You know that I'm a believer"
Giant was a band out of time. AOR was on its last legs, we just didn't know it yet. Giant was perfect for the fifteen years before, but was now out of step with America's changing tastes. After a decade of MTV pop now ruled, And hip-hop was growing. Sure, we were on the last legs of hair band ballads, and Guns N' Roses was something different, something dangerous, yet Giant was more akin to a seventies act, just great players playing straight ahead rock. That sound is still dead, but there were years where it was the biggest in the land.
I don't do much mindless surfing these days. I remember telling my shrink twenty-odd years ago that I'd seen it all, I was on repeats. Then I went into my tab cycle, it would take me about an hour to go through all of mine on Safari, and by time I got back to the beginning, hopefully there'd be new news. But then there wasn't, and then the news exploded, sometime in the late aughts, and then we got to the point where there was no way anybody could get a grasp on what was going on, you could surf new stuff endlessly. End result was the loss of truth, and in many cases credibility, and it's been overwhelming. And sometime in the last ten years surfing was eclipsed by apps.
I must say I never got into the Facebook thing. I'd already heard from most everybody I ever knew, and the people I went to high school with, there was a reason I left my hometown. But recently, years late, I find myself on Instagram, turns out you've got to surf or you lose your name, which happened and having reclaimed it I don't want to lose it again. And Reddit is an endless rabbit hole. But the funny thing is all these outlets have a window, it opens and you're fascinated, you spend time and then the novelty wears off, and suddenly you've got little interest in going back. Doesn't matter how much the platforms shuffle the deck, you're done. Other than Twitter, which most people never pay attention to, it's for information junkies, it's more up to date than any news site, as a matter of fact all the reporters are on Twitter, but it turns out most people are more concerned with their image, becoming influencers, than the news.
But every once in a while, when I'm really relaxed, I find myself surfing once again.
I was listening to music on my iPad via headphones, the big ones, not the portable ones, and when I get the urge certain go-to songs come to mind, and about two weeks ago, it was "I'm a Believer."
For a long time "I'm a Believer" was unavailable online. Took a long time for a lot of non-hit music to resurface. But I had a CD anyway. Which for a long time sat in my car, I'd like to fire it up when I was driving, especially on the freeway, when I could put the pedal to the metal.
And I'm listening to "I'm a Believer" and I'm wondering if there's a live version.
Giant broke up long ago. There's still a band with that name, playing some of the old music, but the key members have long gone. The most key being the lead guitarist and vocalist Dann Huff, who reinvented himself as a hit country music producer, one of the best, to some degree unchallenged until Dave Cobb emerged with his earthier sound.
And I'm on YouTube and I find a Giant reunion, it's already five years old, and it's in a club, so my expectations are low.
And Dann Huff has got that latter day Eric Clapton look, you know, cleaned-up with short hair, as if when he's done he's got to pick up the kids at school. He's smiling like he's embarrassed, like he never does this anymore. He resembles nothing so much as one of those players at your high school reunion. Have you been to one of those, where all the boomer players come out of the woodwork and get together and play, dividing the reunion in half, the players going down the rabbit hole together? I have, not my own, but Felice's.
And then Dann starts to play.
I expect the sound to be lousy, it almost always is on these YouTube live clips. And sure, it's not perfect, but Dann certainly is. I mean I'm bugging out, staring, it sounds like the record, are they playing the record or is it really him?
It's him.
And then some guy in torn jeans and a vest takes the stage and...who is this? He's the singer, why is it not Dann?
Well, doing research I found somewhere on Facebook that Dann didn't want to. But this guy, who looks jive, opens his pipes, and wow, he's like Arnel in Journey, he doesn't look like Dann but he certainly sounds like him, maybe even better.
And now the band is firing on all cylinders and...
You forget that the sound used to be imperfect. Back before all the acts went to hard drive, never mind being synched with untold production. It sounded like the original, but different. The studio take was always slick, the edges were sanded off, but live the music breathed, the edges were back. And that's what made it so immediate and relatable. That's something that's been lost, along with the humanity.
I don't think non-boomers get this. Maybe Gen-X'ers understand. We formed bands, we went to hear bands. A great band built a rep, you had to hear them. Even the local ones, never mind those that played the Fillmore, which you knew about from being immersed in the culture, FM radio, the rock press, you had your ear to the ground, it was a whole culture which is now dead.
Now there are some that say bands like Giant killed it. There are those who believe music died in the sixties. And then there are those who believe punk rules, if it gets too complicated it gets too self-conscious and loses the essence. And then Nirvana came along and wiped this music off the map anyway. But it survives on classic rock, and yacht rock channels. But Giant doesn't really fit in either category. Oh, they've got a ballad, but they were never classic, most people have never heard of them, but there was some airplay on the dying AOR.
And last night I went down the rabbit hole once again. I watched this 2017 reunion video and got the same feeling, I wondered if there were any live videos from the band's "heyday." Turned out there were. I started watching one from London, in 1990. I never knew the band went overseas, but in truth their manager, Bud Prager, was always a big picture guy. With these big picture bands, like Foreigner, although his paradigm was already long in the tooth.
And the video, after some labeling that's depressing, the images are shiny and bright in a way that Giant was not, you see a throng of cheering rock fans. Which doesn't square with the rest of the footage, maybe that scene was staged, because when the music starts the audience is quiet, but still on its feet. This is definitely a rock audience, no other one compares. These are not casual fans, they need the music. How they look is secondary to how they feel. They go to the show to be transported, to bond with the band, to be taken to another level.
And here's Dann Huff once again. Playing the instrumental into to "I'm a Believer" impeccably. But now his hair is long, it had to be to be accepted in the scene, even though by this time it was an affectation. But boy is he wailing. And you're brought back to the era when being an ace guitar player was key. Maybe Slash was the last one.
And this is a live track, but it's so perfect you're wondering if this is a typical video, you know with the studio version providing the audio. But then Dann steps up to the mic to sing and you're reassured that this is truly live. And you're brought right back, there's an energy without the dross that's been laid on in decades since, without the fakery, the imagery, it's just the music.
And I can't believe how great a guitarist Dann Huff is. I go to his Wikipedia page, even though I've been there a zillion times before. And they've got a list of some of his studio gigs. Yes, he was a hired gun. Before he tried to break out on his own with his own band, before he went back to being a player, before he worked behind the board.
I mean that was the rap, that Huff was a studio guitarist, that was part of the hype. But Dann didn't have the fame some of the others did, maybe because he played on so many pop records, maybe because the world had changed and people were less interested in the musicians than the package. But one thing is for sure, Dann could wail effortlessly. Watching it's hard to believe, how did he ever get this good, he's an elite player, member of a small group.
And I'm watching this 2017 reunion show and I'm shattered. I can't believe it. This is the magic, this is the sound, this is the essence, and it's from an era when most people thought the dream was over, furthermore it's being recreated effortlessly long after its time. And it's just as powerful. And the audience understands what is on stage. And it matters not a whit that no one else is aware. It's not about shooting selfies, it's about bathing in the glorious sound, transcending your earthly problems for as long as the amplifiers are turned on and this mellifluous sound emerges.
Studio version: spoti.fi/3sJMQvM or bit.ly/3MpkXRt
7/1/2017 live version: bit.ly/3vOy0Gl
1990 live in London version: bit.ly/35TuPls
Dann Huff Wikipedia page: bit.ly/35xx1iM
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