March 2010 issue of Motorsport

The elegant black-and-gold John Player Special remains a thing of beauty 30 years after it earned a spot in racing annals as one of the first cars to truly exploit ground effects and complex aerodynamics.

Formula 1 fans know that a Malaysian company is reviving the Lotus name this F-1 and IndyCar this season, so there's a resurgence in the brand that once was one of the most famous in racing before hitting hard times in the late 1980s and vaporizing in the mid-1990s. Even the separate but related Lotus automaker -- once a threat to Ferrari and Lamborghini among road-car fiends -- is a shadow of its former self.

Mario Andretti drove the Lotus 79 to his only Formula 1 world title, in 1978.

Even though there's no connection to the original team founded by Colin Chapman, I'll be rooting for Lotus this season, and hoping they'll do justice to a name made famous by Jim Clark, Stirling Moss, Graham Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti and Ayrton Senna, among many others.

The Jam on "Top of the Pops," performing 'The Eton Rifles' in November 1979

• Producer Vic Coppersmith-Heaven buying pieces of corrugated steel and bringing them into the studio to draw a harder edge out of the guitar sound.
• Paul Weller’s dad, of all people, championed bassist Bruce Foxton’s song “Smithers-Jones.”
• The album was completed a mere five weeks before its release. These days -- a world of digital freedom -- record companies seem to take ages before letting songs hit market.
• Classic Jam songs like “Down in the Tube Station and Midnight” and “Going Underground” were struggles to complete.

I don't fault EMI for considering the move; smart businesses can't be beholden to legacies that don't fit their future. As many people wrote, the news was proof that fabled recording studios were living on borrowed time in a world of low-fi Mp3s and earbuds.

Someone, possibly the British government or a historic preservation group, will ensure Abbey Road lives -- not as a studio but as a museum to milk like nobody's business. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Stax Studios, Sun Studios, Motown Studios and other studios turned museums generate big bucks while providing fun history lessons into transformative eras of modern music.

Eric Felten of The Wall Street Journal -- whose previous gig as drinks columnist for the paper had to be the best journalism job ever -- waxes nostalgic in a column that eloquently captures how the great studios transformed how we listen and why that experience may soon be lost forever. I'm a geek about recording history, and I think Felten's short piece is as good as any in quickly capturing the magic and science of studio sound, and why we need to periodically take the time to treasure the art behind it.

Two guitar legends in the mid-60s, and looking a bit shaggy behind the earsI'm stunned this is the first time these two have sat down for an interview, given their close ties in The Yardbirds, blues-rock supergroups in the late 1960s and '70s and their general reputations as two of the best, if not the best, guitarists of all time. Both are co-headlining a brief tour, which sadly won't make it to the West Coast.

Rolling Stone offers a glimpse of David Fricke's interview online, but has reserved the juice for the print edition. If you're a fan of their music or musicianship in general, it's worth the $5.

I've always been a fan of Beck, whose mastery of blues, hard rock and jazz, and to a lesser extent rockabilly, is mind blowing. That inability to focus on one genre  -- or what All Music Guide describes as the "haphazard way he approached his career" -- was a double-edged sword. He's a god among musicians but his commercial success pales next to Clapton.

Clapton, on the other hand, had never won me over. His playing was soulful and technically brilliant, but he was often a jerk and tended to deliver a lot of half-ass performances. One of the worst concerts I've ever attended was a Clapton show (thankfully opener Robert Randolph ensured the evening wasn't a total waste).

But the Rolling Stone interview captures a remorseful side of Clapton, one who regrets some of his decisions and streak of laziness in the 1990s. Clapton comes across as sympathetic, almost as if the tour and growing fondness for Beck is waking a sleeping lion. Let's hope so. It's be great to hear Clapton polish a somewhat tarnished legacy.

The key takeaway for me, however, was a passage describing Beck's work ethic. Beck's public image is one of a man who can't decide whether to play the guitar or restore old cars (he once jokingly said he recorded a new album simply because he needed money for a new band saw). But as Fricke notes, "He still practices for long periods every day, when he's not on tour or in the garage -- working on chords, melodic phrases and fingerpicking exercises.

