He Plays a What?

"Unique" is a word often thrown around the music biz that stands in for phrases like "not commercial" or "we can't categorize it so we can't sell it" or most usually "doesn't play by our corporate rules so we hate it". As any of you who have been perusing this blog know, I often comment that the cognoscenti of the music world wouldn't know a good recording if they were struck across the noggin with it tied to a Fender Strat. But that happily doesn't stop good stuff from getting made. And so often it takes the hand of another artist to get it going - like in the case of this blog entry's featured artist.

In 1981 I had no idea who David Lindley was. As it turned out I heard his nitro-fueled version of "Mercury Blues" at a show in Edmonton during their summer exhibition - then called "Klondike Days", now called "Edmonton's Capital Ex". Although "Klondike Days" was a fairly ghastly name, the new name sounds like it's an ode to the ultimate ex-partner. Well living that far north does strange things to a body - but look at me, I lived there for 25 years so who am I to talk?

Self-serving digressions aside, I'm sad to say that I didn't see David and his band El Rayo-X live. The aforementioned song was the soundtrack to a synchronized water fountain and lightshow that preceded the main act - who may have been "Teen Angel and the Rockin' Rebels" - sort of Canada's answer to "Sha Na Na". They were, in my fuzzy recollection, quite good as a '50's/'60's cover band. But that David Lindley driven water fountain lightshow - that really stuck in my mind. I suspect the designer/developer of that little demonstration went on to be involved with the design of the fountain at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, or at least was one of the first to use the technology - the fountains and lights were wicked fast for their day. But it was the song that got to me.

My only previous experience with "Mercury Blues" was the California-slick and slightly swampy version done by Steve Miller on his equally excellent but nothing-at-all-like-Lindley album, "Fly Like An Eagle". That version had been firmly burned into my brain for at least 5 years, including a run in 1976/77 when I'm pretty sure I listened to the whole album once a day for at least 10 months. In 3 minutes and 33 seconds Lindley shredded my connection to the Miller version and I was hooked, never looking back. Sorry Steve - I still like the rest of "Eagle".

The very next day I had me a copy of "El Rayo-X" and the rest is future history. It turned out I had been hearing Lindley before - I just hadn't noticed. Thanks to Jackson Browne, whom Lindley had done session work for, and who co-produced the album, I was getting the pure source. It also turned out that Lindley was connected to another west coast wunderkind - Warren Zevon - who also was connected to Browne. I was listening to a lot of California produced stuff at the time, but David Lindley sounded like he had dropped in from another planet. By now, you've probably noticed the meandering style this post has taken - well that's just a metaphor for what David Lindley does with a tune.

I'm going to recommend two albums for you and I'll bet that the third one I'll mention is a keeper, too - although I don't have it - yet. The first I've already named above - the second is "Win This Record" (1982) - both originally released on the Warner/Reprise label. The third "El Rayo Live" will satisfy the completists reading this - and while those three don't encompass even a tenth of Lindley's recording career, they do represent the sum total of the El Rayo-X period. And it was a wonderful and all too short spasm of creativity the music biz couldn't categorize, control or contain.

To say that Lindley's arrangements of tunes - especially covers he did - were "different" would be like saying "Nickelback's" music is only slightly formulaic and predictable. But Lindley, for all his unique approach (how about a reggae version of "Bye Bye Love"?) is one of the most musical players I have ever heard. Some of my ab-so-lute-ly personal favs are "She Took Off My Romeos", "Twist and Shout", "Talk To The Lawyer", "Ram-A-Lamb-A-Man" & "Make It On Time". You'll need both albums to hear all of those. But in every case you will be confronted by a man and a band who know exactly what they are doing - even as you are trying to figure out just what it is.

Lindley plays pretty much anything with strings on it that can be plucked or strummed. The fact that he uses an electric steel guitar to create the power chords on "Mercury Blues" was a revelation when I finally saw Lindley and most of El Rayo-X (at least percussionist extraordinaire Ras Baboo was there) on the TV show "Later...With Jools Holland" hosted by the ex-Squeeze keyboardist.

And even though Robert Randolph - the newest proponent of a very un-traditional sounding approach to the standard and pedal steel guitar - never heard of Lindley or other 'secular' bands when he was growing up, I like to think that it was Lindley who was in the vanguard of breaking down some of the barriers that relegated certain instruments to certain genres of music and made Randolph's career an inevitability.

Anyway, you owe it to yourself to give Lindley a try. He takes a bit of listening to get full value from, but it's well worth it. Just start with the tunes that grab you and give the others a chance, and then you'll find yourself hearing those same sounds in other musicians' repertoires. And that brings us meanderingly to the point of why David Lindley matters - he made those sounds first, and then others followed him. And that is the best definition of "unique" I can think of. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

Imitated, yes. Bettered, never!

Shalom