Roger Catlin | TV Eye

Dylan in Pulitzerland

The first rock ‘n’ roller to win a Pulitzer, Bob Dylan hasn’t written much in his songbook about newspapers, awards or journalism.

So proud of his Academy Award (for song of the year) that he routinely tours with it on his stage set, the closest he’s come to mentioning big awards in his song came in his song “Lenny Bruce,” of whom he said, "Never did get any Golden Globe award."

His song from 1970’s "New Morning," "Day of the Locusts" depicted an honor he picked up from a university, describing the scene "as I stepped to the stage to pick up my degree

I put down my robe, picked up my diploma,
Took hold of my sweetheart and away we did drive

When it comes to the world of journalism, the prime concentration for Pulitzers, it’s surprising he mentioned newspapers only once in all of his songs – and then only as a blanket covering the unfortunate person in "Only a Hobo."

Yet he famously skewered a journalist in his “Ballad of a Thin Man,” which begins

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, 'Who is that man?'
You try so hard
But you don't understand
Just what you'll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

On the other hand, his fictional Jones was thought to have been based on a magazine writer.

Scribes of two sorts, though, were directly addressed in his classic song "The Times They Are A-Changin' "

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again

Nor, we assume, will his Pulitzer.

"Heroes" -- The Soundtrack Album

"Heroes" won’t be back with a new episode until it returns for its third season in the fall. To tide you over, they’re releasing a CD of music Tuesday – including a lot of songs that haven’t been in the show nor will ever be.

In the show, "you have probably noticed that we don’t feature a lot of songs, so why are we doing a CD that is full of them?" producer Allan Arkush asks in the CD’s liner notes. "We want to set up a new music connection with our fans and give them the music that helps us make this show."

Mostly, they’re the kind of songs they listen to while putting the show together more than songs you’d actually hear on the show. But there are also four cuts from house composers Wendy & Lisa, among them the very brief show theme. The musical duo began their careers as part of the band of Prince, who is nowhere on the soundtrack by the way.

Among the cuts on there are old cuts like "Man in the Long Black Coat" by Bob Dylan, the New Pornographers' "All for Swinging You Around" and, naturally, "Heroes" by David Bowie.

But 11 of the 18 cuts on the CD are new, mostly in the form of new tracks previewing soon to be released albums from My Morning Jacket, Imogen Heap, Panic at the Disco, Nada Surf and the Jesus & Mary Chain, whose "All Things Will Pass" (not the George Harrison song) is their first studio recording in 11 years.

The track from Death Cab for Cutie is a B-side getting its first official U.S. release. There’s a previously unreleased cut too from Wilco.

The "Heroes" CD also includes a couple of interesting collaboration, Brighton Port Authority with Iggy Pop and the Chemical Brothers featuring Spank Rock.

The collection, itself a marketing device, will be initially available through another marketing device: It will only be available at Best Buy.

The Pogues Again in NYC

It’s becoming a tradition now: As much as the raucous St. Patrick’s Day parade down Fifth Avenue, the annual Pogues concerts right around the same time are the kind of epic event any rock fan can embrace.
One of the motivations of seeing the band as often as possible even in the absence of new material, is that any fan must ask himself how long Shane McGowan will be around to see.
He lives as he sounds – drunk 24/7, dissipated, puffy, toothless – a surer sign of rock mortality than Keith Richards. If you went to see him fronting the Popes, he’d stand and hold onto a microphone stand, if only to hold himself up.

By now it’s clear that not only like Keith, he’s clearly survived, he may outlive us all. Saturday, he was as animated as I’ve seen him in a long time. And though he took frequent breaks to allow Philip Chevron and Spider Stacy to take lead vocals, he’d not just sing convincingly in his his gravelly register, but he’d spin around during musical interludes holding his hat out.
Without new material, it’s a chock full of favorites, some echoing from their use in “theWire” (“The Body of an American”), some from holidays past (“Fairytale of New York”).  It was all great.

Madonna's Detroit Connection

People out Detroit way were outraged when the Class of 2008 inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced.

The field is getting thinner by the year, it's true.

