The World Wide Glen: Welcome to My Thoughtmare

2012-02-10T00:35:00.000-08:00

Chronology: The Unlikely Evolution of Talking Heads

Music DVD Review: Talking Heads - Chronology (2012)

The new Talking Heads Chronology DVD is an often fascinating look back at the short, but trailblazing career of one of rock and roll's most unlikely success stories, as viewed through the rear view window of music video and documentary footage. But you won't find any of the live sequences from the great Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, nor the MTV videos for songs like "Burning Down The House" here (though there is a performance of that song from the old David Letterman show).

Instead, Chronology tells the Talking Heads story through the use of more rarely seen footage, that stretches from the band's earliest days at New York punk rock clubs like CBGB, to their reunion upon the event of their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.

Along the way, we see the band evolve from a trio of nerdy minimalist art-rockers, into the full blown, punk-funk aggregation they became around the early eighties time of Remain In Light (arguably their most fertile creative period). The evolution of David Byrne as a live performer is particularly fascinating to watch. In early performance clips from CBGBs and The Kitchen, Byrne looks so painfully stiff, you may ask yourself "how the hell did he get here?" (to quote one of his most famous lyrics).

By the time of a 1979 appearance on ABC's American Bandstand, Byrne is so visibly uncomfortable during a "Take Me To The River" post performance interview, Dick Clark finally asks bassist Tina Weymouth if he is always so introverted. "He's organically shy," she replies.

Byrne of course eventually evolved into a much more engaging and confident performer, a transformation we begin to see take shape here on a 1980 live clip of "Animals" from Germany. Here, Byrne seems to finally find his stage legs by discovering how to turn his natural awkwardness to his advantage. "20 years of dance lessons, and now you see the result," Byrne quips, before going into some of those odd and quirky stage moves he later became so famous for.

On an early clip of "Psycho Killer" from CBGBs, what you hear is the sound of a band that is still very rough around the edges. But you can also hear the same great song that Seymour Stein did -- prompting the legendary A&R man to sign the band to Sire Records. With the addition of keyboardist Jerry Harrison, the trio of Byrne, Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz, begins to develop more confidence as musicians and performers, as seen here in a performance of "Don't Worry About The Government" from the British music show, Old Grey Whistle Test. You also start to see the foundations of the funk rhythms that would later become so crucial to the Talking Heads sound in later years beginning to form here.

But what really makes Chronology a must for Talking Heads fans, is the latter period stuff. The expanded Remain In Light lineup -- including guitarist Adrian Belew, bassist Busta "Cherry" Jones, and keyboardist Bernie Worrell -- turn in an absolutely incendiary version of "Crosseyed And Painless" from Passiac, New Jersey's Capitol Theatre on this DVD. The combination of Belew's fiery guitar, the deep funk pocket of Jones and Weymouth on bass -- and let's not forget those tight-ass P-Funk grooves -- proves to be an explosive one. Even though this performance is shot in black and white, you have to wonder just how much more of this stuff might be lying around somewhere.

Extras on this DVD include a 1978 David Byrne interview, and something called the "South Bank Show," which is essentially a film combining band interviews with Talking Heads music.

2012-02-09T01:29:00.000-08:00

Wilco Gives Seattle The Whole Love At The Paramount

Concert Review: Wilco at the Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA, 2/7/12

There was a telling comment made by Jeff Tweedy about midway through Wilco's stunning two-hour set this past Tuesday at Seattle's Paramount Theatre, that perhaps best summed up the entire evening. Nels Cline had just finished up a particularly spellbinding solo on "Impossible Germany," when Tweedy turned to the guitarist and quipped, "you keep that up, and you might just become the 81st best guitarist in the world."

The comment was meant in humor of course, but he also made an excellent point.

Although Wilco is often thought of as being Jeff Tweedy's band — and rightfully so, since he is their primary singer, songwriter and overall creative mastermind — it was Cline who provided most of the musical fireworks on this night. On songs like "Impossible Germany," "Bull Black Nova" and "Art Of Almost," the virtuoso guitarist didn't so much play his instrument, as he did attack it.

But watching the way that Cline bashes away at the strings to create those glorious washes of cacophonous noise that he does, is just one of the things that makes Wilco such a great live band.

If "One Sunday Morning" (from their great 2011 album The Whole Love) seemed like an uncharacteristically quiet choice to open a big rock show with, it also provided the rest of the boys in the band their own chance to shine. The pristine acoustics of the Paramount served Wilco particularly well here, as they were able to recreate the delicate layers of the album version perfectly, right down to the more subtle keyboard flourishes of Mikael Jorgenson and Pat Sansone.

Bassist (and co-founder) John Stirratt was another standout throughout the night, providing both the thunderous bottom layer anchoring songs like "I Might" and "Bull Black Nova," and contrasting the lighter shades of "One Sunday Morning" with deeper tones that resonated beautifully throughout the entire building. In addition to providing the big beat which served as the kickstarter for Cline's guitar pyrotechnics on "Art Of Almost" and "Bull Black Nova," drummer Glenn Kotche also played a variety of bells, chimes and other percussive instruments.

As a frontman, the best word you could use to describe Jeff Tweedy is "relaxed." As layered with musical complexities as Wilco's music can be, Tweedy just radiates warmth and comfort onstage. He can also be quite funny.

Although the crowd at the Paramount skewed mostly older, this still didn't stop many of them from reverting to their more youthfully rocking days, and showing their appreciation with a few choice yelps and shouts. When one of these "whoos" came during a quieter, somewhat misplaced moment, Tweedy joked "Maybe we should rewrite the rules of rock concerts — instead of shouting "whoo!," maybe you could just say "you know, I really enjoyed the way you played that song."

As expected, Wilco performed several songs from The Whole Love (some of which had aired on an episode of the excellent PBS concert series Austin City Limits just a week prior). But the well balanced set also dipped deep into the band's back catalog, including both oft-played songs like "A Shot In The Arm" and "Heavy Metal Drummer," as well as rarely heard tracks from earlier albums like Wilco A.M. and Summerteeth.

The show also had noticeably higher production values than past Wilco visits to Seattle. The elaborate, but elegant staging included sophisticated lighting effects and films projected against a backdrop of what looked like torn rags hanging off the ceiling.

Set List:

One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)
Poor Places
Art of Almost
I Might
Bull Black Nova
Company In My Back
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
Kamera
Impossible Germany
Born Alone
Laminated Cat
Shouldn't Be Ashamed
Whole Love
Heavy Metal Drummer
I'm The Man Who Loves You
Standing O
Misunderstood
Dawned On Me
A Shot In The Arm

Encore:

Candyfloss
War On War
Walken
Red Eyed and Blue
I Got You
Outtasite

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2012-02-03T03:38:00.000-08:00

Todd: Reassessing An Unsung Classic

Music DVD Review: Todd Rundgren - Todd (Live, 9/14/2010 at Keswick Theater, Philadelphia, PA) (2012 Release)

A lot of people don't remember Todd Rundgren today, and it's really a damn shame. Because, back in his late seventies and early eighties heyday, Todd Rundgren was the man.

These days, when people think of Todd, what they most likely remember him for are the brilliantly constructed pop classics "I Saw The Light," "We Gotta' Get You A Woman," and especially "Hello, It's Me." If ever there was a more perfect pop single than that, I have yet to hear it.

But beyond the great pop songs, and the multi-colored hair you see on those late night Midnight Special infomercials today, Todd was more known back then as something of a musical renaissance man.

Sure, he wrote great pop songs. But the slightly ahead of its time musical sophistication of his early solo albums -- on which he played every instrument, and oversaw every aspect of the actual recordings -- also made him the most sought after producer of his time. It is only when you check Todd Rundgren's credits as a producer back then -- which include everyone from Hall and Oates and Patti Smith, to Badfinger and Grand Funk Railroad -- that you start to realize just how pivotal he was in shaping the sound of the seventies.

In truth, Todd Rundgren was something like the Rick Rubin of his day.

But it doesn't stop there. On his own records, things went much deeper. For every fluffy piece of pop like "Hello, It's Me," Todd explored everything from fusion-jazz to avant-experimentalism on albums like the tragically slept upon A Wizard, A True Star.

These days, when it comes to Todd's own albums, it's the two-disc pop classic Something/Anything? that gets the most love. But his 1974, lesser known Todd is by far the more musically adventurous record. On this largely overlooked (and probably out of print) album, Todd goes from the pristine pop of songs like "A Dream Goes On Forever," to styles incorporating everything from seventies glam metal, to Zappa-esque, fusion laced humor, to Brian Wilson influenced symphonic sweep and beyond. There are even tap-dancing sequences on this record (but more on that in a minute).

The thing is, Todd displays every bit the studio sophistication of much more universally lauded masterpieces like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds or Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland (both of which Todd share many qualities with, by the way). Yet, it receives nowhere near the same level of critical recognition, as those albums do.

Like I said, it's a damn shame. Because Todd was all over the map on that record in the best way. From the heavy metal cast blue eyed soul of "The Last Ride" to the ferocious stomp of the "King Kong Reggae," Todd is an unsung classic.

So the good news is, he has brought it back.

On this concert DVD, recorded back in 2010 in his hometown of Philadelphia, Todd Rundgren and his all-star band of great musicians recreate the Todd album from start to stop. What is most amazing about this DVD, is just how well they pull it all off, right down to the studio trickery that went into the making of this amazing, if historically overlooked record.

Todd's voice is a bit deeper these days. But he still hits the high notes perfectly, particularly on "The Last Ride," Todd's great take on the Philly soul that was so prevalent back when this album was originally recorded. He also nails the incendiary, closing guitar solo of the original.

Even more impressive, is the way Todd's band is able to recreate the multiple layers of the original recording in a live setting. All of the studio bells and whistles of the original 1974 Todd album are faithfully reproduced here -- from the multi-layered symphonics of "I Think You Know," right down to the tap-dancing of "Useless Begging" (which drummer Prairie Prince handles beautifully).

As for the other guys in the band, they include longtime Rundgren mates like Utopia bassist Kasim Sultan and former Cars keyboard player Greg Hawkes (who looks for all the world like a Rodney Bingenheimer clone here in his blond, pageboy bowlcut).

This great band also gets some great chances to flex their considerable musical muscle, and totally rock out on tracks like "Heavy Metal Kids," and especially "Everybody's Going To Heaven/ King Kong Reggae."

This is a great concert DVD, from one of the most underrated (at least from a present day perspective) visionaries of the original seventies era we regard today as "classic rock."

There is only one bonus feature here, but it's a good one. Noted sportscaster Roy Firestone -- who is apparently also a major league "Toddie" as he puts it -- sits Todd himself down for an interview, in which the man opens up about a variety of subjects ranging from his love of the band Yes to his recollections of how George Harrison dissed him on the production credits for Badfinger's Straight Up.

You won't want to miss this one. In stores February 14.

2012-01-20T02:19:00.000-08:00

Mr. Mojo Risin': Big Jimbo The Lizard King And The Making of The Doors L.A. Woman

Music DVD Review: The Doors - Mr. Mojo Risin': The Story Of L.A. Woman

Mr. Mojo Risin': The Story Of L.A. Woman is a new, 100 minute DVD documentary from Eagle Rock that chronicles the creation of what turned out to be the Doors final album with iconic lead singer Jim Morrison -- the band recorded two more as a trio, before disbanding -- 1970's L.A. Woman. As tempting as it might be for some to grouse that the Doors have already been done to death as a "rockumentary" subject, this film actually manages to unearth some juicy new tidbits behind the making of the Doors sixth studio album.

Besides, has there ever been a more fascinating rock legend than big Jimbo the Lizard King?

But what Doors fans will find most interesting is the inclusion of a brand new, previously unreleased track from the L.A. Woman sessions. "She Smells So Nice" is a blues number much in the same vein as other recordings from L.A. Woman, and is also included on the new 40th anniversary remastered version of the album. But on this DVD, you get the actual studio footage. Here, the song eventually morphs into a sprawling jam, including a brief cover of the blues standard "Rock Me, Baby" (as in "rock me all night long"). This footage alone makes Mr. Mojo Risin' a keeper.

Beyond that, all of the usual bases that students of Doors history will instantly recognize are covered here. The infamous Miami bust (that essentially ended the Doors career as a live concert act), as well as Morrison's tragic descent into alcoholism, leading up to his death in Paris are all discussed in detail. What makes this DVD most interesting though, is hearing these events recounted by the surviving Doors members themselves. The contrast between Ray Manzarek's admission that when Morrison walked out of the L.A. Woman sessions it was the last time that he spoke to him, and John Densmore's memories of a post L.A. Woman phone call from Paris, where Morrison said he would be coming back home to rejoin the band upon learning that the album was a hit, are particularly telling.

Even more interesting though, are the stories behind the creation of some of the Doors most famous songs. Robbie Kreiger (the Doors "secret weapon," according to Manzarek), talks at length about the genesis of "Riders On The Storm" for example. The big revelation here is that the jazzy, haunting "Riders" actually grew out of a jam on the country standard "Ghost Riders In The Sky." When he demonstrates on guitar, the transition from the twangy, country two step of "Ghost Riders" to the slower jazz based riff of the final Doors song, the chasm between the two songs doesn't seem nearly as far as you'd think. Hearing Kreiger (and later Manzarek) recount this story, it actually makes perfect sense.

The DVD also features some interesting extras, including a "Doors guide to L.A." (set to the song "L.A. Woman" of course); the aforementioned "She Smells So Nice"; and some all-too-brief live footage. The lack of any really good live film of the Doors in concert during their heyday has long been a sore spot with fans though, and the brief snippets (some actually in color) here will only further feed that frustration.

Overall though, this is a very well-done documentary much in the same style as other Eagle Rock rockumentaries in their "Classic Albums" series, but with the added punch of much better production values. The attention paid here to the small details (like prefacing each chapter with a Hollywood style billboard) gives Mr. Mojo Risin' that unique feel of being something truly special. The participation of the surviving Doors themselves, as well as insiders like Bruce Botnick, Bill Siddons, and Jac Holzman only adds further legitimacy to this first rate Doors film.

2012-01-19T03:19:00.000-08:00

The Boss Is Back: New Springsteen Single, Album And Tour News

The Boss Is Back.

After a relatively quiet few months following the announcement of an impending new album and European tour dates late last year, Bruce Springsteen fans were treated to a sudden flurry of new activity today, including a clearer picture regarding long expected U.S. Tour dates, as well as details on Springsteen's new album.

Several internet news sources, reported on Wednesday that the new Bruce Springsteen album will be titled Wrecking Ball, with Consequence Of Sound even publishing a track listing and what it is claiming to be the album cover art.

If these reports are accurate, at least three songs from the album will already be familiar to Springsteen fans.

These include the title track, "Wrecking Ball," which Springsteen first performed on tour at Giants Stadium, just before it was demolished. "Land Of Hope And Dreams" has been a staple of E Street Band shows going as far back as their 1999-2000 reunion tour, and "American Land" (listed as a bonus track), has been performed live both with the E Street Band and on the Seeger Sessions tour.

Other songs which seem to match the reportedly political tone of what some insiders are already calling Springsteen's "angriest sounding album" to date, include such intriguing titles as "The Depression," "Shackled And Down," and "Death To My Hometown." Could we have an even more unhappy sequel to the unlikely Born In The USA hit here?

Produced by Ron Aniello (Patti Scialfa, Jars Of Clay), the album combines tracks recorded with the E Street Band, with solo performances said to include “unexpected textures, loops, electronic percussion" and "influences and rhythms from hip-hop to Irish folk.” Guest musicians on the album reportedly include Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello and former Pearl Jam drummer Matt Chamberlain.

Although as of this writing, neither Springsteen's official website or the always reliable Bruce news source Backstreets Magazine were confirming the reports, iTunes is listing a March 6, 2012 U.S. release for Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball. The iTunes store is also displaying the same cover art shown here.

What is absolutely official however, is Springsteen's new single "We Take Care Of Our Own," which went on sale at midnight Thursday on ITunes and Amazon.com.

Running somewhat contrary to the early reports of this being a more experimental album, "We Take Care Of Our Own" is a classic E Street Band track, anchored by a big Max Weinberg drum intro, calliope keyboards, and the most muscular sounding production on an E Street Band studio recording since The River.

The sound is somewhere between "Hungry Heart" and the Beach Boys' "Wild Honey" (which the guitar intro liberally borrows from). The lyrics meanwhile, fit right into the contemporary political themes already being reported by numerous sources. With lines like "the road to good intentions has gone dry as a bone," "We Take Care Of Our Own" could almost be foreseen as the sort of rallying cry you are likely to hear at Occupy rallies during the volatile political season certain to be coming this summer. One can only hope.

Finally, for Springsteen fans awaiting word of U.S. concert dates, Rolling Stone reports that both spring and fall dates are in the works, with several arenas already booked, including an Austin date to coincide with Springsteen's March 15 keynote address at this years South By Southwest music industry con-fab.

Stay tuned.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2012-01-13T02:20:00.000-08:00

An Unexpected Lost Treasure From Neil Young

One of the coolest things about writing a book on a guy like Neil Young is the unexpected gifts you get from even more unexpected places.

One such unexpected surprise arrived in my mailbox earlier this week. It was a long since forgotten video of Neil during his country period with the International Harvesters on the PBS concert showcase Austin City Limits from 1984 -- sent to me as a gift from the ACL folks.

These days, Austin City Lights features artists covering a wide variety of genres -- you are just as likely to find folks like Arcade Fire and Wilco performing on the show, as you are someone like Willie Nelson. But what people forget is that in its infancy, ACL started out mainly as a showcase for country and roots performers. So having them feature someone like Neil Young back in 1984, during his short lived -- and some would say, misguided -- attempt at crossing over from rock to country, was in fact a pretty big deal.

Like most of his various genre experiments during the so-called "lost eighties," Neil Young's country fling on the album Old Ways was by and large a commercial flop. At the time it was seen -- and in retrospect, perhaps somewhat rightfully -- as simply the latest in a long line of weird vanity projects, including dalliances in rockabilly and New Wave influenced syntho-pop, that left everyone from the critics to the fans scratching their heads in collective bewilderment.

In the case of Neil's rockabilly album with the Shocking Pinks, the howls of discontent from Neil Young's fanbase were mostly deserved too. Everybody's Rockin' was a particularly wretched album, and it hasn't grown any more listenable with the passage of time (unlike the synthetic electro-pop of Trans, which has spawned a much more apologetic critical reassessment in recent years).

But of all of Neil Young's eighties genre experiments, his country period is perhaps the most misunderstood of them all.

For one thing, Neil had a hell of a band back then in the International Harvesters. This band of Nashville cats may not have blown down arena doors with the same ferocity as Crazy Horse or, for that matter, Pearl Jam. But as this 1984 ACL concert proves, they could more than hold their own with Neil Young on an extended version of "Down By The River." In fact, a very young at the time Anthony Crawford's guitar interplay with Neil here, very nearly pulls off the enviable trick of summoning up the ghost of the late Danny Whitten himself.

For further evidence that these guys could rock, one only need to listen to the barnstorming "Grey Riders" from 2010's concert recording A Treasure, originally recorded during the same period. Sadly, the ACL performance does not include this amazing track, a lost treasure in and of itself.

But what you do see here is a surprisingly relaxed Neil Young, playing his new country tunes before a surprisingly receptive audience -- and one which had every right not to trust the former hippie rock star (remember, this was the very polarized Reagan eighties era). Neil's country songs are serviceable and decent, if not particularly memorable here -- although his love song to newly born daughter "Amber Jean" comes across as genuinely heartfelt.

Mostly though, they are saved by the International Harvesters, a great band who, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, may have been one of Neil Young's best ever. The late, great Ben Keith is particularly amazing (although he looks pretty funny sitting behind the pedal steel in his hippie headband and vest). Spooner Oldham's piano is likewise pure honky-tonk heaven.

But the guy who really tears the house down is fiddle player Rufus Thibodeaux, bringing otherwise paint-by-numbers country tunes like "Are You Ready For The Country?'' roaring to shit-kicking life.

One other thing that should be noted about this performance though, is the way that the International Harvesters positively nail the studio sheen of songs from Neil Young's Harvest period, particularly on a letter perfect "Heart Of Gold." It seems there was much more to this band than Neil Young's brief flirtation with country music after all. Much like the album of the same name, this lost 1984 performance from Austin City Limits is a real treasure.

2012-01-06T01:14:00.000-08:00

2012 Concert Tour Preview: Who Rules the Road?

Barely a week into the new year, and 2012 is already shaping up to be a potentially huge one for the concert industry. Step aside Lady Gaga, because it looks like classic rock and legacy bands are going to rule the road in 2012. Among the biggest tickets already confirmed for an arena near you sometime in 2012, are the Van Halen reunion and a long awaited Radiohead tour.

Bruce Springsteen's first American shows with the E Street Band since the death of longtime right-hand man, Clarence "The Big Man" Clemons, are also expected to be announced any minute now.

Ditto that for dates reuniting the Beach Boys with creative genius Brian Wilson. A 50th Anniversary reunion tour from the Rolling Stones — including former Stones Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor, according to some reports — is also heavily rumored for 2012.

Figure in the other tours expected to do big business this year — including Coldplay, Roger Waters performing The Wall, and a possible Madonna run following her Super Bowl warmup — and all the ingredients for a record breaking concert season appear to be in place. But of course, there are also the inevitable intangibles.

With the economy still reeling, and so many big names to choose from this year, the question of ticket prices becomes a larger one than ever.

So far, Coldplay and Radiohead have kept their top seats at about $100. or less, and Springsteen has traditionally held his prices at about the same level.

The Stones on the other hand have never shied away from charging the big bucks for their stadium extravaganzas. It's hard to imagine things will be any different for the much bigger deal of an anniversary run — especially one that's been teasing the return of a few names from the band's legendary past.

The Stones are also said to eyeing arenas, rather than stadiums this time around, which could mean even higher prices.

The Beach Boys reunion with Wilson is probably the biggest question mark though.

While Brian Wilson has mainly toured solo in theaters and small halls, the Mike Love/Al Jardine led version of the Beach Boys has been a staple on the oldies circuit for years, performing mainly at county fairs and the like.
Both acts have also drawn significantly different crowds.

The Beach Boys draw a more conservative group of oldies fans who just want to hear the hits, while Wilson's audience are just as likely to come out expecting something like SMiLE or Pet Sounds, as they are "Surfin' USA" and "Barbara Ann."

Fortunately for fans, both have kept ticket prices low. It will be interesting to see if they continue to do so on the reunion tour.

Here is what we know (so far at least), about some of this year's biggest concert tours:

Van Halen:

The reunion of Van Halen "Mach One" with original vocalist "Diamond" David Lee Roth kicks off February 18 at Louisville, Kentucky's KFC Yum! Center, and wraps up on June 26 in New Orleans.

Tickets for the first shows will go on sale January 14. Roth joins Eddie and Alex Van Halen, along with Wolfgang Van Halen on bass (replacing Michael Anthony, which has angered some fans). Fans of the latter, "Sam Halen" version of VH featuring Sammy Hagar, will likewise be disappointed.

Opening the shows is Kool & The Gang, the original seventies/eighties funk band responsible for hits like "Jungle Boogie" and "Let's Celebrate" — a choice which is bound to leave some longtime VH fans scratching their heads. Van Halen will also release a new album (with Roth) called A Different Kind Of Truth, through Interscope Records on February 7. If a warm-up date at New York's Cafe Wha! club was any indication, the band looks to be in top form and fans can expect to hear all the hits of the Roth era, from "You Really Got Me" to "Jump!". A complete list of tour dates can be found here.

Radiohead:

Radiohead's three week American arena tour supporting last year's The King Of Limbs album, gets underway with stops in Miami and Tampa at the end of February, and continues through March 15 with a date at Glendale, Arizona's Jobing.com Arena.

Most of the shows are already sold out.

From there, Thom Yorke and company will be in Europe for most of the summer, before returning to America for a pair of shows at New York's Roseland Ballroom at the end of September. Since their current itinerary leaves all of August, and most of September wide open — and nothing at all has yet been announced for the West Coast — it is almost certain that more dates will be added. You'll find the complete schedule posted at Radiohead.com.

Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band:

Since the original announcement of a 2012 E Street Band album and tour back in November, all we really know at this point is that Springsteen will be spending a lot of time in Europe this summer.

Beyond that initial burst of news, the Springsteen camp has remained frustratingly silent about any American dates, fueling all kinds of thus far unsubstantiated rumors in the fan community.

The most common story is that Springsteen will do a string of U.S. dates this spring, and his keynote address gig at this year's South By Southwest conference in Austin seems to back this scenario.

However, with March fast approaching, and still no word, that window is also closing fast. There has likewise been no word of a replacement yet to fill the very big shoes of a certain very Big Man. There has also been no release date set for Springsteen's new album, which likely consists of sessions recorded last year with producer Ron Aniello, and has been described by Bob Seger as "really unusual" and "the best thing that he’s done in years.”

The most likely scenario for an American tour at this point looks to be a fall run, although I would love to be proved wrong and see a few, select stateside shows in March. The best place to check for any new info on Springsteen dates is Backstreets Magazine.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2012-01-01T04:11:00.000-08:00

In Defense Of Coldplay

After watching them blow up the Space Needle here in Seattle, I spent a quiet New Years Eve at home.

Channel surfing through the various network offerings ringing in the New Year — which included a surprisingly hot Kathy Griffin stripping down to her bra and panties in Times Square, with an aghast Anderson Cooper looking on over on CNN; and the Ryan Seacrest/Dick Clark crapfest on ABC — I finally settled on the Coldplay Austin City Limits concert on PBS.

Now, before you go shrieking in horror at the mention of Coldplay, let's get something straight.

I like Coldplay.

The fact that this brings me considerable grief — both from my friends, and among some of my cohorts at Blogcritics — is really of little circumstance. The fact is, I think Coldplay are a very decent band, that gets nowhere the respect they deserve. That said, I also completely understand the criticism.

"Chick band?" Check.

Chris Martin's whiny falsetto alone virtually guarantees this charge. In fact, one of the funniest things I have ever heard in my life, was listening to a three hour Tom Leykis radio show driving home from work one night, that was devoted to the sole subject of why any real man would never be caught dead at a Coldplay concert.

Even though I had no choice but to agree with Leykis, I also couldn't help but admit that I'm one of those ball-less guys who actually likes them.

Of course, on the other hand, I can think of few other bands out there plying their trade today, that draw as many beautiful single women to their concerts since the eighties heyday of Journey.

Food for thought, gentlemen?

But let's get to the crux of the matter, which of course is the music. Tonight's New Years Eve Austin City Limits concert on PBS was a perfect example of why Coldplay actually is a pretty great band — especially in a live setting.

First off, they've recorded some really great songs.

And in A Rush Of Blood To The Head, they also have one certifiably great album. The gorgeous ballad "The Scientist," and especially "Clocks," — which features the single catchiest piano-based riff of the past ten years — solidifies Rush Of Blood's position as one of the best rock albums of the past ten years on it's own. And yes, rock it does.

