WhitBlog

Whitney Lockert, musician, songwriter, occasional writer of other stuff

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50 Ways to Praise Your Lover (In Quarantine)

Living with a romantic partner can be a challenge in the best of times. As you may have noticed, these are not the best of times. As the world struggles to confront a global pandemic and systemic racism, many of us remain at home, forced to spend day after day in close proximity with our significant others while attempting to balance work, personal space, and time. In such situations positive communication is more important than ever, which is why I would like to offer the following list of 50 things you can say to keep your spouse or significant other uplifted for the next eternity or however long this lasts.

 1.     “Up before 11:00! Way to seize the day!”

2.     “This is your best sourdough photography yet!”

3.     “More banana bread! Yum!”

4.     “Have you lost weight? Your pajamas are looking extra loose today.”

5.     “You really nailed that pizza order. Third time this week is the charm!”

6.     “You really nailed that Zoom meeting! Not that I was watching over your shoulder.”

7.     “Your Zoom meeting joke was so funny it froze the whole program! Not that I was watching over your shoulder.”

8.     “You look really pretty with a mask on. The chambray denim really brings out your eyes.”

9.     “More Grey’s Anatomy! Great choice!”

10.   “You are by far the hottest girl here tonight!”

11.  “This tomato soup omelette is delicious!”

12.   “Yes, this is definitely a great time to start doing our own composting!”

13.  “Way to take a shower today!”

14.  “Your around the block power walking form has really improved!”

15.  “That herb garden on the balcony was a great idea!”

16.  “Some of the herbs on the balcony are still alive. Great job!”

17.  “Your angry ranting at the President is very articulate.”

18.  “Your angry ranting about your boss to a colleague on facetime is very articulate.”

19.  “Your can opener handling has really come a long way.”

20.  “This twelfth bar of soap smells great, good choice!”

21.  “Yes, it’s very cute when you call me your Quaran-TINE.”

22.  “There’s no one I’d rather be stuck inside with until we both die!”

23.  “Yes, now would be a great time to read War and Peace together.”

24.  “Wow, you went all the way to the store and only got chocolate and marshmallows. You always have known just what you want!”

25.  “Your sunny outlook really keeps me going right now.”

26.  “Your constant pessimism finally seems entirely justified!”

27.  “This Zoom dinner party with your whole family was a great idea!”

28.  “Yeah, your bangs look totally straight!”

29.  “You must feel very comfortable in this relationship.”

30.  “I appreciate that you don’t yell nearly as much or as loudly as our schizophrenic neighbor across the hall.”

31.  “I can tell by how long you spend in the bathroom that you’re washing your hands very thoroughly!”

32.  “You’re very brave to try that recipe again!”

33.  “You look more comfortable now on the couch than you have all afternoon.”

34.  “I love the sound of your voice. And it’s a good thing I do.”

35.  “I’m so glad you got this ukulele before quarantine!”

36.  “You’re the only guy for me. Literally.”

37.  “You’re still here! I am delighted!”

38.  “I feel like when I say, ‘I just wish…’, trail off and stare out the window, you really understand what I mean.”

39.  “It’s great that you aren’t letting this situation deter you from your goal of re-watching every NBA Finals game since 1988.”

40.  “When I’m with you I lose all track of time. What day even is it?”

41.  “Nothing else matters when I’m with you. Or at all. I am always with you.”

42.  “When this is all over, I’m going to take you someplace nice. Assuming we still have jobs and money and they still allow Americans.”

43.  “Every hour is happy hour with you! Must be time for a drink!”

44.  “Your hair is so long. Like a mermaid!”

45.   “You are a kind and thoughtful person who thinks only of others and never takes any time to relax and enjoy her own space, which is why I think you should go for a walk by yourself right now.”

46.  “I wouldn’t trade your company for all the toilet paper in China. Do they still have toilet paper there?”

47.  “I love fighting the white supremacist patriarchy from home with you!”

48.  “Of course you can spend the night.”

49.  “After three months at home with you I do not hate you.”

50.  “Your work ethic is particularly impressive during this time at home, but remember that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but not you, I still find you very interesting, HAHAHAHA!”