But while Detroit's daughter Madonna got inducted, there were many in the Motor City still waiting -- specifically Iggy and the Stooges. So it was fitting Monday when it came time for Madonna to be inducted that it was Iggy and the Stooges who performed "Burnin' Up" and "Ray of Light" for the occasion. It was certainly a more rock and roll choice than, say, Justin Timberlake, who gave the induction speech and bowed when she arrived.

It was a nifty moment in a night light surprise. Patti LaBelle and Jerry Butler began the night by singing salutes to the Philly Soul sound of Gamble and Huff.

Canadian folk poet Leonard Cohen gently mocked his honor saying "I have seen the future of rock and roll and it is not Leonard Cohen" while Damien Rice sang his "Hallelujah."

The Ventures played "Walk Don't Run" and "Hawaii Five-O." Billy Joel gave a long induction speech to John Mellencamp, who played a trio of hits. James Cotton inducted Little Walter, jamming with Ben Harper on a couple of his songs.

It was Tom Hanks, oddly, who inducted the Dave Clark 5 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Monday at Waldorf-Astoria, the big beat sound of “That Thing That You Do!” playing behind him.

What inspired his movie may have been what inspired him as a youngster as he gave a fire and brimstone endorsement to the joy that the Dave Clark 5.

Clark, one of three surviving members who attended, made note of the death earlier this month of lead singer Mike Smith.

"At least he knows he’s a hall of famer,"  Clark said. "Mike, you’re with us in spirit my friend and always will be. Mike was one of the great 60s rock singers an integral part of the DC5, an incredible talent that will be greatly missed."

Joan Jett stepped up to sing "Bits and Pieces." The band's "Glad All Over" was the basis of the event's one "jam" song, with John Fogerty and John Mellencamp trading verses, Billy Joel playing keyboards and singing, and Joan Jett continuing to hold forth on stage. But try as he might, the harmonica playing Cotton couldn't get into the song at all.

Remembering Mike Smith

Mike Clark, the dashing lead singer of the Dave Clark Five, died Thursday, ten days before he was to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of the DC5.

He died of pneumonia at age 64, five years after a freak accident in 2003 that paralyzed him. VH1 Classic took the opportunity Saturday to salute him by playing a 2005 benefit concert Paul Shaffer threw at B.B. King's, a show that is to be released on DVD later this month anyway.

It was a labor of love for Shaffer, who said he always modeled his own style of keyboard playing -- standing up -- after Smith's style. Months before Smith's accident, Shaffer invited him to come on and lead the band on a night when Shaffer was filling in for his boss David Letterman.

Smith was the Paul McCartney of the DC5 -- the cute one. As an elder rocker, he held his looks, much like Richard Chamberlain, and still sounded pretty good vocally as well. The DC5 never reunited but Smith kept his hand in music by leading a number of bands.

For Shaffer's tribute, raising money for Smith, he got a bunch of British acts to perform and to each play a DC5 song. The headlining Zombies (flown in on Letterman's private jet from Toronto) sang "Can't You See That She's Mine" in addition to their own "Time of the Season" two years before it would become an anthem for "American Idol" finalist Blake Lewis.

Billy J. Kramer sang "Come on Home," Denny Laine did "Any Way You Want It" as well as "Go Now."  The only group that didn't fit was the Fab Faux, the Beatles cover band led by Shaffer's own bassist Will Lee, though the song they chose to play, "Catch Us if You Can."

But there was real news in the club revival in the first reunion in nearly 40 years for Peter & Gordon, who really look old by now. They sang their own wistful "I Go to Pieces" as well as the DC5's standard slow-dance ballad, "Because" with a kind of country twang.

"Glad All Over" and "Bits and Pieces" were done by the ensemble -- The Safety in Numbers Orchestra, Lee called it; the "Dave Clark 500" with Donald Fagen joining in on keyboards, and Max Weinberg on drums.

It was the kind of jam you'd hear at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dinner, one that Smith will miss March 10.

Kitty, Bruce Back in Hartford

I have seen the future of Bruce Springsteen and its name is "Kitty’s Back."

The 35 year old song from "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" got a crazy good workout in the Thursday night show at the Hartford Civic Center realying on expansive jazzy interludes from the crucial but scarcely used Roy Bittan on piano, E Street guest organist Charles Giordano and Springsteen himself on guitar.

It was great to see such a talented band be able to stretch out a bit, and jazz wouldn't be a bad occasional turn for a band so well versed in R&B.

