I’ve told the story of how I stumbled upon Talk Talk‘s Spirit Of Eden before, but that story doesn’t illustrate much into how jaw-dropping brilliant the album is and how because of that it can inspire other bands to make like-minded epic statements.
To start with, we need to go back twenty years ago…the year that Spirit Of Eden was made…and try to convey how completely unexpected it was. Leader Mark Hollis had made a few Talk Talk albums up to that point that were literal definitions of New Wave music. In fact, he made good New Wave albums, the kind you weren’t necessarily ashamed of, but nothing that demonstrated that they were capable of much beyond the genre they were originally attached to.
They were successful at it, scoring a few hits here stateside (“It’s My Life” and “Life’s What You Make It”) and probably even a few more in their native England. To try to deviate from their proven method was probably met with enormous resistance from band members, record company executives and fans alike. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…and Talk Talk seemed to be pushing ahead just fine. Why Hollis then chose to create album number four with such a huge gulf compared to his previous work is curious. It only becomes clearer the moment you hear Spirit Of Eden for yourself: it’s because Mark Hollis was channeling something much more than sheer muse itself. It was as if there was indeed a higher power manning the controls of Hollis’ pen and the studio control room.
You hear it immediately: organic instruments, horns, strings, choirs; these are major steps away from Talk Talk’s previous synthesizer tinkering. Hollis’ voice also seems to be channeling cathartic powers as he muses on such themes as addiction and loss. There’s a moment on “I Believe In You,” a song about the perils of heroin, where Hollis musters a defiant “Enough! Ain’t it enough, crippled world?” that brings tears to my eyes two decades after first hearing it.
With six tracks clocking in at forty minutes, Talk Talk cleverly place jazz-like arrangements underneath wide melodramatic atmospheres. It’s slowly paced (the first hint of “rock” takes seventeen-and-a-half minutes to appear) but never boring. The drama that Spirit Of Eden creates keeps you glued to it for that entire forty minutes and will stay with you for years afterwards.
When I began this review, it initially came with a lower rating.
In fact, the text to the actual review was more than a little harsh, to the point where I knew something was eating at me. "I used to love this album when it first came out," I thought, "so why all of a sudden am I gunning just to knock these guys down?" I knew there was something more to my sudden distaste for Under A Blood Red Sky, a stop-gap extended play released less than a year after their third album War and bargain priced just before Christmas of '83.
So why the dramatic shift in opinion after 30 years. It is true that tastes change, but if anything, time has confirmed a lot more positive aspects of music I enjoyed as a teenager and young adult, particularly records that I specifically remember listening to alot.
And Under A Blood Red Sky was a record that I listened to alot.
I know what you're thinking, and you're right. A lot on my changing opinion of this record and the band in general, all centers around that self-righteous fuck Bono whose mere image evokes a strong negative reaction from me.
I suppose you could make the argument that those very abhorrent qualities in Bono were already visible three decades ago, but I'm sticking with the idea that the first real evidence of oversaturation didn't really come until The Joshua Tree blew up. And even that was a record in which you said, "Man, this fucker is going to blow up" because it was one of those albums where everything just aligns up for a band, and you know it's their time.
And you know there's nothing you can do about it. If they were your band for a moment, they became everyone's band afterwards.
But The Joshua Tree wasn't the record that forced me to reconcile with the fact that U2 had become too big to hold on to.
That record for me was Under A Blood Red Sky.
Which leads me to the other, much larger reason why I was so hellbent on ripping out a mean and snarky review of it, despite the fact that:
1.) being mean and snarky about U2 is the fucking norm today, man, what's point of spending any amount of time just to be a redundant voice of the obvious?
2.) I hadn't actually listened to the record in over 20 years, probably, and it seemed cheap to pen a mean-spirited review without giving the record a complimentary listen again.
3.) I knew that I actually still loved Under A Blood Red sky after all.
There is another reason why I got a bit aggressive with this review's first draft, and it takes place in the Fall of 1984, prior to the release of U2's fourth studio effort, The Unforgettable Fire. I had been invited to escort a very lovely young lady to the homecoming dance at her Catholic high school. The school shared a bit of a rivalry with the local public school that I attended, mainly because the Catholic high school's boys basketball team were really good. They were state ranked and could really put it to our squad when we had the obligatory tip off between each other, and that created a little bit of drama in the community at times.
But, you know, I don't sweat such nonsense. Plus, the chick was super hot and only a moron would put some silly school rivalry in front of going on a date with such a fine looking young woman, am I right?
I had this swell '68 Plymouth Fury III coupe in which me, my special lady friend and another couple arrived at the dance at the Catholic high school. I parked in the school's parking lot which was lit and featured a city cop car in front as a certain deterrent.
We went inside, danced a bit, and at one point a group of guys who had graduated the year prior showed up in the gymnasium a bit tipsy. They completely ignored their dates, most of whom seemed to be fine with the idea that they were going to their high school homecoming dance with a college guy, regardless of how little he interacted with her. Regardless of the fact that he was acting more immature than his younger counterparts.
The smug fucks made their way up to the d.j. and one of them pulled out a cassette tape from their pocket. Shortly afterwards, the spoken introduction of "This song is not a rebel song..." came over the portable Peavey loudspeakers and, from that moment on, took on a completely different meaning for me.
The graduates joined forces and began air drumming, playing air guitar or acting like Bono, raising their fists and high-fiving each other's performance.
Nobody acted like Adam Clayton.
I remember that feeling - the resentment building inside of me. Somehow, U2 had slipped out of my hands and into these wealthy suburban Catholic boys.
What makes this all the more ridiculous was the fact that War was already a popular record in my school. Not in the same league as 1999 or Pyromania, but big enough to find its way into multiple car stereos while cruising around on the weekends.
So in reality, it was less about U2 being discovered by more people, but the issue was that I felt they were being discovered by the wrong people. I glared as I watched of this preppy cracker mouthing "How long must we sing this song" into his clenched fist, burning with anger that this group of douchebags were totally ruining one of my favorite bands.
Suddenly, a teacher/chaperone/whatever comes walking hurriedly into the gym and heads to the cop that's supposed to be acting as security. He'd been standing by the refreshment table for as long as we'd been there, watching the pretty girls dance and trying to look authoritative around the boys.