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Top 5/Bottom 5: Led Zeppelin

If the many popular shows and movies based in ‘70s and ‘80s adolescence are to be believed, no teenager’s bedroom of the time was complete without a Led Zeppelin poster. As the residents of those bedrooms knew and often argued, Led Zeppelin are one of the greatest, most popular and influential rock bands of all time. Learning and jamming Zeppelin riffs was a rite of passage for myself and countless other aspiring guitar players. With a deep and varied catalogue that covered a ton of stylistic ground, Zeppelin are an ideal candidate for this week’s Top5/Bottom 5.

 Top 5:

·      “Whole Lotta Love”: This is about as Led Zeppelin a song as there is. It’s got all the elements: hot-rodded blues riffing and lyrics, innovative and trippy production, horny moaning and barely disguised innuendos, thunderous drumming, and a virtuoso ensemble sound with no weak links. If you love Zeppelin, you love this song. Led Zeppelin II was the first Zeppelin album I owned, and it still may be my favorite. Where the first album showed a band that could do almost anything musically and weren’t shy about showing off their range, this one was something else entirely. “Whole Lotta Love,” “The Lemon Song,” and “Bring It on Home” take blues to a whole other place, one much more interesting and original than the two straight blues covers on the first Zeppelin album. This song and this album would still be my recommendations to anyone who wonders what Zeppelin are all about.

·      “Good Times/Bad Times”: This makes the list pretty much for the opening chords and drum fills alone. Jun-jun! As I’ve already hinted, I think the first album tries to do a little too much in terms of showing off the band’s range, and I certainly don’t agree with Rolling Stone that it should be the highest-ranked Zeppelin album on the list of greatest albums of all time; but this is a perfect album opener and a perfect first song. Zeppelin famously didn’t release many singles, but this was an early exception, and for most fans at the time this was the first thing they would have heard from this new band. Holy shit. The guitar playing, the bass playing, the vocals, and the drums all get their moment to shine. I can only imagine how many people were inspired to pick up a bass by John Paul Jones’s fills on this song, or to play drums by Bonham’s blend of perfect support and over-the-top bashing here, not to mention Jimmy Page’s obvious impact on legions of guitar players. Not many bands before or since can match this as a first song.

·      “Ramble On”: It’s a tough call, but for me this is the ultimate Zeppelin ballad, edging out “That’s the Way” and “Going to California.” It may be unfair to compare it to those songs, since “Ramble” does contain some heavier Zeppelin elements, including some fairly heavy electric guitar and drumming on the choruses, but to me it remains a ballad at its heart. This song is also in my opinion the best of the Tolkein referencing Zeppelin songs. The electric guitar leads in between verses are sublime, and again the vocals, bass, and drums all show extraordinary range and virtuosity.

·      “Over the Hills and Far Away”: Another ballad/heavy rocker combined in one. I’m not aware of any band that combined acoustic sounds and heavy rock elements in quite this way before Zeppelin. No doubt this was partly owing to improving recording technology and the ability to cleanly layer acoustic and electric instruments in the studio. Whatever the case, Zeppelin certainly pioneered the loud/quiet/loud dynamic of much modern rock with songs like this, and no one has ever done it better. Epic.

·      “Stairway to Heaven”: Sure, this song has been played to death and it’s now almost impossible to hear it without thinking of jokes like the Wayne’s World “No Stairway” bit. And maybe the intro is just a little too close to that of Spirit’s “Taurus” for comfort. Nevertheless, Stairway has it all: an all-time classic acoustic guitar intro, the brilliant studio layering that was such a hallmark of their recordings, some mystical lyrics vague enough to mean nothing and everything all at once, a killer guitar solo, and a heavy outro. Every once in a while I hear this song afresh and it strikes me again how great it is.

 Bottom 5:

·      “The Crunge”: Famously composed as Zeppelin’s answer to James Brown, this song does groove in a unique way, and I’ve always enjoyed that nonsensical “Where’s that confounded bridge?” bit at the end. Nevertheless, it’s a bit of a letdown on Houses of the Holy, following the first three magnificent songs, and for me it contributes to Houses being the first not-quite-great Led Zeppelin album. It just feels a bit like heavy filler that doesn’t quite go anywhere.

·      “Since I’ve Been Loving You”: I love a good slow blues and there was a time when I loved Page’s guitar playing on this song. But having now heard the song many times since I was young, it sounds to me like a plodding, bombastic piece of not super-original, overbaked noodling, full of unnecessary drum fills and vocal and guitar histrionics. In short, it’s everything that people who don’t like Led Zeppelin don’t like about Led Zeppelin. I like Led Zeppelin, but sometimes the critics are partly right.