A freewheeling tune that allows itself for such improvisation, "Kitty" has been used before to showcase the band, including famous extended run on the Hammersmith Odeon live album in 1975.

It wasn’t 17 minutes long in Hartford, just as the show was no longer one of his 3 ½ hour marathon.

The opening night to the second leg of his U.S. tour clocked in more like a modest two hours, with 23 songs on the setlist.

But there was a lot of pleasure found in his well-chosen rarities making first tour appearances. There was nothing this election year from "Born in the U.S.A." but there was a B-side from the era, "Janey Don’t You Lose Heart" (with Nils Lofgren taking a verse) along with two other nuggets finally released on "Tracks" – the surprising show-opener "So Young and in Love" from 1978 and "Loose Ends," from the year later.

Both are punchy and two the point, reflecting his reluctant approach to songs on his current "Magic," which delivered with power, from the can’t miss "Radio Nowhere" (now bumped to second song position) to the indelible "Last to Die." There may be more truth in that song than in all the presidential debates.

Khrushchev's Songbird

The terrific portrait of Pete Seeger on PBS' "American Masters" Wednesday reminded me of the chance I’ve had to talk to the iconic folkie over the years.

Seeger actually made his first performance in Connecticut -- at one of the two prep schools he attended here. It was sea chanteys that sparked his interest, and he got together with his school roommate, in sailor duds, to sing some songs they learned.

After five years in Litchfield, he went to school at Avon Old Farms, where he was given grants to return, he figured, because the headmasters enjoyed his newspaper.

"The Avon Weekly Newsletter,'" Seeger, Class of '36, recalled in a 1995 chat. "I collected news for the newsletter, wrote it up, stenciled it off, collated copies and sold it for a nickel apiece.''

"Free enterprise,'' said the man blacklisted as a Communist during the '50s witch hunts.

"One year I made $90, which was a lot of money in the early '30s. But what it really got me was a free education.''

Journalism -- not music -- was his first love. But in the depths of the Depression, "I failed utterly to get a job on a newspaper.'' When he met Guthrie at age 20, his life took a major turn.

Seeger has been hailed as a giant in 20th century music, the bridge between the populist union songs of the '40s and the folk boom of the '60s. It was his appearance at the top of a Joan Baez bill at the Bushnell Memorial in 1962 that brought a large audience for the young singer, who previously couldn't draw as well in Hartford.

But every time he played those days, there would be picket signs from right wingers.

Even when he was blacklisted, he said, "I went from college to college, school to school, summer camp to summer camp, playing those years. And if one particular show wasn't a sellout, the promoter would say, 'Gee, Pete, we should have gotten some of those John Birch Society fellers here to picket. Then we could have gotten some press.' ''

He recalls fondly, for example, the colonel who followed his various Connecticut appearances like a die-hard fan, so he could hold up his protest sign: "Seeger: Khrushchev's Songbird.''

"I should have given him an award,'' Seeger chuckled. ``He had the same sign all those years. It started to get tattered. Even after Brezhnev took over from Khrushchev.''

Music of 'The Wire'

Although theme songs are no more prevelant than they have been in a decade, the use of pop music in the course of TV shows has grown, to the point where pop songs are inserted in the climactic moments of shows from "Grey's Anatomy" to "Rescue Me" and expected to provide the emotional pinnacle (in lieu of actual writing).

That hasn't happened on "The Wire," where the writing under creator David Simon has always been superlative. Still, there's been some great music in the series, heard in McNulty's car or on the jukebox of the cop bar where he hangs out. It is the Tom Waits song "Down in the Hole" that perfectly served as the show's theme.

But as each season has had a different focus, so has the theme had its variations, from the Waits original to versions by the Neville Brothers, The Blind Boys of Alabama and DoMaJe, a group of Baltimore teenagers. All are included in the soundtrack that comes out next week to tie into the fifth and final season of "The Wire" that begins Sunday on HBO. (Not on the recording is this year's singer of "Down in the Hole" -- Steve Earle, who also appears in the show this year, as a 12-step facilitator.

