A New Year's Eve List of Somewhat Noteworthy Music-Related Things That Happened In 2023
The Sad Dad reflects on the year
It’s almost the end of 2023 as we know it, which means more “best of” and “top [fill in a number]” lists are within my reach than I dare to count. As a dad with competing demands on my time, these lists are quite useful. Each December, I get the lowdown from our culture leaders pretend, otherwise known as critics, on what they believe are the best offerings of the year. I scan these lists for hidden gems I might have missed, a diamond of an album or pearl of a book that might be worth listening to or reading.
As I reflect on my own less than perfect circle around the sun these last 364 days, a few music-related moments stand out. There were of course some big events and big stars in 2023 of which I took note. One big star in particular excited millions of gurls across the country, including my wife and daughter. But monster-sized events like those make no appearance on my list. My list of music-related “bests” from 2023 excited far fewer people, but they are no less interesting or bewitching – at least to the Sad Dad.
In no particular order, these are some music-related events from 2023 that made the Sad Dad glad.
Mike Mills Crashing the Michael Shannon/Jason Narducy Murmur Show at The Metro in Chicago
Forty years ago, R.E.M. released their monumental album Murmur. To mark the occasion, Chicago-based actor Michael Shannon and Chicago-area musician Jason Narducy performed the entire album (plus other songs) at The Metro in Chicago on July 30. Just before the band went on stage, a surprise visitor walked into the green room and wished the band good luck. That well-wisher was none other than R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills. A few songs into the set, Mike walked on to the stage and joined the band in singing some of the songs he had helped write. If you are going to get upstaged, it might as well be by a person you are honoring.
Some fellow sad dads attended the show and recorded this great video of Mills taking the stage and singing with the band, to Shannon’s surprise.
The Replacements Episode of The Bear
The Bear once again served up some of the most compelling television of 2023. From the masterpiece of the “Seven Fishes” episode to Richie’s character arc of enfant terrible to purpose driven life, the show more than delivered on the promise of the first season. On the music side, Sad Dad favorites were aplenty. A live version of Wilco’s “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” snaked through the sparkling new kitchen during the season finale, an allusion to a first-season episode where the song was used to great effect as the then dirty, messy kitchen dissolved into chaos. And after the second episode of season two, which featured R.E.M.’s song “Strange Currencies,” legions of Millennials and Gen Zs were typing “R.E.M.” into their Spotify search bars and updating their Tinder profiles to read “Really getting into R.E.M., that band from The Bear.”
But the best music moment in The Bear was in episode five, or as I call it “The Replacements Episode.” The episode features two well-placed Replacements songs – “Bastards of the Young” during an early scene as the family is trying to solve more than a few challenges to re-opening the restaurant, and “Can’t Hardly Wait” near the end when the main character Carmine is trying to get just a few moments alone with his love interest Claire. But the musical genius is sandwiched in the middle of the episode, in a background conversation between handyman Neil and an electrician where Neil is extolling the virtues of The Replacements. The conversation is not the focus of the scene, so it sneaks-up on the viewer. But Neil’s remarks, delivered with the conviction of a die-hard Replacements fan, perfectly ties together the two songs.
The National Had Their Prince Moment
Sad Dad favorites The National released not one but two albums this year, First Two Pages of Frankenstein and Laugh Track, within five months of each other. That song-drop, 23 total across both albums, reminded me of a similarly voluminous song-drop from the slightly more talented Prince in 1996. His Purple Highness feuded with Warner Bros. for five years to in the 1990s because he wanted to release two albums per year, but the record label refused to do so (for rather sound concerns about market saturation and reduced profits). Once freed from his Warner Bros. contract, Prince released the 36-track triple-album Emancipation in November 1996. The similarities between The National in 2023 and Prince in 1996 begin and end with the voluminous song drop in a single year. (Overcoming writer’s block for The National front-man Matt Berninger, not a restrictive record contract, was a driver for The National’s song dump.) The National’s twenty-three songs of moody, brooding musings on middle age and the mild joys and deep sorrows of relationships is a far cry from the funk and sex of songs on Emancipation like “Get Yo Groove On” and “Sex In the Summer.” That said, Prince’s excellent cover of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” is a track Matt Berninger might appreciate. And maybe Prince, who created his own video game in 1994, might think The National’s “Space Invader” is a fine track, even if you can’t dance to it.
Big Star is Big in Barcelona (apparently)
What does provincial Memphis, TN (my hometown) and cosmopolitan Barcelona, Spain have in common? There is the Hernando de Soto bridge, named after a Spanish explorer, that crosses the Mississippi River and connects Memphis to Arkansas. Other than that, not much. Except for an apparent common love of 70s power-pop legends Big Star! Who knew?
In 2022, to honor the 50th Anniversary of Big Star’s #1 Record, R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills led a supergroup consisting of Ken Stringfellow (The Posies), Pat Sansone (Wilco), Chris Stamey (the dB’s) and surviving Big Star member Jody Stephens on a U.S. tour playing the entire album plus other Big Star songs.
In November 2023, the supergroup took the show to Spain. Why Spain? Well, why not Spain? The Spanish promoter who organized the four shows (in Barcelona, Madrid, Santander and Valencia) compared Big Star to well-known Spanish bands The Beatles, The Byrds, The Kinks and The Who in its promotional material. That some Spaniards have now heard the beautiful chords of The Ballad of El Goodo, In the Street and September Gurls makes the Sad Dad and native Memphian muy contento.