·      “Candy Store Rock”: Did I select this randomly by looking at one of Zeppelin’s weakest albums and picking a very straight-forward rock and roll number? I’m not telling. I will tell you that I listened to it again, and it is not better than I remembered. Every line begins with “Oh baby, baby,” and it doesn’t really get better or more interesting from there. It’s not terrible exactly, just not great, and that’s the measuring stick for Led Zeppelin.

·      “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper”: This song isn’t really terrible either, but it’s pretty half-baked, and another example of Zeppelin needlessly trying to show off that they can play blues, in this case without adding anything of note to it but some vocal effects and weird production. It should probably be titled “Hats off to Fred McDowell,” since he’s the most obvious progenitor of this style of country blues. The guitar playing is fine, but doesn’t come close to matching McDowell’s rhythmic drive, and doesn’t add any other elements to the style. It’s also hard not to blame tracks like this for every amateur guitarist who sticks a slide on his finger, tunes to an open chord and thinks he’s a “blues man”. The lyric is standard blues cliché stuff, which is fine as far as it goes, but not very interesting. Overall, pretty forgettable. I mean, did you even remember what song this was by the title? I didn’t.

·      “Stairway to Heaven”: I hope I never hear this song again. What a bunch of nonsense.

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Top 5/Bottom 5: The Rolling Stones

If you’re anything like me, you love to listen to, talk about, and even argue about music. In that spirit I’ve decided to embark on a little project. Each week I’ll be listing my top 5 and bottom 5 songs from an artist or band that I love, or at least like. Disagree? Let me know, that’s half the fun.

Considered by many to be the world’s greatest rock and roll band, the Rolling Stones have now been making music for over 50 years. That makes their vast catalogue an ideal one to pick through and select highlights and lowlights.

Top 5:

●      “Satisfaction”: Yes, I know we’ve all heard it too many times, and yes, I know there are many (including Keith) who argue that Otis Redding’s version is actually superior, and they may be right. But this is just about a perfect pop/rock song, with its propulsive groove, that classic stupid simple riff, and its great petulant, bratty rock and roll lyrics dissing and dismissing everything from “some girl” to “the man… on the radio” hawking the latest products for instant happiness and fulfillment. Maybe the most important song in establishing the Stones as a group with its own attitude and sound–what we might now call its own “brand.” Classic for a reason.

●      “Wild Horses”: For me it’s just about a tossup between this and “Can’t Always Get What You Want” for greatest Stones ballad, but I give the edge to “Horses” because it feels a little more specific and a little more real to me. Though I always liked it, this was a song that truly meant something to me once I had actually experienced heartbreak a couple times, and no matter how many times I hear it, it still works. It’s also a great arrangement–I love the way the drums just disappear for entire verses and come back in on the choruses, and the lead guitar and the 12 string rhythm are so beautiful and restrained, perfect illustrations of the Stones’ just-enough musicianship approach.

●      “Beast of Burden”: The greatest soul tune in the Stones’ oeuvre in my opinion. A great guitar intro, a great mid-tempo groove, and lyrics that walk the line between self-doubt and seduction. From the last truly great Stones album in my opinion, 1978’s Some Girls.

●      “Tumbling Dice”: It’s all about the groove. No song better exemplifies what I’d call the middle-period Stones, the time when in my opinion they went from being a very good rock and roll band to being a band that had its own complete signature sound. This kind of mid-tempo rock groove, with the classic Keith Richards/Charlie Watts push/pull interplay is what really sets the Stones of Let It Bleed through It’s Only Rock and Roll apart, and it’s the most easily identified sound in bands obviously inspired by the Stones. No matter how many bands attempt it (the Black Crowes come to mind), it just can’t quite be matched. One of the greatest songs on what many, including that similarly named publication Rolling Stone, consider the greatest Rolling Stones album, Exile on Main Street.

●      “Gimme Shelter”: Another one of the greatest mid-period Stones songs, this one for me is all about the production. I’ve heard plenty of live versions of this, along with plenty of covers, and for me none come close to matching the Let it Bleed studio version’s grandeur and menace. The lyric demands big music, and the studio version delivers it. Where most live versions are too fast, the tempo of the album version is perfect to convey the gathering storms, both actual and psychological, depicted in the lyrics. The sometimes swampy. sometimes stinging guitar sounds; the almost operatic backing vocals; the howling harmonica; the thundering piano, all add to a glorious rock and roll mass.

