ART GARFUNKEL ON PAUL SIMON. You know, Simon was the bigger talent, but — as with John Fogerty post CCR — none of his solo work compared to what he did with Garfunkel.

SO JOHN FOGERTY WAS INDUCTED INTO THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME for his song Centerfield, which is pretty cool. That got me to go back and look at all my old Fogerty posts, which was also kind of cool. I knew I’d blogged about him, but I didn’t realize how much, or in how many contexts.

MUSIC REVIEW: I got a chance to give a good, thorough listen to John Fogerty’s new album, Deja Vu All Over Again last week, when I drove to pick up my grandmother. Overall, I didn’t think it was as good as I’d hoped. I’ve heard a lot of people compare it to Centerfield, but it put me more in mind of Eye of the Zombie, an album that was better than most people thought at the time, but not really up to Fogerty’s best efforts.

Deja Vu seems, like Zombie, to lack a theme. Some of the songs are good — I liked “In the Garden,” with its frankly retro approach, the best — but others, like “Nobody’s Here Anymore” (a somewhat geezerish rant against the Internet and cellphones), are just embarrassing. (There are streaming samples for all of these Fogerty albums — just follow the links). Overall, it’s worth buying if you’re a hardcore Fogerty fan and have to have everything, but otherwise I’d give it a pass. And if you’re looking for a first-rate post-Centerfield Fogerty effort, I recommend Blue Moon Swamp instead. It’s much better.

I BOUGHT MY COPY of <a href=”John Fogerty’s new album, Deja Vu All Over Again, earlier today. But I haven’t listened to it yet. Eric Olsen has a review.

ERIC ALTERMAN IS RIGHT about Creedence Clearwater Revival, but wrong about John Fogerty. But we’ll get to that later.

Had a nice drive down with my grandmother. Thanks to a bad knee and a sprained ankle, she’s not very mobile at the moment (“I got old all of a sudden at 85,” she says. “Before that I could do anything.”) But the drive down was very pleasant, and we had a lot of nice conversation. Because my parents were living the intinerant-graduate-student lifestyle when I was little, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents in the summer, and it’s almost like a second home. I wish I could have stayed, but I had to come back today. My speed was aided by the relatively light traffic, and by the enormously high velocity of the traffic that was present. I used to think that 80 was fast. Now if you go 80, you’d better be in the right lane.

On the way back, I listened to some CDs, most notably the remastered Creedence Clearwater Revival box set, which is terrific. The remastering is good, though I have some quibbles with it — but if you’re not a sound engineer you probably won’t have any complaints.

Still, listening to both the great original songs and the terrific covers (“Heard it Through the Grapevine” is great, “Good Golly Miss Molly” is the definitive version, and of course there’s “Ooby Dooby,” written by my University of Tennessee colleague Dick Penner) reminds me of why Alterman is right about Creedence but wrong about Fogerty. Alterman said a while back that Creedence’s music was magic but that only Fogerty really counted. But if you listen to the albums you’ll realize that Alterman’s wrong about Fogerty.

True, John Fogerty was the genius of the band. The other members — Doug “Cosmo” Clifford, Stu Cook, and Fogerty’s brother Tom — were just superbly talented musicians. But the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Listen to the way the rhythm guitar (Tom Fogerty), bass (Stu Cook) and drums (Doug Clifford) work together on “Walk on the Water,” for example, and you’ll realize why Creedence Clearwater was better than any of the bands Fogerty has put together since (even his occasional appearances backed by the Grateful Dead). These guys had played together for years, and they were all great — not just individually, but even moreso as a group. You don’t get that from session musicians, however talented.

That’s the difference between the all-star team and a real team, too. Let those artists who are thinking of splitting up their bands and going solo beware.

ERIC OLSEN is jealous of my free John Fogerty tickets. I probably shouldn’t mention the great show I saw — for five bucks! — that same year. It was a double-bill of The Rainmakers and Steve Earle at the 930 Club in DC. And it was only five bucks. For both! That’s almost as good as free.