The guy approaches the cop and I can make out two words: tires and slashed. The word spreads quickly and we all follow the authority figures out to the parking lot to investigate.
It's at this point where we see the damage. Not all, but well over a dozen cars had one or two tires slashed. There were a lot of angry words tossed around and a few more event sponsors circled around the cop as he called for backup. It was clear by the number of vehicles vandalized that there were probably several people involved and that they probably took some time completing it.
One of the rear tires on my Plymouth featured a prominent hole in the sidewall.
I was pissed. If it had been some kind of inter-school retaliation then I felt that I deserved a pass at any vandalism resulting from the hand of a fellow alumni. My Plymouth was a unique car, relatively well know around my peers, and I'm an amiable guy with very few real enemies that would target my tires simply because they were in the parking lot of an opposing school.
We all went back inside and gave our information for the official police report. I questioned out loud why a cop was hired for dance security if there wasn't any real security being provided. That got the cop's attention. He looked at me sternly and asked "What more do you want me to do?"
"I dunno. Maybe leave the soda and cookies long enough to check the parking lot once in a while."
The crime was later solved and I learned that it all resulted because one of the main instigators had an old girlfriend that had moved on from the relationship and asked a new boy to the dance with her. I knew one of the parties involved and confronted him about it several months after he had successfully avoided me. When we finally did have words together, he told me that he was drunk, wasn't actually a part of the tire slashing and had stayed in the car with the others took to the damage. He apologized for being a part of the events and admitted that it was a stupid. When it became clear that I wasn't so easy to forgive him, even after the cost of the damages were settled and he and the rest of his crew had paid their debt to society.
"What more do you want me to do?" he asked.
U2 could have asked the same question. They were not responsible for my miserable evening. They couldn't control the mass fame that was resulting from their music and they certainly didn't deserve the personal vendetta that I felt was owed because of all of this personal drama.
Because Under A Blood Red Sky is a very good live document, deserving of the same praise that is held for such titles like Live At Leeds or any other notable rock and roll concert recording.
Unlike the video version which features nothing but the band's Red Rocks Amphitheatre performance, the audio version pulls from three separate concerts. A few of the tracks are from the Colorado dates, but all of the second side comes from a gig in Germany-including the version of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" which features the infamous "not a rebel song" intro from our most hated frontman.
Speaking of, the Red Rocks video version is clearly the most visually superior document, perfectly suited for the format. Watching Bono connect among rocks, rain and flames was unlike anything else from that decade, and it marked one of the first examples of a band that was initially part of something beneath the mainstream being clearly able to connect with a large audience.
In other words, you saw Under A Blood Red Sky and wondered, "Why isn't everyone getting this?"
And when they did, I got mad. Go figure.
The audio document is nothing more than a well-cherry picked collection, designed to sound like a band that was much bigger than their sales receipts would suggest. In other words, Under A Blood Red Sky was a perfectly constructed marketing tool, helping to create a reality where even venues like Red Rocks would become too small for the band to perform in.
What results from the extended play record is something that prompts novices who are drawn to the visual grandiosity to explore into the band's catalog further. This is something that a good live record should be able to do. The 8 song set lifts the obvious catalog highlights like "I Will Follow," "Gloria," and "New Years Day" while hitting a few deep cuts in the process, all of which pass for first-class material. It suggests to listeners that the band was consistent in their execution, and with the exception of their album October, they really were.
Under A Blood Red Sky not only suggests this, it manages to exceed the originals in many instances. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is the obvious example of this, but "The Electric Co." really shines and the closer "40," with it's epic outro of the entire crowd singing "How long to sing this song..." made getting to the next U2 show a high priority.
Speaking of "The Electric Co.," the original version of Under A Blood Red Sky contained a moment where the band gets quieter and Bono breaks out a spontaneous taste of "Send In The Clowns." This portion was removed when I bought UABRS on compact disc, the result of a copyright issue. As silly as it may seem, I would try to find a copy with this extra half-minute of banter because it provides another example of how Bono was able to create these memorable moments of connection. It's literally a moment that was repeated for other shows, but put aside how contrived this passage may have been and consider how awesome it must have been to hear a band come across with such sincere intention that moments like this were seen as special.
Listening to it again, it continues to resonate. I'm confident that anyone approaching this band with new ears will find Under A Blood Red Sky as a passionate and memorable statement. What helps is how the band still sounds like they're trying to prove something, and you can hear on another stop-gap live offering a few years later (Wide Awake In America) how much the band had moved from spontaneous moments of emotion to more carefully constructed drama.
The move certainly may have assisted with escalating the cynicism towards U2, but even with decades of the band's frontman slowly eroding their credibility, Under A Blood Red Sky remains as good as a live document as you'll find for these superstars. It captures U2's ability on stage during the end of the band's first creative era and suggests that moving away from that style was a brave one, regardless of how much the move contributed to the lead vocalist's inflated self-worth and how much you want to forget how of their popularity was based on the reality that U2 was once a hungry band who worked very hard at building the sanctimonious stage they walk on now.
One of the saddest things about the recent passing of Delaney Bramlett last month was how overlooked it was. It’s not just that Delaney’s stock plummeted shortly after his early ’70s heyday with wife Bonnie Bramlett, it’s also because one of the duo’s most notable releases—one that features the greatest line-up of blue-eyed soul musicians ever assembled mixing it up with one of the best guitarists ever—has been quietly forgotten by all but the most devoted of fans.
The uninitiated only need to hear Delaney & Bonnie‘s On Tour with Eric Clapton to discover how unfortunate this slight is. The eight-song release captured the band at what may be the highpoint of its career, complete with a once-in-a-lifetime sit-in by none other than “God” himself laying out some wonderfully exciting fretwork.
At its core, On Tour is a document of the kind of music that Delaney & Bonnie had been perfecting for years: Memphis blue-eyed soul with a tinge of gospel harmonics. Where Delaney provided the grit of the blues, Bonnie provided the sweet harmonies and some believable gospel flourishes. Raised in East St. Louis, Bonnie held her own against many blues luminaries as Albert King and Little Milton before finding love—in a bowling alley of all places—with the guitarist from the house band on the Shindig television show.