Honestly, there isn't a clunker in the bunch. Track for track, it's a great album. Viva La Vida was also a damn decent record, especially that album's standout track, "Lost."

Of course, Coldplay have also made some less than stellar records.

But even their lesser albums like X&Y and the current Xylo Myloto, contain some great songs. On the former, Coldplay's stab at the grandiosity of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the song "Fix You" particularly stands out, while on the current, largely underwhelming Xylo Myloto, I still can't help but be sucked in by the gorgeousness of "Paradise."

But then there is Coldplay live, and this is where the band truly stands out. One of the things I most enjoyed about the three Coldplay concerts I've seen — and particularly the last one I saw on the tail end of the Viva La Vida tour at the Gorge in Eastern Washington — is the way they engage the audience.

Outside of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, I would be hard pressed to name any single rock and roll band today who captures a similarly communal feeling between audience and performer in concert.

The "whoa-ohs" exchanged between the guys onstage, and the folks in the crowd — and did I mention they draw some of the hottest looking girls you'll find at a rock show anywhere these days? — just really leave you with this warm and fuzzy effect, once you leave the arena. Girls aside, and for you rocker dudes out there, it should also be noted that Will Champion just pounds the living crap out of his drums in concert.

But the other thing that needs to be mentioned here, is the fact that these seem to be genuinely nice guys. Current crop of "The" bands aside (Cage "The" Elephant, Foster "The" People, etc.), the idea of earnest rock bands, particularly at a time when average working people are really hurting, is a really welcome one right now.

From what I can tell, Coldplay is a band that wears their hearts mostly on their collective sleeve. Sure, they would love nothing more than to be U2 — especially since Brian Eno started producing their records.

Xylo Myloto is not an album that has me rushing to buy tickets to Coldplay's concert in Seattle this April (much as I like the one song, "Paradise") either.

But watching them at home alone tonight on PBS beat the crap out of Gaga, Bieber, and the rest of the "New Years Rockin' Eve" crap over on that other station.

Given the alternatives, Coldplay deserve a break.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-12-23T00:36:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas From The World Wide Glen

2011-12-23T00:32:00.000-08:00

Music 2011: The Rockologist's Top Ten Album Picks

Ladies and gentlemen, we don't have a winner.

As the year in music 2011 draws to a close, the biggest news is that — unlike 2010's near universal anointing of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs — there was no such unanimous consensus amongst music critics, regarding a clear-cut choice for the year's best album.

No matter.

Adele's 21 was of course, still the biggest story of 2011. The come-from-nowhere chart dominance of "Rolling In The Deep" alone all but guaranteed that.

But Adele was only one of several new talents — including Florence Welch of Florence And The Machine — to emerge in a big enough way this year, to lead some veteran observers to label 2011 as being "the year of the big voice." Somewhere out there, a guy living alone in his Mom's basement was heard saying "Oh, Snap!" to that.

The untimely death of Amy Winehouse no doubt played at least some role in this. In 2011, both critics and fans searched far and wide, in the hopes of finding that fresh, new voice ready to fill the surprisingly huge void that Winehouse left behind. Meanwhile, a mostly older generation of classic rock fans mourned the year's other biggest loss — that of saxophone player Clarence Clemons, otherwise known as the "Big Man" of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.

But even with Adele's huge commercial and critical breakthrough this year, this was still not enough to solidify 21 as the odds-on choice for Album of the Year. Instead, when one scans through the various year-end lists already making the rounds out there, several names seem to pop up repeatedly. Some of the most often mentioned, also made my own top ten this year (Kate Bush, Tom Waits), while others (most notably PJ Harvey's Let England Shake) did not.

The best news about 2011 though, was that once you managed to get past the seemingly endless string of mindless pop-candy out there from Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and the like, there was still a surprisingly ample amount of great music. Other than the fact that Springsteen is touring with the E Street Band, and Bon Jovi is thankfully alive and well (ditto for Bon Iver), we still don't know a lot about what 2012 will bring yet.

In the meantime, these were the ten albums that spent the most time in heavy rotation on my CD player. Sorry, the Rockologist doesn't do iPods.

10. The Black Keys - El Camino

A very late entry, from a nonetheless very worthy contender. Guitar. Drums. Danger Mouse. Big Ass Sound. Any Questions?

9. The Beach Boys - SMiLE

After much deliberation and gnashing of teeth, I've reluctantly decided to include this here, even if the music — originally recorded for an unreleased 1967 Beach Boys album that has long since gone on to mythical status — doesn't technically qualify as being exactly "new."

The most common gripe about the 2011 SMiLE box, is that much of the music has been around for years (at least in bits and pieces), and available on various Beach Boys reissues and bootlegs. But up until now, it has never been pieced together with this much loving care on an official release.

Sure, the endless outtakes of "Good Vibrations" are a bit much to take (unless you're a diehard completist, anyway). But for sheer warmth, this beats the pants off of Brian Wilson's 2004 studio recreation of SMiLE. It will be interesting to see if the Beach Boys try any of this stuff out live on their reunion tour with Brian Wilson next year.

8. Adele - 21

I didn't feel the love for Adele quite as much as the rest of the world did in 2011. But there was simply no denying that voice, and especially that damn song. As I recently said to a commenter on Blogcritics Top Ten Best Albums list, you had to have been living in an igloo, if you weren't "Rolling in the Deep" in 2011.

7. Radiohead - The King Of Limbs

Radiohead's full-on return to the minimal, icy sound of 2000's Kid A, and its 2001 companion album Amnesiac hasn't stuck with me quite the same way that 2007's In Rainbows did, nor does it have that album's same "big-time statement" feel and resonance.

Even so, The King Of Limbs has more than its share of great moments. If anything, the songs here feel more like unfinished fragments, than anything resembling the grand sonic sweep of "Reckoner" from In Rainbows. On this album, Thom Yorke's voice is as hypnotic an instrument as ever. And when Yorke sings "don't...hurt...me" on "Give Up The Ghost," it's impossible not to be sucked in by it.

6. The Jayhawks - Mockingbird Time

Although the reunion of principal songwriters Gary Louris and Mark Olson was one that long suffering Jayhawks fans pined nearly two decades for, the results as heard on Mockingbird Time proved well worth the wait.

From the first few moments that the power chords of the opening "Hide Your Colors" come thundering through your speakers, it's clear that the Jayhawks have lost nary a step. On Mockingbird Time the Jayhawks continue the great tradition of their nineties classics Tomorrow The Green Grass and Hollywood Town Hall, with uncommonly great songwriting, and the sweetest sounding harmonies this side of the Burrito Brothers.

5. - Neil Young & The International Harvesters - A Treasure

Okay. Another cheat here.

But one well worthy of inclusion on this list. This compilation of live performances from one of Neil Young's many genre-hopping experiments during the "lost eighties" — for his ongoing Archives Performance Series — actually lives up to its name as a lost treasure of sorts.

Performing with the expanded International Harvesters band during his country phase, Neil Young offers up surprisingly radical takes on obscure chestnuts like "Southern Pacific" and "Flying On The Ground Is Wrong," in addition to previously unreleased gems like "Amber Jean." The song "Grey Riders" also rocks as convincingly as anything from Crazy Horse.

4. Steven Wilson - Grace For Drowning

On his second solo album, the two CD Grace For Drowning, Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson serves up little bits and pieces of everyone from Joy Division and King Crimson, to Brian Eno and Radiohead in the mix.

Wilson also gets a little help from Dave Stewart and original Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett. But what you mostly hear on this record is Steven Wilson himself, offering up a crash course in modern-day prog-rock, that ranges from the swelling mellotron, wildly swirling saxes, flutes and clarinet of "Reminder The Black Dog," to the epic Crimson-esque prog of "Raider II." This is textbook modern prog, and absolutely great sounding stuff, courtesy of Wilson's expert production.

3. Kate Bush - 50 Words For Snow

Kate Bush's first album of new original material since 2005's Aerial is one of those weird little records that creeps up on you slowly, and then really starts to get under your skin. Taken on its surface, the seven songs on this album are quietly reflective pieces — either performed solo by Kate on piano, or with a small trio of bass and drums — revolving around the central theme of snow.

But a deeper listen reveals a more layered lyrical experience, where the songs are populated by ghosts — not to mention a certain snowman — stranded in a purgatory of romantic longing, and almost impossible loneliness and regret. Since the first time I heard it, I have yet to get the simple, but hauntingly catchy "Misty" out of my head. Damn you, Kate.

2. Tom Waits - Bad As Me.

Despite being one of our greatest songwriters, Tom Waits hasn't made an album with this many great and unexpectedly accessible songs in years. On what is easily his best record since Rain Dogs, Tom Waits revisits many of the same questionable haunts, inhabited by the usual cast of shady characters, that he has for going on a half century now. But there are some surprising new twists.

On the gorgeous sounding "Talking At The Same Time," Waits' trademark cigarette and whiskey laced rasp, is transformed into an unexpectedly lilting falsetto. But on this album's best track, "Hell Broke Luce," Waits, backed by an all-star band including Keith Richards and Flea, takes on the persona of a severely damaged war veteran, returning home from a tour of duty marked by listening to the "big fucking bomb made me deaf" and "the general every goddamn word."

This amazing song — which is easily the most overtly political of Waits' career — simply has to be heard to be believed.

1. Wilco - The Whole Love

It's no secret that I love me some Wilco, and why not?

Jeff Tweedy may be the best songwriter of the post-Dylan/Springsteen/Neil Young era, and Nels Cline is quite possibly the most bad-ass guitar player on the planet. But there are at least twelve other reasons why The Whole Love is the year's best album, and they are the twelve great songs on this album.

Wilco's best album since their 2002 masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is also their most stylistically diverse. But beyond that, this is also the album where Wilco's strengths as a band are proven to go far beyond the sum of their individual parts as Tweedy's mere backup crew. From the avant-sonic freakout of "Art Of Almost," to the Doors like keyboards of "I Might," to the lyrical poignancy of "One Sunday Morning (A Song For Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)," Wilco's The Whole Love was track for track, the single greatest record I heard this year.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-12-16T02:51:00.000-08:00

Bonghits For Audiophiles: CSN's 1969 Debut Gets A 2011 Makeover

Music Review: Crosby, Stills & Nash - Crosby, Stills & Nash (Audio Fidelity 24K Gold Limited Edition)

Back in the day, those of us who worked in record stores used to have a saying describing those finicky customers who fancied themselves as "audiophiles."

We called them our "dust cover-dust cover" guys, as in the sort of music listeners who were so anally retentive that an entire market could be created for a plastic dust cover, just to protect more dust from collecting on the fold-down dust cover already protecting the vinyl albums on their $99.00 Radio Shack turntables.

If all this sounds unnecessarily complicated, it's because, well quite frankly, it was.

What made the whole thing even more ludicrous though, was the fact that the musical tastes of these "audiophiles" ran more towards the hot-tub "smooth jazz" of George Benson, Chuck Mangione and Grover Washington Jr., than anything even remotely more musically substantive.

For these folks, one "pop" in the middle of "Breezin'," "Feels So Good" or "Mister Magic" was enough to warrant numerous trips back to the record store to exchange these "defects" for fresh new copies. It's no wonder that the old jazz label CTI accounted for nearly half of all returns to the manufacturer back in those halcyon retail days at my old record store.

One thing I do remember from those days though, is that the "direct-to-disc" albums offered by companies like Mobile Fidelity Audio Labs, ran only a distant second to Japanese imports in the burgeoning audiophile market.

This tradition has carried on today in the CD era (or what is left of it, anyway), with the 24K Gold pressings offered by Mobile Fidelity's successor, Audio Fidelity. The concept here is much the same as the original. By pressing the master recordings of classic albums onto cleaner sounding gold discs, the virgin integrity and warmth of the original recording is preserved.

It is hard to imagine a better candidate for the Audio Fidelity 24K treatment than the 1969 debut from Crosby, Stills & Nash. The good news here is that the audiophile CD of this classic recording is not only warranted, but that it also delivers on everything promised.

At the time of this album's 1969 release, CSN was heralded as everything from rock's first true supergroup, to the American answer to the Beatles. And while in the supergroup sweepstakes they may have had some formidable competition from the combination of Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood in Blind Faith, it is the music of CSN that has most stood the test of time. The fact is, while it has taken a few critical lumps over the years, CSN's debut holds up remarkably well as a unique snapshot of its time today. Steeped in the sixties as they may be, the songs on this album really are that timeless.

The bottom line is that there are very few albums in all of rock history that can boast as many truly great songs as this, and even fewer featuring three voices that harmonize as sweetly as those of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.

Unlike so many modern day digital remastering jobs, Audio Fidelity's 24K recording wisely focuses on the music. The packaging on this CD is a modest recreation of the original (the lone correction is a respelling of the song "Guinevere," which removes one "n").

But the loving detail paid to the actual music itself is something else entirely. The acoustic guitars on Stills' "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" sound crisper than ever, and those famous harmonies on songs like Nash's "Marrakesh Express" sound even sweeter here than you remember them.

But the electric stuff is the real revelation here. The stereo separation on "Wooden Ships" alone will have classic rock fans reaching out for their bongs out of sheer reflexive action alone. Crosby's sharp rhythm guitar dances perfectly around Stills' more understated lead guitar on this original acid-influenced sci-fi epic.

Crosby's homage to Bobby Kennedy "Long Time Gone," is another highlight of this CD that sounds better than ever here. I can still remember how both of these songs were staples of the pre-recorded music piped through the P.A. system at early seventies rock concerts.

This is great stuff. The obvious loving care taken by Audio Fidelity on this pristine sounding recording takes you right back. For audiophiles, this recording is sure to satisfy your need for cleanliness. But for the rest of us, this is headphone heaven, and a great excuse to dust off the old bong.

Speaking of dust covers...

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-12-09T19:22:00.000-08:00

Atlas Shrugged Part One: Trickle Down Filmmaking For Ayn Rand Devotees

DVD Review: Atlas Shrugged - Part One

In director Paul Johannson's modern-day update of Ayn Rand's epic 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, the not-too-distant world of 2016 has become a very frightening place — especially for the capitalists and corporate types, deemed as this film's "rugged individualist" heroes on the DVD cover.

America is on the brink of economic disaster, and gas prices have hit 40 bucks a gallon, necessitating a return to the rail system as the primary means of affordable transportation. Meanwhile, banking CEOs and other people who "get things done" are mysteriously disappearing faster than you can say "Who Is John Galt?"

An out-of-control government bureaucracy is also uncharacteristically hostile to corporate interests, making things tough for them by passing laws limiting their holdings to a single company, and making it illegal for any company turning a profit to fire its workers. Oh, the horror!

The perspective of these workers, by the way, is an element missing from the story altogether. The only time the working class is acknowledged at all in Atlas Shrugged, the point seems to be to dismiss them as parasites sucking the life force from the corporate machine. Or as Dagny Taggart, one of this film's two main protagonists puts it, "What's with all this altruism, anyway?"

Other than this sort of back-handed lip service, you never see the working stiffs building her railway system at all. It's as though they never existed.

Rather, the main point of Atlas Shrugged, seems to be a so thinly veiled as to be transparent attempt at promoting the "Objectivist" ideas put forth in Ayn Rand's books. This school of thought espouses the virtues of self-reliance and self-determination, and the idea of a free market unfettered by such inconveniences as taxation and government regulation. It's no wonder that libertarian purists like Ron Paul have embraced Rand's Objectivism like some kind of new religion.

What is more curious however, is how conservative Christians have likewise hitched themselves to an atheist movement that celebrates blind selfishness and greed over the "feed the hungry, clothe the poor" teachings of Jesus. When the other heroic figure of this film, corporate honcho Hank Reardon, defends his tireless drive for profit, he does so almost incredulously, simply saying "because, it's mine."

So it is inevitable when the two main characters, Reardon and Taggart, form an alliance to defend their corporate interests against a sea of government bureucrats conspiring to bring their two respective empires down. The government types here are portrayed as bumbling idiots — people who would impede any forward progress during bad economic times in the name of misguided altruism at best — and evil, inherently corrupt conspirators at worst.

The thing is, despite a couple of pretty great performances from Taylor Schilling (as Taggart) and a very charismatic Grant Bowler (as Reardon), the heroes of this film are far from sympathetic, driven primarily by greed and selfishness as they are. The only time you really feel anything for these characters, it is because Reardon is stuck in a loveless marriage to an ungrateful bitch, and because Taggart's brother is a clueless fool more interested in gaining political than monetary capital. Needless to say, these two souls find common ground in their self-interest and eventually fall into bed together.

Other than that, Atlas Shrugged mostly plods along through an endless series of boring boardroom meetings and cocktail parties in getting to its point. The thin production values also add little to the intrigue. When Reardon excitedly marvels at the "advanced technology" he sees in an abandoned warehouse where a revolutionary engine was developed, the background scene looks more like the sort of ordinary vacant garage you might find in some B-grade zombie film.

The subplots — which include a terrorist pirate character named Ragnar, and a hedonistic millionaire playboy named Francisco — are also given too little time to develop into anything more substantial than brief diversion. Presumably, these will become more fleshed out in the second and third installments of the planned Atlas Shrugged trilogy though.

But the seemingly most important subplot here, the question of "Who Is John Galt?" is likewise barely addressed. The bigger question one might ask here, is since when do billionaire CEOs answer the door for some mysterious stranger wearing a dark hat and trenchcoat (especially with an epidemic of other corporate types going missing)?

Even so, it's not hard to see where this is going, and I fully expect to see the emergence of John Galt as the messiah figure of some capitalist utopia in Atlas Shrugged Part Two. For now though, Atlas Shrugged Part One represents the sort of trickle down filmmaking, that is unlikely to find much of an audience outside of hardcore Ayn Rand devotees.

Extras on the DVD include filmmaker commentaries, and a series of YouTube videos that feature average Joes proclaiming "I Am Joe Galt."

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-12-09T00:37:00.000-08:00

Lindsey Buckingham's Big Songs, Big Guitar, And Big Voice Shine On "Small Machine"

Music DVD Review: Lindsey Buckingham - Songs From the Small Machine - Live in L.A.

The most striking thing about Lindsey Buckingham's new Songs From the Small Machine - Live in L.A. concert DVD, is the revelation of just how amazing — yet underrated — a guitarist Buckingham really is.

Both with Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist, Lindsey Buckingham most often gets his props — and rightfully so — as a songwriter, and perhaps to a slightly lesser degree as a singer. But on this DVD, and particularly on the five solo acoustic songs that open the set, Buckingham really lets things rip on the guitar.

Thankfully, the camera work here wisely zeroes in on all the action. There are several close up shots that reveal Buckingham's intricate style of hard finger picking. But the best stuff comes when Buckingham is strumming like a maniac on songs like "Big Love," and especially during an intense version of "Go Insane," where he essentially turns the pop song inside out.

Who said acoustic sets at a rock concert were supposed to be for bathroom breaks? Don't tell that to Lindsey Buckingham.

By the sixth song, the shiny pop gem "Under The Sun," Buckingham is joined by his band for several songs from his great new Seeds We Sow album. Calling these "new songs from the small machine" (as opposed to the "big machine" that is Fleetwood Mac, and hence the DVD title), Buckingham likewise shows his gift for writing intelligent, well crafted pop and especially his ear for a great hook, to be as sharp as ever here. If anything, songs like "Stars Go Crazy" and "That's The Way Love Goes" are just a natural extension of the same smart pop sensibilities of his work with the "big machine."

But even on the Fleetwood Mac songs, Lindsey Buckingham finds new ways to keep things fresh. On "I'm So Afraid," the already bluesy song takes on an even more foreboding tone, thanks to an even slower arrangement, and a beautifully haunting vocal from Buckingham. The song also serves as the launchpad for another stratospheric guitar solo, and the camera once again captures Buckingham's unique picking technique up close.

The arrangements on other Fleetwood Mac classics like "Go Your Own Way" and "Never Going Back Again" are more familiar sounding. But Buckingham's strong vocals and guitar playing still make them standouts. The whispered vocal delivery on "Never Going Back Again" is particularly sweet. On "Go Your Own Way," he projects his vocals to the crowd at L.A.'s intimate Saban Theater as though he were playing a sold out arena.

The only bonus feature on Songs From the Small Machine - Live in L.A. is a new Lindsey Buckingham interview. But the concert itself is beautifully filmed — especially when the closeups reveal a few of the master's secrets. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix is likewise flawless and squeaky clean.

In short, Lindsey Buckingham's Songs From the Small Machine - Live in L.A. is another home run from the fine folks at Eagle Rock.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-12-06T01:53:00.000-08:00

Sting Gets Back To Business, And Back To Bass In Seattle

Concert Review: Sting's "Back To Bass" Tour, 12/5/11, At The Paramount Theatre, Seattle WA

Ever since concluding his big bucks reunion tour with The Police a few years back, it's been back to business as usual for Sting. Which, on his current tour, means it has also been "Back To Bass."

Sting is currently touring in support of his 25 Years retrospective boxed set, performing a hits-heavy set mainly in theaters and small venues with a relatively stripped down five piece band. During the first show of a two night stand at Seattle's Paramount Theater (on a freezing cold Monday night, no less), Sting and his band warmed up the crowd of adoring, mostly older fans with an energetic, well balanced two hour set drawing equally from both his solo work, and his back catalog with the Police.

Of course, this is Sting we are talking about here. Which meant that his "stripped down" band, still included two guitarists and a miniature string section (specifically, violin and fiddle).

The newer live arrangements of vintage Police songs like "Every Breath You Take," "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" and "Next To You," while certainly not lacking anything in the energy department, likewise tended more towards an adult-contemporary feel, than his classic eighties period as New Wave's favorite blond cop.

No matter though. With the help of a band that was nothing short of amazing, Sting and company still managed to turn the heat up enough on Seattle's wine and cheese crowd to make them forget the cold outside.

Fiddle player Peter Tickell turned in a couple of particularly jaw-dropping solos, and also re-created the soprano sax parts on songs like "Fortress Around Your Heart" perfectly, with help from Jo Lawry on violin (who also displayed her gorgeous five-octave range on backing vocals). The father-son guitar tandem of Dominic and Rufus Miller likewise had some fine moments (including a couple of cool solos from Dominic using a wah-wah pedal). Monster drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, a recent veteran of Jeff Beck's band, was a dead ringer for Stewart Copeland on the Police songs.

Sting himself often gets a sometimes deserved, but just as often unfair rap for pretentiousness, mostly because of his genre forays into everything from celtic to classical as a solo artist. At the Paramount, Sting was the antithesis of the stuffy performer he is often made out to be, engaging the audience with a humorous sing-along on the ready made for Seattle "Heavy Cloud, No Rain," and name dropping Toby Keith's cover of his country themed divorce song "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying," while adding a disclaimer about Keith's politics.

Sting was likewise in fine voice, showing no signs of his age on vocals, and hitting all the right notes on his signature bass. By the end of the night, Sting had the crowd eating from the palm of his hand, sending them warmly singing their "Whoah-oh's" into the cold Seattle night with an acoustic version of the Police's "Message In A Bottle."

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-12-02T02:06:00.000-08:00

Best Music Writing 2011: They Didn't Pick Me...Again.

Book Review: Best Music Writing 2011 (Edited by Daphne Carr and Alex Ross)

If you enjoy reading music criticism even half as much as those of us who write it, then this year's annual volume of Best Music Writing from Da Capo Press is probably already a major event on your reading calendar.

For those of us poor slobs who slave away writing this stuff for what passes as a living however, this is the closest any of us will ever come to winning the Oscars for music nerds.

Alas, I didn't make it again this year.

But longtime series editor Daphne Carr, and this year's guest editor Alex Ross, have once again put together a fine collection of this year's finest essays from music critics, writing as the few remaining champions of what is left of the rapidly dying art of music journalism.

Like everything else in the present age of internet generated immediate gratification, music journalism has become something of a great, lost art. Both the traditional music business, and the idea of a truly objective journalistic medium, unclouded by the biases of providing infotainment to a ready-made audience pre-determined by demographic labels, have in musical terms long since gone the way of the eight track tape.

No matter. the braintrust at Da Capo have still managed to put together an impressive collection of this year's best critical essays on music.

I'm still not entirely sure what constitutes the judging criteria for inclusion in this book (do you sense my bitterness yet?). But the diverse variety of opinions and genres covered remains as impressive as always. Classical music in particular gets some extra love this year, presumably because of guest editor Alex Ross' bonafides as a symphony scribe.

Beyond that, you'll find some rather eye-opening essays on everything from heavy metal to hip-hop, and everyone from Neil Young and Miles Davis, to Lady Gaga and Keith Moon.

I particularly enjoyed reading Nancy Griffin's remembrances of a once human Micheal Jackson shyly fawning over his "Thriller" video co-star Ola Ray (and the relationship between them that might have been), and Evelyn McDonell's portrait of the tragically lost, late former Runaways drummer Sandy West.

Beyond that, you'll find great music writing here on subjects ranging from the secret diaries of Nina Simone, to Will.I.Am's manifesto for global domination through catchy pop hooks cleverly disguised as street-worthy ghetto jams.

If nothing else, Da Capo's Best Music Writing 2011 is proof positive that good music journalism isn't dead.

Yet.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-12-01T03:17:00.000-08:00

Kate Bush's Impossibly Sexy And Snowy Winter Wonderland

Music Review: Kate Bush - 50 Words For Snow

Even for an artist whose music has taken more than its fair share of odd twists over the years, Kate Bush's new album has to rank right up there as being among her strangest. It is also one of her most beautiful, and one that was well worth the wait.

50 Words For Snow, her first album of all new material since 2005's Aerial, takes a couple of spins for it all to really start to sink in. On an initial listen, the seven songs on this album have the same sort of quietly pleasant, but meandering, innocuous sort of quality you might find on any random piano solo album released on New Age labels like Windham Hill in the seventies.

Sure, they might go down fine with a nice glass of wine next to a warm fireplace. But if you can name that tune in three notes or less the next day, you've more than earned that trip to the sudden death round.

Yet, once you get past this simple deception, these are songs — mostly performed solo by Kate Bush on piano and vocals, with minimal accompaniment in a light jazz trio sort of format with bass and drums — that really begin to creep up on you and get under your skin.

Then, they start to haunt you.

The unifying theme of (what else?) snow is equally deceptive. Kate Bush's "Winter Wonderland" is not the same one you'll find on some Hallmark holiday greeting card, but rather one littered with ghosts stranded in a purgatory of romantic longing, and almost impossible loneliness and regret.

Ever since she was first discovered as a teenage prodigy by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour back in the seventies, Kate Bush's music has always had a strangely ethereal quality to it. At it's best though — particularly as heard on early songs like "Wow" and "The Man With The Child In Her Eyes" — Kate Bush's unearthly soprano voice can also be both wondrously innocent and wildly erotic at the same time (of course, it doesn't hurt that Kate is also pretty hot).