JOHN FOGERTY WAS RIGHT, writes Eugene Volokh: Saul Zaentz really is the devil, or at least a near replica.

RIP: “One of the most successful instrumentalists in rock history,” Duane Eddy, rock guitar pioneer, dies at 86. “In 1987, the guitarist released a self-titled LP that featured – to name just a few guests – John Fogerty, Steve Cropper, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ry Cooder:”

OPEN THREAD: I’m not gone for good. But if I’m ever in a power trio, I want it anchored by a hot blonde who can play slide.

More here. And you’re a fool if you don’t listen.

Plus, this. Quoth my brother: “She’s the real deal.” Like Stevie Ray Vaughn and John Fogerty, mixed up.

Related: My life in five riffs.

She plays a lot like my brother Jonathan.

DO TELL: Bruce Springsteen & Dave Grohl’s Cover Of ‘Fortunate Son’ Draws Criticism.

The thing is, I love Creedence Clearwater Revival, but even in its original form the song Fortunate Son is a big steaming pile of hypocritical horseshit. John Fogerty wrote it after doing one-weekend-a-month Army Reserve duty designed to keep him away from Vietnam. It was the sort of deal a lot of people got, not just “Senator’s sons,” and his bandmate Doug “Cosmo” Clifford — the most underrated drummer of rock’s ascendancy — swung a similar Coast Guard gig.

Meanwhile, Fogerty says he wrote the song as “my confrontation with Richard Nixon,” but in fact Nixon refused the military exemption he was entitled to as a Quaker and served in the Pacific during World War Two.

Basically, whenever lefties go all moralistic, you can be pretty sure they’re being hypocritical. Because that’s just how they rock and roll.

BUY A GUN: Dem Rep. Steve Cohen: Tea Party Republicans Are ‘Domestic Enemies’ We Took Oath To Defend Against.

As Virgil said, it is human nature to hate someone you have hurt. But still. And as Virgil also said, fortune is ally to the brave. Take note.

And Steve? I’ve cut you some slack because of those great John Fogerty tickets you scored me back in 1986. But there are limits.

ED DRISCOLL: In the future, everyone will be a Klansman for 15 minutes. And Steve Cohen’s already had his turn under the sheets.

I’ve always liked Steve Cohen — perhaps because he got me great tickets to see John Fogerty’s first performance in more than a decade, at Mud Island back in 1986. But his behavior in smearing the Tea Partiers as Klansmen, especially after the racist and anti-semitic attacks that Cohen himself has endured from his Democratic primary opponents, is really quite disappointing.

Meanwhile, a lot of Tea Party folks seem to like Vernon Parker.

UPDATE: “The wrong kind of white people.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Moe Lane now regrets defending Cohen when Cohen was attacked by other Democrats. “PS: (Republican) Charlotte Bergmann for Congress. She doesn’t hate people.”

A LIST OF THE best headphones of 2008.

UPDATE: Tom Spaulding (who’s not only a blogger, but John Fogerty’s guitar tech) emails: “Be sure to check out M-Audio’s Q-40 headphones…full range goodness!!!”

THE RACIST ADS MAY NOT HAVE WORKED: “In a contentious primary that garnered national attention this week, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen took a substantial early lead over his Democratic rivals.” I like Steve Cohen anyway, and not just because of the swell John Fogerty tickets he gave me once.

RANK ANTISEMITISM in the Democratic congressional primary in Memphis:

“Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and the JEWS HATE Jesus,” blares the flier, which Cohen himself received in the mail — inducing gasps — last week.

Circulated by an African-American minister from Murfreesboro Tenn., which isn’t even in Cohen’s district, the literature encourages other black leaders in Memphis to “see to it that one and ONLY one black Christian faces this opponent of Christ and Christianity in the 2008 election.”

