12-27-05 Baker, Bruce, Clapton and PBS
After all these years, seeing these guys perform the old Cream songs again on PBS was very exciting for me. Of course, the local PBS station was airing this concert as a draw for pledge week... or is it pledge month? Perhaps it's pledge year.
Consulting my cable guide, I found that it was going to be re-broadcast again, so I set up my recording gear and got the whole two hours into the can. Then I ran it through my editing program to cut out the begging breaks, of which there were three or four. To my utter amazement, the two hours of air time had now been pared down to only one hour and fifteen minutes!
Now, I've never donated money to the local PBS station, despite occasional twinges of considering it during what used to be a once a year pledge drive, and due to their increasing acumen at marketing techniques. But I've never gotten to the point where I made a decision to write them a check. Never. Besides, my wife had been contributing to the local PBS station for years.
It's been my view that PBS, funded by public money for "educational TV" purposes, has been divurging from that original purpose quite a bit lately. The change has been gradual, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Where programs used to quickly list big contributors to specific programs, they'd just show that list at the beginning of the show. Now they get to run little commercials, as if this is still within the bounds of propriety. They run their little commercials at the beginning, they run their little commercials as interruptions in the middle of the program, and they run their little commercials at the end of the program.
How is this different from what we refer to as "commercial TV"?
Well, judging by the over ONE THIRD air time swallowed up begging for money, along with the running "iinfo-mercial" style for pushing the Cream concert DVD and CD during breaks in the airing of the Cream reunion concert, I'd have to point out that there's absolutely NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL.
I mean, the WHOLE POINT of donating money to the local PBS station was because they DIDN'T HAVE COMMERCIAL BREAKS, fer cryin' out loud!
And the really irksome part of all this for me was the fact that they were offering the DVD for a "donation" price of ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS!
I'm really sorry, PBS, but this kind of thing is really out of my reach. It's not that I'm poor, but paying that kind of money for a DVD is just plain beyond comprehension. If the station ran the whole concert, uninterrupted and without those long info-mercial style breaks, then it might make sense to "support" the station. But now that it's just like all the other commercial stations, what's the point?
Later on, my wife found the two DVD Cream concert set on Amazon.com for $15. It arrived via UPS a couple of days later.
I've watched it several times, and I'm still struck by the performances of these three guys. Jack Bruce looks like Trevor Howard now, but he's still the guy who always knocked my socks off with his singing and bass playing. Ginger Baker looks too old to be playing drums as incredibly as he did in this series of concerts, especially in the song "Toad", where the drum solo was beyond belief! And Eric Clapton? Well, Eric's been in the limelight all these years, and we're all very accustomed to seeing him perform.
A friend of mine was disappointed with the performances, saying that it just wasn't up to the head spinning level that it used to be. But I told him that those old performances and studio pieces ran up the pole of drug-induced complex rhythms and levels beyond the realms of musicianship, and out there onto the branches of "Holy shit, Man! I can't believe they can play that same thing over and over so long! Oh, wow, Man! They're still playing the break! Sheesh! How long can they keep that up???"
...know what I mean? I mean, there were lots of bands around in those days of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll that ran out there during instrumental breaks for long, long periods of time. And the strain was really something! I mean, when they finally came down out of the clouds and actually ended the song, we all stood up and gave them thunderous applause because, really, we were just glad they finally ended the song! We just couldn't have taken it any more!
Now, all these years later, Cream finally got back together and made this thing happen. Of course it's different now. Bruce and Baker have been jazz musicians all along, and Clapton is a blues musician. Now that the technology has caught up to the musicianship, we don't have the distortion of Marshall amplifier stacks being driven beyond the point of no return. Instead we have electronic accessories that recreate whatever level of distortion the musician wants. And in order to get that particular sound, they don't have to risk destroying everyone's eardrums. Most importantly, the guys on the stage don't feel they have to stick needles into their arms and get high on heroin before they start the concert now...
I'm really glad these guys stopped back there, got healthy, and managed to live this long so that we can enjoy what they did this past May at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Now we can know that it wasn't the drugs that gave us this band, it was the incredible talent those three guys had then, and still have now.