Laufey Made Jazz Cool Again
For decades, jazz devotees like the Sad Dad have watched and wondered what artist or movement might bring jazz back to the mainstream – or at least bump jazz-album sales above the paltry 1.1% of sales where they currently sit. In the 90s, US3 and Guru, with their respective albums Hand On the Torch and Jazzmatazz, aimed to introduce hip-hop fans to jazz and boost the genre’s profile. Their work was more of a blip than a boost. In the Aughts, it was Brad Mehldau’s Radiohead covers and The Bad Plus’s Nirvana and Blondie covers that would bring rock fans to the jazz fold. Didn’t happen. In the 2010s, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, who was featured on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly and performed at Cochella, would open the doors to a new generation. (I took my son to see Kamasi Washington in 2017 when he was 10 years old.) No permanent change in the jazz landscape.
But in 2023, things may have finally changed – at least for vocal jazz. Enter Laufey. A jazz singer I learned about from my kids. With a captivating voice so deceptively beautiful it would make Howl at the Moon-era Ozzy Osbourne melt, Laufey may be the jazz ambassador to finally bring new fans to the fold. Her album Bewitched debuted at 23 on the Billboard 200, she currently has 26.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and her upcoming shows on both sides of the Atlantic are sold out. Not small venues, but places like Radio City Music Hall. Over multiple nights. Her two shows at The Anthem in Washington, D.C., which is primarily a rock venue, sold out in a matter of days.
Will Laufey’s popularity lead legions of 16-year-olds to buy Bitches Brew? No. Am I aware that the Venn Diagram of Taylor Swift and Laufey fans is not insignificant? Yes. But if Laufey leads Gen Z to discover Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, Diana Krall and Samara Joy, then the world will be just a little bit better for it.
Four Boz Scaggs Albums Were Remastered
Did anyone ask for this? Is there pent-up demand for remastered versions of not one but four Boz Scaggs albums? I have scoured Pitchfork, Paste and Stereogum in search of an article lauding the arrival of remastered versions of My Time, Slow Dancer, Silk Degrees and Middle Man. No such article exists. It was probably never even considered. I doubt that anyone other than me, the studio engineer(s) who remastered the albums, and Mr. Scaggs himself is aware of the remasters. But it happened, and I am here to declare it was a good thing. Because I listen to Mr. Scaggs on occasion. And when I say “listen” I mean that I stream “Lowdown” about once every seven weeks, and perhaps two or three other songs from Silk Degrees about twice a year. Will I notice any difference in the remastered versions? I don’t know. Will the ladies at the local Curves who do workouts to “Lowdown” notice any difference? I doubt it. Do you listen to Boz Scaggs? If so, I am glad. But I am a bit curious to know why.
Mr. Deacon Blues Got His Due
There is a band from the 70s you might have heard of. They released an album each year from 1971 to 1976, but they stopped touring in 1974 to focus on studio work. They looked a bit nerdy, were known for meticulous arrangements, and worked with a rotating cast of studio musicians as well as up-and-coming and established jazz artists. Their polished sound was the antithesis of garage rock, glam rock, punk rock, funk rock, hard rock, power pop – the “real” music of the 1970s that made the decade a great one for music. As Rolling Stone declared in 1977, rock purists had decided that Steely Dan’s music was “soulless.” A band like Steely Dan, with a sound so meticulously manicured and straight it was not to be consumed without cocaine from the yacht-deck table, was supposed to fade into the playlist ether of Florida retirement communities.
But the clever lyrics and complex harmonic structures could not be confined to golf and tennis club speakers. Slowly, like a viper crawling through suburban streets, Steely Dan starting coursing through the culture in the late 2010s. A planned tour (sans co-founder Walter Becker, who died in 2017) was derailed by the pandemic. But Steely Dan emerged on the other side of the Covid lockdown stronger than it had been since, well, the 1970s. The Dan Fans stormed the gates in 2023. The book Quantum Criminals, published in May, explored the low-life characters who inhabit Steely Dan songs and posited that Fagan and Becker’s wry narratives and skepticism of the excesses and libertine mores of the 70s resonated with Millennials’ own disillusionment with early 21st Century America. Ted Gioia proudly proclaimed that he was ahead of the curve (like usual) and had long ago learned to love The Dan. Robert Christgau published not one but three Substacks (1, 2, 3) about his affinity for and personal connection to the band. And The Atlantic made it official – the esteemed magazine, in a review of Quantum Criminals, declared that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had “captured the hearts of a new generation of listeners.”
If you have not guessed by now, the Sad Dad is a Dan Fan. I came to the band years ago, via my love of De La Soul, who sampled the song “Peg” on “Eye Know,” and an interest in 70s jazz. (Like Ted, I was ahead of the curve.) And I have enjoyed every moment of the band’s recent revival. I was even warned by my family not to be that uncle at the holiday table who lectures everyone on the brilliance of the Dan.
Meeting The Baseball Project
I will end where I started – with R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills. And Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, Steven Wynn and Linda Pitmon, a group of musicians otherwise known as The Baseball Project. This super group, led by Scott McCaughey and Steven Wynn, writes well-crafted songs about the national pastime. In my post earlier this year on Scott McCaughey, I mentioned The Baseball Project and their excellent song Journeyman. The band went on tour in 2023 and I was fortunate to see the band live in August.
Not only did I get to see Peter Buck and Mike Mills perform for the first time since 1999, when I saw R.E.M. live during the UP tour, but I got to meet them after the show. And that was the top musical event for the Sad Dad in 2023 – meeting two members of R.E.M.
2023 was a great year for music happenings. May 2024 be as good! Happy New Year!
What a unique and creative breakdown of the musical happenings of 2023. Thoroughly enjoyed it!
Another fantastic post. Had no idea about you and The Dan! When you used to say "The Dan" was one of your favs I naturally assumed you were talking about me. Here's to more Sad Dad in 24!