It's no mistake that Kate Bush has been oft-cited as a key influence by everyone from Tori Amos to Florence And The Machine.

On 50 Words For Snow, Kate Bush is still walking this same delicate line between rapture and desire, even as she is doing the nasty with Frosty The Snowman on this album's best track, the oddly beautiful "Misty." Yet, there is also an undeniable sense of loss here, as Kate feels her icy lover "melting in my hand," and then wakes up the next morning to find "soaking sheets" and "on my pillow, dead leaves and bits of twisted branches."

This is about as far removed from Phil Spector's original girl-group vision of an innocent, Christmas Eve encounter with ol' Frosty as it gets.

It should also be noted that veteran jazz studio drummer Steve Gadd's light and airy cymbal brushes provide a perfectly understated musical backdrop here. Although Gadd's contributions to this album are mostly subtle and nuanced, his musical presence is the most deeply felt (outside that of Kate Bush herself) on virtually every track of this album.

On the opening track "Snowflake," Kate is still searching for her missing snowman, while lamenting that "the world is so loud, keep falling, I'll find you." This same sense of longing takes on another shade on "Snowed In At Wheeler Street," which finds two star crossed lovers (Kate and guest vocalist Elton John) yearning for what could have been, from when they "met in '42," to "9/11 in New York" (there's that whole ghost thing again).

Elsewhere, Kate Bush finds a little sympathy for Bigfoot on the surprisingly catchy (for this album) "Wild Man," and plays narrator (in an uncharacteristically deep and sexy voice) to British actor Stephen Fry as he runs down the complete list of "50 Words For Snow" on the title track.

But mostly, this particular snowfall from Kate Bush seems to serve as a metaphor for longing of the romantic variety. It's never a Merry Christmas when you're alone and missing your snowman.

But it does make for a very beautiful record, and one well worth the repeated listens it takes to get there.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-11-25T19:27:00.000-08:00

The Who's Quadrophenia Reimagined On The Fine, If Slightly Flawed "Director's Cut"

Music Review: The Who - Quadrophenia- The Director's Cut

With multiple disc packages from artists as diverse as U2, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys and Leonard Cohen to choose from, this year's holiday boxed set season has been a particularly rich one — especially for classic rock fans.

But perhaps none of these deluxe editions are as deserving of the re-imagined treatment as the Who's landmark 1973 album Quadrophenia.

As Pete Townshend's second rock opera, Quadrophenia has historically played second fiddle to its more celebrated older brother Tommy, and even to the more commercially huge Who's Next.

But most diehard Who fans know better. Not only does the original double album contain some of the Who's most explosive performances as a band — particularly from bassist John Entwhistle and drummer Keith Moon — it also features some of the best, and most personal songwriting of Pete Townshend's career.

Quadrophenia's storyline, about an alienated mod youth growing up in swinging sixties, post war England, mirrors the Who's own story closely. Jimmy's four "Quadrophenic" personalities are designed to represent the four members of the Who. On the album's original grey jacket, you can even see their faces in the rearview mirrors of the scooter he drives.

Even so, you can see where Jimmy's story might make for a less compelling, cinematic narrative than the more famous deaf, dumb and blind boy of Tommy. Where Tommy rises — and eventually crashes and burns — as a messianic sort of figure, Jimmy's road to redemption comes through the more difficult path of trying to carve an identity out for himself by fitting in with the mod youth culture of sixties England. It's not hard to see why both Hollywood and Broadway embraced the romantic and sympathetic Tommy, over the more complex character of Quadrophenia's deeply troubled, and admittedly more depressing Jimmy. It also didn't hurt that Tommy came first.

The "Director's Cut" of Quadrophenia isn't perfect. In fact, many Who fans have been publicly grousing about both the album mix on the box (from a 1996 remixed version, rather than from the original tapes), and the lack of live material from the same period (even though it is fairly common knowledge that the live Quadrophenia shows from 1973-74 were hit and miss). What is more curious though, is the decision to leave several songs off of the highly anticipated 5.1 Blu-ray/DVD mix included here.

All nit-picking aside (and it really is nit-picking), the original album still sounds great though. On songs like "The Real Me" and "The Punk Meets The Godfather," John Entwhistle's bass runs serve more as a second lead instrument, than merely providing a bottom end to Townshend's slash and burn power chords.

Keith Moon's drumming is also a revelation here. On the powerful album closing suite of "The Rock" and "Love Reign O'er Me," Moon's drums thunder through the mix like controlled symphonic waves of sound, a stark contrast to the more wildly chaotic rock style he is most often associated with. Roger Daltrey is likewise in fine form here. The scream at the end of "Love Reign O'er Me" alone still sends shivers down your spine.

But it is Townshend's masterful writing that makes Quadrophenia quite possibly his greatest achievement. Tucked neatly in between this album's storytelling about youthful alienation, you'll find plenty of songs with biting political commentary ("we're the slaves of the phony leaders, breathe the air we have blown you"), romantic longing ("I just wanna' die with you here, I'm feeling so high with you here"), and spiritual discovery ("only love can bring the rain, that makes you yearn to the sky").

In addition to the 1996 and abridged 5.1 mixes, there are also two discs worth of the original demos for Quadrophenia. In their stripped down, original form, these demos of the original songs provide a unique perspective into the creation of this great Who album. When played in sequence, they also serve as a cool alternate version, that shows just what this album might have sounded like in some parallel universe. Songs that didn't make the final cut like "Joker James" and "We Close Tonight" are also included. A 100 page hard-bound book and a lengthy new essay from Pete Townshend about the making of the album round out this fine, if slightly flawed package.

With six discs worth of both familiar and never before heard material, Quadrophenia - The Director's Cut will be a bit pricey for some fans. But slight imperfections aside, this is an ambitious, and mostly very well done re-examining of what is arguably the Who's greatest album. For hardcore Who fans, the "Director's Cut" of Quadrophenia is a must.

This review was first published at Blogcritics Magazine

2011-11-24T03:53:00.000-08:00

Some Girls: When The Whip Came Down For The Stones

1978 was a curious time for the self-proclaimed "greatest rock and roll band in the world." For the very first time in their at-the-time still young history, the Rolling Stones position as rock's top dogs — and more importantly, their continuing relevance — was under serious challenge.

The Stones had, up until this time, weathered all of the shifting winds of rock's constantly changing trends — from psychedelia in the sixties, to early seventies glam rock and beyond.

Where other, less resilient bands fell by the wayside during these periods of volatile change, the Stones maintained their status on top mostly by staying true to their roots.

Even as they paid lip service to the trends of the day — with a touch of sixties hippie chic here, or a little bit of eye shadow there — the Stones never strayed far from their traditions as a raw and earthy rock and roll band with one foot firmly planted in the blues, by way of Chuck Berry and Robert Johnson.

But late seventies punk rock was something else, even for a band as mighty, and firmly entrenched as the Rolling Stones.

Even as bands like the Sex Pistols and The Jam were mostly updating the original sixties audacious outrage of the Stones and The Who for a younger seventies audience, they were also making an equal point of ridiculing their rock and roll elders as aging, over-the-hill dinosaurs.

In some respects, the taunts were deserved too. The Stones in particular had become ridiculously rich and out-of-touch rock star tax exiles, filling stadiums while largely coasting on such past glories as their last great album, 1972's Exile On Main Street.

But the Stones did take notice, and responded to the punks in kind with 1978's Some Girls album and tour. Still regarded by some fans as the Stones' last great album (although personally, I'd go with 1981's Tattoo You), Some Girls is largely perceived even today as a "Keith album" because of its rawer, back to basics approach.

Except, it's really not.

Some Girls in fact, is an album that belongs every bit as much to Mick Jagger as it does to Keith Richards. For every Keith Richards powered riff-rocker like "When The Whip Comes Down" or punk inspired, stripped down quickie like "Shattered," Mick Jagger's stamp is equally felt on songs like the New York club disco of "Miss You." Combine these two highly combustible elements with Motown covers like "Just My Imagination" and the Texas redneck country feel of "Far Away Eyes," and Some Girls is an easy candidate for the most diverse album of the Stones career.

Speaking of Texas though, one of the most pleasant surprises of this past week's flood of Some Girls reissues is the 1978 Stones tour document Some Girls Live In Texas '78, out on DVD and Blu-ray from Eagle Rock Entertainment.

There are still those Stones fans out there who swear that the 1978 Some Girls tour was one of their best, and up until now I've always wondered why.

I never actually saw the Stones on this tour (Seattle was somewhat strangely bypassed). But based on my own admittedly limited exposure — some '78 Stones tour pictures and film of a ridiculous looking "punk" Mick Jagger in his red cap and "Destroy" T-shirt, and a Saturday Night Live TV appearance where Jagger's voice was shot, and the band sounded like shit — I was not impressed.

That original SNL appearance is included as one of the extras on the new Some Girls Live In Texas '78 DVD, and the Stones suck every bit as much here as I remember then. Other extras include interview footage of the Stones with Geraldo Rivera on ABC's 20/20 from 1978, and an eye-opening new interview with Mick Jagger conducted this year. Jagger is uncharacteristically candid in his comments here.

But the actual 1978 Texas Stones concert, filmed at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, is nothing short of jaw-dropping amazing. As Stones concert films go — and there are something like a zillion of them out there — this one ranks pretty near the top of the pile.

The setlist, which leans heavily on the Some Girls album, with a choice selection of older songs mixed in, isn't the best. But the performance, start to stop, is one which captures the Stones — stripped of the excesses of their stadium tours — eager to once again claim their crown as the greatest rock and roll band in the world. They succeed beyond all expectations.

Simply put, The Rolling Stones are on fire here.

Ron Wood, playing on his first tour as a full band member (Wood was still officially "on loan" to the Stones from Rod Stewart and the Faces on the bands previous 1975 tour), sounds particularly fierce on guitar. His interplay with Jagger is also a lot of fun (if occasionally a little weird), as Mick does everything from grabbing Wood's crotch, to snatching the ever-present dangling cigarette from his mouth.

Jagger himself adds guitar (although it is barely heard in the mix), when he isn't busy with his pointing, waving, and running in place moves, or adding the new line "Jimmy Page was all the rage" to "Star, Star" (a.k.a "Starfucker"). Keith Richards, in perhaps the last Rolling Stones tour where he still looked like more of a rock star than a half-dead zombie pirate, also sounds great here.

But the often-overlooked rhythm section of Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts are the real stars here. Watts drumming is rock-steady throughout, especially when he kicks things into overdrive at the end with "Brown Sugar" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash."

But it is Wyman's unsung bass playing which really powers the funk grooves of "Beast Of Burden," "Just My Imagination" and especially "Miss You." Combined with Watts' drums, and the keyboards of Ian Stuart and Ian McLagan, the pocket here is so deliciously deep and funky you could literally marinate a pulled pork sandwich with it.

This weeks other big Stones reissue is the deluxe edition of the Some Girls album itself. Outside of serving as a reminder that, again, Some Girls is a far more diverse record than its reputation as a stripped down "Keith album" suggests, the remixes of the original songs add little to the memory of the original 1978 release. They do however, still sound pretty great.

However, the bonus tracks suggest that Some Girls could also have made a decent double album. Songs like "Claudine," "Tallahassee Lassie" and "So Young" have a great basic rock and roll feel, while the bluesier tracks like "When You're Gone" and "Keep Up Blues" recall the harp fueled, darker feel of Exile On Main Street castoffs like "Ventilator Blues." Keith Richards also turns in a rarely tuneful vocal on the country-sweet "We Had It All."

Above all, this weeks Some Girls reissues capture the Rolling Stones during a pivotal crossroads, that may well prove to be the last, great creative spark from the greatest rock and roll band in the world.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-11-18T02:55:00.000-08:00

Surf's Up Again For The Beach Boys' SMiLE

Music Review: The Beach Boys - The SMiLE Sessions (2CD Deluxe Edition)

If there was ever a walking, talking argument for there being a fine line between genius and insanity, then Beach Boys creative mastermind Brian Wilson certainly fits that description. For Wilson, SMiLE — the great, lost Beach Boys 1967 masterpiece that has long since attained mythical status — is by all accounts the place where the madness and the muse collided once and for all.

At the time of its creation, Brian Wilson was trying to top Pet Sounds — an acknowledged pop masterpiece itself — by committing the heavenly sounds he heard in his head to vinyl, using the limited recording technology of the day. At the time, Wilson called SMiLE his "teenage symphony to God."

In addition to raising the bar on his own work though, Wilson was engaged in a battle of creative one-upsmanship with the Beatles, who had just come off of Rubber Soul (Sgt. Pepper was still months away).

Ultimately, SMiLE collapsed under the weight of Wilson's perfectionist approach, and the rest of the Beach Boys more commercial desire to just continue making the hits.

The aftermath of this found the Beach Boys riding out the seventies and beyond by filling stadiums as an oldies act, while Wilson spent many of the same years in and out of both his sandbox and psychiatric care.

Meanwhile, the legend of the unreleased SMiLE has only grown. Bits and pieces of this greatest of lost albums have surfaced over the years, beginning with the inferior Smiley Smile album the Beach Boys themselves eventually released instead, to numerous bootleg recordings.

In 2004, Wilson revisited the project himself, piecing it back together from memory with the help of a great band of young bucks on Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. Wilson even overcame a decades long case of stage fright, by taking it out on the road for a critically acclaimed tour.

But there has never been a serious attempt to revive the original, unreleased Beach Boys SMiLE album until now. Whether or not The SMiLE Sessions will go down as the definitive, or even the final word on SMiLE remains to be seen. But for now, it should more than satisfy long suffering fans who have waited decades for this album.

If nothing else, this ambitious attempt to resuscitate one of rock's greatest lost masterpieces is noteworthy for the fact that it was made with the blessing and participation of both Brian Wilson and the surviving Beach Boys alone. Symphony to God or otherwise, the idea of these two often warring parties meeting anywhere but a courtroom has to be seen as nothing short of an act of the Almighty Himself.

On the two disc deluxe version (there is, naturally, also a larger boxed set), you get the album in its intended sequence, in pieces put together from the original sessions. Yet, while the actual SMiLE album was never officially completed, there is nothing unfinished sounding about what you get here.

The multiple layers of strings and voices that Wilson heard in his head, methodically pieced together as they were, sound as complete here as on the 2004 solo version recorded using modern technology. But if anything, the mix here is a lot warmer sounding. This is especially evident on songs like "Do You Like Worms (Plymouth Rock)" and of course "Good Vibrations." As good as the young cats in Wilson's 2004 band sounded, there is simply no substitute for the multi-tracked vocals of the original Beach Boys in all their sixties prime.

But mostly, finally hearing the multiple layered vision Brian Wilson must have originally imagined come to life is just astounding. The genius of songs like "Cabin Essence" and "Surfs Up" is something he has rarely achieved since (although he came close on the self-titled Brian Wilson solo album with both "Love And Mercy" and the "Rio Grande" suite).

The combination of music this intricately put together, while sounding so fresh and innocent is simply mind-boggling. The fact that it was done using the limited technology of sixties recording is equally remarkable. Brian Wilson really was a mad genius.

The second disc here breaks this technique down even further, taking the listener into the actual recording process with multiple takes that reveal how each song was put together in short fragments. There are at least five tracks devoted to bits and pieces from "Heroes And Villains" alone. This is fascinating, if admittedly geeky stuff that may not resonate with the average listener (and there is even more of it on the box). But you also get humorous insights into the band, as they joke about things like the "acid kicking in" in between takes.

They were joking, weren't they?

But the main event here is the SMiLE album itself, which sounds every bit as good here as fans who have salivated for its release all these decades could have hoped for. The 2CD version also features a poster of the original album art, a booklet with liner notes from Wilson himself, and even a SMiLE button.

While this still may not be the final word on Brian Wilson's "teenage symphony to God," The SMiLE Sessions meets and exceeds decades of legend and expectation. The Beach Boys lost masterpiece has been realized at long last.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-11-11T00:06:00.000-08:00

Leonard Cohen's Complete Columbia Albums Collection: A Box That Oozes Class

Music Review: Leonard Cohen - The Complete Columbia Albums Collection

While Leonard Cohen's name may not carry the same instant, household sort of recognition as someone like say Bob Dylan, his body of work over some four decades as a singer, songwriter, poet and all around renaissance man is no less remarkable.

From the moment of his debut album for Columbia, 1967's Songs Of Leonard Cohen, Cohen established a name for himself as a songwriter of uncommon depth with songs like "Suzanne" and "So Long, Marianne."

Already an established novelist when that record came out, his reputation as a formidable talent equally rooted in the traditions of Dylan and Gershwin has only grown to legend status in the decades since.

Cohen's voice — particularly on his later work — is nearly as unmistakable as his songs, pulling off the unique trick of sounding weathered and wise, yet oddly slick and soulful all at once.

Some of Cohen's best known work — songs like "Bird On The Wire" for example — may have gained their greatest popularity when they were interpreted by other artists. But it is on his lesser known songs, like "Democracy," "Boogie Street," "I'm Your Man," and "First, We Take Manhattan" (well okay, that one is fairly well known), that the revelation of his true artistic voice is best discovered. On songs like these, Cohen can take on the persona of wise old sage, poetic bard, hopeless romantic, and street hustler, sometimes within a single song.

Like the best songwriters though, Cohen is mostly a great storyteller. His words come most alive when he is adopting the character persona of the drinkers and angels of compassion that populate the seedy bar of "Closing Time," or the more curious mix of humanity inhabiting a place like the "Chelsea Hotel."

If you haven't yet discovered Leonard Cohen for yourself, The Complete Columbia Albums Collection is probably not the best place to start. For that, you'd probably be far better served with the crash course offered by a collection like The Essential Leonard Cohen. But it is by far the most complete.

This exquisitely assembled boxed set features completely remastered versions of all 17 of Leonard Cohen's albums for his career long label, Columbia. In addition to the studio recordings, this includes all of his live albums from Live At The Isle Of Wight (recorded in 1970), right up to 2009's two-disc Live In London set.

All of the albums are housed in a simple, but elegantly designed box, that opens up to reveal each album in a loving recreation of its original sleeve (including those with gatefolds). There is also a nice booklet that features full annotation of each album, plus liner notes from longtime Cohen confidante Pico Iyer.

Incidentally, Cohen's reinventions of some of his greatest songs on the concert stage represent some of the most stunning music to be found on this entire collection. Playing in a huge room like London's O2 Arena, Cohen amazingly captures the torchy ambiance of a jazz singer performing at some piano bar around last call. His band is likewise top notch. On the live recordings, they perform with such precision as to be nearly indistinguishable from something created in the studio.

For those who'd just as soon skip the live recordings though, there is also a box containing Cohen's eleven studio albums appropriately titled The Complete Studio Albums Collection. This isn't anywhere near so much as big, brassy and over the top a collection of work as other recent boxed sets out there from U2 and the like. But it just oozes class.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-11-09T23:59:00.000-08:00

Twenty Years Later, It's Achtung Baby All Over Again

It must be getting close to Christmas time.

That would certainly explain all the expanded editions and boxed sets that have come down the pike in recent weeks. From The Who and Pearl Jam, to Brian Wilson and Leonard Cohen, nothing says Merry Christmas this holiday season like your favorite artists re-imagined, remastered and repackaged, complete with everything but the bow on top.

Of all this years crop of deluxe retrospectives however, none of them are as elaborate and over-the-top as the 20th Anniversary Edition of U2's Achtung Baby. In fashion befitting a band not exactly known for its subtlety, U2 have pulled out all the stops here, providing fans a multitude of options to choose from.

For most, the 2-CD "Deluxe Edition" should prove sufficient.

It features the original album remastered, along with a second disc of remixes, B-sides and alternative takes that covers the Achtung Baby period quite nicely, without overdoing it to the point of redundancy — a problem that plagues both of the bigger, and much pricier boxed sets.

Both the "Super Deluxe" and "Uber Deluxe" versions contain six discs and four DVDs, with the latter also including everything from a book and some rare art prints, to your very own pair of Bono's sunglasses (the same model he wore as "The Fly" on the Zoo TV tour).

It can all be yours, for somewhere around $400.

All excesses aside, this sort of grandoise treatment is certainly appropriate, given an album as pivotal in the overall U2 story as Achtung Baby. At the time of its 1991 release, U2 had just completed its conquest of the world with The Joshua Tree album and tour. But with that same newly anointed status, the inevitable blowback soon followed.

The bombs hurled at the band back then, most often centered around a perception that they had ballooned overnight from a populist phenomenon into a self-important, pompous and overblown monstrosity. Rattle And Hum, their largely failed concert film experiment, did little to quiet the critics — many of whom were put off by its self-congratulatory tone.

Perhaps as a result of this backlash, U2 sought to reinvent themselves with Achtung Baby. Amazingly, they succeeded. The title is influenced at least in part by the German location where sessions for the album began with producer Brian Eno. Here, the band's mission was to bottle their own version of the synthesized electro-funk rhythms pioneered by German groups like Kraftwerk, and exploited to the greatest effect by David Bowie on his infamous, seventies "Berlin trilogy" of albums (also produced by Eno).

This isn't exactly how things worked out, and the band eventually returned to Dublin to complete the album with Eno and co-producer Daniel Lanois. Still, they did succeed — even if somewhat accidentally — in reinventing themselves with an album combining the Euro-pop and dancefloor elements the band was initially after, with a rawer, more stripped down version of their former arena-rocking selves.

As such, Achtung Baby is about as far removed from the anthems of The Joshua Tree as it gets (save for the one-world sentiments of the appropriately titled "One"). At the time of its original 1991 release, its comparatively minimalist sound came as something of a shock. What is apparent today however, is that Achtung Baby was the album that set the table for everything that would follow from U2. It still sounds as great today, as it did back then.

If you can actually afford it, one of the best reasons to spring for either of the pricier boxed set versions of the new 20th anniversary edition, is the inclusion of From The Sky Down. This is a great 90 minute documentary on the making of Achtung Baby by filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (best known for the Al Gore eco-doc An Inconvenient Truth).

Since the film was sanctioned by the band, there are times where it carries a certain sense of spin with it. You get the whole thing about U2's need at the time to rebuild the band from the ground up, by first tearing it down. But at times, there is also a noticeable degree of camera consciousness on the part of the band members. Sometimes U2 appear to be trying a little too hard to present an image of being regular Joes, rather than the biggest band in the world we've all come to know and love.

As revealed in this film, it is also quite telling to learn just where the decision to move the band further toward the dancefloor on Achtung Baby came from. As easy — and convenient — as it would be to assume that Bono played the Mick Jagger role to Edge's Keith Richards (and Bono does namedrop then trendy industrialists like Einsturzende Neubaten here), there was apparently no such yin and yang musical shuffling in play at all. Surprisingly enough, the move towards a trendier sound was arrived at through mutual, democratic consensus.

But the most interesting parts of the film come while watching the creative process behind the creation of Achtung Baby itself. It's fascinating to watch how a half-baked song idea (with the working title of "Sick Monkey" no less) evolves into "Mysterious Ways." Or how a fragmented chord sequence from Edge is transformed into the genesis of "One," once Bono adds the melody line, seemingly as an afterthought.

Hopefully, this film will eventually be released as a standalone DVD of its own. But in the meantime — and if you can't afford the price tag of the box — it's playing on Showtime all this month.

The other likely draw for fans on the boxed set will be the "baby versions" of the Achtung Baby songs, which make up the sixth "kindergarten" disc. These are mostly bare bones demos, that often feature only Bono and Edge doing very rough takes of the songs on one or two tracks.

Beyond that, the boxed sets mostly suffer from a case of too much repetition. The inclusion of the Achtung Baby companion album Zooropa is certainly a nice touch. But the numerous remixes of songs like "Even Better Than The Real Thing" and "Mysterious Ways" will already be familiar to most of U2's hardcore fan base. To those hearing them for the first time, these dancefloor mixes offer little more than a quick lesson in the sort of nineties DJ cliches that U2 later employed to mixed effect themselves on the Pop album.

For the best of these remixes, you'll do far better (and cheaper) with the two-disc deluxe version (the "Fish Out Of Water" remix of "Even Better Than The Real Thing" is especially good). You'll also get great Achtung-era outtakes like "Blow Your House Down," and choice covers of Lou Reed's "Satellite Of Love," John Fogerty's "Fortunate Son," and the Stones' "Paint It Black."

Twenty years later, it's Achtung Baby all over again. Sunglasses not required.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-10-27T04:42:00.000-07:00

Tom Waits For No One On Bad As Me

Music Review: Tom Waits - Bad As Me

A well-rounded Tom Waits album in 2011? Well, ya' don't say...

Bad As Me is the best sounding Tom Waits album in years. Well okay, it's also his first studio album of new material in about seven years, period.

But that's beside the point. Coming from a guy who has made a career out of writing singularly amazing songs — even as he has all but defied virtually every convention associated with traditional songwriting — the broad, stylistic diversity of these songs is nothing short of stunning. On Bad As Me, Waits revisits many of the same questionable haunts, inhabited by the usual cast of shady characters, that he has for going on a half century now.

But there are also some surprising new twists here.

On the gorgeous sounding "Talking At The Same Time," Waits' trademark cigarette and whiskey laced rasp — that same, late night damaged vocal cough that lends so many of his songs their unmistakable authenticity — is transformed into an unexpectedly lilting falsetto.

While it isn't quite Smokey Robinson worthy, when combined with longtime guitarist Marc Ribot's fabulous tremelo effects on guitar, the results effectively take you to that same dark, foreboding cinematic place as a great David Lynch film. The only thing missing is the midget dancing on a checkerboard floor to a torch singers take on "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."

No sooner are these darker corners explored, then Waits makes an abrupt about-face to "Get Lost" in a semi-rockabilly rave-up that allows guitarists Ribot and Los Lobos' David Hildalgo to cut loose with some savage slapback. Ribot and Hildalgo explore similar fifties rock and roll territory on "Tell Me." Only this time, they take a detour down the sweeter, less threatening paths forged by Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. If Roy Orbison were still alive, this song would be a perfect vehicle for him.

As hard as it might be to imagine the weathered and weary voice of Tom Waits conjuring that same type of original teen-pop innocence, he pulls the trick off quite convincingly here. In fact, the single most astonishing thing about Bad As Me is probably the revelation of Tom Waits as a vocalist of previously unrealized depth.

Like Bob Dylan, Waits' vocal talents have up until now manifested themselves mostly in the art of interpreting, and especially in the phrasing of his own lyrics. More than anything else, save for the lyrics themselves, it has been this unique voice that has most lent Tom Waits' songs their unique cinematic quality. The surprising vocal range displayed on Bad As Me is simply an unexpected bonus here.

But the best track on Bad As Me finds Waits resorting to more familiar vocal territory. "Hell Broke Luce" isn't so much sung, as it is shouted in a shower of expletives coming from the perspective of a war veteran who has been irreparably damaged after a tour of duty marked by "listening to the general every goddamn word" and how "the only ones responsible for making this mess, got their sorry asses stapled to a goddamn desk."