Yet with all the different versions it does have, "The Wire ... And all the Pieces Matter" (Nonesuch) never becomes repetitive. Indeed, the well-programmed overview liberally sprinkes bits of dyalog with tracks that include Michael franti and Spearhead's "Oh My God," The Pogues' "The Body of an American," Solomon Burke's "Fast Train," Jesse Winchester's "Step by Step" and Paul Weller's cover of Dr. John's "I Walk on Gilded Splinters."

Naturally, it eventually gives way to largely Baltimore-centered rap from Mullymen, Diablo and others that is also found on a second album of only hip hop, "Beyond Hamsterdam: Baltimore Tracks from 'The Wire.' "

Of the snippets of dialog that surround each track on "And All the Pieces Matter," most are instantly recognizable and memorable from their seasons. More proof that the writing is so good, they don't have to rely on the music, at least for emotional content of the script.

Thom Yorke Meets Al Gore

Radiohead already pretty much gave away its great new album "In Rainbows" which makes its debut in stores imminently. Why not give away free video as well?

It happened quietly New Year's Eve, when it webcast its performance film "Scotch Mist: A Film with Radiohead in It" and made the tape also available on Current, the cable network co-founded by Al Gore.

Current isn't much for hour long music specials. In fact few of its shows are as long as a half hour. Instead, its brief pods run five or ten minutes until the next one. Only recently has the network agreed to organize its content -- much of it viewer provided -- into proper shows that can be listed and recorded.

It's a good match for Radioheard, as it turns out -- an alternative outpost, cued to hipsters while the masses expecting actual music on MTV, say, are getting a Tila Tequila music video instead.

For a while it seemed like it would be a particularly low-fi performance of the band doing the new album in the studio, shot by what looked like fixed security cameras. They'd play the songs, with lead singer Thom Yorke in one room, guitarist Jonny Greenwood poking at his guitar, drummer Phil Selway pounding away  in one corner, Colin Greenwood cross-legged at some suitcase of synthesizers or providing a bass pulse -- they all looked like they were in separate rooms. In between songs all from the new album were odd snippets of film, an odd poem, but very little linkage between songs.

But there was also one sweet outdoor performance of "Faust Arp" on some moor somewhere as the sun set.

It seemed all to have ben shot over the course of days. Yorke's beard gets shaggier annd less so; he keeps changing his shirt.

The title referred to apparitions a viewer thinks he sees, but there seemed very little hidden -- what we saw was what we got. Just like the digital download of their album.

The turning of the tide critically for the Beatles came 40 years ago when "Magical Mystical Tour" film was released at Christmas on the BBC and quickly declared a disaster. Following the breakthrough of "Sgt. Pepper," it seemed a rudderless mishmash completed soon after manager Brian Epstein died.

No such expectations were set up for Radiohead's telecast. Indeed, maybe because it was New Year's Eve, nobody was home to see it. But maybe I'm just talking old school. You can see it online.

Ike Turner, 1931-2007

He’ll be forever be remembered as the abusive husband of Tina Turner. But Ike Turner, who died Wednesday at his home in suburban San Diego at 76, was a multi-talented bluesman who recorded what may believe was the first rock ‘n’ roll record, "Rocket 88."

Like the rest of the luck in Turner’s career, he was never credited with it. When it was issued on Sam Phillips’ Sun Records in 1951, it was credited to singer Jackie Brentson instead of Turner’s Kings of Rhythm.

He did find, bring to prominence and marry Tina Turner and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue were one of the most exciting acts in R&B or rock, knocking out audiences when they opened for the Rolling Stones in 1969, and making John Fogerty’s "Proud Mary" their own.

But there were also fiery clashes, depicted so dramatically in her 1986 autobiography "I, Tina" and the 1993 movie "What’s Love Got to Do With It."

Ike was the bad guy, and like bluesmen of another era, he did prison time before he returned with renewed vigor this century.

He won a Grammy earlier this year for his “Risin’ with the Blues,” part of comeback that began with the release of his “Here and Now” on the Connecticut label Ikon in 2001.

That’s when I met up with him in Austin. After a blazing show T Antone’s that drew a number of other artists from Ryan Adams to Niko Case and featured a belting singer who looked a lot like a young Tina Turner, the bluesman spoke in his hotel room.

"I did a lot of wrong things in my life," he said. "But I also did a lot of good things in my life. There’s nothing in my life that I’d change, though, because it made me what I am today."