Welcome to the RPM Record Club Seven Day Soundtrack, week ending Friday 28th July 2023. Here's a few tunes from the RPM collective to while away a couple of hours this weekend...over to...

Jean -

"I’ve gone completely random this week with my choices. I opened a box of my singles and took out 3. Here they are..."

"Best wishes to everyone."

Tony -

"Here's my offering for the week...a downbeat 3 that I hope everybody will enjoy."

Piers -

Philip -

"I'd like to offer my thanks to John for making me think with his question last week, ie. "did Bruce Springsteen become (temporarily) a tribute act." It's always A Good Thing to be made to think.

The answer is that of course he did, and he's been one again since with his tribute album to the soul music that inspired him during his youth. There is nothing to be ashamed of in this - it is perfectly legitimate and indeed honourable to acknowledge and give credit to those forebears an artist considers to be his or her musical mentors. In fact I would suggest that any artist worth their salt has done this, very often in the early stages of their own careers (eg. Beatle covers of Chuck Berry, Larry Williams, Buck Owens, etc.),

It is true that "various artist" tribute albums to much loved performers tend to be "curate's eggs"- ie. good in parts, but I'm sure we all have soft spots for an example or two of the genre. (My favourite is "Return of The Grievous Angel").

As for acts that specialize in performing the works of older artists, it can certainly be argued that they betray an inability to be creative in their own right, but my principal objection is that they generally fail miserably to do justice to the music of those people to whom they are supposedly paying tribute.

I think that another reason for antipathy towards tribute acts has to do with the matter of authenticity, which is perhaps the most fetishized notion in popular music, and an idea with which one should be very careful. Many artists have been very voluble in support of this idea, from Neil Young's desire to "keep it real" to Richie Edwards' ridiculous behaviour to Kurt Cobain's drug-addled confusion and guilt to the name of Lukas Nelson's band (Promise of The Real).

In Country music there's even a website called "Saving Country Music." Save it from what, you might inquire. Well, from the inauthentic, the fake, the song-writing-by-numbers involving several contributors that deals in cliches with no individual point of view. Back in the 90s, Garth Brooks was widely described as "The Anti-Hank," though this attitude seems to have softened a bit, but there remains much disagreement about what is "real country music."

Then we have questions as to whether white men can play- let alone sing- the blues, and about "cultural appropriation." Take for example Leadbelly. The Lomaxes went into prisons because they thought they would be able to record "authentic" black folk music in those institutions, but did Leadbelly give them that or what he thought the white men wanted? To what extent are those two things different and to what extent are they the same?

And another thing: is Neil Young any more true to himself with his denims, acoustic strums and electric squalls than Cher is to herself with her feathered finery and big productions? I know which I prefer, but I'm not sure that "authenticity" comes into it. What matters is whether the music resonates with you viscerally, emotionally or intellectually.

There's an excellent book published in the UK by Faber and Faber in 2007 that deals with this subject. It's called "Faking It: The Quest For Authenticity in Popular Music," by Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor. I recommend it."

Nina -

"Hi folks. Hope you're all well.

It has to be 3 from Shuhada' Sadaqat a.k.a. Magda Davitt a.k.a. Sinead O'Connor this week. Mammoth talent, bravery + sensitivity. Rest in power, Sinead."

"P.S,  I'll also share this essay link.  Not often I agree with Morrissey.. and shame he had to make it (at least a bit) about him, but still.. worth a look."

https://www.morrissey-solo.com/threads/you-know-i-couldn%E2%80%99t-last-july-26-2023.151306/

Jayne -

Dave -

"Hi RPMers, hope you have all had a good week . Here’s my 3 this week."

Tim -

"Always up for some disagreement....er, I mean, debate. I pretty much agree with everything Philip says regarding tribute bands…oh, and about getting us thinking; thanks John.

Except…my view is that Bruce didn’t turn into a Pete Seeger tribute band when he did his ‘We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions’ album/tour. He didn’t dress up to look like Pete and come on stage with a 5-string banjo, now did he? 😎 Live performances featured up to 18 band members, a sort of rock’n’roll-bluegrass-New Orleans funeral brass band crossover. For me he was still being Bruce, but including a lot of ‘cover songs’ in his repertoire, strongly associated with Pete Seeger, but which are all taken from what I’m going to flexibly call the American folk-song tradition. (But can a ‘traditional folk song’ even really be called a ‘cover’ version? Still mulling that one over.) Going back to Springsteen, I’d say the project was Bruce paying tribute to Seeger by using his name in the project title as an acknowledgement of Pete’s tireless championing of the American ‘folk song’ cannon. That’s a proper tribute with meaning. The majority of the songs recorded for the project are 'donkey's years old' and have been played by many, many other musicians and singers, 'Dan Tucker' dating back to 1843, no less, which is why they are thought of as now being ‘traditional’, even though composer credits can be attributed to a fair few of them (unlike ‘traditional’ songs from these isles). Looking at the album credits, Seeger in fact only wrote one song, ‘Bring ‘Em Home’, which appeared on a subsequent expanded edition of ‘We Shall Overcome’ and not included on the original release of the album. Bruce also composed a new song himself for the project, ‘American Land, which is something tribute bands don’t do. The very nature of a tribute band means they restrict themselves to performing material originally written by whatever band/artist they are sonically eulogising.

I’d also say there is a line crossed when a ‘covers’ band becomes a tribute band. Most pub bands, for instance, are what I’d call ‘covers’ bands, playing material drawn from lots of different artists, although usually within one type of genre i.e. a soul band, a classic rock band etc. These performances are enjoyable with a few beers and are not pretending to be anything else other than what they are. I’d therefore suggest Bruce’s soul album is a covers album…he’s not pretending to be any one particular soul singer. Personally, I think it’s an OK album, but I can’t see the point of recording these songs yet again. I didn’t buy it…I’ll listen to the originals.

Tribute bands single out one artist or band in particular, playing material exclusively pertaining to their chosen hero(es). In it’s extreme, I think it can become a musical Mike Yarwood show (famous impressionist from the 70s, kids) and for me the falseness of the concept takes away any musical enjoyment. I’ve been to one tribute band show, probably before they were as such a big thing as they are now…….I’m still not sure why I went. It was a Hendrix Experience tribute act commemorating one of the seemingly many Hendrix anniversaries for this, that and the other…can’t remember the year…which stopped off at the UEA LCR, Norwich. I’m afraid the name of the guitarist taking on the mantle of our Jimi escapes me, but he came on stage in a full Jimi-at-Monterey-feather-boa-outfit and technically was superb, even playing behind his head and with his teeth. He even wheeled on ex Hendrix bassists Noel Redding and Billy Cox (maybe that's why I went) for a few numbers. But it was all just very weird and….well, fake, and I struggled with the idea of someone playing a gig dressed up as Jimi Hendrix (impersonating him, in fact) as being a valid way of honouring the man's music. Maybe the problem is that I had gone for a great musical experience (pun intended) but what it actually was, was a theatrical show that just happened to have music in it. On that level, I suppose it worked, it was fun and the audience had an enjoyable night. It would have meant more musically and also been a real tribute to Hendrix without the guitarist acting as if he were Jimi, in my view.

Anyway, what I want to know now is; when does a band become it’s own tribute act? Discuss."

"In the mean time, here's some music I've played this week."

'Til Next Time...