It is arguably, Waits most overtly (and uncharacteristically) political song to date, and one which finds its hapless protagonist weeping, pantsed at the wind for a joke, and coming down from the meth. In other words, the exact sort of place you might expect to find Tom Waits leering back at you from a dive bar around last call, doing an industrial-blues mashup backed by no less than Keith Richards, Charlie Musselwhite and Flea.

As Tom Waits albums go, Bad As Me ranks right up there with Nighthawks At The Diner, Rain Dogs and Mule Variations. Right now, I'm calling it yet another turning point for sure. In time, it could very well go down as his best yet.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-10-21T02:55:00.000-07:00

The Bridge School Concerts: 25 Years Of Great Music For A Great Cause

Music Review: The Bridge School Concerts 25th Anniversary Edition (2CD)

Over the course of his long and legendary career, Neil Young has supported a wide variety of political and social causes, lending both his music and famous name to everything from the annual Farm-Aid benefit shows to his work on the eco-friendly, energy efficient Linc-Volt automobile.

But of all of these, the cause that is closest to Neil Young's heart remains his work with the Bridge School. His ongoing involvement with the Bridge is also a family affair. Neil's wife Pegi sits on the Bridge School's board of directors, and his son Ben is one of the greatest successes of the Bridge School's alternative approach to education for the physically and verbally challenged.

For the past twenty five years, Neil Young has headlined the annual Bridge benefit shows held at the Shoreline Ampitheatre in Shoreline, CA. In addition to being the site of several of his own greatest performances, Neil Young's name has also drawn some of rock's biggest and best to the yearly shows.

Over the years, the Bridge School benefit shows have included a list of Neil's famous friends that reads like a who's who of rock and roll history. Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Elton John, The Who, Pearl Jam, Radiohead and last year's improbable Buffalo Springfield reunion are just a few of those who have offered up the musical fireworks in support of the Bridge.

Some of the greatest of these history making performances have now been captured on The Bridge School Concerts 25th Anniversary Edition, a 2-CD collection out next week from Neil's longtime record label, Reprise. There is also a companion 3-DVD collection, that features additional performances not heard on the CD, making both of these essential purchases. Never let it be said that Neil Young is one to let a good marketing opportunity pass him by.

In addition to all of the big classic rock guns, there are also a number of great performances from country greats like Willie Nelson ("The Great Divide") and lesser known critics darlings like Gillian Welch ("The Way It Will Be"), Fleet Foxes ("Blue Ridge Mountain") and Sonic Youth ("Rain On Tin"). Even legendary pop great Tony Bennett gets into the act here, turning in a stellar sounding take on "Maybe This Time."

Reflecting the mainly acoustic format of these shows, some of the best stuff to be found here is also the quietest, including the pastoral harmonies of Fleet Foxes on "Blue Ridge Mountain" and Band of Horses' lovely sounding "Marry Song." Bruce Springsteen's haunting, dirge-like acoustic version of "Born In The USA" is another highlight of this collection, showing a darker lyrical side to a song most often thought of as a stadium-rock anthem.

But that doesn't mean that rock and roll gets pushed to the side altogether. To that end, Metallica's acoustic rendering of "Disposable Heroes" proves that you don't always need the amps cranked up to eleven to bang your head. Elton John and Leon Russell's "A Dream Come True" also proves itself a worthy showcase for two of rock and roll's finest, if somewhat unsung honky-tonk piano players.

Nils Lofgren's great cover of the Beau Brummels classic "Cry Just A Little" provides the rock history lesson here. Not to mention some great playing from the underrated guitarist for both Springsteen's E Street Band, and occasionally for Neil Young himself.

Of course, some of the best moments to be found on The Bridge School Concerts 25th Anniversary Edition come courtesy of Mr. Young. These include a version of "Love And Only Love" with Crazy Horse that although played acoustic, rocks nearly as hard as the version on their classic album Ragged Glory. Neil also lends a hand on CSNY's "Deja Vu" and R.E.M.'s beautifully haunting "Country Feedback."

The DVD companion to the CD set also features performances not heard here from David Bowie, Patti Smith, Thom Yorke and others. Looks like Neil Young has gotten his hands into my wallet again. But since it's for a great cause this time, I wont begrudge the man too much this time around.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-10-21T00:35:00.000-07:00

Who Misses The Old Peter Gabriel?

Music DVD Review: Peter Gabriel - New Blood - Live in London

Does anyone besides me miss the old Peter Gabriel? You know, the guy who used to dress like a giant flower, or wear a rectangular shaped box on his head, all the while reciting nonsensical stories to introduce his songs with Genesis in concert? Or how about the guy who, as a solo artist, made those wonderfully arty, but nonetheless goofy videos for songs like "Sledgehammer"?

That Peter Gabriel is all but gone on New Blood - Live in London, a new concert DVD that also serves as a companion piece to his latest album New Blood. Instead, Gabriel has opted to join the likes of Sting and David Byrne in that exclusive "artistes club" of aging, white rock musicians continuing their careers during their twilight years, by running as far away from their rock and roll pasts as possible.

Like both Sting and Byrne, Gabriel has long displayed a flair for the more "artistic" side of rock and roll. But for most fans, songs like "Roxanne," "Burning Down The House" and "Shock The Monkey" remain far more memorable than any experiments in world beat, classical, or in this case, a re-imagining of past work recorded with a 46 piece symphony orchestra.

In fairness to Gabriel, it works better here than on previously ill-fated attempts at merging rock with classical by artists ranging from Deep Purple to Spinal Tap. It's an interesting enough idea in theory. But in most cases, it's usually a failed one in actual execution. Although there are those few and far between exceptions here, New Blood - Live in London mostly continues the long tradition of that rule.

The problem here, is that by removing rock elements as basic as guitar, bass and drums, some of Gabriel's best songs lose a lot of their original firepower. On this DVD, Gabriel wisely steers clear of his more funk based, hit material like "Sledgehammer," in favor of a setlist heavier on deep album cuts like "Intruder" and "San Jacinto."

But in these newly sanitized by strings arrangements, you can't help but notice the lack for those little things that made the originals such standout tracks. The absence of the big drums of "Intruder" and the rising keyboard swells of "San Jacinto" in particular are both sorely missed here.

Immaculate as the performances themselves are, they suffer from the same thing that burdens most of these types of experiments. The simple, yet effective hook of the original song is all but buried in a sea of strings and woodwinds. Even on a song like "Biko," which you'd think would benefit from the bigger arrangement (particularly on vocals), much is lost to the bloated symphonic sound.

Gabriel himself, who in the past has shown himself to be an animated and engaging performer, is also uncharacteristically stiff and serious here. It's enough to make one yearn for the leather-jacketed Rael stage character from his Lamb Lies Down On Broadway days.

Still, New Blood - Live in London does have its moments. The DVD is a stunner in terms of both sound and visuals. Some of the visual effects also have the same endearingly goofy quality of Gabriel's early eighties music videos. The "Red Rain" which falls across the screen during the song with the same name, achieves a borderline 3D effect, and serves as welcome relief from all the otherwise dead seriousness of this concert. Similar visuals dotted throughout the performance provide an equally effective compliment to the music.

As expected with something like this, the audio mix likewise more than lives up to the challenge of capturing something as intricately layered as the sound of a full orchestra. Technically speaking, the performance is also top notch (save for its lacking any apparent element of soul).

Gabriel fans will also appreciate the setlist, which mostly eschews the hits in favor of drawing on comparatively more obscure chestnuts from Gabriel's catalog. The new arrangements are also interesting enough on a first listen. They just don't resonate deeply enough to warrant those repeat listens.

I dunno' Pete, maybe an unplugged concert, next time...or at least something that rocks a bit more.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-10-13T22:20:00.000-07:00

Wow! Can You Believe That Hair?

Glen Boyd, "rap music expert" circa 1987, as interviewed for KING-TV 5's shocking expose on the evils of rap, on the eve of the now historic "rap apocalypse" during a Seattle Run-DMC/Beastie Boys show. Thanx to Nasty Nes for this hilarious blast from my chequered hip-hop past.

2011-10-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

Renaissance Man: Steven Wilson Finds Grace For Drowning

Music Review: Steven Wilson - Grace For Drowning

When it comes to how he approaches his art, Steven Wilson is something of a renaissance man. Dabbling in various musical disciplines and sub-genres that stretch across an ever growing multitude of projects, bands and artists, Wilson has also quietly earned himself a name as the "go-to" guy for producing and remixing albums by classic progressive rock and metal acts ranging from Opeth to King Crimson.

But when it comes to his own bands, Wilson seems to walk a straighter line right down the middle. The lighter, more introspective pop stuff is usually reserved for Blackfield, the jazzier and trippier avant-electronica is saved for No-Man, the heavier progressive rock for Porcupine Tree, and so on.

With his more recent solo albums, the ever prolific Wilson seems to have found a special place for that not quite so easy to characterize stuff that doesn't really fit any of those other bands though.

On 2009's solo debut album Insurgentes and the just released double disc set Grace For Drowning, Wilson sets darker and more personal lyrical themes against a musical backdrop that is much further out there. It's music that really defies conventional labels, although avant-prog-jazz-fusion, with a touch of melancholic doom probably works just as well as anything else.

As the artist who has done more to proudly fly the flag of modern day prog-rock than anyone else, Steven Wilson has always worn his influences on his sleeve. For proof of this, look no further than Porcupine Tree's Pink Floyd homage "Time Flies" from The Incident.

So, not surprisingly, on Grace For Drowning, you can hear little bits and pieces of everyone from Joy Division and King Crimson to Brian Eno and Radiohead in the mix. But what you mostly hear on this record is Steven Wilson himself. On Grace For Drowning, Wilson goes all out for broke in a wildly layered mix of sounds and styles that come off a little like all of the above, and yet like none of them at all.

This occasionally makes for some rather challenging listening. Grace For Drowning is not an album that is easily digested within just a single listen. But as repeated plays reveal subsequent new discoveries, the payoff does eventually come. For those with the patience to get there, Grace For Drowning is ultimately a very rewarding listening experience.

Dedicated to his father (who passed away earlier this year), Grace For Drowning explores much of the same darker territory Wilson first mined on 2009's Insurgentes. Death and mortality are the two most prevalent themes here. However, these don't begin to surface until three songs in, on the "title track" of disc one, "Deform Is To Form A Star." Instead, the first disc opens with two instrumentals that couldn't be more different from one another.

First up is "Grace For Drowning," a short piano interlude (with lovely playing from Jordan Rudess). This segues into "Sectarian," a fusion-prog workout recalling mid-period King Crimson, complete with abrupt time changes and cacophonous soprano saxes. Perhaps owing to Wilson's recent work on the Crimson remasters, "Sectarian" provides only a hint of the KC influence which later manifests itself more fully on the twenty minute long "Raider II."

"Postcard" is another of this albums many songs drawing on themes of melancholy. But here the somber mood is lightened considerably by a lovely sounding string and choir arrangement by Dave Stewart. This is followed by "Raider Prelude," a short, doomy sounding slice of funeral music that recalls "Light Mass Prayers," the prelude to Porcupine Tree's "Dark Matter" from their Signify album.

This makes for a great segueway into "Remainder The Black Dog," a tour de' force combining swelling mellotron, wildly swirling saxes, flutes and clarinet, and some amazing guitar work from the great Steve Hackett. Hackett's signature sustain is especially gorgeous in the ebb and flow fade that comes towards the end of this beautiful nine minute track.

Disc two (which carries the intriguing subtitle "Like Dust I Have Cleared From My Eye"), opens with the short instrumental "Belle De Jour." This is mainly highlighted by Wilson's acoustic guitar and another nice string arrangement from Stewart. This carries over into "Index," once again contrasting the shades of light and dark that make up the heart and soul of this album. "Track One" (which is actually track three on disc two) shifts between light glock and mellotron flourishes, and more of the bludgeoning, ever-present wall of musical doom.

The twenty minute epic "Raider II" is the true standout here though. A magnificent opus in the best tradition of classic prog, "Raider II" is all musical bluster and raging cacophony. This is the sort of joyful indulgence that will have you racing to check for references on all your old King Crimson albums. Perhaps more than any other track on Grace For Drowning, "Raider II" emphasizes the musical balance between darkness and light, as lilting flutes give way to crashing metallic guitars at will. The mellotron choir vocals here have likewise never been used to darker effect.

Despite its being an occasionally difficult listen on first blush, Grace For Drowning is ultimately a very satisfying effort from the modern day standard bearer of prog-rock, and one of music's true renaissance men.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-10-07T02:35:00.000-07:00

Mockingbird Time: The Pot At The End Of The Rainbow for Jayhawks Fans

Music Review: The Jayhawks - Mockingbird Time

The Jayhawks new reunion album Mockingbird Time marks the first time that principal songwriters Mark Olson and Gary Louris have made a record together — at least under the Jayhawks band name — in nearly twenty years.

But it also represents a logical conclusion to the recent renewal of interest in the band many credit with pioneering the modern day alt-country movement. At the very least, the Jayhawks two early nineties releases for American Recordings — Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow The Green Grass (Olson's last recording with the band) — are acknowledged today as classic, groundbreaking recordings.

This full band reunion follows Olson and Louris mending fences to make 2009's more acoustic based "solo" Ready For The Flood album, as well as the Jayhawks anthology Music From The North Country and expanded deluxe editions of both Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow The Green Grass.

For long suffering Jayhawks fans, these past few years have been something of a goldmine, that have also included the reissue of the mythical and long out of print Bunkhouse Album.

It would seem then, that Mockingbird Time has to be viewed as the pot at the end of that particular rainbow. The big question here is, does the end result fulfill the fans lofty expectations, or fall short the same way so many other such big time dream reunions have a way of doing?

Any such doubts are put immediately to rest on Mockingbird Time. From the first few moments that the power chords of the opening "Hide Your Colors" come thundering through your speakers, it's clear that the Jayhawks have lost nary a step despite a nearly two decade absence. Louris and Olson's trademark vocal harmonies — which along with uncommonly great songwriting, have always been this band's strongest suit anyway — remain very much intact all these many years later.

Besides the sweet sounding vocals though, the piano flourishes of Karen Grotberg have long been the best kept secret about the Jayhawks. Here, on tracks like "Tiny Arrows," Grotberg's always subtle ivory tinkling provides the perfect compliment to all of the sweetness of that pitch perfect, Flying Burrito Brothers inspired harmonizing.

Of course, this would all be for naught were it not for great songs. Thankfully, on Mockingbird Time the Jayhawks continue the great tradition of albums like Tomorrow The Green Grass and Hollywood Town Hall, by providing these in abundance. If singles still mattered — at least outside of the auto-tune manufactured machinery that sells records today — a song like "She Walks In So Many Ways" would be a worldwide number one hit. As it stands, the song is a more than worthy successor to previous Jayhawks gems like "Waiting For The Sun" and "Blue."

In addition to the proper album, the now common practice of putting out a deluxe edition makes for some very tasty extras. In this case, these come in the form of a bonus DVD that includes rehearsal footage for the album, as well as a very well done documentary film on the making of Mockingbird Time.

With Mockingbird Time, the Jayhawks have made that rarest of reunion albums that makes us realize just why we missed them in the first place. I can't wait to see these great new songs performed live.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-10-06T04:34:00.000-07:00

Wilco's The Whole Love Is The Album To Beat For Best of 2011

Music Review: Wilco - The Whole Love

Wilco's best overall record since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is also their most stylistically varied since that 2002 album, widely acknowledged as their masterpiece. Much of the same experimental spirit first heard on Foxtrot and its followup A Ghost Is Born is also present on The Whole Love.

But lying in between the sonic freak-outs of tracks like this album's wild seven minute opener "Art Of Almost," you'll also find plenty of the quieter, more understated alt-country elegance that characterized more recent albums like the critically underrated Sky Blue Sky and Wilco: The Album.

More than anything else though, The Whole Love is the album which finally realizes the full potential of Wilco as a completed band. On this album, they are far more than just chief singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy's backup crew.

Ever since the addition of guitarist extraordinaire Nels Cline to the lineup, there have been sporadic hints of these explosive possibilities.

But up until now, they have been only heard in occasional bits and pieces. These have included the Kraftwerk meets Crazy Horse fireworks of "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" (from the live Kicking Television album), the Allman Brothers like axe-dueling of "Impossible Germany" (from Sky Blue Sky), and the dead-on George Harrison by way of Badfinger inspired guitar parts of "You Never Know" (from Wilco: The Album).

On The Whole Love, these previously separate, but highly combustible elements are brought fully together for the first time.

The results are like putting a match to a powder keg. The Whole Love seamlessly combines the more elegant alt-country shades of albums like Sky Blue Sky, with the further out-there avant-experimentalist spirit of early 2000's albums like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born. From Patrick Sansone's lighter than air flourishes on piano and glockenspiel, to the metronomic, rock steady rhythm section of bassist John Stirratt and drummer Glenn Kotche, Wilco cover all the bases on The Whole Love. But of course, there is also the wild card that is guitarist extraordinaire Nels Cline. Here, he fits the band like a previously missing glove.

Cline's stamp is all over this album.

It runs from the histrionic, Jorma Kaukonen meets Robert Fripp psychedelic guitar craziness of the seven minute opening track "The Art Of Almost," to the more subtle steel guitar flourishes of country flavored tracks like "Open Mind" and "Black Moon." On the latter, Cline makes a bagpipe guitar noise not heard since the likes of Big Country back in the eighties. Cline's edgy guitar work also provides a perfect counterpoint to the Doors-like keyboards of Mikael Jorgensen and the throbbing bass of Stirratt on "I Might." Listening to this track will have you checking the liner notes for a Ray Manzarek credit.

The Whole Love is also Wilco's most layered sounding recording to date. Nowhere is this newfound density more evident than on "Capitol City." Here, carnival sounds recalling those heard on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper are interwoven with an American twist on the vaudevillian feel of the original, uniquely British sounding Beatles classic.

But it is still Jeff Tweedy's songwriting that ultimately makes this album. Whether he is turning romantic longing into an erotic joke on "I Might" (with lyrics describing "your sno-cone and its piss and blood"), or hitting a perfect note of melancholy with the line "I kill my memories with a cheap disease" on the Beatles like "Sunloathe," Tweedy remains a master of lyrical understatement.

The centerpiece of The Whole Love however, is undoubtedly the closing track. "One Sunday Morning (A Song For Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" is a twelve minute lyrical tour de' force. Describing the breakdown of a father/son relationship for reasons never explained other than the cryptically spoken line "father said what I had become, no one should be" (feel free to fill in your own blanks here), "One Sunday Morning" combines Tweedy's own whispered lyrics with the lovely sounding piano and glock tinkling of Sansone. It is one of Tweedy's most descriptively poignant songs ever.

Long story short, there is not a bad cut to be found here. Wilco's The Whole Love is at this late point, the one to beat for album of the year 2011.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-09-30T01:27:00.000-07:00

The Enduring Twenty Year Legacy Of Nirvana's Nevermind

Unless you've been off living in a cave somewhere these past few weeks, you've no doubt been unable to escape all the hype surrounding the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's landmark 1991 album Nevermind.

That the album itself was an unexpectedly earth shattering event has never even been in question. Nevermind was without a doubt, one of those rare moments in music where a single release changed literally everything. That the album knocked the piss out of everyone (especially King Of Pop Michael Jackson) by inexplicably rising to the top of the charts on the strength of little more than street buzz that caught everyone by surprise, in and of itself makes it one of those rare and wonderful happy accidents where the fans became the tail wagging the industry dog.

Prior to 1991, the last time this occurred was when the Beastie Boys revealed to the world that black kids weren't the only ones listening to rap with 1987's Licensed To Ill. As big as that record proved to be though, the scale of Nevermind's success was something on an entirely different level.

Of course, it can be argued that not all of Nevermind's initial impact was necessarily positive. Who doesn't remember that brief, early nineties period when you couldn't turn on a radio without hearing a slew of imitators (Silverchair, anyone?).

All of the renewed "voice of a generation" accolades these past few weeks have also proven to be just a little bit much. Kurt Cobain's legacy is marked as much by his suicide, as it is by his music. Which probably makes the comparisons to John Lennon most often heard when discussing his impact, more than a tad annoying to some Beatles fans. Understandably so, too.

Lennon's murder was arguably a political act — albeit the fact of its being carried out by a deranged fan. Cobain on the other hand chose to take his own life, to become forever immortalized in what could rightfully be called the ultimate case of the angst-ridden, reluctant rock star. Where Lennon died for his art, Cobain may have died because of it.

Either way, Nirvana (and by association, the rest of the Seattle based grunge movement) represent the last time rock music really mattered in both a musical and a cultural sense. The successes of modern day hitmakers like Coldplay and Kings Of Leon notwithstanding, rock and roll is mostly on life support these days. It just hasn't produced anything comparable to the way that Nirvana and a fan-based, street level movement like grunge impacted mainstream culture on a similarly massive level since. In that respect, Nirvana really were a lot like the Beatles.

Among the many Nirvana tributes making the rounds right now, two notable new releases arrived in stores this week. The 2-CD expanded edition of Nevermind will be followed next month by a limited edition 5-CD boxed set. But for fans, the release of Live At The Paramount on DVD and Blu-ray is the more significant event of this week's Nirvana mini-windfall.

Recorded on Halloween night 1991 at Seattle's Paramount Theatre, this show has been long coveted by Nirvana fans. It was a triumphant homecoming for the reluctant hometown heroes, as Seattle's music and scenester communities turned out en masse to welcome back the band who had so recently (and inexplicably) conquered the world. On Live At The Paramount you can feel this electricity in the air. It is both powerful and palpable.

I've seen Nirvana in concert just twice. Once at this show, and the other about a year later at the MTV Video Music Awards telecast in Los Angeles. But I most distinctly remember being at the Paramount in Seattle on October 31, 1991 — right along with the rest of the local record industry.

For guys like us, attendance at Nirvana's triumphant return show was mandatory, like a bizarre combination of the social event of the year and some kind of industry wide meeting. Your presence was not an option. It was required. Nirvana's big homecoming show is probably the last event of this type I can recall before the record industry eventually imploded on itself from within.

What I also remember though, is feeling like the only guy in the room who still didn't quite get it yet. I mean, great punk rock band? Absolutely. But it just didn't feel like the second coming, in the same way it seemed to be to everyone else there. I'd already seen the saviors like Springsteen, and the "only bands that matter" like the Clash before. While Nirvana certainly combined some of the better elements of both, they just didn't feel quite that "special" to me. At least not on the level they were being made out to be by everyone and their mother back then.

Of course, I didn't dare voice this opinion out loud. Privately, I rationalized my mild indifference towards Nirvana by wondering to myself if I had become musically out of touch. Perhaps two years working with Sir Mix-A-Lot and the music coming from the "other Seattle" had insulated me too much from what was happening in the rest of town. Looking back on it now, at the time I think I just thought homegrown bands like Soundgarden and Mudhoney sounded better, and maybe even deserved it more. What I also know now however, is that I was dead wrong.

Watching that same concert today on the Live At The Paramount DVD, I now see just what I missed, even though I was right there when it happened. As seen here, the electricity in the building for this show is pretty much off the charts. And although one still senses some reluctance to all this new found attention from the band themselves, Nirvana rise to the occasion like the heirs to the rock and roll throne they had just become.

In terms of pure, over the top energy, the closest thing I could compare the performance on this DVD to is something like vintage Who, as heard on The Who Live At Leeds and seen on the Live At Isle Of Wight 1970 DVD. Drummer Dave Grohl in particular turns in a frenzied show of Keith Moon like drumming, all flailing hair and sweat as he pounds away at the skins like a man possessed on songs like "Lithium," "Territorial Pissings" and "Aneurysm."

Cobain mostly just stands there, with his now classic pose of low slung axe and dirty blond hair covering his face. But the sounds he gets out of his guitar, though mostly cast in simple chord sequences transformed into thundering riffs, are astonishing to hear even now. Combined with Krist Novoselic's pounding bass riffage, the prototype of punk rock power trio becomes an afterthought as Nirvana creates a racket that sounds like the product of a band with twice as many musicians. It's one hell of a beautiful sounding noise.

The sound mix on Live At The Paramount also deserves singling out for praise though. Although most of this performance has previously surfaced on various bootlegs and now rare official releases like Nirvana Live! Tonight! Sold Out!, it has just never sounded this good.

The mix is as bright, edgy, and loud as the show itself. Cobain's raspy, emotional vocals are balanced perfectly with his razor-like guitar shredding. Novoselic's bass riffing rumbles the speakers just as it should, and Grohl's chaotic wildman drumming is wisely mixed way out front. It can't be stressed enough, this DVD should be played at the maximum level allowed by your TV speakers.

The video is not quite as good — you don't get enough clear shots of Cobain for one thing (although there are ample opportunities for drummers of both the professional and air varieties to be hypnotized by Grohl here). But it does do an admirable job of capturing the electric atmosphere of what proved to be an unforgettable, historic night.

In my own case, it just took me a few decades to realize it.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-09-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

Sooner Or Later, It All Gets Real....

For the ten or twenty of you who are still actually reading this (BC's attribution policy killed this sad old blog o' mine dead some months ago -- at least in terms of unique hits), there was some great news on the Neil Young book front this week. First, we have ourselves a cover (Jeff Allen's beautiful shot from the 1969 taping for ABC-TV's Music Scene, seen above).

Second, Backbeat has set an official release date of May 22, 2012, as revealed on the beautiful one-sheet published this week on those crazy internets. Neil Young FAQ is also now officially available for pre-order. To reserve your copy, go here. Hell, buy me a beer and I may even autograph the bloody thing.

2011-09-16T04:49:00.000-07:00

Alice Cooper's New Nightmare: The Old Ghoul Has Still Got It

Music Review: Alice Cooper - Welcome 2 My Nightmare

Alice Cooper's place in rock and roll history was assured long before his massively overdue induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame earlier this year. Let's face it, were it not for Alice Cooper — for better or for worse — there would never have been a Kiss, a Twisted Sister, a Marilyn Manson, or a Slipknot.

Not that any of these latter day "shock rock" bands ever possessed Alice's unique gift for combining the gender bending, parentally horrifying social outrage of the day with a great pop hook of course (Twisted Sister probably came the closest with "We're Not Gonna' Take It"). For that, one only needs to reference original Alice Cooper classics like "I'm Eighteen," "Be My Lover" and "School's Out."

What Alice's biggest fans also know however, is that by the time of his first solo album, 1975's Welcome To My Nightmare, the party was pretty much over.

Not that the original Nightmare isn't a great album.

In fact, when viewed from the rear window of time, the original Welcome To My Nightmare album holds up remarkably well. The makeshift band of studio hot shots assembled for that album — guys like guitar ace Steve Hunter — certainly had the chops. The songs, like "Black Widow," "Department Of Youth" and Nightmare's lone hit "Only Women Bleed" weren't half bad either.

