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Song Review: Joan Osborne - “Rainy Day Woman #12 and #35” (Live)

Everybody must get Joaned.

And so it goes on Joan Osborne’s slinky rendition of “Rainy Day Woman #12 and #35,” single No. 2 from her forthcoming (April 25) Dylanology LP.

Though the concert document co-stars Amy Helm, Jackie Greene and Robert Randolph, this track, like the preceding “Highway 61 Revisited,” is just Osborne and her band.

It’s a complete rewrite, outfitted with a walking bassline and precision pin picks on electric guitar. Osborne’s wordless into and outro vocals are ill-fitting, but her “Rainy Day” interpretation is nevertheless successful.

Grade card: Joan Osborne - “Rainy Day Woman #12 and #35” (Live) - A-

Television Co-founder Tom Verlaine Dead at 73

- “This man’s importance can’t be overstated,” Scott Metzger says

Tom Verlaine, the guitarist and singer who co-founded the influential punk band Television, has died at 73, Rolling Stone reports.

The magazine cited Patti Smith’s daughter, Jesse Paris Smith, who said Verlaine died Jan. 28 following a “brief illness.”

“More 2023 fretted heartbreak,” a “saddened and bummed” Vernon Reid wrote on Twitter.

“One of the great punk lead stylists. Tom Verlaine was a true downtown hero.”

Television’s 1977 debut, Marquee Moon, is considered a touchstone; it is one of only two albums the band released in its initial incarnation.

“Not many first-time-hearing experiences in my life compare to the first time through Marquee Moon,” drummer Steve Gorman (the Black Crowes/Trigger Hippy) tweeted. “There weren’t any words then, and there really aren’t any right now.

“Damn.”

Guitarist Scott Metzger of Joe Russo’s Almost Dead concurred, calling the LP “a holy grail of creative rock guitar, song craft and arranging that I always end up going back to year after year.

“This man’s importance can’t be overstated,” Metzger wrote on social media. “RIP, Tom Verlaine.”

After Television’s demise, Verlaine would release nine solo albums between 1979 and 2006, even after Television reformed 1992 and continued to play sporadically. But Marquee Moon had the greatest impact; Jason Isbell said he and the 400 Unit walk onstage to that LP “most nights” and he called Verlaine “the realest deal.”

“May Tom Verlaine rest in peace and love,” Todd Rundgren’s Spirit of Harmony Foundation said.

Murderer Phil Spector Dead at 81

- Killer also produced a lot of records

Phil Spector - the murderer who as music producer created the vaunted “Wall of Sound” and whom Steven Van Zandt called “a genius irredeemably conflicted” - has died at 81.

Spector died at a hospital Jan. 16 of “natural causes,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.

The one-time record producer had been serving a 19-year prison sentence for the 2003 murder of Lana Clarkson.

Former Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman summed up Spector’s legacy as well as anyone could, tweeting:

“Phil Spector, like OJ Simpson, is a murderer who did other stuff before he started murdering.”

That other stuff is producing acts and albums including Darlene Love, the Crystals, the Ronettes, Let it Be, All Things Must Pass, Plastic Ono Band, Imagine, Dion, Ike & Tina Turner, Leonard Cohen, Ramones and countless others. All this music, like so many guns, has Spector’s fingerprints all over it.

“Travel on well, Phil Spector,” the Waterboys’ Mike Scott tweeted. “Thank you for your genius record production. I guess your maker will need a little word with you about the other stuff. Good luck.”

Writing on Facebook, Love tried to untangle her complicated feelings about her former collaborator.

“I feel a sigh of relief but emptiness, too,” she said. “Another chapter in my life has come to an end. A truly sad ending to a brilliant music pioneer.”

Book Review: “BONZO: 30 Rock Drummers Remember the Legendary John Bonham” by Greg Prato

It’s been 40 years since “Bonzo,” the mighty John Bonham, backbone of the mightier Led Zeppelin, died in 1980 after choking on his own vomit.

He was just 32 years old.

Gone. But not forgotten. And widely revered as one of rock’s greatest drummers, Bonham is remembered by a score plus 10 of his contemporaries and acolytes in music journalist Greg Prato’s “BONZO: 30 Rock Drummers Remember the Legendary John Bonham.”