Well, that just makes everybody look good. Jeez. I like Steve Cohen a lot, and not just because he once gave me some absolutely amazing John Fogerty tickets (to the Mud Island show that was his first appearance after a decade of not touring). But even if I didn’t, this would be absolutely disgraceful. Perhaps Barack Obama should make a point of condemning this.

UPDATE: Why should Obama weigh in? Because he promises an uplifting new kind of politics and this is an ugly old kind. Because Steve Cohen is one of Obama’s supporters, and political loyalty is supposed to run both ways — unless you’re Hillary, anyway, and Obama’s supposed to be the anti-Hillary. Because otherwise Obama’s big appeal — I’m a black candidate who’s not like Al Sharpton! — will be a fraud. And, of course, because it’s the right thing to do.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, the “fraud” bit was a bit strong. But it is the right thing to do, and it’s the kind of thing that a guy promising a new uplifting kind of politics ought to do. Trust me, if the racial angle were pointing the other way, this would be getting a lot of attention, especially if it could be tied to a Republican. And I say this, remember, as a guy who went after Trent Lott for a lot less.

MORE: I’m criticized a bit over at The Carpetbagger Report, but I agree with this commenter:

Cohen is a stellar guy.

Barack should absolutely stop by and campaign for Cohen before the primary.

If you know Memphis and if this preacher is trying to divide dems by religion and race, this is an easy call.

Of course Barack does not have to respond everytime an Isaah Thomas (f)s up.

But I think you are really missing the point here.

I think they are, too.

PODCAST QUESTIONS UPDATE: Various questions are answered! First, have I considered doing a podcast using Apple’s GarageBand software, now that I have a Macbook Pro? Yes. Haven’t done it yet, but I’ve fooled around with the software a bit, and it’s enough like Acid that it’s easy to figure out.

What kind of microphones do I recommend? Good question. If money’s no object, an ElectroVoice RE-20 is a good way to go. I don’t use those, because money is an object, and besides I already have some other mikes. I use an AKG C3000, and Helen uses a Marshall MXL microphone. For guests I’ve used an SM-57 because I have several of those utility mikes lying around, but I’ve just recently bought this Sennheiser on my brother’s recommendation. I love the SM-57 as an instrument mike but I’ve never been crazy about it as a vocal mike. For vocal podcasting, most any microphone is okay, but ideally it shouldn’t have too much of a proximity effect — in which low frequencies are boosted when you’re close to the mike — because people you’re interviewing tend to shift around. Whatever you get, use some kind of pop screen and you’ll improve your sound a lot, at low cost.

For sound treatment — the new podcast space is a bit echo-y — I had planned to stick up some Auralex foam, but an InstaPundit reader who’s at Ready Acoustics offered me a customized sound treatment if I’d do a review. I’ve gotten some of their bass traps and high frequency panels via FedEx now, but haven’t put them up. I’ll let you know how it turns out — they’re almost certainly overkill for the space, but it should be interesting. The 3D graphic of the room that they constructed after I sent them photos and measurements was kind of cool, too.

If you’re starting from scratch, you might want to consider a podcasting kit like this one. I haven’t used it, but it’s probably quite good, and quite reasonably priced. It says something about the popularity of podcasting that many music dealers and manufacturers are offering products aimed specifically at that market. An earlier post on this topic can be found here.

UPDATE: Tom Spaulding — who as John Fogerty’s guitar tech has lots more audio cred than I do — writes: “I love the M-Audio gear I own. Check this out: M-Audio Podcast Factory.” Looks like a good, cheap solution. I actually use the Mobile-Pre USB audio interface myself. It’s a bit noisy for music applications, but fine for voice.

HARD COMPRESSION, SOFT COMPRESSION: My earlier post on hardware compressors drew a response from Ed Driscoll suggesting that software compression is just as good. Yes and no.

