Ween - 12 Golden Country Greats

Occasionally, I'll write a review where I enjoy the record far more than what the review would lead you to believe. These are releases that qualify as “guilty pleasures,” even though its a term that’s cheapened with the misconception that it’s something already perceived as awful by general consensus.

But a guilty pleasure doesn’t mean that it’s a bad record, at least not in my mind. Instead, I think of a guilty pleasure as a record that is neither groundbreaking nor all that well executed. For me, a guilty pleasure can be something that you enjoy listening to and have unchecked fondness for, without having a very good explanation for why it ranks in such high regard.

A good example of what I’m trying to explain is Ween’s 12 Golden Country Greats. It’s a record that I return to time an again for reasons that cannot be explained by the record’s place in recorded music or by the actual quality of the songs themselves.

I remember buying the album sight unseen and without the benefit of hearing a song sample. The very notion that Ween was devoting an entire record to one specific genre and were using some very legendary session musicians to help execute ten songs into a very misleading album title, was a very bold movie in my mind. It was an idea that remains as the most divisive entry in their cannon of weirdness and something that I felt deserved immediate support.

However, I can’t overlook the fact that I was somewhat disappointed after my first listen. It’s the most polished the brothers have ever sounded, which is a testament to the performers they’ve enlisted, I suppose, but after years of audible tape his in nearly every moment of their recording history up to this point, its absence suddenly sounds unsettling.

The other thing that was immediately off-putting was how subtle the humor is throughout 12 Golden Country Greats. Besides the obvious entries (“Piss Up A Rope,” “Mister Richard Smoker” and “Fluffy”), most of the record remains straight, at least by Ween standards.

Finally, I’m not utterly convinced that Ween aren’t entirely earnest in their appreciation with the genre of country music, a critical necessity when doing such a swan dive into such major left turns like this. And even though Gene does a nice roll call during “Powder Blue” of some of the musicians, he also has them present for such mundane moments like “I Don’t Wanna Leave You On The Farm,” a song so contrived that you want to apologize to the players for wasting their time with such rudimentary material.

Just as I would be remiss in telling you about all of these questionable moments on 12 Golden Country Greats is the fact that regularly let this record into my schedule and I’m just as regularly satisfied with it.

Ironically, it’s that subtle approach that makes such repeated listens so rewarding for me. When they let the talent loose during “Help Me Scrape The Mucus Off My Brain,” Ween goes beyond any prior expectations of how great of a project this could have been.

“You Were The Fool” reaches similar heights as the band counts off “Slow four….one, two, three, four…” A gentle acoustic moment is created while Gene effortlessly takes listeners on a wild ride, at one point advising, “You can speak with a turtle just by flippin’ him around.”

And I’m sorry, but “Piss Up A Rope” is one of the best “Fuck you” songs of all time, making 12 Golden Country Greats worth the price of admission.

As with any “guilty pleasure,” your mileage may vary, but for me 12 Golden Country Greats has gotten plenty of highway miles. It never quite reaches the heights that the idea hints at during a few moments, but it’s a project that I find strange comfort in their flawed attempt.

Steppenwolf - 7

There was a moment in my childhood where I was enamored with albums based entirely on the covers alone. When I say “childhood,” I’m talking kindergarten age, the time when a young boy left to his own turntable instead of human contact begins to form realities within the cover art in front of him.

What’s concerning is the nature of those records, in terms of content, but mainly the covers themselves.

Three records stand out: Bloodrock Bloodrock 2, Alice Cooper Love It To Death and Steppenwolf 7.

Only one of those albums-Love It To Death-remains in high esteem, for reasons that I didn’t know back then. The other two have been lost to youthful admiration, seemingly selected on their easy heaviness and bitchin’ album art.

But the Steppenwolf record was lost early, and I have not been able to verify that it deserved to be forgotten since I left it in the back of my mom’s baby blue VW Beetle. I was going to bring it to show and tell at school, and on the way home I put it in the very back for “safe keeping” only to promptly forget about it for a few days. When I remembered, it was unplayable.

Fast forward to last night, when I remembered the above story and quickly downloaded a replacement copy for my long lost warped vinyl copy.

What I discovered-and this is something that I suspected before-was that Steppenwolf’s 7 is nothing like it’s menacing cover projects. In fact, it’s quite a collage of different styles, each one proficient enough to place this Canadian outfit as a credible touring act capable of stirring up enough dust on the circuit to deserve the bigger letters on the marquee.

But by the time 7 was released in 1972, the band was reaching the end of their popularity and the record seems to hint that John Kay and the boys are throwing up different styles just to see what sticks and what might take off for continued commercial success in the new decade.

For “Snowblind Friend,” Steppenwolf dig out the pedal steel and try a bit of Canadian Prairie country, telling the story of a young drifter who spent his last buck on drugs. They seem to imply that more money is coming to him on Monday-from what, the listener doesn’t know-and they admit that someone simply needs to get him on a bus home.