The two created a pair of albums before being tapped as the opening band on Blind Faith‘s first and only US tour.
While traveling the American highways, a young Eric Clapton began seeking solace in the duo’s tour bus, shying away from the adulation that surrounded him with both Blind Faith and Cream. While the supergroups that Clapton was participating with at the time presented a challenge of egos, Delaney & Bonnie provided him with time from the spotlight to reflect on what really mattered: the music.
Befriending Eric Clapton is a great story in itself, but the real story is how great Delaney & Bonnie’s band were even before Clapton sat in with them. The Croydon, England show recorded for this album features Dave Mason, Carl Radle, and Bobby Whitlock on keyboards. Rita Coolidge helps compliment Bonnie’s amazing vocal workouts while legendary brass mates Bobby Keys and Jim Price add some punch to the mix.
Essentially, this is the same band used for the Derek & the Dominoes sessions and it’s quite clear that Clapton uses similar vocal range for his own solo career as Delaney Bramlett.
The band lets up once, allowing Bonnie to sing Bessie Griffin‘s “That’s What My Man Is For.” She seductively informs the lighting man to bathe her in red lights “…’cause this is a red light song” before laying down a solo workout that demonstrates why she was the only white woman that can claim to have been an Ikette during Ike and Tina‘s sixteen-year career.
The time on the road must have indeed made “friends” out of Clapton and the rest of the performers.
Not only did he nick them for his own Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, their services also were provided to George Harrison during the Concert For Bangladesh, and even Leon Russell partook in their generosity by enlisting them for Joe Cocker‘s Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour.
All of this work put Delaney & Bonnie on the back burner, and with it, any chance of capturing the momentum that should have come from working with such high-profile companions. Instead, the pair watched their good fortunes collapse and, eventually, their own marriage too.
On Tour is a stunningly abrupt live release that’s prime for rediscovery and a proper reissue. It remains the best example of Delaney & Bonnie’s authentic blend of Delta soul and the last example of how great Clapton could be when he worked as a sideman among musicians of equal caliber and inspiration.
As Delaney himself sings on the track “Poor Elijah,” “Ain’t nobody here but good people.”
He’s being modest; On Tour is a document of some great people doing what they love.
A Christmas gift that eventually became a permanent member
of my car stereo after the player decided to power off every time I attempted
to eject the disc.
After a few attempts, I let it be. And for an entire week Slates became a perfect fixture for my commute to and from work. In the mornings - if I got on the road early enough to miss the heavy traffic on the interstate - the mini-l.p. would fill in the entire drive. From driveway to parking lot, start to finish.
I suppose you could do worse rather than having The Fall’s six-song
e.p. Slates stuck in your deck
forever. Indeed, when I did finally manage to get it out of the player, I thought about
putting it back in after a few minutes just to hear “Leave The Capitol” one more time before putting it away.
Originally released as a 10” e.p. in 1981, Slates finds the band not only contemplating change, but nearly defining it. It was the final record needed to complete their contract with Rough Trade, but unlike most bands who view the final contractual obligation as a make it or break it scenario, Mark E. Smith seems to view it as a way to burn as many bridges as possible on the way out.
The band is still working within their post-punk abrasiveness, so don't expect too much in terms of accessibility. But Slates also hints at the band’s ability to work within the elements of pop, particularly with “Fit And Working Again.” With its
acoustic guitar and quick pace, "Fit" is about the closest track here that would resemble anything remotely familiar - a familiarity would be featured more prominently in future offerings. If the rumors that Slates was the first Fall record to get future first wife Brix's attention, then "Fit" would seem to be the most logical track to grab her ear, at least judging by her own work within the group starting a few years later.
But it’s the left-of-center material that really shines, from the with the mouthbreather study of "Middle Mass," the anthemic closer “Leave The Capitol," the Beefheart worship of “Prole Art Threat” and the infectious title
track, “Slates, Slags, Eset” that rolls on for a hearty six-and-a-half minutes
when I could easily injest six-and-a-half more.
The brevity is undoubtedly part of the appeal of Slates, but the reality is that the spontaneous combustion of how this record was conceived wouldn't mean a thing if the songs themselves didn't burn a hole in your memory.
And these songs catch a fire immediately. The mundane existence of my morning/evening commute was not exacerbated by the fact that I literally could not remove Slates from my car stereo. In fact, it was therapeutic.
In the garage din of The Fall's inadequate musical abilities, Mark E. Smith presents some of the best lines he's ever written, a strong elixir of working class dread, Beat poet musings and an ample diet of coffee and speed.
M.E.S. was there with every turn of my odometer, reminding me of the routine I have nestled into every weekday morning ("The boy is like a tape loop") or explaining to me why I felt a great sense of release each time I headed home for the night ("He learned a word today/The word is misanthropy").
The reissue provides some extras that most Fall fans probably have in other configurations (the Peel sessions were a bit of redundancy for me), but I have to confess that I didn't mind it at all since the e.p. timed up perfectly with my drive and since the six original songs are downright vital, I didn't dwell too much past the original tracks.
Beyond the high quality of these half-dozen titles, Slates also served as the first strong indication that the sum of the The Fall's parts essentially begin and end with Mark E. Smith alone. It was the first record to ever dispel the notion that the band would ever have a true "classic" line-up and the first one to suggest that they really didn't need one.
Don't let the bonus material be the deciding factor - this shit would be a bargain if it was only the original six tracks and came presented in a scuffed up CD-R housed in an old Krokus jewel box. Slates may be one of the greatest e.p.'s ever released, a challenging and confident effort that holds up well, even when it's the only option available in your stereo.
For those too young to remember, Saturday Night Live was hugely influential in breaking new artists before MTV. I remember learning about Devo, the B-52′s, Fear, and many others from the show. And on one episode that featured Monty Python member Eric Idle as the guest host, a young Kate Bush was the musical guest. She writhed on top of a piano if I recall, sang “The Man With The Child In His Eyes” and I immediately fell in love with her.
There was something precious about her first two albums and a hint of some remarkable talent on album number three, Never Forever. But it wasn’t until the fourth album, The Dreaming, that Kate Bush’s capacities began to be fully realized.