I use a lot of compression on podcasts — much, much more than I use on music, where my instinct is generally to fiddle with the original signal as little as possible. (In fact, getting bolder about that is one thing that improved our sound quality a lot over the first several episodes). And I do the compression on the .wav files in the computer. But I also use hardware compression on the input side, mostly so that when somebody laughs, coughs, etc., it doesn’t produce a peak signal that’s loud enough to produce distortion. I could accomplish the same thing by just recording at a lower level and then boosting levels on the .wav file in the computer later, but I find it’s always best to start with a good, loud, clean signal — you can do a lot in the digital realm, but you can do a lot more if you start out with a pretty good signal to begin with.

As with the noise reduction software — Ed likes Soundsoap, which is for the Mac, I get the same thing with the noise reduction routine in Adobe Audition — there are limits to how far you can go without introducing artifacts. When we do the podcast interviews by phone I always record a few seconds of silence up front (which is really a few seconds’ sample of the telephone line noise) and then, when processing later, I sample that, tell Audition to take out everything that sounds like that, and generally produce a pretty dramatic improvement. Nonetheless, I try to start with as little noise as possible. The noise reduction is pretty good — when we interviewed Michael Zemel in his office, there was a loud air conditioner outside, and the noise reduction removed that so efficiently that you could hear the room reverberation when we talked, something that was completely masked by the air conditioner noise on the original file. But that was taking it about as far as it would go. My own philosophy of signal processing, unless you’re deliberately trying to produce something distorted and weird, is that less is more. Not everyone agrees, of course, but the better the signal you start with, the more room you have for fiddling with it later.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll emails that Soundsoap isn’t just for Macs, and he’s right. Sorry — I hadn’t realized there was a PC version, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Boy, write about music-geek stuff and the email pours in:

Tom Spaulding here, guitar tech for John Fogerty, currently with Hall and Oates on their promo tour for their excellent Christmas CD “Home For Christmas”. I’m blogging that tour at Caught Up In The Fable.

I agree with most of your take on signal processing, but you might get better results in eliminating air conditioning noise by using a high pass filter on your interview mic. I’m sure you are aware of the “bass
roll-off” switch on most microphones that typically attenuates the amount of low end (100hz or lower). There’s not much useable info down there in a voice interview and eliminating it at the source (the mic) will let the algorithm of the software noise reducer work more efficiently in removing the rest of the noise.

I tend to favor the Waves De-noiser plug-ins in Cubase and Nuendo…very useful. Another good hardware compressor that can be bought cheaply is the half-rack dbx 163X. Ebay has them for around $50-100 dollars: one slider that reads “more” is all you need!

Yes, I keep the roll-off switch on on the Edirol all the time, and will probably never remove it unless I record a concert or something. And check out Tom’s blog for lots of cool photos and guitar-geekery. I should note that Bob Britt, who’s playing as Fogerty’s second guitarist at the moment (or at least when I saw him on an MHD special recently), is really, really good.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Lawrence Faria emails:

Having John Fogerty’s technician confirm your compression tactics is heavy duty confirmation that you really know what you’re doing. I’m surprised, though that in the discussion of your instinct to preserve as much as possible of the original signal didn’t include getting the best possible signal with the best possible microphone.

In an October 28th post, you mentioned your experience with your brother’s old Western Electric phone. You mentioned you wish you had one. Bill Quick noted that post, and added that they often turn up at Goodwill and the Salvation Army.

If you want one, you now have a place to look for one of the most durable products ever made. If you can arrange to have an university official see you rummaging around in those places, you might even get a pay raise out of it.

Heh. Alas, though, it’s the phone that our interviewees are talking on that raises problems. On my end, it’s a fairly decent AKG C3000 condenser microphone.

A.C. KLEINHEIDER thinks that I’m overly positive on Harold Ford, Jr.’s chances, and that the Ford family will cause him problems.

He may be right. I haven’t written about the Jake Ford / Steve Cohen race because Steve Cohen gave me great tickets to see John Fogerty’s first “comeback” concert when he opened the Centerfield tour in Memphis, and thus earned my undying loyalty. Hence, a conflict of interest.