But they never really recaptured the original spirit of the great, though occasionally ragged original Alice Cooper Band as heard on the string of early seventies albums that made Alice a star in the first place. The fact is, what followed the original Welcome To My Nightmare album, was a brief run of TV movies with the likes of octogenarian Helen Hayes, appearances on the celebrity golf circuit and shows like Hollywood Squares. Sadly, this was followed shortly after by a fall from grace marked dramatically by years in and out of rehab recovering from a very severe booze habit which very nearly took Alice Cooper's life.

You wanna' talk about an Alice Cooper album demanding a sequel now? That discussion begins and ends with 1973's masterpiece Billion Dollar Babies.

The best news about 2011's long-awaited Nightmare sequel is that it reunites Alice with original AC band members Neal Smith, Dennis Dunaway and Micheal Bruce for the first time in decades. They still sound pretty great here too. Songs like "When Hell Comes Home," serve as a musical reminder of what brought Alice's shock-rock act to the dance in the first place. Longtime Alice Cooper producer Bob Ezrin is also back on board, and the songs on this album are some of Alice's best in years.

Sadly, the idea of great hard rock songs with catchy hooks probably comes a few decades too late for the present-day musical climate of here today, gone tomorrow pop stars. Speaking of which, Ke$ha also makes an appearance on this album on the song "What Baby Wants" — which is something I am still trying to wrap my original Alice Cooper fan around.

All minor quibbles aside, Welcome 2 My Nightmare is easily the most listenable Alice Cooper album in years, and proof positive that when the old ghoul puts his mind to it, he can still deliver the goods.

In the meantime, diehard fans like me are still await that Billion Dollar Babies sequel.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-09-09T02:25:00.000-07:00

ELP 2011: Bring On The Prog, Dude

Music DVD Review: Emerson Lake And Palmer - 40th Anniversary Reunion Concert

Emerson Lake and Palmer is a band that has been — unjustifiably in my own opinion — universally shat upon by rock critics over the years. Personally, I have never quite understood the hostility.

Back in their brief, early seventies heyday, ELP provided the blueprint for the progressive rock power trio format later employed to varying degrees of success by bands ranging from imitators like Triumvirat (not so much), to those who really took the ball and ran with it (Rush and the latter day Phil Collins led version of Genesis).

What most people don't remember though, is that back in the early to mid-seventies, ELP ruled. With a string of mostly great — though occasionally indulgent — albums like Tarkus, Trilogy and especially their masterpiece Brain Salad Surgery, ELP held the undisputed title of the greatest "musician's band" on the planet.

As most of their most diehard fans already know, the party was pretty much over when ELP released the Works Volume 1 set (three sides of solo albums, plus a fourth side of group tracks), followed by the mostly outtakes Works Volume 2 set. Much ego-wrangling followed, culminating in the particularly wretched Love Beach album, and their eventual breakup.

But back when ELP inspired the same sort of debate amongst keyboard enthusiasts between Emerson and Rick Wakeman of Yes, as Beck Vs. Page did amongst guitarists, these guys were the real deal. As for Carl Palmer, and with all due respect to Rush's Neil Peart and Porcupine Tree's Gavin Harrison, no one outside of perhaps Keith Moon has better defined the term "monster drummer" before or since.

That said, ELP's 40th Anniversary Reunion Concert DVD is mostly a nostalgia trip. It also has a few very noticeable flaws sound wise in the early going, particularly during "The Barbarian." Here, the band don't seem to be playing as a tight unit (although they do eventually find their place on the later tracks). Emerson's mike also noticeably cuts out.

Even so, the crowd doesn't seem to care.

The guys all look mostly good (although former groupie magnet Greg Lake has gotten pretty fat), and they still can play their asses off. Which is what really matters in a DVD like this. When Lake bellows out the improbable "Karn Evil 9," lyrics rhyming "gypsy queen" with "vaseline" and "guillotine," any original critical nitpicks are reduced to irrelevancy. ELP are recapturing a moment in time here, and God bless em' for it.

As the concert progresses, and the band falls into a familiar groove, all the theatrical stops are pulled out. Cannons are fired during the otherwise ponderous "Pictures At An Exhibition." Emerson reprises the knive wielding, keyboard destroying theatrics of his nationally televised performance at 1974's California Jam, and Carl Palmer turns in a spellbinding solo on his revolving drum kit.

It's all enough to make one yearn nostalgically for the days of pretentious, seventies indulgent prog-rock. Sign me up, Scotty.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-09-02T02:42:00.000-07:00

Praying For My Little Brother Steve

This is the only known picture I have of my little brother Steve Boyd.

I got it from Facebook. Of all of my brothers, Steve is the one I have most closely related to myself. He is a kind, sensitive guy who just can't seem to cut himself a break (sound familiar?). Earlier tonight, I learned that Steve was involved in a horrible traffic accident where a person was tragically killed. Apparently, Steve was also drunk.

Whatever you might think of Steve, I know that amongst a band of Boyd brothers that have a well earned reputation as bad boys, Steve has a great heart, and this is probably eating him up inside far more than the extended jail time he is undoubtedly facing now. We Boyd boys seem to have a particular tendency for drawing out the devil (whether intentionally or otherwise), and from what I know, Steve has had a particularly bad go of it in recent years (losing a daughter among other things).

What I also know is that the fact that Steve may have been responsible for taking another person's life is probably eating him up more inside far more than the extended stay in a jail cell he now undoubtedly faces.

This is a good kid who made a horrible mistake, folks. Honestly, Steve is not a bad guy.

And knowing Steve as I do, I am quite sure he believes he deserves everything that is coming to him. But what I also know is that he didn't mean it, and if he could rewind time and take it back, he would so in a heartbeat.

Please pray for my little brother Steve. He really is a good kid. Thank you.

2011-09-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

The Joyous Rock And Holy Roller Noise Of Kings Of Leon

Sometimes it takes something like watching a movie to really "get" an artist or band. This week, after watching multiple screenings of Stephen C. Mitchell's Talahina Sky: The Story of Kings Of Leon documentary on Showtime, I think I may have finally gotten the appeal of the post-modern, southern fried, gospel tinged rock of the Followill boys.

Better late than never I reckon. The thing is, it's still not for the reasons you might expect.

As a live band — despite their recent graduation to headlining arenas and stadiums — Kings Of Leon have yet to take that next big step which elevates them to the big leagues as a "must see" attraction on the same level as a Bruce Springsteen, U2, Radiohead or even Coldplay.

In fairness though — and based on the all-too-brief concert clips in this film — Kings Of Leon still rock convincingly enough. But outside of the big lights and production values that come when your albums begin to do the platinum business KoL's have, there is little difference between their current use of stagecraft, and the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time band I saw open up for Bob Dylan nearly a decade ago.

With a few notable exceptions (like the gorgeous "Talahina Sky," which closes this film on a perfectly bittersweet note of uncertainty that I'm sure was completely intentional), Kings Of Leon's songs also still fall in the mostly very good to just above average range.

What does come through about Kings Of Leon in Talahina Sky though, is the fact that this is an extremely earnest and thoughtful, sincere and likable bunch (especially Caleb). This is a band who rose from very poor and humble beginnings to their current (if somewhat tenuous) status as perhaps the last truly great American rock and roll band.

Fan or not, Talahina Sky: The Story of Kings Of Leon is not only a film that will leave you rooting for this band to carry on — but one which will stick with you for days on end after seeing it.

The Kings Of Leon story is already well known to those who follow such things. The Followill brothers (Caleb, Jared, and Nathan), along with cousin Matthew, are the rock and roll spawn of a southern Bible Belt family led by tent revival preacher Ivan Followill. With no apologies, KoL left that Red State, Pentecostal existence behind to conquer the music world as international rock stars. Except, at least according to this uncommonly honest and unguarded rock-doc, maybe they didn't leave it back in the church at all. Not completely, anyway.

The story of rock and roll artists coming from church backgrounds, and then going on to a life long struggle between the pleasures of the flesh and the joys of the spirit is of course nothing new — especially in the deep south. Artists ranging from Elvis and Johnny Cash, to Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard have famously fought this spiritual battle between a higher calling and the so-called "devil's music" throughout their careers, and often in quite public fashion. In the case of Kings Of Leon front man Caleb Followill, he even aspired to follow his father's footsteps into the pulpit from an early age.

In Mitchell's Talahina Sky: The Story of Kings Of Leon, we see the way this inner struggle between flesh and spirit can exact a profound psychological toll, in up close and personal fashion.

This is possibly the closest thing to a "real time" story of this type ever made, and although the notoriously hard drinking Kings Of Leon aren't a band particularly known for their musical proselytizing, this film shows they haven't left their faith completely behind either. In Caleb's case, this inner turmoil seems to manifest itself most dramatically when he drinks — which he does often here.

In light of recent events which have cast some question over the future of Kings Of Leon as a band, Mitchell's film is also much more than just the latest exercise in self-aggrandizing rock-doc puffery. Taken in this context, it is actually quite the eye-opener.

Much of the film is framed against the backdrop of the annual Followill family reunion picnic, which takes place somewhere on a private patch of creekside land tucked deep inside the furthest boonies of Oklahoma. Here we see the Followill boys engaged in wholesome family activities like group prayer, pitching horseshoes, fishing for crawdads, and drinking plenty of hooch.

This is a tight knit clan of cousins, uncles, grandmas and grandpas that are also clearly quite proud of their most celebrated sons, the Followill boys of Kings Of Leon. Even so, fame is still defined by some of these folk as meaning being referenced on the game show The Price Is Right.

With a colorful cast of friends and relatives that seems to have sprung straight out of some backwoods trailer park, the Okie-authenticity of these characters is hard to miss. Good old boys like Uncle Cleo (who died of cancer shortly after this film was completed) and roadie cousin Christopher "Nacho" Followill make nighttime shots gathered around a raging campfire eerily reminiscent of a white supremacists gathering (minus the racist elements, of course).

Numerous home movies taken from the Followill boys childhood provide the clearest look at the real backstory here though. At times, these private family reels seem to be pieced together without much regard for continuity, giving the film the occasional feel of patchwork. But taken together, they tell what may be the most crucial element of the overall Kings Of Leon story.

We see Caleb and Nathan as squeaky clean church boys singing hymns for the congregation, scant years prior to their transformation into boozing, worldly rock stars. But we also learn that when their father went from preaching the gospel at revival meetings to hitting the bottle at local beer joints, it took a heavy emotional toll on the Followill boys, and on their faith.

At this point, any sheltered illusions the Followills had of a two dimensional world consisting only of saints and sinners were pretty much shattered. Caleb — remember, this is the sibling who once aspired to become a preacher himself — in particular seems to continue struggling with these lingering demons.

In one of Talahina Sky's more telling moments, we hear Caleb say "As soon as I got a record deal...I knew I was going to hell." There are also numerous scenes cut throughout the film of what appears to be a recent one-on-one interview between Caleb and the unseen camera man. Here, Caleb drunkenly rambles on about the band, his life and his mortality, as he proceeds to smoke and drink literally everything in sight.

We also see Caleb fighting with his bandmates in the studio, at one point mercilessly berating cousin Matthew over a guitar part, and finally being read the riot act by brother Nathan. In the very next scene, we see the band come back together in a circle of prayer, with all transgressions apparently forgiven (for the moment, anyway).

With the recent cancellation of an American tour following Caleb's strange outburst during a concert in Texas putting a question mark on the band's future, Talahina Sky places these events into a much larger context. Their current hiatus has been officially explained away as a much needed break and an opportunity for Caleb to heal up his vocal chords.

But Twitter posts from the band members themselves have done little to quiet the Caleb rehab rumors out there. What is clear in watching this film, is that this is a band who are collectively dealing with considerable issues, and that Caleb himself seems to be wrestling with a personal crisis of conscience and faith.

But what is also clear is that these are four very likable, mostly good, clean Christian boys, with four very distinct personalities. Jared is the most "rock star" of the group, Nathan is the one who is "all business, all the time," and Matthew, as seen here anyway, seems to be the adorable goofball. Caleb, of course, is the earnest thinker who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, which may at least partially explain his searching for the answers inside of a bottle.

Fans of this band will find that Stephen C. Mitchell's Talahina Sky: The Story of Kings Of Leon provides at least some of these answers (not to mention some pretty great music). It is also the sort of rare, unvarnished insider look into the private lives of jet-setting rock stars — complete with warts and all — that makes you wonder what possessed the band members to sign off as executive producers for this project. Ultimately though, this is a film that makes a great argument that some rock stars are just as human as the rest of us — at least if they happen to be the Kings Of Leon anyway.

I'll be rooting for them. Talahina Sky: The Story of Kings Of Leon is currently playing on cable television's Showtime network. You'll find playing times by checking for them at Sho.com.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-08-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

Patti Smith's Outside Society: A Greatest Hits Set From An Artist Who Didn't Have Any

Music Review: Patti Smith - Outside Society

If you are looking for the definitive overview of Patti Smith's legendary career, the just released Legacy Recordings compilation Outside Society is not it. The closest thing out there to that sort of comprehensive retrospective of Smith's groundbreaking work, complete with prerequisite rare tracks and alternate takes, remains the Land (1975 - 2002) compilation — and that set focuses mainly on her years with Arista Records.

However, as a brief introduction to Patti Smith, Outside Society works well enough as a sampler. You might even call this album a kind of greatest hits set from an artist who really didn't have any (save for "Because The Night," the collaboration with Bruce Springsteen that remains her most famous song).

Outside Society (which takes its name from a lyric to her song "Rock And Roll Nigger") is mostly notable because it draws equally from all phases of Patti Smith's 35 years as a recording artist. It brings material from both the Arista and Columbia Records eras together for the very first time on a single disc.

The only real complaint here, is that by following the sort of "greatest hits" mentality that apparently went into the making of this collection (despite the active participation of Patti Smith herself), Outside Society really only skims the surface. The way that longer, more expressive pieces like "Birdland" and "Land" (from Patti Smith's brilliant 1975 debut album Horses), are glossed over in favor of shorter, more radio ready songs is likely to be a disappointment to long time fans.

It is tone poems like these that helped make Patti Smith's reputation as punk rock's original reigning queen of spoken word, stream of consciousness poetry in the seventies. Here, they are overlooked to focus on more traditionally structured rock songs like "Because The Night" and "Summer Cannibals," as well as her cover versions of songs like Kurt Cobain's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Roger McGuinn's "So You Want To Be A Rock And Star." In that respect, Outside Society really only presents one side of this multifaceted artist.

Even so, there is still a lot to like here. Outside Society covers all the bases in terms of being a well rounded collection of the hits. From "Gloria" and "Because The Night" to "Dancing Barefoot" and "People Have The Power," the song selection does a great job of gathering her career highlights together on a single disc.

Patti Smith's poetic talents do not go completely unnoticed here either. The inclusion of songs like "Pissing In A River," "Free Money" and "Aint' It Strange" accomplishes that trick nicely (if too briefly), as does her blazing performance of "Rock And Roll Nigger" (which is thankfully unedited here). Patti Smith's gift for interpretation is best showcased here with her version of Cobain's "Teen Spirit," which is broken down into a minimalist dirge that is simply spellbinding.

Longtime fans will also appreciate the inclusion of liner notes written by Patti Smith herself, where she offers her own impressions on each of the eighteen songs in this collection. As a career defining anthology, Outside Society is anything but complete. For that, fans would be far better served with Land, or by just picking up a copy of Horses (still her best). But for first timers in search of a quick test drive, you could do a lot worse than this.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-08-19T03:00:00.000-07:00

Muddy Waters: Aggro Rockers Puddle Of Mudd Paddle Into The Seventies

Music Review: Puddle Of Mudd - Re:(disc)overed

Under normal circumstances, Puddle Of Mudd's brand of aggro-metal isn't the sort of thing that really floats my boat. Crap, I don't even really like these guys. But this album isn't exactly your typically tattooed trip to the mosh-pit either.

On Re:(disc)overed, this mid-western band of hard rock numbskulls venture into the muddy waters of the seventies, covering classic tunes by everyone from bands you'd expect like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, to the more unlikely choices of Elton John and Neil Young. With vintage tracks from the likes of Free and the James Gang rounding things out, the playlist here comes straight from a seventies FM rock radio programmer's log, and serves as an instant reminder of why that format is so sorely missed today. It certainly beats the hell out of the Black Eyed Peas, Britney and Bieber.

The question here is, do the Mudd boys pull it off? Surprisingly, the answer is mostly yes.

In keeping with the seventies spirit, the cover art of the CD is a celebration of the vinyl album format. The front sleeve features an old record player cut from the original RCA Records "Nipper" days, and the CD itself is designed to look like a vinyl LP. When you open up the seventies style foldout cardboard sleeve, it even smells kind of like an album.

Mudd's take on the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" maintains this vibe of authenticity, right down to soulful backing vocals that do a nice job of duplicating Merry Clayton's from the original version. The band also adds just the right touch of nineties hard rock energy here, without ever overdoing it to excess. So far, so good.

Likewise, a nice version of Neil Young's "Old Man" remains very true to the original, even going so far as to duplicate the pedal steel and banjo. The one minor quibble here is the chorus of background vocals, which sound just a bit overproduced.

The thing that gives each of these tracks a fresh sounding quality though is Wes Scantlin's vocals, which display a bit of the drawl normally associated with southern rockers like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Come to think of it, these guys probably would've done a bang-up job covering somebody like Skynyrd. Maybe, next time.

This approach also works well on a version of "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," where Scantlin pretty much nails the Tom Petty part and guest vocalist BC Jean turns in a likewise near perfect Stevie Nicks. Scantlin also does a very pretty sounding, if just ever so slightly overdone "Rocket Man" by Elton John.

By the time of Steve Miller Band's "The Joker" however, things start to wear a little thin. There is a growing feeling that in their obvious affection for these songs, they are also playing it a little too safe. At this point, you really start to wonder if Puddle Of Mudd is going to bring something a little more original to the mix.

Fortunately, the Mudd-Pudds are much more in their element when they crank up the amps to take on seventies hard rock chestnuts like AC/DC's "TNT," Billy Squier's "Everybody Wants You," and Free's "All Right Now." The band sounds right at home here, having fun and rocking out like a band of stoner kids headlining their very first high school kegger.

Despite a tendency towards safe arrangements and occasional overproduction (particularly with the backing vocals), Puddle Of Mudd's Re:(disc)overed is ultimately saved by the fact that it was clearly a labor of love for them to make.

This is the sound of a bunch of grown men channeling the sounds of their misspent classic rock youth, and obviously having a blast. Which translates into a very fun, if slightly guilty sounding pleasure for the rest of us.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-08-11T04:14:00.000-07:00

Alice Cooper's New Nightmare: The Original Billion Dollar Babies And...Ke$ha?

Forget about Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. The real reunion that fans of 70s classic rock least expected to ever see happen was the high heeled boys of the original Alice Cooper band getting back together. Well don't look now, but in just a few weeks, on September 13, hell — no, not the fake Eagles version, but the actual, real hell — is about to freeze over.

On that day, Universal Music Group will release Alice Cooper's long awaited sequel to his classic 1975 album Welcome To My Nightmare. More than thirty years in the making, Welcome 2 My Nightmare caps off an amazing year in Alice Cooper's already legendary career.

In a year which has already seen Alice receive his long overdue induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, Welcome 2 My Nightmare reunites Alice with the surviving members of his original, greatest band for the first time since 1973's Muscle Of Love.

To put this in its proper perspective, the original 1975 album Welcome To My Nightmare was Alice Cooper's first album without the guys responsible for his brief, but meteoric ride — roughly 1972-1974 — from freak sideshow cult status, to arguably the biggest selling album artist and concert attraction in the entire world.

In those two short years, the albums Love It To Death, Killer, School's Out, and especially 1973's Billion Dollar Babies firmly established the original Alice Cooper band as not only the biggest — but also the most dangerous — rock and roll band on Earth.

In the process, the band's gender bending persona and elaborate, often blood dripping stage shows — where Alice was routinely executed onstage every night by simulated hanging or guillotine — established the template for Kiss, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, White Zombie, and virtually every other theatrical shock rock act which has come ever since. Not a one of which has yet to top the original.

The fact that Alice Cooper's reunion with this band comes on the sequel to the album that marked their breakup is somewhat ironic. While Welcome To My Nightmare was both a commercial success at the time and a landmark in its own right, most fans agree it also marked the beginning of an artistic decline that was further accelerated by Alice's own personal, and long since well documented demons.

Welcome 2 My Nightmare reunites Alice Cooper with his original Billion Dollar Babies, including bassist Dennis Dunaway; drummer Neal Smith; and guitarist Micheal Bruce (who also co-wrote some of Alice's biggest hits like "I'm Eighteen") on three tracks, including "When Hell Comes Home." Unfortunately, the late guitarist Glenn Buxton is the lone member of the band who didn't live to see this historic reunion. The album is also produced by Bob Ezrin, the man behind the controls for all of Alice Cooper's original 70s classics.

The album also includes contributions from guitar great Steve Hunter (best known for his work on the original Nightmare album, as well as on Lou Reed's classic live Rock And Roll Animal album), and a somewhat unlikely appearance by teen pop sensation Ke$ha on the perhaps appropriately titled "Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever."

Of Ke$ha's contribution, Alice says "I think a lot of my audience is going to go 'KE$HA!?', but she probably wrote the most wicked lyrics in the song – we had to rein her in. I like people to know that just because artists are put in a pigeon hole, that doesn't mean that's what they are. Give people a little room.”

Ke$ha or not, we like what we have heard thus far. From the doomy rock of "When Hell Comes Home," to the surprisingly pretty "Something To Remember Me By" (Alice's emotional range as a vocalist has long been his best kept secret), Welcome 2 My Nightmare sounds a whole lot like the classic Alice Cooper album fans have waited decades for to us. Look for a more full review here on these pages soon.

Alice Cooper's Welcome 2 My Nightmare arrives in stores and digitally on September 13.

Welcome 2 My Nightmare Track Listing:

1. I Am Made Of You
2. Caffeine
3. The Nightmare Returns
4. A Runaway Train
5. Last Man On Earth
6. The Congregation
7. I'll Bite Your Face Off
8. Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever
9. Ghouls Gone Wild
10. Something To Remember Me By
11. When Hell Comes Home
12. What Baby Wants
13. I Gotta Get Outta Here
14. The Underture

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-07-29T05:16:00.000-07:00

Phil Ochs: Artist, Activist and American

Music DVD Review: Phil Ochs: There But For The Fortune

Kenneth Bowser's Phil Ochs: There But For The Fortune is a fascinating documentary overview of the largely unheralded, overlooked sixties protest singer who spent the bulk of his career in the shadow of his more famous, critically acclaimed friend and inspiration Bob Dylan. However, as this film so often poignantly illustrates, where Dylan chose to shroud his persona in a cloud of vagueness and mystery, Ochs wore his political values much more visibly on his sleeve.

While Dylan's protest songs may have led the political charge of the sixties progressive "movement," they were just as often measured by the sort of lyrical ambiguity that was such an essential element of the mystique he was creating even back then.

By contrast, Phil Ochs took a far more direct approach in songs like "There But For The Fortune" (a song most often identified with fellow protest icon Joan Baez), the antiwar anthem "I Aint' Marching Anymore," and "Love Me, I'm A Liberal," a biting satirical commentary directed more cynically towards his own. Songs like these and others left little room for doubt of Phil Ochs' lefty politics.

Arriving on the burgeoning New York folk scene at roughly the same time as Dylan, Ochs quickly befriended the future "voice of a generation" and adjusted his own ambitions accordingly — deciding he would need to settle on being merely "the second best songwriter in the world."

But as Dylan set out to conquer the music world, Ochs set his own sights on the larger goal of actually changing it, organizing benefit concerts for the causes of union workers and civil rights. Eventually he would take the equivalent of a self inflicted bullet for these beliefs.

Although Ochs artistic and commercial fortunes would take many twists and turns over the years, he never strayed far from his original political idealism. As this film so vividly points out (backing it up with rare, original footage from the period), even as Ochs was enjoying a minor commercial radio hit with "Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends" (from the A&M records album Pleasures Of The Harbor), he was organizing the Yippie Party with fellow radicals Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner. When the Yippies famously disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Phil Ochs was right there in the middle of the tear gas and the pepper spray.

But the cracks in Ochs' fragile, idealistic hopes for progressive change were beginning to show even then. By the time of the political assassinations of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and especially his friend Chilean protest singer Victor Jana (murdered by soldiers in a football stadium in the coup which toppled the government of President Allende), they had grown into an insurmountable chasm. This was followed in short order by alcoholism, mental illness and Ochs' eventual suicide in 1975.

All of this — accompanied by footage that is quite riveting, yet often painful to watch — is documented in Kenneth Bowser's Phil Ochs: There But For The Fortune.

Made with the blessing and participation of family members like brother and former manager Micheal Ochs, the film combines rare concert and newsreel footage and new interviews with Joan Baez, Tom Hayden, Pete Seeger, Sean Penn, Peter Yarrow, Billy Bragg and other contemporaries. The result is a fascinating, sympathetic and long overdue career study of this criminally overlooked artist, activist and American.

The DVD extras — which include a photo gallery and a director's bio — aren't all that great. But the rare concert and historical archive footage makes this a film that is more than worth your attention.

This article also appears at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-07-24T22:51:00.000-07:00

Making Sense of Amy Winehouse And The 27s Tragedy

The death of Amy Winehouse is a tragedy. But what might be the saddest commentary of all has been all of the Monday morning speculation — both in the media and elsewhere — surrounding it.

For the love of God people, it isn't even Monday yet.

Over the course of the next several days and weeks, you are going to hear a lot more of it too — particularly once the medical examiner's report comes in (which could be as early as Monday, according to some published reports). The fact is, even before family, friends and fans have been given the chance to take a proper step back to absorb and reflect, it has already begun.

The glib and dismissive "I told you so" tone of some of the comments that have popped up on internet discussion boards over the past 48 hours, has been particularly distasteful. Never mind the fact that perhaps we've all been guilty of such armchair commentary on occasion. When Alice In Chains vocalist Layne Staley overdosed back in 2002, I joined many others in Seattle's music community in shaking my head, perhaps a little too condescendingly, and with a knowing sigh.

Crass as this type of behavior might be though, it is also sadly predictable. Some might even argue it as a way of coping with grief, albeit a strange and perhaps tactless one. Nonetheless, it's both amazing and unfortunate how celebrity death has the side-effect of transforming so many of us into instant experts on subjects as complex as addiction and mental illness. Not to mention turning still more of us into foolish, obnoxiously prognosticating Nostra-dumbasses.

Among the strangest reports out there though, have been the odd articles popping up everywhere linking Amy Winehouse's death to something called the "27 Club."

Many of the internet posts on this subject have a certain Twilight Zone quality to them — connecting the dots between the sex and drugs and rock and roll lifestyle and things like astrology, numerology, and other assorted New Age mumbo-jumbo. I even saw a post that attempted to draw a straight line between Amy Winehouse and Jesus Christ himself (was Jesus crucified at 27? Uh, no...he was 33).