It was here that Bush began to assume more diverse characters in her songs, often utilizing the full range of her voice for dramatic effect. She also began to piece all of the musical elements together as the record’s sole producer. As one would expect from a relative novice in the producer’s chair, there are moments of clutter and questionable arrangements.
But for every misstep, there is a sense that Bush set out to make The Dreaming as something more than she, or any other contemporary artist, had made before. For that lofty goal, she must be duly rewarded, but the real reward may be how she was able to go so far towards the avant-garde and recover in better shape commercially than before. There is little on The Dreaming that sounds commercially accessible, and the fact that her record company gave her even more financial resources for her next album seems unfathomable in today’s economic climate.
What’s more is that The Dreaming shows signs of Kate Bush being completely bat-shit crazy. Sure, she was able to maintain a proper English front in the press and fans, but it’s not far fetched to consider her fodder for the loony bin after a few spins of this record. As a matter of fact, there are shots of her donning a straightjacket in the video for “Suspended In Gaffa.”
Video storyboards aside, all interviews from this period and beyond show an impossibly coherent and well-spoken person, seemingly leaving all normalcies at the studio door during the recording process. She addresses this on “Leave It Open,” the last song on side one. “I kept it in a cage / Watched it weeping / But made it stay,” she says of her idiosyncrasies, before acknowledging “now I’ve started learning how…I leave it open.”
What exactly is she leaving open in The Dreaming? The door to “weirdness” apparently, judging from the last verse where she all but admits to the listener through backwards masking: “We let the weirdness in.”
It’s true: Kate assumes various personas throughout the album, an amateur robber (“There Goes A Tenner”), a Viet Cong soldier (“Pulling Out The Pin”), Harry Houdini’s wife (“Houdini”), and by the end of the album (“Get Out Of My House”) she’s lost her mind completely to the point where she begins to bray and snort like a fucking donkey.
If her lyrics and the roles she puts her voice through aren’t enough to make the proceedings challenging, the rest of the arrangements will challenge even the most well-versed of listeners.
She cakes all available tracks with worldly instruments, leaving only the spare piano/vocal movements for emotional impacts. They’re infrequent, which means that for the majority of the album you’re wading through Turkish string instruments, didjeridus, and maybe an occasional bullroarer.
It takes a while to get used to all of the continent jumping and ethnic polyrhythms, particularly since The Dreaming sounds far from what would be considered a “world music” album. No, the only sense of why certain instruments were used was if they marginally fit the song’s overall theme and if they sounded majorly fucked up.
By commercial standards, The Dreaming failed. Even in England, which treated her as a national treasure prior to the album’s release, only one single (“Sat In Your Lap”) managed to crack the top twenty. Why her label, after taking such a gamble, agreed to let Kate man the controls again for her next album is quite remarkable.
She repaid them by delivering an album that was slightly less challenging but still far-reaching; Hounds Of Love provided them/her with worldwide success and instantaneous notoriety. It too is an album worth pursuing, but for my money, I like The Dreaming more. It shows a young women, manic with ideas and creativity throwing caution to the wind and delivering an off-her-rocker masterpiece that very few artists have ever had the courage to make before or since.
For all the talk about the Beatles remasters, there’s a hefty amount of Apple material that could also use a quick tidying up from their original cd releases of two decades ago. Topping the list wouldn’t be a release by a former Beatle, but instead the band that seemed to be handpicked ambassadors to the Fab Four’s power pop division.
Badfinger was indeed a band that could sound remarkably similar to the Beatles, but it was 1972′s Straight Up that demonstrated how the band could actually compose material that lived up to the Beatles in terms of quality.
It’s here where you can find the band’s two most recognizable songs, “Day After Day” and “Baby Blue.” But the best thing about Straight Up is how you’ll discover that those two awesome songs are packed tightly inside a collection of equally great tunes.
It’s also impeccably sequenced, with the slow building “Take It All” introducing the album while its closer “It’s Over,” with its multi-tracked chorus and sweet slide guitar solo, appropriately wrapped up the band’s best album.
You’d never guess it, though, as Rolling Stone magazine inexplicably panned the album, deaf to Straight Up‘s pop charms and attacking the album’s lack of “rock and roll spirit.”
They’re wrong.
Straight Up has plenty of rock and roll spirit; it just happens to the spirit that doesn’t jibe with what the R.S. reviewer had in mind from a band that routinely rubbed elbows with the Beatles.
There’s “Suitcase,” the obligatory “touring sucks” song. “Sweet Tuesday Morning,” the obligatory “I’ve been all around the world but you—my lady back home—are still the apple of my eye” ballad. There’s even an eerie foreshadowing of the future financial ills (“Money”) that would plague the band and prompt half of the band’s members to take their own lives.
Yes, Badfinger was a band riddled with tragedy, and it often overshadows just how good they were during their prime. “Don’t you know there’s a song to sing / Keeping us together,” sings vocalist Pete Ham during the bridge of “Take It All,” hinting that Badfinger was still making music out of sheer joy at this point. It would be just a matter of months before they’d be writing music that faced scrutiny for its commercial potential.
With Straight Up, the band hired both a Beatles guitarist (George Harrison) and a Beatles enthusiast (Todd Rundgren) to help trim down the band’s growing repertoire to a handy dozen. But it’s the band’s own musicianship and wonderful chemistry that make Straight Up‘s twelve songs a stunning piece of power-pop and a timeless slice of post-Beatles salvos.
I played Straight Up constantly growing up. It caught the attention of my babysitter, who tried to get me to trade it for John Lennon‘s Mind Games.
I refused; Straight Up stands tall against even the Beatles’ solo efforts while reaching for the band’s lofty mid-period gems.
For some reason, the packaging, the running order, the
difference between the UK and US version of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut
album Are You Experienced has always
intrigued me. So when Experience Hendrix announced the reissue of Jimi’s first
trio of releases on vinyl-including the UK version of AYE-my attention was laser-focused.
I have no historical connection with the mono versions of
Hendrix’ first two releases. I was raised on the running-order of the Reprise
stereo versions of both, themselves reissues of the awesome old steamboat logo
that Reprise used to have. I ruined perfectly good Animals records from that
period, and I remember noting the big old boat version and I scribbled my name
over the label.