Plus, the WSJ shows Corker up 5% now. It’s a close race, and it’ll probably stay one.

THE REPUBLICAN “E-CAMPAIGN” is emailing about this story on Harold Ford, Jr. returning campaign contributions from the adult entertainment industry. Seems like nothing much to me; if this is all they can dig up, he’s looking good. More interesting was this tidbit in the same story about Ford’s support for Joe Lieberman, and another independent candidate who lost a primary:

Last month, Ford told radio talk show host Don Imus that Lieberman was a friend and had his support in the primary race for the U.S. Senate.

Lieberman’s independent run is not the only one Ford may have to contend with. Ford’s brother, Jake Ford, is running as an independent in the 9th Congressional District race in Memphis. State Sen. Steve Cohen last week won the Democratic nomination for the seat that Harold Ford Jr. now holds.

Harold Ford Jr. does not intend to get involved in the local race, he said. “I’m a Democrat. I support Democrats,” Ford said, noting that Lieberman and his brother, though both running as independents, are still Democrats.

(I’ll take a position: Steve Cohen got me tickets to see John Fogerty’s comeback show in 1986 at Mud Island, so he’s got my eternal loyalty). But come to think of it, Ford ought to be embarrassed — for returning the contributions, not for taking them. After all, porn is good for America!

LAST NIGHT’S POST on books about music produced some email. Reader Tom Spauding writes:

The Sound Reinforcement Handbook is great for /live/ sound engineers, but it’s tough to beat Bobby Owsinski’s “The Recording Engineer’s Handbook” and “The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook” for studio tips and techniques.

I’d also second Ed’s mention of Rikky Rooksby’s “How To Write Songs on Guitar”, and add that his “Songwriting Sourcebook” goes it one better.

BTW……I am John Fogerty’s guitar tech, and of course, I have a blog Caught Up In The Fable.

I asked him if he was the keeper of the legendary Kustom amp, and he responded:

No, that amp has been tucked (and rolled…heh) away for now. He did use it on previous tours, with the Rickenbacker, but these days he uses Cornford amps for Dirt and Solo sounds, and Mesa-Boogie for clean. I did hook him up with the new Kustom folks and he is getting a combo amp from them for his studio. Apparently, the tremolo circuit in the new amps does a great job of getting that classic Creedence swamp wobble.

Cool. (My brother gets a great tremolo out of a hotrodded Super Reverb and a Swedish Hagstrom Les Paul copy; I recorded one song where it was so luscious you just wanted to scoop it out and put it in an ice cream cone.) And good suggestions on recording books. (There’s also Owsinski’s Mastering Engineer’s Handbook, to complete the series). I would stress, though, that although the Sound Reinforcement Handbook is about live sound, most of its content is equally applicable to recording.

Meanwhile, reader Ron McCabe recommends this quick-and-dirty guide for musicians. And reader Scott Foster writes:

You might be geeky enough to find the following interesting.

The next big thing for little Davids doing home brew music production is small room acoustics. You just can’t have a critical listening environment without dealing with acoustic treatment [or a stellar home theater for that matter]. Folks are figuring this out and activity in the internet community on this topic is exploding.

Like so many others fields of interest this is a fundamental science that heretofore was simply not available for the purposes of the little guys – but because of the communication efficiencies of the net [particularly forums in case of acoustics] this field of interest is fast switching from being a resource for only the most sophisticated of enterprises to one attainable by everyman.

The old standard layman’s reference on small room acoustics / home studio building is still quit popular – it is called: “The Master Handbook of Acoustics” and is on its 4th edition.

But there is a new boy in town… Rod Gervais – well known acoustic construction expert – OK well known in the internet acoustics community anyway – he just built a re-make of Studio “A” [where the chairman of the board used to record] has got a new book out.

Sure to be a smash hit! Well us acoustics geeks are excited, anyway.