Others, however, are of a more blatantly exploitative nature. The authors of the book The 27s: The Greatest Myth Of Rock And Roll for example, have wasted no time claiming credit for predicting Winehouse's membership in "The Club." Wow, nice "hit" there guys.

According to the same book, the official number of rock stars to die at 27 is 34 (and now 35, with the addition of Amy Winehouse to the list). On the surface at least, this high number — beginning in 1938 with the mysterious poisoning death of legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, and continuing with iconic names like Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and other lesser known names like Uriah Heep bassist Gary Thain — is striking, especially when the relationship with substance abuse is figured into the mix.

It is this connection that carries along with it the mythical sort of connotations you'd expect. In the minds of some, premature death, tragic as it is, plays perfectly into the whole "live fast, die young, and leave a good corpse" mythos of rock and roll itself. By this measuring stick, dying for ones art is considered a badge of honor.

Factor in a few creepy coincidences like how Jim Morrison was said to have remarked "you're looking at number three" (when asked for his reaction to the deaths of Hendrix and Janis Joplin), and you have all the ingredients for some very compelling, if rather creepy mythology.

Things get even weirder when official versions of events surrounding some rock and roll deaths are called into question. There are a surprisingly greater number of people out there than you might think who really do believe that Elvis is alive and that Paul is dead. And while such rock and roll conspiracy theories as Jim Morrison faking his death (he didn't), Kurt Cobain being murdered (he wasn't), and Tupac Shakur remaining alive (he isn't), have died their own merciful deaths, others such as the "accidental drowning" of Brian Jones continue to raise some legitimate questions even today.

Where this line of thinking begins to fall apart however, is when you realize that not all rock stars who died at 27 — not even all of the really significant ones — succumbed due to causes related to drug and alcohol abuse. Mia Zapata of the Gits for example was 27 when she died. Zapata, however, was brutally murdered in Seattle in a case which went unsolved for years.

Still others didn't die at 27 at all. John Lennon was 40 when he was murdered, and Marvin Gaye was 44 when he was shot by his own father. Elvis was 42 when he overdosed.

Yet another very decent argument — one nearly as compelling as the so-called 27 Club in fact — could be made for the high body count amongst rockers who have gone on to the "Great Gig In The Sky" at the equally young age of 24. These include Duane Allman and Berry Oakley — both of the Allman Brothers Band — who died nearly a year to the day apart in separate, but eerily similar motorcycle accidents.

Other members of the "24 Club" include Mother Lovebone's Andrew Wood (overdose) and rapper Notorious B.I.G. (murdered). The still unsolved murder of Tupac Shakur (which has been linked to B.I.G.'s murder and to a rivalry between the two men) happened when the "Dear Mama" rapper was 25.

As much as we may like to worship our rock stars and place them on pedestals as Gods, the fact is that they are as human as the rest of us. Aside from the occasional horrific plane accident (Otis Redding, Buddy Holly, Ronnie Van Zant), this means they mostly die from the same natural causes (Bob Marley, Clarence Clemons) as the rest of us.

Some also die of overdoses. But far too many of them die young (there goes that whole God theory). Perhaps this is the reason we willingly clutch at the straws offered by an oddball theory like the 27 Club. As ludicrous as the whole idea might be, maybe in some odd way it helps us sort through our grief or to make sense of that which otherwise does not. If nothing else, it's mostly harmless and a far more constructive coping mechanism than finger pointing or engaging in otherwise pointless, sanctimonious "I told you so" jackass behavior.

If Amy Winehouse's death does prove to be the result of drugs and/or alcohol, there are some important things that probably need to be put into perspective. It would be easy to say the entertainment industry eats its young, but it would also be unfair. As much as death can make for short term, increased record sales (at least under the old industry model), its also fair to say that most record executives would prefer a long sustained career with healthy back catalog sales, over a short and out-of-control, but meteoric one.

As prevalent a problem as drug and alcohol abuse remains in the entertainment industry (and in society itself), I've seen no evidence that the corporate types running today's media conglomerates have any use for slackers. As with any other "employee," entertainment industry employers want someone who shows up on time and works hard.

Amy Winehouse leaves behind two officially released albums that were both commercial and critical successes. Like other greats whose careers were cut tragically short like Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin (both of whom had officially released just three albums at the time they died), one can only speculate what would have come next had they been able to conquer their demons.

There is considerable evidence that all three of these 27 Club members — Cobain, Joplin and Winehouse — sought drugs and alcohol as more of an escape route from deeper seeded emotional problems than as a means to a more wreckless end. Both Cobain and Joplin were known to suffer from depression, with Cobain in particular reportedly wanting no part of the limelight during his tortured final days. Janis was known to routinely drown her loneliness in Southern Comfort.

If this was also true in Amy Winehouse's case — as some of the stories emerging now indicate — then it is particularly tragic that her troubles were so often reported in the same light as celebrity trainwrecks like Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen and Paris Hilton by the tabloid media.

Gifted with a voice that could be alternately sultry and ageless, or smoky, painful and husky, Amy Winehouse had that rare, unique ability to transport you to another place with songs combining the soul of a torchy ingenue ("Love Is A Losing Game") with the defiant sass of a blues belter ("Rehab"). The fact that the retro-soul, Billie Holiday influenced terrain of her Grammy winning album Back To Black had been previously mined by Old School R&B revivalists like Erykah Badu is of little consequence. With respect to Badu (and others like her), Amy Winehouse's melding of blues and jazz with both doo-wop and hip hop sensibilities had the greater impact by far. Her influence can be heard most notably today on Adele's chart-topping smash 21.

In an age of short attention spans and flash-in-the-pan celebrity culture, driven by disposable, flavor-of-the-minute, now-you-see-them, now-you-don't pop stars created by cable and the internet, Amy Winehouse was a shining, rare talent. It's a shame we will never know what would, or could have been. It really is just a damn shame.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-07-15T01:45:00.000-07:00

Robert Fripp's New Sons Of The Crimson King

Music Review: Jakszyk, Fripp And Collins - A Scarcity of Miracles - A King Crimson Projekct

This album is probably going to surprise a lot of people. Given the heavy names attached to it, and particularly the King Crimson pedigree, it might also come off as mildly disappointing — at least on an initial listen. Although the vague subtitle coyly brands this as "A King Crimson Projekct," Robert Fripp seems content to stop just short of labeling this is as the latest full-on incarnation of the pioneering progressive rock group he founded some forty years ago.

In this case, keeping that particular link at arms length is probably appropriate.

A Scarcity Of Miracles bares little resemblance to either the frenetic histrionics of Red era Crimson, or the stately prog-rock sweep of the band's earliest work (despite the return of saxophonist Mel Collins). Rather, it falls somewhere in the middle.

Along with Fripp's far too occasional guitar soundscapes, the vocals of unlikely collaborator Jakko M. Jaksyzk (Level 42) provide the clearest link to the ghost of Crimson's past. On songs like "The Price We Pay," his voice comes eerily close to being a dead ringer for past Crimson vocalists Greg Lake and John Wetton.

But perhaps the oddest thing about this album is just how smooth it sounds. If "smooth" is a word you never thought would be spoken in the same sentence as King Crimson ("Projekct" or otherwise), you are not alone.

Yet the way Mel Collins saxophones swirl in and out of the mix on songs like the aforementioned "Price We Pay" recalls the atmospheric sheen of Andy Mackay's work on Roxy Music's Avalon, more than anything with Crimson. On the closing track "The Light Of Day," Collins' drifting saxes are equally matched by the ebb and flow effect of Jakszyk's keyboards.

If anything, this album has the same kind of distinct, dreamy feel to it as the Roxy Music classic mentioned above. It's just very soothing, "smooth" sounding music (there's that word again). It also has quite an atmospheric feel to it, although not so much in the ambient sense of Fripp's sonic "Frippertronics" explorations with Brian Eno. If anything, A Scarcity Of Miracles may be the most song oriented record Fripp has done since the days of In The Court Of The Crimson King and Lizard.

Fortunately, the prog fan's dream rhythm section of bassist Tony Levin (Peter Gabriel, Remain In Light era Talking Heads) and monster drummer Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree) get a chance to shine on "The Other Man," the lone track here displaying flashes of the darker, more musically dangerous side of King Crimson. Fripp also gets in some of his trademark "treatments" here, as he also does on the title track.

But mostly, this is a rare case of some of the best musicians in the world really laying back for a change, and allowing the songs to be the focal point. For a band more traditionally prone to a certain degree of musical excess, it's an oddly refreshing change. It just might take some getting used to.

In addition to the standard CD version, A Scarcity Of Miracles is available in vinyl and deluxe CD/DVD-A versions. The latter features 5.1 and high def 24/96 stereo mixes, and a bonus album of alternate mixes.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-07-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

For Guitar Players, By Guitar Players And About Guitar Players...

Book Review: Guitar Player Presents Guitar Heroes of the '70s Edited by Michael Molenda

Given the more pop oriented climate of today, it seems like a million years ago that guitar heroes like Hendrix, Clapton and Page ruled the musical landscape. Yet, in the late sixties and continuing throughout the seventies, the guitar reigned supreme in popular music.

This was due in large part to the enormous popularity of guitar oriented hard rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple in the seventies, later followed in the eighties by Van Halen and an endless slew of metal bands. But with technique being as important an element as style back then, jazz guitarists like John McLaughlin and Al DiMeola also enjoyed considerable success, as well as influencing more traditionally rock oriented players like Jeff Beck and Carlos Santana.

All of these great musicians, and many more are represented in Guitar Player Presents Guitar Heroes of the '70s, a compilation of interviews which originally appeared in the pages of Guitar Player magazine. Not surprisingly, all of these interviews focus primarily on the guitar — this is Guitar Player magazine after all.

In that respect, the interviews here might seem a little dry to readers who don't happen to be musicians themselves. Pages upon pages here are devoted to subjects like fingering and picking techniques, and what strings, picks, and amplifiers are used by the interview subjects. Occasionally this proves interesting, such as when Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi describes the protective plastic tips he uses on his fingers (he lost two of them in an electric welding accident). But if you find musical tech talk at all boring, this may not be the book for you.

However, once all the gear gab is dispensed with, Guitar Heroes of the '70s is an often fascinating read, and one which offers up a surprising number of new insights into what makes some of the greatest axe-wielders on the planet really tick.

When it comes to influences for example, many of the names one would expect to see, do in fact come up repeatedly. Among the veteran rock guitarists, early rock pioneers like James Burton and Scotty Moore and blues greats like Muddy Waters and B.B. King are mentioned often, while guys like Clapton and Hendrix are name checked by second generation guitarists like Eddie Van Halen. More surprisingly, the comparatively lesser known Leslie West is cited by no less than Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix as a guitar player they admired.

The book also occasionally sheds light on the human side of these great musicians, and not always in a flattering way. Robert Fripp — who pioneered the progressive rock genre with both King Crimson and in various solo and collaborative projects with people like Brian Eno — comes off as both prickly and self absorbed, for example. In his interview, Fripp says that most guitarists don't interest him and he describes the work of Eric Clapton as "mostly quite banal."

In addition to the hot-shot rock players, the book also effectively covers the remaining genre bases, from jazz (McLaughlin, DiMeola, Larry Coryell, Pat Martino) to blues (Mike Bloomfield, Johnny Winter, Bonnie Raitt) to folk and acoustic music (Leo Kottke, Ry Cooder). In short, a book about guitar players, for guitar players, that will be read mostly by guitar players.

This review was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-06-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

Chaos, Disorder, Revolution And...Prince

Book Review: Prince: Chaos, Disorder, and Revolution by Jason Draper

Jason Draper's Prince: Chaos, Disorder, and Revolution is a stunningly thorough, meticulously researched account of one of rock's most influential and trail blazing, yet ultimately mystifying careers.

In just under 300 pages, Draper skillfully condenses all of the highs and lows of the Prince story into a tightly woven narrative. Draper's straight forward, matter of fact story is told with the eye to detail of a master journalist, but easily digested style of a great storyteller.

From the dizzying heights of his commercial peak in the eighties — a time when Prince's record sales and concert tours were matched only by Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen — to his often bizarre career moves (like changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol), Draper's blow-by-blow retelling of events doesn't miss a thing. Whether you are already a Prince fan, or just looking for insight into the star making (and breaking) machinations of the music business, this is a fascinating read.

Although Chaos, Disorder, and Revolution lightly touches on Prince's personal life — including both documented and rumored relationships with everyone from Vanity and Susannah Melvoin to Kim Bassinger, Carmen Elektra and Sheena Easton — Draper wisely places most of his focus on the music. As a result, the single biggest revelation of the book is just how much music Prince has actually recorded over the years.

The fact that Prince's artistic output has been quite prolific (to say the least) is of course hardly a secret to anyone who has followed his career. In the years immediately following his 1984 multi-platinum breakthrough Purple Rain, Prince cranked out albums (both by himself and with a stable of artists including The Time, Vanity and later Appolonia 6, Madhouse, the Family and others), at a dizzying rate — often driving the marketing department at Warner Brothers Records to fits in doing so. In more recent years, Prince has proved himself quite capable of dropping multiple album sets on a continuously revolving series of record labels with the same sort of regularity that the rest of us mere mortals change our underwear.

What is less known however, is the staggering amount of Prince material which remains unreleased, and which the artist himself seems perfectly content to allow to languish in a mysterious "vault" somewhere in Minneapolis. Draper places a particular emphasis on these "lost albums" — which may number as many as his official recordings — with acute detail. For hardcore Prince fans, this alone makes Prince: Chaos, Disorder, and Revolution an essential read.

In addition to these lost recordings, Draper also reveals little known insider details about Prince's various business dealings (Glam Slam, Paisley Park Records) and his often volatile relationships with the musicians he has worked with. In one of the more interesting stories here, Draper recounts how a reunion with the Revolution — arguably his most successful band — was scuttled when Prince suggested that band members Wendy and Lisa would have to renounce their lesbian relationship (Prince himself had just become a newly converted Jehovah's Witness at the time).

The picture which ultimately emerges from this book is that of an enigmatic, if not always pragmatic personality whose undeniable talent has perhaps only been held back by his own stubbornness.

On the one hand, Prince remains one of only a handful of artists to have reached his iconic level — Neil Young is another which comes immediately to mind — strictly on his own musical and artistic terms. On the other, this refusal to compromise has also resulted in some of the most colossal marketing blunders ever to come within a whisker of sinking a career. The "love symbol" phase, along with Prince's battles with Warner Brothers, and more recently, releasing far too many records on numerous labels for even the most devoted fan to keep up with would have been certain career-enders for a lesser artist. Prince's rationale for these, and other equally strange career decisions have never been adequately explained, and they aren't here either.

At the same time, Prince's innovations as an artist are beyond question. From pioneering the concept of multi-racial, gender bending bands in the eighties with the Revolution, to being among the earliest rock stars to embrace the possibilities of the internet (even though he is now on record as saying the same internet "is over"), Prince's legacy as a trailblazer is still largely being written.

He may not sell as many records these days. But Jason Draper's Prince: Chaos Disorder And Revolution makes a very convincing case that Prince remains as artistically relevant today as he has ever been. It is also one of the more eye-opening unauthorized rock bios in recent memory.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-06-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

Goodnight In Jungleland: Remembering Clarence "Big Man" Clemons, Dead At 69

When I first heard the news on Saturday night, June 18 at about 7 p.m. that Clarence Clemons had died as a result of complications from a massive stroke he suffered the previous weekend, my immediate reaction was a myriad of emotions that came rushing through me all at once: Sadness. Surprise. Shock. Resignation. Man, this sucks.

Although there was a general consensus that Clemons' stroke had been quite serious — early reports indicated there might be at least prolonged partial paralysis, if he even survived — there had also been reason for hope of a miraculous recovery as recently as just a few days ago. In light of this, and despite concerns for Clemons' health among fans going back for several years now, in many ways the news that he didn't make it still came as a shock. As I write this, I honestly feel like I've been punched in the gut.

You see, I always thought Clarence Clemons was one of those mythical guys who'd live forever.

Part of this is pure selfishness, of course. Although I have seen Clemons perform with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band numerous times dating back to the Born To Run tour in 1975 — that's nearly forty years ago now — the fan in me really wanted to see him do it just one more time. Even if it meant him taking to the stage in crutches.

Clemons himself did nothing to discourage such selfish optimism among his fans. Although he described the pain he felt touring with Springsteen in support of 2009's Working On A Dream album as "pure hell" — this following replacement surgery on both his knees and hips — in a recent interview, he'd indicated he was far from ready for the rock and roll retirement home.

"As long as my mouth, hands and brain still work I'll be out there doing it," he told Rolling Stone. "I'm going to keep going 'til I'm not there anymore. This is what's keeping me alive and feeling young and inspired."

Clemons had also kept reasonably busy in the recent months during one of the periodical E Street Band sabbaticals he'd no doubt become accustomed to over his many years with the Boss. Most recently, he was heard playing sax with pop sensation Lady Gaga on her single "The Edge of Glory."

Springsteen fans the world over have known Clemons by a variety of names, reflecting his larger-than-life persona in the E Street Band for some four decades. Many of these, such as "King of the World" and "Master of the Universe," became part of the universal language of E Street by way of Springsteen's lengthy, played-for-maximum-dramatic-effect introduction of his longtime sax player and all-around crowd favorite onstage. Ever aware of what (or in this case, who) moves an audience, Springsteen always saved Clemons for last when introducing the members of the E Street Band.

"Do I have to say his name?" Springsteen has been known at testify on stage with all the fire and brimstone of an old-time gospel preacher. "Do I Have To Say His Name?" Of course, E Street Band fans best knew Clemons simply as "The Big Man."

In addition to providing the unforgettable saxophone that proved such an integral part of the E Street Band's signature sound — including such standout sax breaks as those heard on "Badlands," "Born To Run" and especially "Jungleland" — the Big Man was the ideal onstage foil for Springsteen. Dating back to their earliest concerts in the '70s, Clemons cut a towering presence next to the comparatively smaller and wiry Springsteen, making for a unique onstage chemistry unmatched in all of live rock and roll.

Yet it was their onstage camaraderie, particularly as manifested in humorous stories Springsteen told with Clemons by his side, that became the stuff of legend. When Springsteen replaced the E Street Band with a group of studio musicians — including another sax player — for his 1992 tour behind the albums Human Touch and Lucky Town, fans never bought into the Boss' attempt to recreate this unique combination.

"He was my great friend, my partner," Springsteen said of Clemons in a statement Saturday night, "and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band."

That last promise could prove a bit tough for the Boss to keep. As much as carrying on the E Street Band might be the ultimate tribute to the memory of Clarence Clemons (as well as to keyboardist Danny Federici, who succumbed to melanoma in 2008), it neither could nor ever would be the same without the Big Man.

And so the change was made Upstairs and... well, you probably know the rest.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine

2011-06-16T04:33:00.000-07:00

I've Seen Fire And I've Seen Rain

Book Review: Fire And Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970 by David Browne

David Browne's masterfully researched and written Fire And Rain is the sort of book that should have come along much sooner than it actually did. It also serves as proof positive that as years go, 1970 was not only pivotal, but very definitely underrated in the larger scheme of history.

By focusing on the about to implode careers of three of rock's then greatest, most culturally significant acts — the Beatles, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and Simon & Garfunkel — and combining this with the rise of another superstar in the making (James Taylor), Browne makes a very convincing case for a shift in the socio-political fabric of the culture itself.

Whether you buy into these arguments or not, at the very least it makes for a very compelling, thought provoking read. In the process of making his case, Browne gives you a ringside seat into the time tunnel of events surrounding everything from the Kent State Shootings which inspired Neil Young's "Ohio," to the legal turmoil enveloping the messy breakup of the Beatles.

What is most clear in reading Browne's Fire And Rain is that society itself was rapidly changing, and that the music of those turbulent times was dictating the change as much as anything else. With a narrative that will have you skimming its pages faster than you can turn them, Browne weaves together all of these events with the strokes of a master storyteller.

You are right there as Paul Simon's songwriter ego struggles with the idea of his sidekick Art Garfunkel making a bigger name for himself as an actor. You are likewise in the studio and backstage as the Beatles and CSNY try to hold it together amidst a gathering storm of clashing egos — and in the the Beatles case, the seductions of dueling evil businessmen.

Most interesting here though is the way that Browne details the rise of James Taylor.

In the midst of a culture that was shifting as fast as the music was, Browne rightfully points towards Taylor as the catalyst for a post sixties generation yearning for a cure to the hangover of those turbulent times in the form of a softer, less threatening musical soundtrack.

Although Taylor will never be remembered as the same sort of musical trailblazer that Lennon, McCartney, Bob Dylan, or Neil Young are, in that respect Browne's account of those times is dead on.

As much as the folk rock of the sixties may have been the bridge, it was Taylor who paved the road to its early seventies mass commercial acceptance. A very decent argument could be made that without Sweet Baby James, the Eagles and even Elton John never could have existed. Which is exactly what makes Fire And Rain such a fascinating read.

This articled was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-06-15T22:45:00.000-07:00

Neil Young Knockoff Roc-Doc Is Saved From Dullsville By Its Soundtrack

DVD Review: Here We Are In The Years: Neil Young's Music Box

With a fresh crop of new Neil Young releases arriving in stores this month — including the MusiCares Tribute To Neil Young DVD collection and the 1985 concert recording A Treasure with the International Harvesters — this knockoff, straight-to-DVD style documentary is likely to get lost in the shuffle.

Even so, Here We Are In The Years: Neil Young's Music Box is not without its merits.

Like most similarly unauthorized rock documentaries, Here We Are In The Years was made without the participation or endorsement of its subject, and features a round table of music writers and other geeky types offering up their critical assessments of the artists work. If you've ever come across any of those cheesy classic rock DVDs with titles like "A Critical Review" in the bargain section of your local music store — or worse yet, ever watched one — this will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect.

What sets Here We Are In The Years: Neil Young's Music Box apart from the pack however, is its unique focus on a central theme — in this case, Neil Young's musical influences, from surf and folk to punk and grunge. But what really saves this from being another ninety dull minutes on the couch with a bunch of annoying critics is the soundtrack.

The film makes generous use of Young's music, including some fairly choice video performance clips. Drawn mainly from common sources like the Rust Never Sleeps film, many of these will of course already be familiar to Neil Young fans. But if you watch close enough, you'll see that some are of a much rarer vintage.

In discussing Neil Young's musical influences, the film often uses his own songs to punctuate the comparisons. When discussing folk guitarist Bert Jansch for example, the soundtrack features the great On The Beach track, "Ambulance Blues" (Young once claimed to have stolen the acoustic guitar melody from Jansch).

In another scene dealing with the Rolling Stones influence, Young's "Borrowed Tune" (the title refers to his own borrowed use of the Stones' "Lady Jane"), is given equally clever use. Scenes devoted to the impact of Kraftwerk on Young's underrated 1983 Trans album, split footage from the now rare Live In Berlin concert video, with the original Kraut-rockers themselves. It's a lot of fun to watch, and certainly more engaging than the canned music accompanying most of the other roc-doc knockoffs out there.

The geek squad of rock intelligentsia assembled for the project — including Rolling Stone's Anthony DeCurtis — offer up the usual insightful analysis, along with the prerequisite spoonful of self-importance. These are, after all, rock critics. Fortunately, a healthy dose of Neil Young music makes that medicine go down much easier.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-06-09T03:33:00.000-07:00

The Rockologist On Macca In Mono And Other Pitfalls Of Remastered Recordings

Familiarity sells records.

For proof of this, look no further than the endless stream of repackaged, remastered, and in far too many cases, regurgitated deluxe reissues and boxed sets of classic albums by legacy artists — mostly from the sixties and seventies rock eras.

They just keep on coming, with no foreseeable end in sight.

When remastered deluxe sets are done right (see Neil Young's Archives Volume 1 and Bruce Springsteen's The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story), they can be a real treat for fans, offering up a pirates chest of previously unheard treasures like rare tracks and unseen DVD/Blu-ray concert footage.

Unfortunately, even the great ones can fall victim to a case of the record company going to the well one too many times though. The back catalogs of Elvis Costello and David Bowie for example, have by now been mined to the point of redundancy. In other cases, even the most seemingly well intentioned ideas can prove ultimately pointless.

For example, all the overdone four disc set devoted to Pet Sounds — Brian Wilson's sixties masterpiece with the Beach Boys — really succeeded in doing was proving that the original was just fine as it was, thank you very much.

But when a remastered, or otherwise "enhanced" deluxe recording is treated with the loving care it deserves, the results can be pure magic. Last year's remastering of Band On The Run as part of Paul McCartney's ongoing "Archive Collection" was a perfect case in point.

On its three disc version, the original recording is balanced nicely by a generously selected second disc of rarities and outtakes, as well as by a bonus DVD featuring rare footage from the studio and live onstage. The remastering of the actual Band On The Run album, overseen by Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick and Macca himself, likewise hits the mark.

The two most recent entries in McCartney's "Archive Collection," are however a decidedly more mixed bag.

First, the good news.

For the remasters of his two most famous "solo" albums, McCartney and McCartney II (Sir Paul plays every single instrument on each), Macca once again oversaw the project, so at least you know the loving care department has been covered. The packages are also very nicely done, mostly recreating the original fold out sleeves of the originals in the CD booklet, along with a few extra photographs. So far, so good.

But there is simply no way around the flat sound heard on the remastered version of Macca's classic McCartney. The music on McCartney's first solo album sounds just as good today, as it did back when it was first released in the wake of the Beatles breakup. The really great songs on this album like "Maybe I'm Amazed," "Every Night," "That Would Be Something" and "Man We Was Lonely" have only improved with age. Even the seemingly knock-off instrumental pieces like "Kreen-Akore" have a certain charm to them (overlooking the fact that they seem to be there for no other real reason than to show off McCartney's chops as a one man band).

I just don't remember this album sounding anywhere near this low-fi dull when I first heard it though. Maybe this is because the "do-it-yourself," homemade nature of the original recordings don't really lend themselves to the digital transfer process — I'm really not sure. But on the remaster, the recordings are so "clean" sounding, they sound as though they have had the life sanitized right out of them.

The drums and bass tones yield a low, dull thud, and there is so little definition elsewhere I had to check my speakers to see if the left and right channels were working properly. The vocals and guitars are on top as they should be. But everything else is so evenly and flatly distributed in the mix, the recording almost sounds like it was sound proofed.

Honestly, this sounds like McCartney in mono.

The extras on the bonus disc of McCartney are likewise disappointing. Most of the material, taken from sources like the oft-seen and heard One Hand Clapping and Live In Glasgow, has been previously issued on other remastered McCartney albums. Clocking in at just 25 minutes, the running time of the second disc also comes off like a bit of a cheat. Sorry, but I gotta' call it like I hear it here.