“He said he wanted Heaven/But prayin’ was way too slow” indicates an impatient character, and John Kay’s weary baritone nearly makes this melodramatic tale work.

Nearly.

And that’s the problem throughout 7; Steppenwolf nearly makes an album as worthy as their heyday, and they nearly seemed poised to take on the new decade with something refreshing.

Trouble is, they can’t seem to focus on one style long enough to grain traction. Even the gatefold sleeve is filled with identity conflict. It finds the band members donning gladiator costumes, except  Kay who is still in his biker motif.

When they start given other members the lead vocals, like “Fat Man,” things go from bad to worse. Guitarist Larry Byrom provides some ridiculous unbuttoned shirt singing, magically turning Steppenwolf into an atypical Canadian bar band who’s nightly setlist contains the FM rock staples of the day and a few of their own “Let’s go grab a beer” originals.

Of course, at six-years of age this stuff probably seemed as badassed as the dual skull cover art, but as the decade wore on and I grew older, it was probably for the best that I left this record as a relic of my youth. Because some four decades later, listening to it now reminds me how leaving it the sun’s glare was probably the most appropriate outcome for this forgotten document.

Alice Cooper - Love It To Death

Thanks to the recent induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I pulled out my old vinyl copy of Alice Cooper’s Love It To Death and confirmed: it’s about fucking time.

I’m one of those “Alice Cooper is a band” supporters, the kind of fan who understands that theatrics is only half of the equation. The other half is a raw outfit of musicians who made those theatrics frightening.

But the scare-tactics were pretty badassed. On one occasion, I used the gatefold sleeve of Love It To Death in a “haunted house” me and my cousins made in my bedroom circa ’77. The picture was just close-up of Alice’s eyes in that spider leg mascara-but it gave the room a frightening feel along with my scientifically accurate plastic skull with removable skullcap.

We made a dollar in quarters that night at my parent’s house, so thank you Alice Cooper for making my amateur haunted house a financial success.

And thank you for making Love It To Death, the album that finally put the morbid spin on the entire Alice Cooper band after two records of uncomfortable weirdness. Alice’s third hones in on the aggression while a young Bob Ezrin places everything in its place within the mix, including instruments that weren’t prevalent on those previous records.

But even though there’s a piano in the back of it, “I’m Eighteen” is nothing but raw, irrational angst, you’ll swear you never heard a trace of them. So associated with those three syllabic power chord bursts of boy-into-man birthday, “I’m Eighteen” would become the first song you ever learned on a guitar, if “Smoke On The Water” had never been written.

Love It To Death is the reason I hate Kiss. The moment I learned of them, this record had been in my youthful heavy rotation long enough that I knew that Alice Cooper had started the entire heavy, theatrical rock thing a few years earlier. I also knew, at that young age, that Alice Cooper had done it much, much better.

And Ezrin-producer of Kiss’ Dynasty-did his best work with Alice Cooper too. The camaraderie began here, and it’s his efforts that help make the creep factor obvious, even without a visual guide. He brings the weird out during “The Ballad of Dwight Fry,” particularly when Alice promises to bring back all of the playthings to his little girl-the moment he gets out of the loony bin-“even the ones I stole!”

I also think Ezrin is responsible for the ironic Theremin on “Sun Arise,” a cheeky nod to “Good Vibrations.”

But the best one is “Black Juju,” where Ezrin directs Alice (the man) to damn-near stop the entire track to silence, before jamming a hot poker up his to make him scream “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” before the end reprise.

It was the most terrifying thing that this young boy had ever heard at the time, and it’s still creepy enough to give me a few more chills some four decades later.

And Love It To Death is still good enough to wonder why Alice Cooper hadn’t made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a bit sooner.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

From Straight To Bizarre: , Beefheart, Alice Cooper and LA’s Lunatic Fringe

Going back to the first time I ever heard Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, I remember wondering, “What is going on here?”

The second thought immediately following this was “Who on Earth would release this.”

Even today, Trout Mask Replica stands out as a left-field landmark, an impressive opus that may not sound like a masterpiece upon first listen, but its creative seeds begin to plant themselves immediately afterwards causing each subsequent listen to reveal an additional layer of complete brilliance.

So it goes without saying that the record company that had the impossible foresight to allow such a document to grow to fruition must most certainly be run by a special person.

The label was originally called Bizarre and it eventually transformed into Straight records. The men responsible for these forward-looking labels were Frank Zappa and his manager Herb Cohen. Together, they drew up a contract with Warner Brothers for Zappa’s material, and they secured a vanity label with the company so that Frank and Herb could offer artists an outlet for their creativity.