So thank God it wasn’t a Hendrix original pressing, I guess.
And for some stupid reason, there was a time during the 80’s
when I was so fixated on replacing every one of my vinyl titles on cd that I
was sell them for pennies-on-the-dollar just to
have it on a shiny aluminum disc.
This includes all of my vinyl of Jimi Hendrix records.
Now, none of mine were rare titles. Like I mentioned, they
were all (and by “all,” I’m only talking about the first three records)
reissues of Reprise titles, well before everything got sold to someone else and
that someone else is now Sony records, I guess.
Whatever.
Point in that I sold all of that shit, and then one day I’m
playing my records, like actual vinyl, and I go “Man, some Hendrix would really
hit the spot!” and go over to my stack of wax and look for Jimi.
And it’s not there.
Not the badassed gatefold copy of Axis with all of its lysergic glory. Not the Columbia House edition
of Electric Ladyland and not even the
U.S. stereo version of Are You
Experienced?
Obviously, I had to correct that problem, toot suite.
This is about the time of the Experience Hendrix reissues,
of which I read about, became convinced of the item’s quality, and selected the
UK mono version of AYE just to mix it
up and listen to it again with fresh ears.
Let me tell you that the results floored me. Not in the
manner in which you may be thinking, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
First of all, the packaging contains a reproduction of the
UK cover, just standard issue quality. Mine was numbered “1697”, of how many
more, I haven’t researched.
The inner sleeve is a pedestrian black and white colored
sleeve, one side featuring a roll of Hendrix performing live, while the other
touts the extensive manner in which Bernie Grundman mastered the release, using
state of the art analog mechanics. It’s an interesting read, but I have no idea
what the shit means.
What I do know is that the vinyl is thick. None more black.
The fuckers at Sony replaced the more historically accurate Polydor label with
a new Experienced Hendrix one.
At this point, I don’t care. Particularly after I learned
that Grundman retrofitted a machine with old tubes to make it sound “accurate,”
so, you know, I’m stoked about hearing AYE
“as it was meant to be heard” or “the way Jimi intended it” or “You just
dropped $17 for an album to once owned, so get to playing it, dummy!”
Right out of the gate, let me say that leading off the
American version was “Purple Haze,” a cut that doesn’t appear on the UK version
of AYE, because it was basically
slopped together at the beginning of the Summer of 1967. America had to wait
for its version, and when it came, it was primarily the stereo version, and it
included the aforementioned “Purple Haze” and the stunning “Wind Cries Mary.”
If you’re new to Hendrix, this is the album where you need to start and this is
the version you need to start with. Even after hearing the UK version, the US
stereo version is a vastly superior title and it stands as one of the greatest
debuts of all time.
The UK version of AYE
starts with “Foxy Lady,” still, a pretty swinging opener for May of ’67, and it
begins a very curious visit to an old friend. Not only is the fact that “Foxy
Lady” is starting things off, it’s doing so in a very muddy fashion. This is
the worst mix of this song I have ever heard.
But I press on.
The UK version includes “Red House” and “Remember,” both of
which give our compatriots over there a much more blues presence over the
record. With England already witnessing a blue resurgence thanks to Clapton’s
work with John Mayall to the Stones earlier catalog, Are You Experienced takes on a more decidedly English feel than its
American counterpart, which now feels like a much more heavy rock record
compared to this version.
Overall, AYE UK
achieves exactly what I was hoping for. It transported me in front of a
shitty monophonic record player, hearing the album as close as I could get to
the exact moment when it was first issued. It’s mindblowing and it still stacks
up to nearly everything that was released in the creative-filled year of 1967.
The monorail performance is a flat-eq’d barker with Hendrix’s
guitar front and center. There’s occasionally a bit more reverb in some of the mix
and a ton of gain present during the dynamic performances. I’m guessing this is
a result of Grundman’s back to mono ethos in the mastering process. Whatever it
is, it is some weird shit. It made me light some incense and feel a little
creeped out, gingerly contemplating my brief crack in the time continuum.
There is a bunch of other strange sounds from differences in
the mix that occur, particularly in “Third Stone From The Sun,” which easily
becomes my favorite moment in this new old mix. Again, Jimi’s guitar is way up
in the mix, making all of the sound effect moments and slow-speed space
transmissions even more eerie. Then Jimi comes in and asks if he can “land my
kinky machine” and everything’s cool again.
Except for “Fire,” which nearly had me believing that I had
secured an inferior pressing of AYE. Right
after Jimi’s solo, the audio suddenly drops out and sounds out of phase, if
that makes any sense. It is remarkably different, like it’s a different source
for the material. It’s a jolt to the listener and something that I’d think they’d
put a disclaimer of if it were a regular occurrence, like The Who did on Live At Leeds with its warning of the
record label of “Crackling noises o.k. – Do not correct.”
I visit the Steve Hoffman forums-the go to place for
everything geek record information-and sure as shit, the issue of the dropout
in “Fire” to the crappy mix of “Foxy Lady,” are all addressed and they are
attributed to the defects of a hastily put together recording and mixing
session are the root cause of all of these sonic issues.
The reality was that most listeners heard their
records on blue collar systems, and little attention was paid to sonic
perfection by pop/rock engineers as a result. There’s a natural tendency for such system limitations to mask the imperfections,
combined with the reality of the limits that those primitive recording consoles
had when recording a dynamic artist like Hendrix, and you get a lot of
noticeable flaws on aurally visible, even today’s mid-range systems.
Given how much an original UK mono pressing of Are You Experienced is going for, and
considering how there is (supposedly) no difference between the mix of it and
the new Experience Hendrix reissue is, the new release is a bargain. It’s still
great enough to blow minds, even in a flawed monorail mix of what
is-particularly in its American sequenced stereo counterpart-one of the greatest debut
albums in rock history.
I stumbled across Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, m.A.A.d.Cityby accident. It
would come up every now and then when purchasing music from some online
retailer. It was the result of one of those tepid “Others who bought this
product also bought…” suggestions that come when the algorithms start working
their magic.
All of this is stranger, considering the incredibly small
amount of rap music that I purchased, which I swear, seems like it would have
been Whodini’s Escape.