Truth is, I really had hoped for more with this one. But I still have to label the remastered two-disc version of McCartney as a mild disappointment.

Fortunately, the remastered sound on McCartney II is a bit better than on that of its predecessor. The bad news here is the McCartney II album itself is also the far less superior of the two, taken from a purely musical perspective. The fact that the sound here is a notch above, only serves to further demonstrate the technical inadequacies of the other.

Not that McCartney II is a bad album, because it's not. It's just that outside of maybe "Coming Up," there are nowhere near as many memorable songs as on the 1970 original. If anything, Macca is to be commended for doing something this experimental at the time. From "Coming Up" on down, McCartney II also proves that Sir Paul had his ear finely tuned to the syntho-wave sounds of its eighties day.

The stuff found on the bonus disc of rarities is especially revealing in this regard. It varies wildly from the beautiful Richard Niles arranged orchestration of "Blue Sway," to the comparatively simpler holiday message of "Wonderful Christmastime" (continuing a long standing tradition of Beatles Christmas songs). Other outtakes from the period like "Check My Machine" reveal that McCartney was nearly as obsessed with electronic advances in music technology as Neil Young was at the same time with his own Trans.

The difference here is that Macca was much quieter about it. The one thing for sure here is that the outtakes and unreleased songs on the remastered McCartney II certainly reveal another side of the normally perceived to be much more musically conservative Paul McCartney. For this reason alone, the remastered McCartney II is a definite keeper.

As for the actual album?

It's a decent, if not quite perfect representation of exactly where McCartney was at when the album was originally recorded. The sound is also quite a bit better (perhaps owing to the more advanced studio technology at the time it was originally made), than on the (musically speaking anyway) much more memorable McCartney album.

At the time it was first released, McCartney II was widely regarded as an artistic comeback for the former Beatle, and this certainly shows in pop gems like the aforementioned "Coming Up" and the Kraftwerk inspired "Temporary Secretary." Likewise, Macca shows he can still deliver the token syrupy ballad with "Waterfalls."

But there are precious few songs as memorable as "Maybe I'm Amazed" here. Which is a shame because the recording on this remastered album is so much better than on 1970's far superior album McCartney.

It's still a little flat sounding, but in this case eighties synths appear to win out over the DIY technology of seventies home recording. But the main pull of McCartney II remains the extras, which simply kick the crap out of those found on the remastered McCartney.

In fairness, I haven't seen the DVD/Blu-ray footage on the even more souped up versions of these remastered albums. But the audio versions nonetheless fall a bit short.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-06-01T01:29:00.000-07:00

Steven Wilson, Aviv Geffen And Blackfield Hit A Home Run In Seattle

Concert Review: Blackfield At Studio 7, Seattle, WA, 5/31/11

For the Seattle stop on Blackfield's current American tour, the near capacity crowd at Studio 7, a tiny, hole in the wall club located in the city's industrial Sodo district, just a stones throw away from Qwest Field — where MLB's Seattle Mariners beat the Baltimore Orioles 3-2 on the same night — caught a break.

Following the passing of guitarist/vocalist Steven Wilson's father, several Blackfield shows were canceled as Wilson flew back home to England to pay his final respects. Thankfully for Seattle fans, their Studio 7 show marked the bands return to active duty, for what turned out to be a home run show.

Despite his recent personal loss, Wilson in particular, seemed to be particularly energized during a blazing and well balanced two hour set, drawing generously from all three of Blackfield's studio albums. When he is not busy with a multitude of other projects ranging from his more famous band Porcupine Tree to overseeing the remastering of King Crimson's back catalog, Wilson fronts Blackfield along with Israeli singer/songwriter Aviv Geffen.

For the Seattle show, Wilson even sat in briefly for the opening set from Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess. In addition to Wilson's unscheduled appearance, Rudess' treated the enraptured crowd to a virtuoso solo performance on the keys, highlighted by a brief medley of classic progressive rock tunes including Genesis' "Blood On The Rooftops."

After a brief break allowing for just about enough time to quaff a quick adult beverage, Blackfield took to the stage with a powerful version of "Blood" from their new Welcome To My DNA album. Like most of the new songs from DNA performed in Seattle, "Blood" took on a new power in a live setting only hinted at on the studio version. It was a killer opener, and a perfect segue into the song "Blackfield" from the bands debut album.

"Glass House" and "Go To Hell" also proved to be standouts from the new album, the former displaying Wilson's vocals and soaring guitar, and the latter showcasing an equally impressive vocal from Geffen. More than anything, the new songs proved just how well these two great musicians jell together as a unit.

Blackfield II — their best record for my money — was also well represented in Seattle. Although it would have been nice to hear the mysteriously absent "Christenings," great versions of "Epidemic" and "Miss U" proved to be just the right antidote.

A three song encore brought one of the best moments from Blackfield II though, as Geffen sang the lyrics to "End Of The World" from under a black hood in an apparent reference to living under the ever present shadow of terrorism in his native Israel.

It was a very powerful ending to an amazing show.

Setlist:

Blood
Blackfield
Glass House
Go To Hell
Open Mind
Pain
DNA
Waving
1000 People
Once
Hole In Me
Miss U
Zigota
Epidemic
Oxygen
Where U My Love?
Dissolving

Encore:
Hello
End Of The World
Cloudy Now

This review was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-05-26T01:04:00.000-07:00

Jimmy Fallon Channels Neil Young Again: With Crosby & Nash!

It's a party in the U.S.A.

2011-05-04T04:26:00.000-07:00

All Work And No Play Makes Glen...Well You Know the Rest...

Neil Young looks out over the horizon and wonders "Where's the damn book, Glen?"

Haven't updated the blog in awhile, so I thought I'd check in and bring y'all up to speed on all things Glen.

The book: As most of you already know, I'm working furiously to meet my publishers deadline for the book I'm writing on Neil Young originally scheduled to come out this fall -- but that will more likely be published next April (at least according to my own Google searches for book store pre-orders on Neil Young FAQ).

This is mostly my own fault.

I was supposed to deliver a finished manuscript this past April, and when it became apparent I wasn't going to make that deadline, I asked for an extension until June (which my publishers at Backbeat thankfully, if reluctantly granted).

The good news, is that although things like work have gotten in the way, I'm still confident that I will make Backbeat's graciously extended deadline.

But I'm not gonna' lie here... it's gonna' be tough. I've basically got about eight chapters and 30,000 words to complete, and about four weeks to get there. I will make it, but you are still not at all discouraged to wish me luck in getting there...

Work: The new day job is both a blessing and a bitch. For those of you who endured my near continuous bitching about being unemployed for two years until last October, you already know how much I needed this. The fact that I got my underpaid gig slinging cable at all is something I am also highly grateful for. That two years of total poverty took its toll.

That said, it's been a tough ride. The schedule sucks (mid-week days off), as does the commute from West Seattle to the East Side, a monster run encompassing both the notoriously tricky West Seattle Bridge and three major freeways (I-5, I-90, and I-405). Despite the charming personality you all know and love, I also get the overall impression the youngsters at my day gig would love nothing more than to get me the fuck outta there. Hey, I gotta' call it like I see it. In just six months I've also been written up for a quick exit twice -- so far, I've managed to dodge both.

I'm probably not long for a future there, bottom line. That said, I'm doing the best I can -- and actually had a personal best sales day there today. But do I see a long term future of being screamed at by pissed off customers who don't understand their costly cable bills (and by the way, neither do I)? In a word, no I don't. I'm trying my best, I really am. But in reality the odds are not in my favor...they see me as an old fool.

I'm not of course, but in an odd sort of way, I sort of understand why they view me that way. After all, I was once an obnoxious, self-important, too cool for words twenty-something myself.

Better days lie ahead I'm sure. But for now, this is gonna' have to do. On a side note, thanks for getting Osama, Obama. Now please...please...get us some meaningful, well-paying, and yes "fun" jobs, sir.

Blogcritics: BC's role in re-establishing me as a still relevant music critic after chasing my own ass for much of the nineties following my spectacular flameout as an aspiring record exec in L.A. simply cannot be overstated, and for that I will always owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.

That said, I cannot deny the overall dip in quality of the music writing at BC over the past year in particular, nor the unfulfilled promises of improvement since the "regime change" to Technorati last year. The mass flight to greener pastures elsewhere from some of BC's best former music writers in the past 12 months or so speaks volumes -- but you already know that if you have been paying any attention.

My own recent absence at BC is largely due more to my need to get this book done than anything else -- I won't return to an active role there until NYFAQ is done (hopefully June 1). Once I do -- and if I do -- I will resume being as active as ever in my dual roles as a music editor and writer. The Rockologist and all the rest will be back in force.

But this is provided I see signs that things are improving. The fact that Donald Gibson is now the senior music ed is one of the biggest reasons I am optimistic that BC can regain its once mighty position. Donald is one of those guys who was pretty much born to edit and write about music -- and he does so very well. On the other hand, the fact that elsewhere the site has the increasing feel of a bunch of brats throwing sand at each other in a sandbox does not raise hopes that things are improving.

We'll see...

Social Life: Non existent at present, but stay tuned.

2011-04-13T19:24:00.000-07:00

Steven Wilson And Aviv Geffen Reunite On Blackfield's Welcome To My DNA

Music Review: Blackfield - Welcome To My DNA

Welcome To My DNA, the third album in the on and off collaboration between Steven Wilson and Israeli singer/songwriter Aviv Geffen known as Blackfield, is a bit different from its two predecessors.

Wilson is of course, much better known to music fans in the western hemisphere as the creative mastermind behind modern progressive giants Porcupine Tree, and as the successful producer of such projects as the ongoing remastering of King Crimson's back catalog. Geffen — although far less known in this part of the world — is a huge pop star in his own right in his native Israel (where he is known as much for his outspoken political views, as he is for his music).

Coming from my own perspective as an admittedly diehard fan of Wilson's work with Porcupine Tree, Blackfield's albums have always represented a refreshing, if slightly more introspective and melancholic departure from his heavier records with PT. Aviv Geffen's role, to me at least, has always seemed to be more like a foil to Wilson, and a damned good one too — especially on songs like "Epidemic" and "Christenings" from Blackfield II.

This new album, on the other hand, is going to take some getting used to.

Geffen's presence on Welcome To My DNA is a lot more front and center for one thing. There's no more playing Andrew Ridgely to Steven Wilson's George Michael here. The music is also much lusher sounding (thanks to Wilson's densest production yet on a Blackfield album).

In fairness to Geffen (and again coming from my own somewhat admitted bias coming in as a Wilson fan), he largely rises to the challenge. Taking a much greater share of the lead vocals here (and from what I can tell, the songwriting as well), Geffen has lost most (but not all) of the distracting Israeli accent of past songs like "Epidemic." The new songs are mostly pretty strong too.

My lone complaint — and it's a relatively minor one — is that the mildly melancholic pop of previous Blackfield albums gives way to outright pessimism here, especially on darker songs like "Go To Hell" and the apocalyptic "Oxygen." The latter takes place in a world where "there's no oxygen left on our planet" and "everyone's sleeping with guns, someone's going to die."

Hey, I'm all for going green too. But can you say downer, dude?

But in the midst of all the gloom and doom, there are still some glistening modern alternative pop tracks to be found between the cracks. The first single from the album, "Waving" is a particularly good example. Steven Wilson is back up front on vocals and guitar for one thing. And despite the presence of some occasionally distracting strings, Wilson's ear for a pop hook remains as strong as ever (I'm assuming Wilson wrote this one).

Wilson's influence also comes through on tracks like "Blood" (the albums heaviest track, it plays almost like an outtake from PT's The Incident). The opening track, "Glass House," is another standout with a Steven Wilson lead vocal, and a string arrangement that manages the trick of being both subtle and lush at the same time.

Welcome To My DNA is Blackfield's most pronounced walk through the minefield of darkness and light yet. I suspect it will be growing on me for quite awhile.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-04-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

On Leon Russell And Elton John

So I have to honest here. The first time I ever heard of Leon Russell was as a pre-teen kid cruising my way through the pages of Circus Magazine, where I came across an an ad for Leon's debut solo album, which was at the time still called Can A Blue Man Sing The Whites?.

Cool title, I thought.

The album was of course eventually released as Leon Russell's self-titled solo album by Shelter Records (not sure whatever happened to that original title), and upon the first time I heard it, I was instantly enthralled.

But to be completely honest here, the first side of this album did absolutely nothing for me at the time. It was the second side that I really liked.

I liked Leon's weathered, sand-papery voice well enough, and the production of the record, populated as it was by the then very much in vogue Muscle Shoals sound of people like Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, by way of British pop stars like Eric Clapton also went down very easy.

But to me, a few of the songs were still kind of lacking.

The second side however? Well, that was something else entirely.

Kicking off with "Delta Lady," and proceeding from there to scream through an entire side of New Orleans delta funk like "Pisces Apple Lady" and "Roll Away The Stone," this damn thing didn't let up for a second. I was instantly hooked. Anchoring it all was Leon's world weary rasp, set against some of the funkiest, Nawlins' honky tonk piano you will ever hear in this lifetime.

From this auspicious debut as an amazing solo artist who was clearly (at least to my pre-teen ears) one to be reckoned with, Leon went down hill fast, at least for my money he did. Latter albums yielding hits like "Tightrope," as well as ill-advised experiments like the country tinged "Hank Wilson Is Back" albums, just never completely recaptured the spark of that initial, brilliant debut album for me.

Of course, let's keep things in perspective here. I was, after all, still a kid.

Obviously, Leon also went on to much bigger and better things. His stint as the bandleader and "master of space and time" in Joe Cocker's extended Mad Dogs and Englishmen band is particularly memorable — and was obviously pivotal in establishing him as one of the true greats.

Still, as great as Joe Cocker's blues shouting on his version of "Delta Lady" is on the Mad Dogs double live album from 1970 (and it is pretty great), I'll take Leon's, less celebrated original version in a heartbeat.

Not long after, Leon stole the show at the all-star benefit Concert For Bangla Desh show, by kicking the living crap out of a blues medley including songs like "Youngblood" and "Jumping Jack Flash." The other headliners that night, which included no less than George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton didn't stand a chance against him.

Which brings me to last nights episode of Saturday Night Live...

Like Leon Russell himself, Elton John is a great artist, who I personally feel shot his creative wad fairly early in the game, but for entirely different reasons.

In my own opinion, Elton's first five or so several records represent his best work. But even these are spotty. For every truly brilliant moment like "Burn Down The Mission," "Rocket Man," and "Madman Across The Water, there are also ample amounts of filler on these records.

And once we get past Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, the filler eventually gives way to paint by numbers hit-making. By the time of the eighties, even that formidable, but equally formulaic well of catchy pop tunes began to run dry.

The thing is, even for all of his concessions to blatant, and occasionally schmaltzy commercialization over the years, Elton's heart still seems to be in the right place — and nowhere is this more apparent than in the way he has taken Leon Russell under his wing in the past year.

I'm not entirely sure what got Leon to the place where Elton found him — apparently broke and semi-destitute, in failing health, and with his status as a legendary artist largely forgotten by a brutally short-sighted music industry.

All I know, is Elton came to his rescue in the past year — both making an album and going on tour with him and inducting him into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame — and Leon has acknowledged the debt in kind.

Elton John's heart has never been in question in that respect. Still, it was kind of sad to see Elton and Leon together on Saturday Night Live this past weekend, when the former hosted the show. I give Elton ultimate credit for bringing Leon along to what ultimately may prove to be his last dance before a nationally televised audience.

But seeing Leon as a shell of his former "master of space and time" self (his voice was barely audible in the sound mix) was also kind of sad — especially as Elton participated in skit after self aggrandizing skit hammering home the fact that he is a very famous, very wealthy, and very gay pop star.

Look, Elton, we get it. You're rich. You're famous. You're gay. We get it.

But thank you once again for reaching out to Leon Russell.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine

2011-03-20T02:57:00.000-07:00

Marillion's Live From Cadogan Hall: Much More Than Just Another Acoustic Show

Music Review: Marillion - Live From Cadogan Hall (2 CD/2 DVD)

Marillion's third live concert DVD in recent years (dating back to 2005's Marbles On The Road) is a radical departure from both of its predecessors.

Filmed on the final night of the Less Is More tour — which took its name from Marillion's 2009 album of the same name, and featuring stripped down recreations of previously released songs from the progressive rock band's vast back catalog — Live From Cadogan Hall is still much more than the simple acoustic concert document you might think.

There is a whole lot more going on here than your standard two hours featuring a bunch of guys sitting on stools strumming folk guitars, and as a concert film, Live From Cadogan Hall leaves you with the inescapable feeling of having just witnessed something quite special.

The cathedral like ambiance of London's prestigious Cadogan Hall also makes for an appropriately elegant backdrop — especially during this DVD's many overhead shots showing a giant Christmas tree perched high above the band (the concert was filmed back in December 2009).

One of the first things you notice about this concert though, is the number of diverse, unusual instruments being played by the musicians on the stage.

These are things you wouldn't normally associate with a rock concert at all. There are xylophones, glockenspiels, dulcimers, celestes — there is even an autoharp which keyboardist Mark Kelly at one point claims to have built himself.

All manner of percussion instruments — bells, chimes, wooden blocks and the like — are also prevalent in this concert. They are not only played by monster drummer Ian Mosley either, but rather at one point or another by all five members of Marillion.

The thing is, all of these exotic instruments serve as far more than just window dressing for this concert. Marillion make fabulous use of all of them throughout, showing off their musical chops in ways that are only hinted at in the more grandiose progressive rock recordings the band is so much better known for.

From the oriental motifs of "Interior Lulu" to the lighter shades provided by Kelly's xylophone on "Hard As Love," this album is above all else a showcase for Marillion as a band of fabulous musicians. Even vastly underrated bassist Pete Trewavas gets a moment to shine here, turning in a series of fabulous sounding runs on "The Space," rumbling just underneath the tandem of Kelly's jazzy keys and Steve Rothery's gorgeous guitar.

Speaking of Rothery, although the guitarist is better known for the soaring, Pink Floydian heights he normally reaches with Marillion, his guitar work here is no less worthy. With the smaller arrangements heard here, Rothery is able to display a more subdued, but no less powerful and intricate side of his considerable guitar prowess. Lest anyone worry though, Rothery finally cuts loose with a ripping solo on the second disc closer "Three Minute Boy."

The setlist on Live From Cadogan Hall is also one sure to please Marillion fans. In addition to the entire Less Is More album — including new versions of everything from their earliest songs after Steve "H" Hogarth replaced original vocalist Fish in 1989 ("The Space") to more recent material from the group's 2008 double-disc Happiness Is The Road ("Wrapped Up In Time") — the second disc includes new takes on songs like "You're Gone," Marillion's near hit from the 2004 prog opus Marbles.

There aren't really any extras to speak of on this DVD, and that's okay. The 127 minutes of exquisite music here should be plenty enough to satisfy fans of the band, and for anyone willing to gamble twenty bucks, perhaps make them a few new ones as well.

The DTS Digital Sound Mix captures every musically nuanced highlight of this great concert (and there are plenty of them). The high definition video, while shot rather simply, is tasteful and straight forward, concentrating on the musicians onstage as well it should.

Marillion's Live From Cadogan Hall will be out on double disc DVD and Blu-ray on March 29, 2009, as well as on a double disc audio CD.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine

2011-03-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

Worst Neil Young Video Ever? You Decide...

Doing research for a book on Neil Young, unfortunately means also reacquainting yourself with some of his more embarrassing albums, such as 1986's particularly vapid Landing On Water. Here, "Touch The Night," a song that when played live with Crazy Horse circa 1984, could actually be mistaken for a slightly less great retread of "Like A Hurricane," is reduced to a typically overproduced, overdubbed eighties mess.

The drums are particularly awful (even though they are played by the great Steve Jordan). As for the video, well, get ready for Neil Young as Clark Kent.

But wait. I take it all back. This lovely little ditty, taken from the same album, may be the actual worst Neil Young video:

2011-03-16T01:49:00.000-07:00

To V Or Not To V: All Hail Your New Reptilian Gods, Puny Humans

In case you missed it — and if the ratings for this season are any indication, most of you did — ABC wrapped up the second season of its once much-ballyhooed alien invasion series V this past Tuesday.

Officially, Tuesday's two months too early "Mother's Day" episode was only the season finale for this reboot of the eighties sci-fi cult classic. But few outside its most optimistic fans expect the show to be back next fall. In many ways, V was doomed from the start — a combination of both classic mishandling by the network (was the show ever around for more than a few weeks in between hiatuses?), and its own initial failure to live up to the enormous wave of hype preceding its 2009 debut.

Still, for pure balls alone, you've really got to hand it to these guys. If this really is the end of the road for V, then they have gone out on a full head of blood, guts, skin and cheese. In one of the more audacious risks ever taken on behalf of a show facing almost certain cancellation, the writers and producers of V threw the television equivalent of a last second, fourth and long, Hail Mary pass on Tuesday night.

Major characters, including lizard-loving teen drip Tyler, alien baby daddy Ryan, and repentant eighties alien Queen Bitch Diana (Jane Badler) all got killed off in the final thirty minutes (Diana's lizard spear through the gut was a particularly bloody scene for network TV). And in perhaps the ultimate "if we're going down, were taking you with us" move, the writers then proceeded to write the rest of us humans out of the show. As it turns out we weren't conquered by superior technology or military might at all, but rather by the "bliss" of alien lizard super crack.

Leading up to this, V likewise went for broke in trying to match the cheese of the original eighties series. They brought back original star Marc Singer — now sporting a Ming The Merciless Fu Manchu to boot!

There was even a brief eighties sliding split screen segueway from Tyler's death by rough alien sex aboard the mothership, to a "meanwhile, back on Earth" shot with Tyler's Mom Erika (Elizabeth Mitchell) being kidnapped by black hooded thugs. Earlier in the episode, a different set of kidnappers wore grey alien masks. Nice touch.

But there were also holes big enough to drive a fleet of saucers through. Like how for instance, does Ryan manage to sneak out of a fascist tent revival meeting full of lizard converts after her amphibious majesty Queen Anna demands their worship on bended knee?

Or, in V's biggest reveal, how does a full bodied, fifteen foot high lizard baby turn into a manufactured by skin, human clone of the shorter, much more petite Princess Lisa — who is still convincing enough to seduce the hapless romantic Tyler? Well, okay. The kid is dumb as a box of rocks and twice as gullible. Still, that is some serious skin shrinkage.

Cheese factor aside, this go-for-broke attitude is exactly what the finale needed if this is really it. Despite being mishandled by the network nearly every step of the way (and following an over-hyped, but underwhelming start), V really was starting to get good this year. One has to wonder if a third year might have brought a breakout season.

As it stands, V concludes with enough wide open spaces to fill several Grand Canyons. It could always still get picked up on cable by a network like SyFy or Chiller. Otherwise though, they have ended things up with an audaciously spectacular F.U.

All hail your new Reptilian Gods. Puny Humans.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-03-02T20:03:00.000-08:00

Bruce Hart's Pro-Wrestling Tell All Puts You In The Middle Of The Ring

Book Review: Straight From The Hart by Bruce Hart

Ever since the mafia like code of silence governing the secrets of professional wrestling known as "kayfabe" was broken once and for all back in the nineties, pro-wrestling insiders have been tripping all over themselves to publish their own "tell-all" books about the sports entertainment business.

Some of these books, such as Mick Foley's Have A Nice Day have proven to be both entertaining, and quite revealing. Many others however, written by such names as Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff and Ric Flair, have more often than not yielded little in the way of previously unknown details, and in a few cases have even proven to be more than a little self serving.

Bruce Hart's Straight From The Hart falls somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. On the one hand, this memoir of Hart's life as both a wrestling performer and "booker" (for his father Stu Hart's Stampede Wrestling promotion) offers a fascinating inside look at the pro-wrestling business, with all of its colorful cast of characters and equally cutthroat behind the scenes politics.

At the same time, Hart's book also serves as a forum for the author to air some of his own dirty laundry in public. Reading between the lines, it's hard not to see through Hart's often harsh criticisms of his more famous siblings (this is especially true in the case of his brother Bret "Hitman" Hart), as not being at least a little colored by his own professional jealousy. There also seems to be some genuine hurt there over the way that Bret Hart handled the matter of Bruce's ghost writing Bret's syndicated wrestling column for the Calgary Sun.

Mostly though, this book is a real eye-opener that makes for some very fascinating reading, even if you don't necessarily call yourself a wrestling fan. As the lesser known son of the Hart family — a professional wrestling dynasty that includes such famous names as Bret and Owen Hart, British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith and Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart — Hart's qualifications as an insider with unique insight into the inner workings of the squared circle are virtually without rival.

Some of his stories will of course be familiar to wrestling fans. The story of the infamous "Montreal screwjob" at 1997's WWE Survivor Series pay-per-view for example certainly represents familiar territory. As such, Hart's own retelling of what went down on the night that Bret Hart was "screwed" out of the WWE title in a real life conspiracy involving Vince McMahon, arch-rival Shawn Michaels and referee (and close friend) Earl Hebner offers few new details.

The death of his brother Owen Hart however, is a revealing look into how this tragedy (Owen Hart fell to his death while attempting to perform a stunt from the ceiling of an arena at a WWE pay per view show) shook his family and friends to their emotional core.

In Bruce Hart's account, Owen's death reads like the latest chapter in a long series of events that came to define the unique love-hate relationship which continues to exist between the Hart family and Vince McMahon to this day. Even as the family was grieving and pointing fingers of blame over the tragedy, there was also a strange business as usual aspect about it, that seemed to suggest the show must nonetheless go on. It makes for some of the most eye-opening reading in this book.

Elsewhere, Straight From The Hart reveals many of the insider details you'd expect from such a book. There are the humorous road stories about the "ribs" wrestlers often pull on one another as a way to amuse themselves during the otherwise mundane grind of traveling from city to city during their decidedly unglamorous "house show" tours.

There are also the darker stories about steroid use, and the accompanying rate of premature death amongst wrestling performers. This is most tragically illustrated here by the case of family friend and promising wrestling talent Brian Pillman, found dead in a hotel room at the age of 35.

Mostly though, Straight From The Hart is Bruce Hart's own story about growing up in one of the most powerful families in wrestling, complete with all the personal memories and anecdotes one would expect. To his credit as a writer, Hart also holds little back here — whether its dealing with the backstage politicking or with more deeply personal matters like the deaths of Pillman and his brother Owen.

There is plenty of dirty laundry here to be sure, and more often than not Bruce Hart seems to have some personal axes to grind. But the story is also told with the candid feel of reading from someone's diary. In that respect, Bruce Hart's Straight From The Hart puts you right in the middle of the ring.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-02-23T03:39:00.000-08:00

Radiohead's The King Of Limbs: These Are My Twisted Thoughts

After having had the opportunity to live with Radiohead's new album The King Of Limbs for nearly a week now, I can honestly report that I still have semi-mixed feelings about it. Which, at least in the case of this particular band, is probably a good thing.

