The midsummer of 2008 has been a trip down Memory Lane for live concerts. In the last two weeks, I’ve seen, or will be seeing, Alex De Grassi, Return to Forever, King Crimson and Manuel Göttsching/Ashra , all acts who came to their greatest renown in the 1970s. It got me wondering about our penchant for both over-glorifying the past while also about acknowledging music that withstands the capriciousness of popular tastes.
In the midst of an Echoes Chamber session with Return to Forever guitarist, Al Di Meola, the 54-year-old musician went into a subdued rant about the music we heard as kids. “We grew up in the greatest era ever, the 60s,” he proclaimed. “We still love the music we listened to when we were kids. Our kids aren’t going to be able to say that. They’re going to be listening to the music we listened to when they get older.”
There is some truth to what he said, at least in regards to pop music. Certainly the music of the 60s and early 70s continues to hang on, powered by classic rock stations and turned into dogma by places like The School of Rock. But there’s also Rock of the 70s and Rock of the 80s format radio stations and I’m sure that 30 years from now, there will be a Rock of the 2000s format. I think every generation holds on to the music they heard in their teens and college years: 60s acid rock, 70s progressive rock, 80s punk, 90’s grunge.
Di Meola is mostly referring to pop music, because otherwise, he’s continued to explore new sounds and technology throughout his career as a listener and creator. But a nostalgic aroma was ever-present at the Return to Forever show I saw at the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia. I was wondering why RTF en mass felt it was necessary to wave the flag for “live” music and rail against iPods and YouTube to a full house of some 4,000 people. 
And Chick, baby, despite your claims that RTF got no radio airplay in the 70s, I know they got boatloads of spins from commercial jazz stations that were still around then, including WRVR in New York and WWDB in Philadelphia. College stations, like WXPN in Philadelphia, played this music to death and got RTF many of their fans, as evidenced by the 50-something demographic dominating the reunion audiences. RTF’s performance thrilled those fans. They didn’t play any new compositions other than the opening tune-up piece, and except for a mangled version of “Romantic Warrior,” they stuck to the recorded versions of most of them pretty faithfully, including the same somewhat dated synthesizer sounds that Corea used.
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Alex de Grassi’s audience was substantionally smaller, but they to, were thrilled to hear this veteran of the finger-style guitar renaissance at Sellersville Theater. Like RTF, much of his set was drawn from older material made during his glory years at Windham Hill Records. It was good seeing Alex playing solo, although nothing new was being revealed, something I wouldn’t say for his world fusion DeMania trio.
I’m hopeful, but not expectant for Manuel Göttsching who performs in Philadelphia and New York over the weekend of August 15th. 
I know that he plans on playing classic music from Inventions for Electric Guitar and New Age of Earth up through E2-E4. The most recent piece he’s reported to play, Die Mulde, dates back to 1997 and that’s very much in the 1970s sequencer style. However, I’m still looking forward to that show, since Göttsching, like Klaus Schulze, has never played in the US. It’s music I’ve never heard performed live, but I’m not expecting any revelations. It will probably be like seeing RTF, who I also didn’t get to see in the 70s. (BTW, can somebody update Ashra’s Wikipedia entry? It is woefully skimpy and inaccurate).
Of them all, King Crimson has continued exploring new dimensions in their heavy metal future shock sound. I’ve seen them twice in this millennium and both were exhilarating, ear-shredding performances full of precision, spontaneity and new music. While their audience will certainly be from the same demographic that will attend De Grassi, RTF and Ashra shows, Krimson’s music continues to be exploratory, without pandering .
I too, love the artists of my formative years, and Echoes also maintains a loyalty to the pioneers we played early on like Will Ackerman, Tangerine Dream, Andreas Vollenweider, George Winston and Klaus Schulze. That music, along with Hendrix and the Beatles, Coltrane and Miles, Ultravox and Siouxsie & the Banshees, Philip Glass and Steve Reich is all in my musical DNA.