In any case, the album looked intriguing from a cover art
perspective and I looked into the record a bit further. Let me cut to the chase
and tell you that I acquired Good Kid,
m.A.A.d. City shortly afterwards and it is a beast of a listen and one in
which you should discover right now. Details on this follow, but there is an
admission that I am by far the authority on what constitutes a good rap record
these days, because I am so far removed from that genre, having abandoned it
after the genre became such a chore to navigate.
Like rock and roll, there became an entire sub-culture
universe that existed. It was a reality that I could no longer devote the
energy to keep up with it. And since my passion lay with rock music, it was
best that I break off from any pretense of knowledge or understanding of
current rap music.
This is not to say that I don’t like the genre or enjoy a new
rap record. I do, but I won’t work hard to discover it.
And let me tell you, life is pretty good when you allow
others to tell you what is decent in rap releases. It enables you to cherry
pick from those that closely resemble your primary likes and preferences. For
me, that preference would consist of the location of where rap music began:
this middle-age cracker from Iowa
likes his rap music East Coast style.
Which is odd because Good
Kid, m.A.A.d. City is proudly West Coast, specifically Compton, and surprisingly narcotic. It is
unique, infectious, and at times disturbing. It brings about a level of
empathy, alternating between championing Lamar and chastising him for making
some tragic decisions.
It blurs the line between fact and fiction well,
incorporating his violent surroundings with well paced moments of bravado,
dreams and outright lies. Trying to pinpoint Lamar to just one of Good Kid’s many personalities is a bit
tricky, and ultimately the record’s most frustrating characteristic.
Too many times he peppers songs with ill-advised diversions,
like the inner-voice portion of “Swimming Pools” where the entire codeine vibe
is killed on what is likely the first drank anthem ever put to a hard drive.
In the end, you cannot deny that Lamar has put together an
impressive array of narratives and the arrangements in which he and his studio
visitors (read: big names) have weaved together one of the most unique and
challenging records in any genre.
It all came together for me in a moment of impulse purchase
intrigue, a result of some devious program designed to get me to dig a bit
deeper into my wallet. And while I’m naturally suspicious of such tactics, it
doesn’t mean that I’ve turned myself off to the suggestion.
And that’s all I’m trying to do with this review, because
even with a cursory bit of investigation you’ll hear that there’s a good deal
of comfort in Lamar’s van-tour of his dangerous and infectious streets.
Probably the most impressive thing about Eleventh Dream
Day’s second album for Atlantic (third album,
overall) is how little it did to remove itself from the raw passion of the
previous record, Beet. It seems hard
to believe that the major label was pleased with the sales results of Beet, in fact, you could even imagine the folks at the record label offering a more accessible vision, one that includes huge
bags of sweeteners and infectious candy coatings.
Instead, Lived To Tell
was recorded in a fucking tobacco barn, and you can almost hear the dusty floor
stirring up from the ruckus that Janet Bean makes with her questionable
timekeeping, never mind the air that’s getting pushed around from guitarist
Baird Figi and Rick Rizzo.
Rizzo also serves as Eleventh Dream Day’s primary
mouthpiece, with Bean herself providing some additional color with backing
vocals.
From her noticeably rushed intro to album opener “Rose Of
Jericho,” you’ll easily forgive her sloppy beginnings when you hear the twin
cacophony that Figi and Rizzo unleashed upon their entrance to the song. With a
nice dual fret-war underway, it becomes understandable why Bean wanted to get
the rumble underway, tout de suite.
Looser and louder than its predecessor, Lived To Tell finds Figi branching out with some incredible slide
guitar word that just pops out of the right channel.
Speaking of, the entire record is mixed with the guitars way
out in front, Rizzo and Bean’s vocals struggle to be heard while Janet’s snare
drum cuts through everything. What actually pushes the song forward alternates
between her high-hat or her bass drum, causing the entire arrangement to sound
like it could topple over in its own excitement at any moment. The band simply
sound like they cannot wait to rock your fucking balls off.
Smack dab in the middle of the grunge revolution came a trio
from Los Angeles playing banjos and fiddling
with stand up pianos, creating a very early entry in the emerging Americana market. Their
sound possessed about as much dust and history as the band’s frontman would
hint at in his name alone, Grant Lee Phillips.
The words that Phillips conjured also suggested an old-west
motif, but the opening track to the band’s second release, Mighty Joe Moon, also demonstrated that he also studied the (then)
news of the day, incorporating their narrative in the band’s pretend historical
documentary.
“Lone Star Song” may resemble the big state’s penchant for
self-gratification, but that’s in name alone. The real tale is a
hot-off-the-presses account of the Waco Siege, in which we witnessed the worst of government fuckery, where the outcome played out like a national embarrassment each night on television. It's safe to say that neither side could claim much in terms of a victory, or as Phillips suggested,“Pray the holy wars are
ending/Like the films of Hollywood."
Whether recounting ancient or recent history, Grant Lee Buffalo-the band-sounded
unlike anything else during the 90’s, and unfortunately they remain lost in
that decade’s pile of forgotten classics. With that in mind, Mighty Joe Moon remains that forgotten
piece of archeology that begs for both rediscovery and the respect of those who
now find bigger wallets from simply acclimating the same sounds and styles that
GLB did before them to more “exclusive” crowds.
Not that Mighty Joe
Moon didn’t have a chance to turn a few heads twenty years ago;
“Mockingbirds” found some lunar rotation on MTV at one point, never mind that
the strategically placed strings and Phillips’ haunting falsetto definitely
should have seen the light of day for a bigger audience.
In fact, Mighty Joe
Moon finds a home perfectly suited for both the most discriminating pop
elitist and the campfires of Spahn Ranch. At one point mysterious and strange, Mighty Joe Moon drifts languidly into
memorable hooks that even twenty years after the fact sound surreal, novel, and
vital.
Grant Lee Buffalo did manage to find increasing rewards for
every subsequent record they released after Mighty
Joe Moon, but the sales failed to be the large return on investment that
Warner Brothers were looking for, and at the end of their contract with the
label, the band decided to dissolve along with the legal document.
Ultimately, the only problem with Grant Lee Buffalo was
their reluctance to compromise their integrity for the benefit of their major
label owners. But that makes it only a “problem” for the record company who has
hard time understanding that some bands don’t work well within a creative
microwave.