Yeah, the acoustics in my home studio are pretty good, but I’m working on a few small flutter echoes with some Auralex wedge patches. There’s also a lot of cool computerized room-analysis equipment out there that didn’t used to be available.

MARK STEYN writes that Kerry’s “Vietnamization” strategy hasn’t worked out. “Ever since the first cries of ”Quagmire!’ back in the early days of the Afghan liberation in 2001, the left have been trying to Vietnamize the war on terror. They failed in that, but they succeeded in the Vietnamization of the election campaign.”

UPDATE: I suppose it’s worth mentioning these thoughts on why the whole “Operation Fortunate Son” thing is ill-conceived, too.

But don’t let the Kerry Campaign’s misuse of John Fogerty’s music, and misrepresentation of his life history, stop you from enjoying the music. I’ve got the Creedence Clearwater Boxed Set and it’s great. They did a good job with the remastering, too.

POWERLINE NOTES that the Kerry campaign is playing the Creedence Clearwater song Fortunate Son, as a subtle dig at George W. Bush’s National Guard service. (Okay, it’s not that subtle.)

It’s a great song. But, of course, the song was written by John Fogerty, who served stateside in the Reserves:

John went to college but in 66 Uncle Sam knocked, Doug and John became reservists in the Coast Guard and Army respectively. John married and had a child.

Or as Salon reports it:

Fogerty, who until two years earlier was serving once a month in the Army Reserve, wrote “Fortunate Son” in 20 minutes, sitting on the edge of a bed with a legal pad in his lap. “It’s a confrontation between me and Richard Nixon,” he once said.

(Emphasis added.) Does the Kerry Campaign think that John Fogerty betrayed his country by not serving in Vietnam? (Mary Anne Marsh transcript here).

Call me crazy, but I think that a better song for this campaign would be the lesser-known single by John’s brother Tom, entitled Goodbye Media Man:

You spread your paranoia all over this land
Creating situations you don’t understand
If I could get next to you & turn you around
At place that we all could share & get on the ground

But that’s just me.

I DIDN’T GO TO SEE JOHN EDWARDS: I had a teleconference this afternoon and just wasn’t up for going downtown. But Doug “InstaLawyer” Weinstein was there and reports via cellphone that Edwards got an overflow crowd. He says they played Creedence’s “Travelin’ Band” and John Fogerty’s “Rockin’ All Over the World,” which is worth a few cool points.

VIA BLOGCRITICS, I see that Creedence Clearwater Revival’s works have been remastered (“brilliantly”) and I’m going to have to go order the whole set now.

John Fogerty rules, but with Creedence the whole was more than the sum of the parts. I think they’re the greatest — and most thoroughly American — American rock and roll band.

UPDATE: Reader Joel Nickelson writes:

I would add that for people of my age group (late 20’s and early 30’s) who grew up on punk and independent rock in the 1980’s, Creedence resonated like no other band of their era. If there was a common denominator that various isolated punks across the country could understand, that would be Creedence. Not Bruce, not Dylan, not even the Velvet Underground who always seemed too influential to uncynically embrace. For a while there it seemed we might have had our own Creedence in The Minutemen were not for the death of

D. Boon in the mid 80’s.

A final note: Creedence is most certainly the finest driving music there is. There is some techno from Detroit that comes close for me as well, but techno irritates too many people for that to be a commonly accepted sentiment. Well, that’s their loss.

I agree on all counts.

TED BARLOW points out that Bruce Springsteen’s organization denies that Tipper Gore asked for free tickets, though Fox’s Roger Friedman — who reports this — says that his anonymous source stands by the story.

Meanwhile, I have a confession to make. And it’ll make Alterman jealous as hell. I got free tickets to see John Fogerty’s 1986 comeback concert in Memphis, which was his first public appearance in over a decade, I believe — and I got them through a favor from a prominent Tennessee politician. I won’t mention his name, though. He might be embarrassed.

It was a great show. And I don’t feel at all guilty about the free tickets.