From Straight To Bizarre: Zappa, Beefheart, Alice Cooper and LA’s Lunatic Fringe chronicles the origins of Zappa and Cohen’s record company all the way to its ultimate collapse amid bad feelings and obligatory lawsuits. It’s recommended to any fan of Zappa or Beefhearts that’s interested in learning more about this very creative time for both of them and the strange business plan that Zappa hatched in turning documents of L.A.’s self-described freaks into recording stars.

What’s striking is how patient Zappa seems to be with these people, some of whom have clear mental issues that far outweigh any attempt at assisting their artistic endeavors. Others are just plain opportunistic, part of the scene because they invited themselves and invented a second-life persona that was either hiding their real history because of how awful it was or how bland it looked on paper.

For some reason not explained on film, (none of the interviews presented in this feature Zappa) Frank felt these enigmatic characters deserved documenting. He began on a quest to transform a paranoid schizophrenic named Wild Man Fischer who spent his days selling his stream-of-questionable-consciousness songs for a dime, essentially panhandling his lunacy for tourists and passer-bys.

For most of us, these characters are minor annoyances on our way to work, but to Frank, Fischer was part of the landscape of this social freak culture he was attempting to document. Fischer thought he’d sound like the Beatles when Frank finished, but when Zappa presented an album with not only Fischer’s primitive compositions, but his crazed existence in the form of field recordings, he got mad.

The Wild Man-true to his name-flung a flower pot too close for comfort at the head of a very young Moon Unit Zappa, trying to process how An Evening With Wild Man Fischer wasn’t as big as Meet The Beatles.

After that event, Fischer was never allowed in the Zappa house again and his debut record has never been re-released to this day because of bad feelings. I verified this online where the lowest priced copy of An Evening With I found on a recent scan of EBay (VG rating) had a starting price of $20 with better quality copies ranging from $50-$100.

The GTO’s get ample screen time on From Straight To Bizarre with Pamela Des Barres and Miss Mercy spouting on about meaningless stories of getting high with the Magic Band and defining what exactly constitutes being a groupie. Out of all of the label’s releases, the GTO’s Permanent Damage may stand as the most unnecessary record ever made, but according to the film, Zappa tolerated their limit talents and unprofessional behavior in the studio.

Thankfully, a great deal of time is spend on Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica and the power that he exerted over the band during this period. It’s clear from Magic Band members John French (Drumbo) and Bill Harkleroad (Zoot Horn Rollo) that the Captain initiated a regime of cultdom that French later referred to as “Masonesque.”

You get the sense that Zappa himself was aware of this treatment, yet gave a wide birth between being concerned with their welfare and allowing his old friend Don Van Vliet to have what he wanted most: total creative freedom. In his defense, Zappa did give the Magic Band a hot meal every so often out of pity.

During the period where they were considered a band, Alice Cooper also maneuvered into a contract with the label based on an audition that Vince Furnier misheard to take place at nine in the morning at the Zappa cabin in Laurel Canyon instead of Frank’s preferred time of nine in the evening.

Frank also caught an Alice Cooper gig that witnessed half the audience leaving in disgust, which meant that Zappa simply had to agree to sign them based on principle alone. By the time of their third album Love It To Death, the band had finally found a new producer who captured their essence into a palatable offering, led by the enormously successful “I’m Eighteen.”

With that record in 1971, the logo of Straight Records was all that was left before the Zappa/Cohen project was phased out of discussion along with Zappa’s own contract with Warners.

I haven’t even touched on signings like the A cappella gospel vocal group The Persuasions, Tim Buckley’s Starsailor release, as well as Mother’s member Jeff Simmons’s solo album. They’re all included in the discussions during From Straight To Bizarre, which makes the film a bit heavy at over two-and-a-half hours in length.

You may get a bit winded by all of the talking heads throughout the feature, helping to assist in the film’s girth and you may get very sick of the original musical music they use each time the conversation focuses on Beefheart. There are samples of some of the label’s artists, but as a matter to save money, the producers must have bargained a lower number to someone familiar with Beefheart’s repertoire to come up with a cheesy facsimile.

Cheap tactics aside, the film does prove to be a good reference point for any up-and-coming Zappa fan looking to see how far his influence extended into the late sixties. It’s also a nice document of one of the most successful avant-garde record companies that ever benefited from a major record label and a reminder of how different the system was when it came to harvesting talent beyond the pool of commercial ambition.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

Alice Cooper - Flush The Fashion

Some of us will never forgive Alice Cooper for disbanding the Alice Cooper Band after releasing an impressive catalog of material that required no revamping whatsoever.

Once departed/terminated, Alice promptly released one embarrassment after another, all of which followed similar formulas that usually featured one ballad that snuck Alice’s name in the top 40, a weird blend of schmaltz and desperation. In short order, Vincent Furnier dismantled the good name of a great band while caring more for his notoriety instead of quality music.