Consulting my cable guide, I found that it was going to be re-broadcast again, so I set up my recording gear and got the whole two hours into the can. Then I ran it through my editing program to cut out the begging breaks, of which there were three or four. To my utter amazement, the two hours of air time had now been pared down to only one hour and fifteen minutes!
Now, I've never donated money to the local PBS station, despite occasional twinges of considering it during what used to be a once a year pledge drive, and due to their increasing acumen at marketing techniques. But I've never gotten to the point where I made a decision to write them a check. Never. Besides, my wife had been contributing to the local PBS station for years.
It's been my view that PBS, funded by public money for "educational TV" purposes, has been divurging from that original purpose quite a bit lately. The change has been gradual, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Where programs used to quickly list big contributors to specific programs, they'd just show that list at the beginning of the show. Now they get to run little commercials, as if this is still within the bounds of propriety. They run their little commercials at the beginning, they run their little commercials as interruptions in the middle of the program, and they run their little commercials at the end of the program.
How is this different from what we refer to as "commercial TV"?
Well, judging by the over ONE THIRD air time swallowed up begging for money, along with the running "iinfo-mercial" style for pushing the Cream concert DVD and CD during breaks in the airing of the Cream reunion concert, I'd have to point out that there's absolutely NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL.
I mean, the WHOLE POINT of donating money to the local PBS station was because they DIDN'T HAVE COMMERCIAL BREAKS, fer cryin' out loud!
And the really irksome part of all this for me was the fact that they were offering the DVD for a "donation" price of ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS!
I'm really sorry, PBS, but this kind of thing is really out of my reach. It's not that I'm poor, but paying that kind of money for a DVD is just plain beyond comprehension. If the station ran the whole concert, uninterrupted and without those long info-mercial style breaks, then it might make sense to "support" the station. But now that it's just like all the other commercial stations, what's the point?
Later on, my wife found the two DVD Cream concert set on Amazon.com for $15. It arrived via UPS a couple of days later.
I've watched it several times, and I'm still struck by the performances of these three guys. Jack Bruce looks like Trevor Howard now, but he's still the guy who always knocked my socks off with his singing and bass playing. Ginger Baker looks too old to be playing drums as incredibly as he did in this series of concerts, especially in the song "Toad", where the drum solo was beyond belief! And Eric Clapton? Well, Eric's been in the limelight all these years, and we're all very accustomed to seeing him perform.
A friend of mine was disappointed with the performances, saying that it just wasn't up to the head spinning level that it used to be. But I told him that those old performances and studio pieces ran up the pole of drug-induced complex rhythms and levels beyond the realms of musicianship, and out there onto the branches of "Holy shit, Man! I can't believe they can play that same thing over and over so long! Oh, wow, Man! They're still playing the break! Sheesh! How long can they keep that up???"
...know what I mean? I mean, there were lots of bands around in those days of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll that ran out there during instrumental breaks for long, long periods of time. And the strain was really something! I mean, when they finally came down out of the clouds and actually ended the song, we all stood up and gave them thunderous applause because, really, we were just glad they finally ended the song! We just couldn't have taken it any more!
Now, all these years later, Cream finally got back together and made this thing happen. Of course it's different now. Bruce and Baker have been jazz musicians all along, and Clapton is a blues musician. Now that the technology has caught up to the musicianship, we don't have the distortion of Marshall amplifier stacks being driven beyond the point of no return. Instead we have electronic accessories that recreate whatever level of distortion the musician wants. And in order to get that particular sound, they don't have to risk destroying everyone's eardrums. Most importantly, the guys on the stage don't feel they have to stick needles into their arms and get high on heroin before they start the concert now...
I'm really glad these guys stopped back there, got healthy, and managed to live this long so that we can enjoy what they did this past May at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Now we can know that it wasn't the drugs that gave us this band, it was the incredible talent those three guys had then, and still have now.
posted by Jeff Barnard at 4:51 PM
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