Thirty drummers may have been too many as Prato runs out of unique questions and repeats himself often, making the final third feel like a rehash of what came before. Still, there’s something satisfying in hearing famous musicians speaking as fans.

Prato wisely allows the drummers to talk about the drummer and his drumming, asking simple, concise questions and geting out of the way. He then lays out his conversations with journeyman Kenny Arnoff, Quiet Riot’s Frankie Banali, Gregg Bissonette (Ringo Starr), Grand Funk’s Don Brewer, Liberty DeVitto (Billy Joel), the Black Crowes’ Steve Gorman, Marky Ramone and others in Q&A style over 275 pages.

Although “BONZO” is a book about drumming as told by drummers, the interview subjects don’t speak in any kind of secret language, making it comprehensible to anyone.

While the subjects universally agreed Bonham is among the best of the best, other names - Starr, Carmine Appice, Neil Peart, Mitch Mitchell, Phil Collins, et al. - pop up with surprising regularity in interviews that took place after Peart’s death in January and before Banali’s in August 2020.

The book puts an end to the apocryphal stories of Bonham playing with inordinately large sticks or whacking the drums with extraordinary force, instead explaining his big sound is attributable mostly to Bonham’s tuning, expert mic’ing, Jimmy Page’s sage production and the fact he was in Led Zeppelin.

“Bonham is to rock ‘n’ roll what Buddy Rich was to jazz,” Arnoff says. “There’s only one human being like that - and so different and so unique.”

Grade card: “BONZO: 30 Rock Drummers Remember the Legendary John Bonham” by Greg Prato - B

Song Review: The Black Crowes - “Jealous Guy”

Though they laugh their way through the count in, the Black Crowes are all business on their new/old version of “Jealous Guy.”

Recorded in studio in 1990 but never released, the Crowes’ rendition of John Lennon’s introspective solo ballad has all the subtlety of a piano dropped from a high rise, with snarling guitars, prominent piano and organ and a deep-in-the-pocket rhythm section behind Chris Robinson’s throat-shredding, partly improvised, vocals that include a snippet of “Bring it on Home to Me” on the homestretch.

It’s not a cover so much as a smashing-and-rebuilding project. Superior and far more revealing than the “Charming Mess” that preceded it ahead of the Shake Your Money Maker 30th-anniversary box set (Feb. 26), this “Jealous Guy” unleashes the fury Lennon tamped down in his original.

Grade card: The Black Crowes - “Jealous Guy” - B+

#HamiltonLeighthauser and Trigger Hippy will also be dropping by and we'll head by to 1964 to spotlight the theme song to Flipper for TV In The Radio.

6p ET on 91.9 WFPK

Quarter Notes: Blurbs & Briefs from Sound Bites - COVID-19 Edition

MY MORNING JACKET POSTPONE SHOW DUE TO COVID: My Morning Jacket’s Sept. 3 concert in Georgia has been pushed to Sept. 13 after “a member of (the band’s) touring party” tested positive for COVID-19.

The band and crew are all fully vaccinated and this person’s symptoms were described in a statement as mild.

“Please stay safe, get vaccinated and wear a mask,” the band said.

TRIGGER HIPPY CANCEL KENTUCKY SHOWS DUE TO COVID: Calling it a “tough decision,” Trigger Hippy scrapped its Sept. 17 and 18 performances in Kentucky, owing to “recent developments concerning the rise of the delta variant.”

The concerts are officially postponed; however, refunds are being processed and new dates will be forthcoming, the band said in a statement.

“Stay safe,” the band said.

DINOSAUR JR. POSTPONES TOUR DUE TO COVID: Citing “the rise in COVID cases and hospitalizations along with the impact that the delta variant is having,” Dinosaur Jr. postponed all concerts between Sept. 10 and Oct. 2. The group is still planning to honor all November and 2022 dates.

“I’m really bummed that we’re not playing these shows,” J. Mascis said in a statement. “I miss touring and miss all of you. I’m grateful for your understanding, and I hope all of you are able to stay safe.”

VACCINE OR NEGATIVE TEST REQUIRED FOR TODD RUNDGREN TOUR DUE TO COVID: Proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test within 72 hours will be required on Todd Rundgren’s upcoming The Individualist, A True Star tour.

“Stay safe out there, get vaccinated and let’s beat the virus together,” Rundgren said in a statement.