 Bottom 5:

●      “Angie”: “Angie/Aaaaann-jay”–I consider this the other side of the “Wild Horses” coin. Is it about David Bowie’s then-wife Angela? Is it about Anita Pallenberg? Is it about Keith Richards’s daughter? Who cares? What it is is a saccharine ballad with some drippy strings and piano, and Mick Jagger overly enunciating every syllable for effect. It’s also possible that my negative opinion of the song was reinforced by the junkie who used to come in to the Guitar Center near Union Square in New York where I worked, who would sit on a stool, play the beginning of the song, start singing to himself and almost invariably nod off. You and me both, buddy.

●      “Start Me Up”: Ok, I’ll admit this one seems a little too easy to hate. Maybe I don’t actually hate it, but it’s so ubiquitous as to be borderline annoying almost every time I hear it. It’s a good guitar riff that in my opinion doesn’t quite measure up to Keith’s greatest. Something about the song just gives me ‘80s rock beer commercial vibes, even if its most famous commercial use was actually for Microsoft.

●      “Anybody Seen My Baby”: This song just sucks. A weak attempt to use some of the mid-‘90s electronic dance production techniques that were so in vogue, and were much better utilized by artists like David Bowie. (Bowie of course produced some blatant Stones pastiches in the ‘70s.) And sure, you could list any number of the Stones songs from the mid-‘80s on as among their weaker songs, but some of them are actually pretty fun if you don’t listen too closely. Not this one. Amusingly, Keith Richards recounts in his autobiography that Mick Jagger accidentally stole part of the melody from a KD Lang song, and the band subsequently had to give her partial songwriting credit. A dubious honor in this case, but no doubt financially rewarding.

●      “Have You Seen Your Mother Baby?”: What the hell is this song? Glad you asked. It is a psychedelic relic of anti-authority nonsense. On the other hand if this were a Pretty Things song it would be one of the best things they ever did. What an overrated music dork band they were.

●      “It’s All Over Now”: Just kidding, this song rules.

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The Quality Coffee Quandary

           Like a lot of people, I like to start my day with a good cup of coffee. Not just a good cup of coffee, but also breakfast. Breakfast is very important to me. Without breakfast, my coffee will just make me jittery and upset my stomach, and without the coffee I won’t ever really wake up, so the breakfast is necessary to support the coffee, which supports my becoming what passes for human in the morning.

Anyway, as I said, I like to start my day with a good cup of coffee. But I don’t like to start my day with too good a cup of coffee, at least not every day. Because the coffee sets the tone for the whole day. Or rather it sets the bar for the whole day, and I don’t want that bar too high. If my morning coffee is the best thing about my day, the apotheosis, well then it’s all downhill from there, isn’t it? And not downhill like in the sense of smooth sailing, easy riding, going with the flow downhill, more like moving down the hill from a nice hilltop view to the dingy cottage with no view down in the valley. (I never understood that expression, all downhill from here - going downhill is supposed to mean decreasing quality, but moving downhill is easier, so you’d think that would be a good thing.)

Recently my girlfriend brought home a new coffee. It was organic and responsibly roasted and it had a great profile, with notes of, I don’t know, good coffee taste. And these things are important to someone like me - as a white guy with a beard pushing 40 I care about coffee. I brew it the same way every time, grinding the beans fresh and brewing it one cup at a time using a ceramic cone filter, letting the water settle after boiling, pouring in a circular motion just enough to cover the grounds initially to let it bloom, then pouring enough water to fill the cup. And this coffee was great. I made myself a cup in the morning with a quick egg sandwich, and I was good to go.

Well, as you already guessed, that was the highlight of my day. Sure I could have come home and made myself another cup, but I don’t have the stomach for that anymore, or the caffeine tolerance. My day was ruined, nowhere to go, defeated by the excellence of my morning coffee. I yearned for it, but there was nothing to do. I could only look forward to the next day’s cup. Which I suppose is something.

