any day now: Tony Bennett, 96; Burt Bacharach, 94; Sonny Rollins, 93. Even the ageless one, Willie Nelson, is 86.

January 2023 was a particularly cruel harbinger of the reckoning to come as guitar legend Jeff Beck and folk rock icon David Crosby died within eight days of each other.

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