But I don’t want to exist in a musical past like some artists and audiences who are in an arrested state of musical development, living a terminal adolescence with the music that informed their youths. I don’t want to think that the best music I’ll experience for the rest of my life came out 30 or so years ago. When I see teenagers who are enthralled by the sound and imagery of the sixties, I don’t sometimes feel validated in my youthful tastes. but just as often, I feel like telling them to listen to your own music.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
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leader Sri Chinmoy. He comes into the Echoes Living Room with famed cellist Eugene Friesen from the Paul Winter Consort and windplayer Premik Tubbs. They’ll play live tonight on Echoes.
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Will Ackerman Then & Now: 5 Best CDs
August 6, 2009Five Best Will Ackerman CDs
Will Ackerman @ Echoes
There are a few people of whom I can say, if not for them, I wouldn’t be here. And that’s the case with Will Ackerman. He founded Windham Hill Records, still a cornerstone of the music you hear on Echoes. That would probably be enough, but he also launched the finger-style guitar renaissance. It had already begun, as Will said in my liner notes to
A Quiet Revolution: 30 Years of Windham Hill Records: “You know there was a lot about that whole Takoma Records/John Fahey thing that was a beacon to me.” He meant that in terms of starting a label, but also, playing acoustic guitar. Fahey and Kottke opened the door, but Will Ackerman built the house. His open-tuning approach is now dominant among finger-style guitar players. But his influence has gone beyond that. A new generation of rock musicians are listening to their parent’s record collections and bands like Balmorhea and Hammock cite him as an influence.
As we head toward our 20th anniversary, we’re listening back to some of the signature artists of Echoes. On Friday, August 7, we’ll feature Will Ackerman: Then and Now.
Will has made a lot of records. Surprisingly for an artist who has been recording for over three decades and whose early work is nothing if not seminal, I prefer his later and more mature recordings. Sadly, most of his catalog is currently out of print, a criminal state of affairs for such a major artist.
THE 5 BEST WILL ACKERMAN ALBUMS
In 2004, Will Ackerman went back and recorded many of his signature tunes. And you know what? They sound a lot better now. Cynics might view this as a ploy to retain control of his catalog, which since it was his first non-Windham Hill recording, it kind of was. But his playing and the recording quality are sharper here than on those old Windham Hill favorites and Ackerman’s compositions have rarely sounded more poignant. Returning sounds like your memory of that music.
As I said in my Billboard magazine review in 2001, this is a brave album. Ackerman enlists a group of singers including Samite, Happy Rhodes, Curtis King and Heather Rankin, to intone his quiet meditations. Sometimes with English lyrics, just as often in Native tongues and imaginary dialects, Hearing Voices has a hymn-like quality. It also features Ackerman’s only electric guitar playing on record at the time.
This is the earliest album in my list and another departure for Ackerman. He weaves his guitar between the yearning lyricon playing of the late-Chuck Greenberg from Shadowfax, the tone-bending bass of Michael Manring, guitarist Michael Hedges and a few other WH stalwarts as well as Kronos Quartet. A CD of intimate ruminations and conversations.
I really liked Will Ackerman’s music from the beginning, but this was the album that made me a fan. I was seduced by Ackerman’s plaintive songs and simple but ornamented motifs that come across like sky paintings. Ackerman surrounds himself with keyboardist Tim Story, oboist Paul McCandless and it even features metal monster guitarist Buckethead (Guns ‘n’ Rose, Bill Laswell).
Sound of Wind Driven Rain has the familiar earmarks of earlier Ackerman albums with wistful melodies flowing over a finger-picked trellis of arpeggios. In addition to the usual accomplices — violinist Charlie Bisharat, oboist Paul McCandless and bassist Michael Manring — is Ugandan musician, Samite. His soaring voice lifts Ackerman’s “Hawk Dreaming” into a soulful hymn. “Unconditional,” played on a parlor guitar given him by Michael Hedges, has that timeless introspection that has made his music so enduring.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
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Tags:Acoustic Guitar, guitar, Will Ackerman, Windham Hill
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