Strangely, Cooper opted for another image transfusion when a new decade arrived-a new wave freak that began looking more like a retirement-age Betty Davis undergoing cancer treatments-and with it came a new direction in sound.

The sound, in case you’re wondering, was a blatant attempt at sounding modern. To help, Alice enlisted the help of Roy Thomas Baker-the “in” producer for late 70’s new wave garb and the dude responsible for splicing all of that tape for Queen’s over-the-top vocal treatments.

There’s none of those treatments on Flush The Fashion, but you can hear a bunch of the same synth tones found on The Cars’ Panorama and a weird similarity to Iggy Pop’s output around this same period.

Alice hails from the same town as Ig, so maybe the sound is intentional. Regardless of the source or inspiration, Cooper delivers an oddly compelling record that seems to suggest that his heart was actually in it for a moment.

That’s more than you can say for the follow up releases to Flush The Fashion where Alice admits that he doesn’t even remember recording.

I’m willing to bet that he remembers these R.T.B. sessions, and I’m also willing to bet that he tried hard at this career re-invention at both the creative and image level.

The first single “Clones (We’re All)” is a fine example of this. Cooper recites some Orwellian imagery and phonetically places like a robot over some Greg Hawkes keystrokes. It works and it sounds like a lost new wave classic today.

Alice Cooper - Clones (We're All ) - The top video clips of the week are here

The same is true for “Pain,” where Alice goes into a tried-and-true definition lyric formula (“I’m the holes in your arms when you’re feeling the shakes/And I’m the lump on your head when you step on the rake”) and comes out somewhat victorious.

Most of the rest album, unfortunately, doesn’t. Those instances of real inspiration are sagged by a plethora of other songs that sound like they’ve stopped at the arrangement portion of the creative process. Too often, Alice uses a singsong technique and just rattles off words that he thinks sounds menacing.

That means you get songs about “Aspirin Damage” and nuclear meltdowns (complete with The China Syndrome nods!), all delivered in a range-less tone because Alice can’t seem to find the same kind of inspiration as he did on the more realized material.

Add it up and Flush The Fashion might indeed be the best album since his days as the frontman for the Alice Cooper Band. Unfortunately, it’s almost as lazy as some of those same offerings, proving that maybe he should have focused more on reinventing his deteriorating lifestyle than his overhauling his image.

Because a sober ear could have easily heard that Alice was pointed in the right direction during some moments of Flush The Fashion, but for the rest of the record, he clearly was too inebriated to steer.

The Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Soundtrack

I’m beginning what I’ll call the Mother-In-Law series, which is merely a handful of long-players that she brought to me because she knows that I like music.
Evidently, this is a common phenomenon; I’ve heard that my cousin’s in-laws also hand over the occasional vinyl album and my father is also a fan of the “Here’s some scratchy old albums that you beat to hell when you were little” gift.
“I remembered that you liked The Beatles,” she said as she handed over the records.
As I noticed the familiar cover of the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Soundtrack and chuckled a little.
It was this album that ignited a passionate hatred for the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and Alice Cooper and it caused me to think that Aerosmith may indeed have a problem with drugs.
Understand that I liked all of them up until that album-hell, I even tolerated the shitty I’m In You for Frampton-and now he does this to me?!
The movie is awful, but the soundtrack is just as bad with Aerosmith throwing out a decent cover of “Come Together” and Earth Wind & Fire offering a nice version of “Got To Get You Into My Life.”
These have proven to be the only two good tracks on the album,
Did I mention it’s a double?
Every thing else is just awful and with George Martin’s name on the project, it’s an embarrassment.
What I don’t understand is how even at that young of an age (12) I knew this thing was going to be a bust. So how did a group of smart adults let this thing get started?
Who knows? But Robert Stigwood dropped a fortune on this thing to the tune of “bankrupt” almost immediately after people started to notice that this thing smelled like a turd.
It worked for a moment; the album reference, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and that wild and crazy guy Steve Martin got us all excited to see the movie. The trouble was, nobody could remember what the hell the film was about only five minutes after we left the theatre.
I wish I could say the same thing for the soundtrack.

No Soup For You!

True story: I was messing around online at work and I noticed that the number one search item for a few hours today was Soupy Sales.
What on Earth, in this day and age, are people searching for Soupy Sales on the internet?
And then I noticed that Soupy passed away today.
The dude rubbed shoulders with the Rat Pack, knew a bunch of hip jazz musicians, and sired on-time Iggy Pop and David Bowie rhythm section members Tony and Hunt Sales.
I never really paid much attention to Soupy; he was after my childhood and I really only remember him from those game shows in the 70's. I do remember my father speaking poorly of him as an unfunny hack. Balance that with Iggy Pop's claim (on the Dinah Shore show) that Soupy sales was an influence on The Stooges.
When in doubt, trust in Iggy.
Here's Soupy with a surprise visit from Alice Cooper.