Mighty Joe Moon
possesses tons of hooks within its gramophone jive and sepia-hued jackets.
They take their own sweet time in rising, but their lingering melodies are
undeniable. It’s a timeless record that goes by surprisingly fast for thirteen
tracks, but their impact is something not easily forgotten.
And if you can’t find a way to market something with this
kind of lasting impression, then maybe the problem is with you.
Endlessly endearing and enviably talented, Nick Cave returns with the Bad Seeds and another left turn, this time even more noticeable since the last effort (Dig Lazarus Dig) was such a raucous affair.
We should probably come to expect this from Cave, as Murder Ballads bequeath Boatman’s Call, and therefore it should come as no surprise that album number fifteen is the quiet and reflective Push The Sky Away.
It took me several listens to wrap my head around this record, and I think the delay was nothing but the shock of hearing Cave sound his age again, and the reality is that it may take a traveled person to really appreciate what’s going on with this record.
Because its simplicity is deceiving, but it also enables you to appreciate the beauty that comes from Cave’s distinctive voice and the wonderful draw of his words.
It’s what kept me coming back-those words. They’re filled with big, curious themes. Some of which he’s explored before, but that doesn’t mean they’re worth reviewing. After all, weighty topics like mortality, love, religion and mermaids sometimes need a second glance.
With the additional look, you’ll hear such incredible details like “I watch your hands like butterflies landing” right next to such naughty musings as “I was the match that would fire up her snatch.”
Producer Nick Launay wisely leaves Cave’s voice out in front, highlighting its age when needed, its desperation when it’s called for, and its dark perversion when everything else fails.
The Seeds find Warren Ellis again stepping up with remarkable restraint and incredible intuitiveness. Basic loop structures are introduced with very little else added to the mix; a spare piano, a lone guitar and a simple rhythm are usually the rest of the performances. The bare atmosphere that is created throughout the album makes it something dark and timeless.
Push The Sky Away is subtle masterpiece that is diminished only by the artist’s already impressive catalog. But to be honest, after my own repeated listens there is nothing else in the man’s work that I’d rather listen to at this moment.
The cover art to Swans’ 12th album-like the record itself-makes a credible argument that The Seer is probably better suited for a vinyl format.
It features a painting of a dog, presumably a Yorkshire Terrier, a small breed of canine that is small in stature and originally bred to kill rats in the clothing mills of England. They bark a lot, which makes them excellent alarmist and they have a tendency to have dental problems throughout their life.
The Yorkie on the cover of The Seer features Swans’ leader Michael Gira’s teeth drawn in the dog’s mouth. Flip the cover over and there is a picture of the dog’s anus in full view. I’m giving the artist (Simon Henwood) the benefit of the doubt by assuming that it is merely representative of the dog’s backside, not Gira’s.
How this particular breed relates to Gira is another matter for discussion. I don’t know the relevance or if it even if there is one. I just know that it’s disturbing and compelling at the same time, definitely the same you get from listening to The Seer. It’s a record that not only serves as the culmination of Gira’s thirty year career as a provocative noise monger, but one that qualifies as perhaps the best album you’ll hear this year.
That praise comes with the condition that you’ll have an open mind to tolerate epic length of sonic torture. The Seer isn’t for everyone, but the reality that Gira has accomplished something very special here needs to be relayed to every music lover, including the ones that will never enjoy endless moments of sonic drones and skull crushing accentuations.
This, perhaps, is the other reason The Seer is better suited for the vinyl format. At two hours in length, and with some songs running near the half-hour mark, you’ll need that simple act of taking the needle off the record to take a breath and compose yourself. This isn’t to suggest that all 120 minutes aren’t worth their weight, but to suggest that Gira’s dread is often the equivalent of enduring repeated blows to your optimism.
The Seer is not comprised entirely of his bag of confrontational brutality; there are moments of incredible beauty paced throughout this monolithic creature, and some of those moments come at the hand (or voice) of the album’s long cast of characters.
The most notable is “Song For A Warrior” featuring Karen O in a strategically placed spot, kicking off the record’s second half and providing a reprieve from the record’s primal first disc.
But perhaps the most beautiful is the “A Piece Of The Sky,” a nineteen-minute suite that begins with a crackling fire, develops into a nightmare chorale (featuring former member Jarobe scratching out the polyphonic drone), transforms into post-rock stomp before brilliantly segueing into a languid poetry shuffle where Gira delivers some of the best prose of the album.
It alternates, like most of the Swans most notable material, between the profane and profound. Gira points out the beauty in even the most conflicting of environments (“In the wind of my lung/In methane and in love/In petroleum plumes/There’s a floating slice of moon”).
The Seer is as abrasive as life itself, and how you chose to relate to its harsh realities is a matter of both taste and tolerance.
But If you’re familiar with Michael Gira’s past 30 years, and are willing to believe that he’s able to deliver the most complete and compelling work at nearly 60 years of age, then The Seer will show how this old dog’s bark is just as vicious as it has ever been.
I “rescued” Pere Ubu’s Dub Housing from a radio station, where it stayed locked up and forgotten until my efforts came into play.
And for years, I never really understood why I kept it. It’s a difficult album, and I rarely played it. Even though I initially didn’t “get” what the band-or specifically this album-was all about, at least I had the common sense of keeping it. I thought that if I gave it some more time, I would someday discover what it was about this band that had so many glowing reviews.
When I heard “Non-Alignment Pact” and “Final Solution,” two early singles from this weird band from Cleveland, I began to warm up. And thanks to the accessibility of Cloudland, I was beginning to piece together the complex stitch work of Pere Ubu, and before long, I was ready to tackle Dub Housing again.
I still didn’t get it.
Dub Housing is the band’s second full-length, and it’s a hard thing to understand how they could get an album like this on a major label. Yes, they were on the Chrysalis records roster-right next to Nick Gilder and Jethro Tull-during a time when you could get away with something like that.
And I still can’t believe how this, an album that took me so many years to figure out, found it’s way onto the label during the year 1978.
It sold horribly, or so I’ve read, and those promotional copies sent to radio stations probably all ended up in a dumpster instead of hidden away in a back shelf like my copy.