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Stumbling Upon the Din of Ecstasy

It’s easy to wonder today how Chris Whitley ever became a major label artist at all. While many believe he never achieved the fame he deserved as a singer, songwriter, and guitar player, he did achieve a measure of relative fame and success as a major label artist in the 1990s – at least enough that people in the know still remember and speak of him in tones of quiet reverence reserved for the finest cult acts. It is true that years of making beautifully abstract blues-based rock that also incorporated shoeagaze, electronica, noise, and other elements never produced a hit single or hit album; and though he possessed a measure of good looks, there was always something alien about Whitley, something about his music and persona which suggested that he would never belong, even among the heroin chic heart-throbs of the “alternative” ‘90s. In spite of critical accolades, his music was ultimately destined for the bargain bins, which is where I found Din of Ecstasy at a record store in Sonoma County, sometime after reading a bit on him in Guitar Player magazine (in the pages of which I discovered a great deal of just-outside-the-mainstream music when I was younger).

I don’t know quite what I expected when I picked up the album, but that was the beauty of record (or CD) shopping in those days: Sometimes a couple of intriguing sentences in a music publication of some sort was all it took to convince you to part with your hard-earned money and take a chance on something new, particularly something that could be had for a bit less than the more-or-less standard used rate of $9.99. I don’t recall for sure, but I believe Din of Ecstasy was one of many discs that I gave a preliminary listen on one of the multi-disc loading players available for use as a listening station in the store. The opening song blew me away pretty much from the first guitar riff, and it still does each time I put it on. What a sound! Messy and distorted, yet melodic and articulate, the guitar arpeggios of “Narcotic Prayer”’ flow like lava into the ear canals. I heard years later from a colleague who had known Whitley and visited him in the recording studio that during the making of the album he had used piles of effect pedals, often chained together at the same time, to get the results he wanted in the studio. However he achieved it, the tone on that song in particular might be one of the greatest guitar sounds I’ve ever heard, miraculous in its simultaneous chaos and clarity. When Whitley sings, “The lights come up and I just crash,” the barely controlled feedback of the guitar crashes with him, the perfect aural counterpart to the lyrics.

To my mind, nothing else on the album quite equals the power of that first song; nevertheless, it’s a great album all the way through. There are fierce rockers; some acoustic blues, or what should be called blues if the descriptions weren’t so often limited to music that repeats the same chord progressions and lyrical clichés; and some gorgeous quieter moments. Idiosyncratic blues-based acoustic playing would remain Whitley’s primary calling card for years; one of his most commercially and critically successful albums ultimately would be Dirt Floor, recorded in a couple of days at a barn in Vermont, entirely solo and acoustic - not exactly the product of a record label’s grand vision, and in some ways the antithesis of Din of Ecstasy’s chains of effects pedals and robust arrangements. Needless to say, like many great musicians, Whitley’s vision covered a wide range of styles and dynamics. Two more major label albums followed Din of Ecstasy before he and the label parted ways. He continued to perform and record albums, primarily for small European labels, and lived in Europe for several years. A longtime smoker, Chris Whitley died of lung cancer in 2005.

I’ve listened to plenty more of Whitley’s music over the years, and enjoyed it all, but Din of Ecstasy still stands out for me as a great introduction to the music of a man whose style was never easy to categorize but enchanted many. It seems sadly fitting that a long-promised documentary about the brilliant, troubled singer/songwriter who could never quite get over the hump commercially ultimately failed to materialize after years of production and teasing.

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Fingerstyle arrangement of a favorite Beatles melody. What else is there to do on a day off with no hot water in the apartment? #beatlescover #instacover #fingerstyle @officialgretsch

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Playing around with some pedals and found my new favorite slide sound: Strat into @xoticusa SL Drive into the old Blues Jr. #slideguitar #strat #fender

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Came up with this little groove after being inspired by Chris Whitley's Dirt Floor album. Played on my @gretsch Jim Dandy, a super fun little guitar. #jimdandy #acousticblues #songwriting

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AIBHyenvy4)

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A Chord

A brief story about how my songwriting brain works: Last night I went to see a friend play a show, which was excellent. Another band played after my friend. I thought they had an interesting sound but it didn't quite get me there; in fact there was a particular chord voicing that the guitarist used in one song which I thought could be used better. So I said my goodbyes and walked to the train thinking about how to use this chord. Before long I started to hear it in my head: a guitar riff, a melody, drums, even some lyrics. By the time I was home, I had an A part and a B part, and not long after plugging in a guitar and messing around a little, I had what I thought was a killer chorus. Much work remains, but it's a start.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB4I81LN5N8)

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Hard at work on the new homepage.