The New Ryan Adams Album is Incredible

I remember the first time I listened to Ryan Adams.  It was Columbus Day weekend at Providence College during my sophomore year.  Most of the student body had retreated to their home towns for the long weekend and I was one of the few warriors to stay on Campus.  It was that friday night that I sat in my dorm room, with monsoon like weather going on outside  finding myself with little to do.  I discovered the Ryan Adams album Rock N Roll on the campus music share site, more specifically two songs from Rock N Roll: "So Alive" and "Anybody Want to Take Me Home".  I had heard Ryan Adams' songs before that moment, but I had never really listened.  Nothing was ever the same.

Years down the line, I'd come to find that Rock N Roll is considered one of Adams' lesser albums, a departure from his wheel house sound of soulful folk/country/rock.  His fan base has grown and waned since then.  But that weekend it was everything.  Sitting here now, with a glass of white wine and Ryan Adams' new self titled album playing through my headphones, the feeling is the same as it was that rainy weekend back in 2005.

Ryan Adams has made his name as a restless troubador.  A man never satisfied in a days work, never willing to settle for one style.  This has shown in the twenty-one different albums and EPs he has released since 2000 as a solo act or fronting a band.  His sound has gone from Country to Folk to Pop to Rock to Punk to Western to all points back again, and it all has its own distinct charm.  All of it has been distinctly Ryan Adams.

When I finally had the chance to experience Adams live, it was at the Newport Folk Festival this summer.  For a folk festival he had his electric guitar plugged in with surprising regularity (there were also a suprising number of Danzig covers).  Listening to his new album it is understandable.  Ryan Adams the album is decidedly a return to rock for Adams, who had spent much of the last ten years turning out folk and country styled jams.  The crisp production is something new for an Adams album, with a lot of the raw emotion coming from the guitars and organs.  The crunching guitars are something Adams hasn't used since 2008's Cardinology and hasn't nurtured hardly at all in his career aside from punk side projects like his stellar 1984 released last month (if you got your hands on a copy, you are one lucky soul).

All of the electricity and howling guitars on Ryan Adams only makes the transition more stark when Adams unplugs for the one stripped down acoustic track on the album, the heart wrenching "My Wrecking Ball" (a song that was unsurprisingly well recieved at the Newport Folk Festival).

The real triumpth of Ryan Adams, is the balance that Adams finds between his soaring guitars and his signature deliberate lyrics.  In the past, on more guitar centric albums like Rock N Roll the impact of the lyrics were sacrificed to serve the sound of the album.  Here the crunching sound compliments Adams' creeping urgency in his vocals.  The sound of Ryan Adams is one of a constant build, giving the listener seldom few pay offs, making those precious hooks in catchy tracks like "Gimmie Something Good" and "Stay With Me" all the more memorable.

With Ryan Adams we don't just get tastes of Adams' musical genius, we get to ruminate in it, let it simmer.  We get the power of Cardinology with the weight of Heartbreaker and the accessability of Gold.

What we have here in Ryan Adams is one of the best albums of the last fifteen years from one of the best artists of the last fifteen years.  As one of the fans that never left, I will be glad to see the name Ryan Adams swell in the world of music once again.

Gentlemen's DisAgreement - 9/10/2014

Here it is, yet another ramblin' pod for all you ramblers out there!  In this episode, Amelia Bienstock shares some of her expansive knowledge and experiences with Broadway theater and I try to keep up (my favorite part is when I describe the show Memphis as taking place in New Orleans).  Listen below.

NOTE:  Gentlemen's disAgreement is now available on Itunes!

Musical Theater! Is it Dead? Should We Kill It?

Musicals are a funny thing.  Some people consider them to high culture entertainment others, the tacky trash of stage medium.  Yes,  there are a great many varying opinions on the quality of entertainment found on the Great White Way, I find it is best judged on a case by case basis.  Or, at least broken down into smaller groups so we can easily determine what should be celebrated and what should be stopped at all costs.

Big Boy's Game?

For about a decade now the popular wisdom regarding Broadway shows is that you need to have name attached at some level in order to be a success.  Whether it is a proven star, producer, or writer if you're trying to put on a show with a bunch of nobodies you might as well schedule the closing date at the same time you do your opening night.  

There are certainly plenty of examples to back this wisdom up. But, shows that received critical acclaim and were awarded with early closes are nothing new.  The same goes for shows that find success thanks in no small part to having a big name attached or popular source material.

Going back decades, The King and I, West Side Story, My Fair Lady are all based on pre-existing material.  Sure it is tough to get smaller productions onto Broadway and onto Broadway for a long time, but that has always been rare.

Money, Money, Money!

Well, its been 2 years, time for another revival of Les Miserables.

The two things that have truly changed about Broadway in the last 10-15 years are extra-long running productions and the revival.  The latter is pretty obviously going to become more common as years go by.  The more big shows there are, the more revivals there are going to be down the line.

When it comes to the Broadway mega-show that lasts and lasts (ala, Lion King, Wicked, and Phantom of the Opera) these productions are the only truly new thing about Broadway.  Of the 10 longest running Broadway productions only ONE closed before 1990 (Oh, Calcutta) and four are still running.  Breaking 1,000 performances on Broadway used to mean your show was a smash hit, now if you don't reach 1,000 many would consider it a failure.

The longest running Rogers and Hammerstein show of all time, Oklahoma!'s 2,212 performances is only good enough for #29 on the all-time list.

This new reality ultimately means less theaters for shows to play if they are tied up in longer engagements.  In spite of this, however, the number of new shows released onto Broadway every year hasn't tailed off much.  This means slightly higher turnover between shows.  This turnover gives the appearance of a lower success rate, but in fact, the exact opposite is true with shows running longer and making more money than ever.

I, for one, have never been a fan of the big "Disney" productions like Wicked or Mamma Mia but just because they're watered down and safe doesn't mean they're destroying Broadway.

Broadway is at its best when it is doing something you can't see someplace else.  This, of course, is a big reason why the returns are so greatly diminished when a classic Broadway show is transposed to another medium (cough*The Producers*cough).

Theater has always been a medium for intimacyy and that intimacy is lost when you pack a theater with 3,000 people to watch Idina Menzel fly around in green makeup.

Adele Dazeem filling in for Idina Menzel.

But you know what, maybe, MAYBE the success of big shows like Wicked help producers make the money to put out the lesser known shows that sometimes turn into greats like Avenue Q (which actually beat out Wicked for the Best Musical Tony).  Maybe, without one we couldn't have the other.

It's not always what we want, but it might just be what we need.  Don't worry about Broadway, it's doing just fine.

Actually, nevermind, screw Wicked.