3 Doors Closed

Watching Donald Trump become president of the United States might have left you feeling dismayed.

The fact that any musicians had anything to do with the inauguration was disturbing. 

Lots of them said no, of course. But not the band 3 Doors Down. And that left me feeling, at several removes, a little let down.

My old band the Shark Dentists used to play a good and thoughtful song by 3 Doors Down called "Be Like That". These were good guys, I thought. It goes to show you never can tell...

Trump is a huge 3 Doors Down fan apparently... Right or wrong, I've kind of gone off them...

Time Piece

Virgil Donati is an amazing drummer. Understatement. And now he is also a classical composer. He wedded these two talents together for "The Dawn Of Time", an album which is breathtaking in its ambition and achievement.

Any drummer who has attended a classical concert must have tapped a foot or two to some powerful rhythms – and wondered why the band doesn't have a proper drum kit and instead limits itself to a few timpani and a couple of cymbals.

But Donati hasn't just added drums to a series of orchestral pieces, he has enmeshed the drums into the music, giving them equal billing with the other instruments and sometimes taking centre stage. On top of this he has mixed up some stunning time signature changes and juxtapositions. And, as with Frank Zappa's orchestral work, he has created something new and urgent inside an established genre.

Wonder Man

The phrase "one-hit wonder" has seldom been as apt as it was when applied to Peter Sarstedt, the singer/songwriter who is one of the first casualties of 2017. He was – and long will be – remembered for "Where Do You Go To My Lovely", which was a wonderful song.

Somehow it shouldn't have worked, but somehow it did. It was slightly corny and it rolled along as if it were a sort of gentle "Like A Rolling Stone" in reverse: a rags-to-riches "how does it feel?" instead of a riches-to-rags one.

And similarly, you could never hear it too many times. It was a classic and a wonder...

Devilishly Good

It may sound slightly odd – Black Sabbath guitarist writes choral work for Birmingham Cathedral – but it should come as no great surprise that Tony Iommi has done just that.

There has always been a fine line between the devil's music and religious music – and sometimes no line at all.

Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison... need one say much more?

Great musicians ploughing the fields of blues, country, soul, funk, rock and even heavy metal have all been inspired by the spiritual – if not the outright religious.

In fact, the "devil's players" come well equipped (with passion and feeling and a few "sins" to confess) to get religion. Yet conventionally religious types, on the other hand, don't usually have what it takes to rock...

Super Mayfield

I'm sitting in a bar with the unmistakable – and most welcome – opening bars of Curtis Mayfield's 'Superfly' cutting through the Muzakal mix.

As this year draws to a close in which we are remembering so many musical greats who have been taken from us, maybe we should also find time to recall Mayfield, a genius who died in 1999 at the age of 57, nine years after being almost totally paralysed when lighting equipment fell on him.

He was a beautiful singer, an innovative songwriter and a great musician. And his legacy runs through so much of what followed, including the work of many of those famous names who died in 2016.

If you haven't already... listen to him.

Wham!

Foolish of me to think that Rick Parfitt was the last rock star to be taken in 2016... The death of George Michael comes as a much greater shock – and constitutes the loss of a great musical talent, who managed to go from boy-band whimsy to seriously good singer/songwriter.

If you're a well-known musician, take care between now and New Year... We keep thinking it's all over... But maybe it isn't...

Down, Down...

Just when you thought 2016 couldn't take away another rock star... Rick Parfitt of Status Quo is gone.

The Quo were formidably good at what they did... but it wasn't really for me, and I never saw them live.

But many musicians rated and respected them – including, maybe surprisingly, John Lydon, who perhaps saw something punkish in the Quo's refusal to ever do anything but stick to basics and go for the lowest common denominator.

This year of the wins of Brexit and Trump and the losses of Bowie, Cohen and Prince (and many more) has been bloody awful. I dare to think that 2017 has to be better – rather than a case of down, down deeper and down.