" 'I fnd it inexcusable not to get up and play,' Beck explains, 'especially now with big shows coming up. I've got a guitar on every sofa, leaning up against walls, telling me, 'Don't forget what's about to happen.' That's the way it's been for 35 years.' "

I admire people who still have passion for the hard work that creates greatness. Anyone who's seen Beck's new DVD "Live at Ronnie Scott's" is blown away by his masterful mix of detail and flash. Author Malcolm Gladwell suggested in his book "Outliers" that anyone can be great at something if they put in 10,000 hours of practice. His key example was The Beatles played multiple live shows nightly for two years before they hit it big. And so while it's amazing that after nearly 50 years in the business, one of the all-time greats still finds the passion -- and the need -- to work on the basics, it's a lesson we all can take to heart.

Greil Marcus

Indeed. And yet he continues, hoping to stay above the fray.

"A NewLiterary History of America" is Greil Marcus' latest bookMarcus has teamed up with Harvard professor Werner Sollors to deliver a new anthology titled “A New Literary History of America.” PopMatters’ Loss takes a stab at an overview, writing:

"Among the more surprising entries are essays on Alcoholic Anonymous, the Winchester rifle and pro football. Such choices are defended in the volume’s Introduction as evidence of “how one got across what he or she meant to say to his or her fellow citizens”, a cut-throat whatever-it-takes methodology that shouldn’t seem surprising in today’s America. Basing their selections around voices which spoke in public of something new, or spoke in a new way about something old (and borrowed and yes, blue), and then charting the trajectories of those voices—how far they carried, and to whom—Marcus and Sollors emphasize the imperative outbursts of a country seeking to define itself, to know itself, after the fact of its invention.”

Sounds inviting and daunting to me. I feel like I need a couple weeks of training to prepare for the adventure. I think I'm up for the challenge.

On Saturday, it was catching up on the nutty "All Songs Considered" Holiday Music Mix 2009" podcast, which restored a bit of Christmas spirit to an otherwise dreary exercise. Yeah, I know Christmas music in February is odd, but I was just in the mood.

Jenny Lewis and Rilo KileyBut it was today's podcast to which I'll be giving multiple listens: a 2007 Rilo Kiley concert from the 9:30 Club in D.C.

Lead singer Jenny Lewis has since delivered some great solo work but this concert fronting the L.A. band Rilo Kiley captures Lewis at her best: confident, spirited and sultry in tackling a diverse mix of eclectic pop. The band is tight and the 18-song, 90-minute set never hits a bump. In fact, it's nice to hear a band get its more popular songs out of the way early in the set, freeing the second half to stretch and breathe before closing with an amped-up version of "Does He Love You," with its surprise plot twist.

Highly recommended download. Here's to a return of Rilo Kiley.

PopMatters is one of my favorite music sites1) Jason Gross' "The Best Music Scribing Awards 2009" from PopMatters, which takes a deep dive into widespread changes in the music journalism business for print and online publications big and small. It's a good read for music fans and journalists alike. Key graf:

"The same way that a Net/tech savvy writer will keep plugging away in all kinds of online forums, magazines and publications themselves need to keep doing the same. I’m still convinced that there’s no such thing as easy, long-term solutions to how magazines and publications will survive and thrive, but once they get into the mindset that this is a slippery realm that they’ll have to keep adapting to in different ways, they stand a much better chance of swimming rather than sinking."

Option magazine was published 1985-19982) Johnny Mnemonic's "Music Journalism 101" blog on Blurt, the magazine reborn in the ashes of Harp. After two print issues, I'm still not sure what Blurt is trying to be. But the website has an interesting mix of bloggers like Mnemonic, whose last two posts focus on the late Option magazine. Part 1 takes us back to a lame 1991 editorial decision that lays the groundwork for Part 2, an escalation of the snobbery and refusal to listen to its customers that led to Option's downfall:

"For all Option's so-called championing of the music underground, Amerindie and otherwise, it "overlooked" (or conveniently ignored) anything that didn't quite measure up to the editors' rarified notions of what was hip."

Sad, but all too common. If only Jason Gross had been around to whisper in their ear.