I can’t tell what exactly turned me around. Maybe it was those years of listening to Captain Beefheart records, secretly prepping me for things that didn’t always make sense. But when it finally took hold, I discovered that Pere Ubu was indeed a national treasure and Dub Housing their most vital release.
Don’t let me scare you off: there are actual songs here, and you can get a taste of both the bizarre and the traditional song structure that mixes together with opener “Navvy,” a bouncy, angular guitar pattern made positively normal when Allen Ravenstine comes in with his bag of beeps, blips, and scratchy noises.
If Ravenstine never played keyboards on any other album besides Dub Housing, he’d still deserve a place as one of the all time greatest keyboardists. There is very little in his playing that constitutes traditional structure, yet the minimalist technique and endless barrage of strange sounds is positively groundbreaking. He has a fondness for both the typical garage rock organ tones of the 60’s and a healthy quest to create the most bizarre sounds known to man, in other words, a perfect addition for a band that’s already very adapt at making left hand turns.
Dub Housing features some of vocalist David Thomas’ most manic and memorable offerings. From crazed voices of repeated phrases (“Walked around/Took a bus/Walked around/Took a bus”) to just a bunch of noises made with his mouth, Thomas does not let his limitations deter his skewed sense of art.
He is one of the reasons why I never gave up on this record. And even though it took me several years to get there, I finally relented an began singing the chorus of “Navvy” with much conviction, joining Pere Ubu with their declaration “Boy, that sounds swell!”
Before you play a note, there’s a good possibility that
you’ll hate The The merely on the merits of their ridiculously pretentious
name, and even more so if you consider that the The is in fact, one person
commanding that moniker.
If all of this points to a possibility that you’ve developed
an opinion of Matt Johnson’s The The, then your first listen of his 1989’s Mind Bomb may even add to those that
bark “holier than thou” as the record is chocked full of end of days imagery
and various samples that beat the notion of religious Armageddon to death. All
one has to do is look at the back cover for proof; it features a white dove,
bloody and impaled, cruelly suggesting that the quest for world peace is
nothing more than folly for the naïve.
Mind Bomb is over
twenty-years old now, and what may save Johnson from that cynical notion is how
amazingly accurate his clarion call was, particularly in light of our post 9/11
condition. But it would be disingenuous of me not to admit that even then, Mind Bomb sure sounded like a major
piece of work
.
“Islam is rising/The Christians mobilizing” he advises on
“Armageddon Days Are Here (Again),” an acidic observation on how messengers of
hope and everlasting life have “forgotten the message and worship(s) the
creeds.” One need only look at the “God Hates Fags” signs or any act of
religious aggression so commonplace in today’s headlines to consider that
Johnson may have been clearly on the mark.
On “The Beat(en) Generation” he declares how we’re all
“reared on a diet of prejudice and misinformation,” encouraging us to “open
your imaginations” and consider the possibility that our religious and government leaders don’t always work in our
best interest after exploiting the
presumption that they’re always…always…supposed to.
With the introduction of Johnny Marr, The The’s sound
benefits greatly from the inclusion of the former-Smith’s chord progression and
plaintive harmonica while the band’s hosts of session players give Johnson’s
creative outlet the proper detail. Mind
Bomb’s big themes are given big production values, but they don’t become as
cluttered as other similarly themed releases who feel the need for huge
orchestrations or layers of pointless instrumentation. And nowhere on Mind Bomb is the attention to far from
Johnson’s philosophical musings, his colorful voice is placed firmly in charge
and up front in the mix.
The only downfall to Mind
Bomb-if there is one-is that the concept is so big, it would be nearly
impossible to follow up. The big themes explored on this record came as a
surprise to everyone, particularly considering The The’s previous work which
featured Matt Johnson’s big mouth in an incredibly sterile and claustrophobic
mix.
Mind Bomb opens up
the windows, allowing you the opportunity to not only contemplate what’s being
said, but to consider what’s really important in life. And if change does
indeed start with one person, Matt Johnson can take solace that Mind Bomb remains a fine example of
someone willing to take that first step towards enlightenment.
Believe it or not, when considering the parody that Motley Crue has become, the actually began as a straight-up dangerous glam-metal band who seemed intent on using their decadence for their own immediate gratification rather than parlaying it into a marketable image.
That notion would come later-thanks to some money-hungry music-biz types-but Too Fast For Love remains as an untainted debut from those early fuck-all days. The lyrics are dumb, the recording sounds off, and their performances full of more attitude than talent. Which is why Motley Crue’s debut sounds wonderfully out of place even today while remaining their most essential recording in both influence and sheer consistency.
I go a bit farther and suggest that Too Fast For Love is probably the best, true glam rock album of the 80’s and perhaps just as vital as those revered Iron Maiden records that everyone points to when compiling best-of’s and critically praised. We like those-myself included-because their creators would probably hold their own with us in a battle of brains, while the boys in Crue would merely come across as barely functioning half-wits, annoying to a fault and not at all clever, at least not until you learned that they’ve nicked your wallet, your girlfriend, or both.
I love how the opener “Live Wire” begins with the sound of a hot amplifier while Mick Mars waits for the signal from the control room to begin playing. As soon as the nod is given, he looks down towards his guitar and starts a riff that is equal parts punk and metal, an impressive feet for a guy that used the Crue to reinvent himself after a decade of barely making ends meet on the bar band circuit.
The good news, is that Mars’ transformation is complete as the rest of Too Fast shows how quickly he picked up on this alien genre, a style he most undoubtedly learned from his younger bandmate, Nikki Sixx.
Credit also has to go to drummer Tommy Lee, a lanky beater who plays the kit like someone with ADHD and a bad coke habit on top of it. Cowbells, crash cymbals and double bass drums arrive in the mix without notice, like Lee is concerned that this will be his last recording session ever, so he wants to make sure that every part of his kit is heard in the final results.
While Nikki Sixx now likes to portray himself as a misunderstood writer with legitimate underground credentials, his lyrics and bass performance on Too Fast For Love barely register above an 8th grade reading level. Not that this is a bad thing, because when you combine that fact with Vince Neil’s woefully inept vocal abilities, you have a perfectly executed piece of art.