So, to borrow from the title of a song once intended for this album, these are my twisted thoughts.

You see, Radiohead is a band whose albums — especially the good ones — have this tendency to sink in rather slowly, taking deliciously insidious root in your brain and in your psyche, brick by brick. Likewise, the really great ones — as I suspect The King Of Limbs may well prove to be — reveal previously undiscovered new sonic textures that might have been initially glossed over with each new spin.

Like most really great music, once it gets under your skin, Radiohead's best stuff has this tendency to really take root and grow on you. The journey getting there can be occasionally difficult, and quite often is. But the final destination is almost always worth it in the end, and also one which much more often than not leaves you wanting more once it's over.

The King Of Limbs is no exception.

I also suspect that the physical CD release — which is still about a month away — will reveal even more new audio treasures of the sort only hinted at in the initial MP3 and Wav downloads that were released this past Friday. In the case of 2007's In Rainbows, this was certainly true and then some. The difference between that initial download release, and the actual CD that came later, was almost like hearing two completely different records.

The King Of Limbs marks Radiohead's full-on return to the layered, somewhat icy soundscapes of 2000's Kid A, and its 2001 companion album Amnesiac, following the fuller, more traditional rock instrumentation (at least comparatively speaking) heard on 2003's Hail To The Thief and 2007's In Rainbows. Not surprisingly, there are already rumors afoot of a similarly forthcoming companion to The King Of Limbs (based on the title of the closing track "Separator," and its lyric "if you think this is over").

On an initial few listens, the songs here have the sort of unfinished feel to them that — at least to the more casual listener — might sound more like a series of half-baked ideas, even though looped over the occasionally lush, often trippy, but nonetheless intriguing music that it is.

On the surface at least, there is nothing on The King Of Limbs with the same grand, sonic sweep as In Rainbows best songs like "Reckoner," nor a song anywhere as fully realized (at least in a traditional sense) as "All I Need," from that same album. Even so, there is a hypnotic quality to these songs that is almost impossible not to be sucked in by, particularly after repeated listens.

But the real star of The King Of Limbs is Thom Yorke's voice. As most fans of Radiohead's post-OK Computer work already know, Radiohead's lyrics have not always been one of the bands stronger suits.

When you can pick them out here, lines like "I'm such a tease and you're such a flirt" (from this album's "Little By Little"), make about as much sense as "yesterday, I woke up sucking a lemon" did the first time Yorke sang them on "Everything In Its Right Place" from Kid A.

Even so, the way that Yorke uses his high pitched, borderline eerie sounding falsetto as an instrument to not only compliment, but enhance the overall atmospheric textures of this album is nothing short of amazing.

When Yorke's lonely, seemingly just beyond the grave voice is looped over and over saying what sounds like "don't...hurt...me" during the song "Give Up The Ghost" for instance, I have absolutely no idea what he's singing about. But, and perhaps inexplicably, I still find myself drawn spellbound to it like a moth to a flame.

The first time I heard Yorke use his voice as an instrument like this was on 2000's classic Kid A, an album which, along with its companion piece Amnesiac, gave me initial cause to draw comparisons to what David Bowie did back in the seventies on his Berlin trilogy with Brian Eno.

That comparison largely still holds, by the way. But hearing Yorke's use of his voice as a unique compliment to the music on The King Of Limbs, I'm also reminded a lot of what Neil Young did on his highly under-appreciated eighties syntho-pop experiment Trans. It's probably not a coincidence that Yorke has been known to occasionally sneak in a few verses of Young's "After The Gold Rush" during the song "Everything In Its Right Place" at Radiohead's concert performances.

Much like Kid A (an album which The King Of Limbs, not coincidentally in my own opinion, shares much in common with), and to a slightly lesser extent, Thom Yorke's solo album The Eraser, the icy cool of Radiohead's new album will probably not bring any comfort to those fans who have been patiently waiting since the nineties for that followup to The Bends or OK Computer (neither of which are probably forthcoming anytime soon by the way).

But for right now, The King Of Limbs really feels like one of those great Radiohead albums.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-02-16T19:45:00.000-08:00

New Radiohead Album Arrives Saturday As Download, CD And Vinyl To Follow

Radiohead's long awaited new album — their eighth studio release overall and the band's first since 2007's In Rainbows shook up the recording industry with its then revolutionary new distribution model — will be available this Saturday as a download through a special website set up by the band. The album is once again produced by longtime Radiohead musical collaborator Nigel Godrich.

Details about the new album, titled The King Of Limbs, were first released in a statement by the band this past Monday, and in typical Radiohead fashion, were predictably sketchy.

What is clear is that Radiohead will once again initially employ the same download-only distribution model they used for In Rainbows, although there will not be a "pay what you want" or otherwise free option this time around. At the time of its 2007 release, In Rainbows shocked the music industry by allowing fans to download the album for whatever price they chose to pay, including paying nothing at all. This time around, the download will come at a fixed price of about $9.00 American.

The band will subsequently release physical CD and vinyl editions of the album on March 28. The vinyl edition is being touted by the band as the world's first "newspaper album," due to its elaborate jacket that folds out like a newspaper. Perhaps, they have never heard of Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick, which was released in a similar jacket way back in the early seventies.

What is less clear about The King Of Limbs however, is the track listing. A Japanese website set up for online pre-orders was at one point reporting that the album will feature eight new tracks, but has since removed the post. Early sessions for the album in 2009 produced two tracks, "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" and "These Are My Twisted Words," which were subsequently leaked as downloads.

However, various news sources on the web report that neither of these are likely to make the final cut of The King Of Limbs. AtEaseWeb, the popular, semi-official Radiohead fan site, suggests the following songs as strong possibilities for the album:

The Daily Mail
Mouse Dog Bird
Lotus Flower
Give Up The Ghost
Skirting On The Surface
Open The Floodgates
Let Me Take Control/Chris Hodge
Burn The Witch
No Shame
Pay Day
Super Collider

While sites purported to be streaming tracks from the album are likewise said to be plentiful, a diligent Google search failed to yield any actual results for places to hear so much as a single snippet. Of course, we will all know by this Saturday, won't we?

American fans can download Radiohead's The King Of Limbs beginning this Saturday, February 19 by going here.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-02-16T03:55:00.000-08:00

By Request: NYFAQ Table Of Contents

Since a number of you have been asking -- and since my ever-anxious publishers today joined this group -- here is a preview (subject to change) of the table of contents for my Neil Young book, which I still hope to have out by his fall.

As always, this comes with the usual disclaimer that things are subject to change as events develop between now and my late spring deadline to deliver the actual goods.

Neil Young FAQ

The Albums And Archives Of Neil Young

Contents

Introduction: Everybody Knows This Is Neil

About The Author

Forward (Writer TBD)

Part One: A Dreamer Of Pictures

Neil Young’s Early Years: 1963 – 1969

1. - I Am A Child: From Canada To California
2. - Hello, Broken Arrow: Buffalo Springfield
3. - Buffalo Springfield Again: Latter Day Remembrances, Compilations, Anthologies And Boxed Sets
4. – Is This Place At Your Command?; Neil Young, Elliot Roberts And David Briggs
5. – When I Saw Those Thrashers Rolling By: Neil Young & Crazy Horse
6. - Sleeps With Angels (Too Soon): Departed Bandmates, Brothers In Arms, And Sisters In Song
7. - You See Us Together Chasing The Moonlight: Neil Young’s Bands

Part Two: The Needle, The Damage And The Ditch:

1969 – 1975

8. - We Have All Been Here Before: A Brief History Of Crosby, Stills, Nash (And Sometimes Young)
9. – An Open Letter From Neil Young (Reprinted from Blogcritics Magazine)
10. - There Was A Band Playing In My Head, And I Felt Like Getting High: After The Gold Rush
11. - I’ve Been To Hollywood, I’ve Been To Redwood: Harvest, Nashville, And The Stray Gators
12. – So I Headed For The Ditch: Time Fades Away, On The Beach, And Tonight’s The Night – Neil Young’s Ditch Trilogy
13. – Why Do I Keep Fuckin’ Up?: Neil Young’s Biggest Commercial Flops
14. – Hey, Ho, Away We Go, We’re On The Road To Never: Neil Young’s Most Underrated Albums

Part Three: Dancing On The Light From Star To Star: 1975-1980

15. – Zuma, The Stills-Young Band, And The Return Of The Horse
16. – Like An Ocean Fish Who Swam Upstream: Chrome Dreams, American Stars And Bars, The Ducks, Decade, And Comes A Time
17. - More To The Picture Than Meets The Eye: Human Highway, Rust Never Sleeps, And The Punk Rock Connection
18. – Get Off Of That Couch, Turn Off That MTV: Neil Young’s Live Recordings
19. – Piece Of Crap: Five Essential Neil Young Bootlegs
20. – A Kinder, Gentler Machine Gun Hand: Five Great Neil Young Concerts From Seattle, Washington

Part Four: Sample And Hold: The Geffen Years And Neil Young’s Lost Decade

21. – Why Do You Ride That Crazy Horse?: Hawks And Doves, ReAcTor, And A Kid Named Ben
22. – I Need A Unit To Sample And Hold: Trans, Island In The Sun, And Geffen
23. – Computer Cowboy: The Best Neil Young Websites
24. – No Matter Where I Go, I Never Hear My Record On The Radio: The Shocking Pinks, Old Ways, And Farm Aid
25. – Strobe Lights Flashin’ On The Overpass: Landing On Water, Life, Muddy Track, And The Bridge School
26. – Aint’ Singin’ For Pepsi: The Blue Notes, American Dream, Ten Men Working, And The Road Back Home
27. – What We Have Got Here, Is A Perfect Track: Eldorado, Times Square, The Young And The Restless
28. – This Shit Don’t Sell: A Brief History Of Neil Young’s Unreleased Recordings

Part Five: A Thousand Points Of Light: Neil In The Nineties

29. – Rockin’ In The Free World: Freedom And The “Return” Of Neil Young
30. - Don’t Spook The Horse: Ragged Glory And Arc/Weld
31. – From Hank To Hendrix: The Most Noteworthy Neil Young Covers, Collaborations, Sendups And Tributes
32. – On This Harvest Moon: Twenty Years Later, The Sequel
33. - Change Your Mind: Sleeps With Angels, Mirror Ball, And How The Punks Met The Godfather Of Grunge
34. - Good To See You Again: Broken Arrow, Dead Man, Looking Forward, And Year Of The Horse
35. - Touch The Night: Neil Young’s Latter Day Disciples

Part Six: It’s A Dream: 2000 – 2011

36. – Let’s Roll: Broken Arrow, 9/11, Are You Passionate?, And Greendale
37. - Falling Off The Face Of The Earth: Prairie Wind And Heart Of Gold
38. - Motion Pictures On My TV Screen: Shakey In The Movies
39. – Should’ve Been Done Long Ago: Living With War, Let’s Impeach The President, And The Freedom Of Speech Tour
40. – Sure Enough, They’ll Be Selling Stuff: The Resurrection Of The Archives
41. - No Hidden Path: Chrome Dreams II and Fork In The Road
42. – I Said Solo, They Said Acoustic: Neil Young Brings Le Noise To The Twisted Road
43. – Buffalo Springfield Again

Acknowledgments/ Sources

Index

PS - Congrats to Neil on his long overdue first Grammy for music this past weekend!

2011-02-09T04:04:00.000-08:00

All We Are Saying Is Give V A Chance

Although ABC's reboot of the original cult 1980's sci-fi alien invasion series V got off to a somewhat sluggish start during its initial freshman season, I'm really liking where things seem to be headed with this years sophomore run.

The biggest fear right now though, comes with the rumors I'm hearing of a season ending cliffhanger. With the show experiencing what would be — to put it kindly — rather soft ratings, and with ABC's demonstrated lack of patience for giving shows like this one a second chance, it is entirely possible the only ones left hanging by this season's finale might be the viewers who've stuck through it this far.

Given the network's track record with sci-fi series like this one, I'm not much liking the prospects for a season three of V next fall right about now. The success of Lost notwithstanding, ABC is still the network that pulled the plug on both the semi-promising Flash Forward, and the much limper Happy Town without so much as blinking, despite initially hyping both to the moon and back.

Consigning V to a similar fate — to make way for the latest season of Wipeout or whatever — would just be a damn shame. Because right now, I think that V may be finally onto something.

Take Tuesday night's episode "Concordia" for example. Up until this point, V's main characters — played by a great cast of vets like Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost), Morris Chestnut, and the always reliable cable sci-fi series stalwart Joel Gretsch (Taken, The 4400) — have been fairly one dimensional.

As FBI agent Erica Evans, Mitchell has played both sides the most of all — cow-towing to the evil V new age alien lizard queen Anna (the deliciously sexy and seductively evil Morena Baccarin), even as she knows the bitch has designs on an obscene inter-species breeding program involving her own son.

Yet, despite her own inner conflicted nature, she has always taken the moral high ground. That changed tonight, as the FBI agent signed on to a plot to take out Anna for good, with the help of new cast member Oded Fehr (in a typically hard core terrorist role for this vet from Showtime's much missed Sleeper Cell) as Fifth Column bad-ass Eli Cohn.

As catholic priest (and closeted alien resistance member) Father Jack, the lines between passive protest and more direct "any means necessary" tactics became similarly blurred tonight. In this episode, the penultimate man of faith became the man of action by signing on to the same assassination plot as FBI "Anti-Fifth Column Task Force" head Agent Evans.

But the real wild card here is Morris Chestnut as Ryan Nichols — an alien lizard who up until tonight was a Fifth Column human sympathizer playing the role of double agent, but who now appears ready to sell out the resistance to that lizard bitch Anna (who holds Ryan's child captive aboard the mother ship).

So, just when it looks like ABC might pull the plug, this shit is actually starting to get rather good.

Still, the fact of where it is actually going next is also somewhat obvious. My own prediction is that double agents like Mitchell's FBI agent and Gretsch's Catholic Father Jack will discover their inner bad-asses and take up arms for an all-out, take no prisoners war next fall (provided of course this is one).

The current political references — which have been both timely and smart from the start — also remain razor sharp. Tonight's "Concordia" episode even referenced the reptilian's cloaked inter-species breeding centers as an "urban renewal project."

The other nice new development this season has been the way that the "reboot" of the original eighties V has been rewritten to be more like a sequel to the earlier version. With the return of original eighties alien queen Jane Badler as Diana, the story has now been recast as a second try at invasion by these alien lizards.

As a guilty pleasure fan of the original (cheesy as it was), I like this latest touch a lot. All we need now is the return of Marc Singer and the pre-Freddie Krueger Robert Englund (reprising his role as the clumsy human sympathizing alien Willie) to complete the trifecta.

All we are saying is give V a chance.

This article was first published at Blogcritics Magazine.

2011-02-02T02:18:00.000-08:00

Saddle Up To The Jayhawks Greatest Album All Over Again

Music Review: The Jayhawks - Tomorrow The Green Grass (2 CD Legacy Remastered Edition)

With the Jayhawks reportedly set to embark later this year on their first extensive tour with the original lineup led by principal songwriters Gary Louris and Mark Olson since 1995 (and a new album reportedly set to follow), a fresh new dust-off of Olson's last album with the band couldn't have come at a more opportune time.

This deluxe remastered edition of 1995's classic Tomorrow The Green Grass from Sony/Legacy was released last month, along with its 1992 predecessor Hollywood Town Hall. Of the two repackaged albums, Tomorrow The Green Grass gets the more ambitious treatment by far.

In addition to a beautifully done remastering job on the original album (overseen by Olson and Louris, along with original producer George Drakoulias), the deluxe expanded double-disc edition also includes the first appearance on an officially sanctioned release of the "Mystery Demos."

Recorded in 1992 during two separate sessions in Los Angeles and their native Minneapolis, these early, acoustic versions of songs that eventually wound up making the final cut for Tomorrow The Green Grass — as well as subsequent solo albums by Olson and Louris and Jayhawks offshoot Golden Smog — have long since attained mythical status among hardcore fans. These recordings offer a rare glimpse into the songwriting process behind some of Olson and Louris' greatest songs (not to mention some rarities heard for the very first time on an official release).

Even so, it is still the original 1995 Tomorrow The Green Grass album that is the main event here. Despite receiving unanimous praise from critics when it was originally released, the album was largely slept upon in terms of actual record sales. Today, it is regarded as a classic and rightfully so.

As good as its predecessor Hollywood Town Hall was, Tomorrow The Green Grass was the defining moment where the Jayhawks first began to shed some of their more obvious country-rock influences (Burritos, Byrds, Everlys, and Neil Young primarily) heard on the former album, and begin to find their own unique voice as songwriters and as a band. Not that these influences are abandoned altogether here. Indeed, the harmonies are sweeter and crisper sounding than ever before on songs like "Two Hearts" and especially the absolutely gorgeous album opener "Blue."

But lying just beyond that twangy exterior, you can also hear echoes of everyone from the Band to the Stones and even latter day Grand Funk Railroad (on a great cover of the latter's Motown influenced "Bad Time"). If anything, on Tomorrow The Green Grass the Jayhawks wear their sixties and seventies rock bonafides on their sleeves just as comfortably as do their well-worn Gram Parsons cowboy boots.

The guitar riffs which power "Ten Little Kids" for example, are taken straight from Exile-era Stones (and from "Tumblin' Dice" in particular). "Sleep While You Can," one of five bonus tracks on the first disc here, likewise takes the riff from Badfinger's "No Matter What" and simply speeds it up. And if "Red's Song" doesn't borrow more than a little from The Band's classic "The Weight," I simply don't know what does.

But the biggest difference here musically is the addition of keyboardist Karen Grotberg, whose tinkling ivories add a new dimension to the Jayhawks sound on tracks ranging from the hymn like electric piano heard on "Ann Jane," to the straight out honky tonk of "Last Cigarette" (another bonus track, which also features lead vocals from Grotberg). Largely unknown at the time, Grotberg had the unenviable task of replacing the studio vets like Nicky Hopkins and Benmont Tench heard on Hollywood Town Hall. Her keys are an absolute delight throughout Tomorrow The Green Grass.

With a set of warm-up dates just completed (where the Jayhawks performed both the Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow The Green Grass albums in their entirety), rumors of a reunion album and a more extensive tour later this year are running high.

If this is indeed the case, don't miss them if they come to a town near you. In the meantime, this excellent expanded edition of the Jayhawks greatest album is a great introduction to the band who more or less provided the blueprint for what we today refer to as alt-country.

Saddle up.

This article was first published as Music Review: The Jayhawks - Tomorrow The Green Grass (2 CD Legacy Remastered Edition) at Blogcritics Magazine

2011-01-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

The Jayhawks: As Good Now As They Were Then

Music Review: The Jayhawks - Hollywood Town Hall (Remastered And Expanded Edition)

Back when it was originally released in 1992, the Jayhawks' Hollywood Town Hall was just about as unlikely a candidate to become the sort of classic whose lasting influence continues to this day as you could possibly imagine.

At the time, rock music was still dominated by the post-punk sounds of Seattle grunge bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and the adult-alternative radio format which would later embrace them was still very much in its infancy.

Yet, if you were to pinpoint a defining moment in time where the term "alt-country" was pretty much invented in the modern sense, the Jayhawks Hollywood Town Hall is probably it. The album is today regarded (at least by those in the know) as an alt-country classic.

A beautiful record both then and now, the Jayhawks' debut album for the big leagues with Rick Rubin's Def American Recordings (the Minneapolis based band had previously recorded albums for indie labels like Twin Tone), is as perfect a marriage between the country twang of Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers and the elegant grandeur of Robbie Robertson and the Band as it gets.

It also serves as a crucial flashpoint for just where the so-called "alt-country" genre would eventually go with bands like Wilco and with such albums as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Although it could be convincingly argued that Jeff Tweedy and company eventually took it much further, it was in fact the Jayhawks who paved the way.

Continuing the recent revival of interest in this groundbreaking band that began with 2009's Music From The North Country anthology, and continued with last years reunion between principal songwriters Gary Louris and Mark Olson on the Ready For The Flood album and tour, Sony Legacy has this week reissued remastered, expanded editions of both Hollywood Town Hall and its equally brilliant (if initially slept upon) 1995 followup album Tomorrow The Green Grass.

Now, as then, songs like "Waiting For The Sun" and "Take Me With You (When You Go)" represent some of the most brilliantly constructed little slices of alt-country Americana you are ever likely to hear. From the sweet sounding, perfectly in-tune harmonies of Louris and Olson, to the occasional bursts of fuzzed-out Neil Young histrionics from Louris on guitar, this stuff is, honestly, just about as good as it gets.

The bonuses on the expanded edition are modest, but do include a trio of songs previously released only on the now rare Def American promo E.P. Scrapple, including the songs "Keith And Quentin" and "Up Above My Head." There are also extended liner notes from original album producer George Drakoulias.

If you are only just now discovering the band that pretty much wrote the book on modern day alt-country, get ready for a rare treat.

Because this stuff is as good now as it was then.

This article was first published as Music Review: The Jayhawks - Hollywood Town Hall (Remastered And Expanded Edition) at Blogcritics Magazine

2011-01-13T01:23:00.000-08:00

Obama And Palin: A Tale Of Two Speakers

The contrasts, both in style and in tone, were undeniable. Perhaps more telling though are the apparent motivations behind the two public statements made by Barack Obama and Sarah Palin yesterday, in response to the assassination attempt on the life of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Obama, speaking at the Arizona memorial service for the other victims of Saturday's shooting, did what presidents do. Looking and sounding more presidential then he has at any other point during his tenure at the White House, Obama served as the comforter-in-chief both for the families and friends in attendance, and for the rest of us watching the nationally televised speech, still trying to make sense of it all.

He eulogized the fallen, offered the support of the nation to the wounded and to the families of those who were lost, and praised those who helped prevent any further damage as heroes. Obama also wisely took the high road in choosing not to point fingers, place blame, or otherwise politicize the tragic events in Arizona at a time more appropriately given over to reflection and grieving for those who were lost.

If anything, Obama seized the moment to urge a return to civility in the political debate, and for a more rational, less inflammatory tone of unity in the national discourse seeking to find common solutions to the complex problems facing America in tough economic times.

Whether Obama's words continue to resonate by this time tomorrow or even next week remains an open question of course. But Obama's speech on Wednesday transcended partisan politics. This was a president doing what all presidents during a national tragedy do, much as Bill Clinton did after the Oklahoma City bombing, and yes, George W. Bush did after 9/11.

That said, in a lot of ways Obama also looked more like the rock star of the 2008 campaign than he has at any point since then. The memorial event at times seemed more like a campaign rally — there were several times when Obama's remarks were interrupted by spontaneous eruptions of cheer — than a somber memorial service. Obama's speech also served as a reminder of just how electric he can be as a speaker. You almost expected the crowd to start chanting "Yes, We Can" at times.

For that reason, it also reminded me again of just why I've become so disappointed with his presidency at times. Aside from the way he has all too often met the punches of his Republican detractors by opening up a bi-partisan can of compromise on them, Obama has also seemed detached from the populist movement that helped elect him. Obama is the sort of speaker who, at his best, can galvanize people from all walks of life into action. Which is exactly why I'd like to see him do a lot more speaking.

Sarah Palin's remarks on the other hand, have left me somewhat dumbstruck.

Made on a professionally produced seven minute video, and released — incredibly — on the same day as the memorial, Palin's remarks start on mostly a proper note. She offers a mix of outrage over the tragedy and support for the families of the victims. To her credit, Palin does do that much — well, for about one of the seven plus minutes of her presentation, anyway. From there, she also rightly defends the principles of freedom of speech, and the all-American contact sport of a vigorous, passionate political debate.

Incredibly, she then turns her remarks completely upside down and inside out by lashing out at those who would exercise the rights of others to do exactly the same — that is, challenge or otherwise disagree — by daring to criticize, guess who? If you guessed Sarah Palin, you win the Dancing With The Stars DVD.

The point where this crosses the line from being merely laughable, to somewhat disturbing, is when she invokes the words "blood libel" — a none too thinly veiled anti-Semitic reference to historically made comments about Jews killing Christian children for blood sacrifice.

Seriously, this woman wants to be president?

Aside from this, the "What About Me?" tone of her remarks come across as a pathetic attempt to turn what should have been a day of mourning into a pity party for the "real victim" — which would of course be Sarah Palin. This is simply astonishing, particularly coming from such a national political figure.

You can debate whether accusations from the left pointing blame for the Arizona shootings towards the inflammatory rhetoric of folks like Palin, Sharon Angle, and Glenn Beck is fair or not. In truth, a lot of that probably isn't either. But in turning the tragedy back towards herself, rather than the real, proper victims, Palin comes off as being just pathetically shameless.

I think a lot of us already knew in our hearts that Sarah Palin was a deeply narcissistic personality who is really more interested in the sort of celebrity that comes with shooting deer — and not very well, I might add — on her reality show on cable TV, than in the deeper sort of thought and commitment required of any real public servant.

But her performance on Wednesday, even as Gabrielle Giffords fought for her life in an Arizona hospital was embarrassing at best, and self-serving at worst.

In a word, incredible.

This article was first published as Obama And Palin: A Tale Of Two Speakers at Blogcritics Magazine

2011-01-05T02:14:00.000-08:00

Music 2010: Merciful Goodbyes And An Uncertain Future

We're Back, and Happy 2011!

As the last few weeks of 2010 limped their way towards what, for my money anyway, was a mostly merciful conclusion, I came down with both a killer cold and a monster case of writers block.

The antidote for the cold was easy enough. Spent four days over New Years in bed, drank the usual heavy (and non-alcoholic for a change) fluids and chicken soup, downed the vitamin C, and missed a day of work at the job. All that, and damned if I'm still not nursing one mother-bitch of a cough. Still, five days into 2011, I'm happy to report I'm mostly on the mend, if not quite at 100% yet. It's enough to make me consider finally giving up the cigs. Well, almost anyway...

The writers block on the other hand, presented a more complicated problem. Usually around this time of year, like many of my music scribbling colleagues, I take stock of what just happened in music over the past year with a top ten list. The problem with 2010 — much as I hate to say it — is I'm honestly not sure I could fill such a list.

It's not that 2010 was so dreadfully god-awful or anything. It wasn't bad. But it also wasn't that good. There were plenty of decent records released this year, and you'll find many of the more noteworthy entries — by folks like Kanye, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, and even the unlikely Cee-Lo Green — on any number of the other lists making the rounds out there (both at Blogcritics and elsewhere).

It's just that I can't recall even five records in 2010, to say nothing of a top ten list, that flat out bowled me over this year. No In Rainbows by Radiohead, No Modern Times by Dylan, No Sky Blue Sky by Wilco, to cite just three records released in the past decade that continue to resonate with me even now.

Even the most oft-noted records this year (judging by the lists out there), don't strike me as classics I'll be going back to, say, ten years from now.

Arcade Fire's critically lauded The Suburbs for instance, is a decent enough followup to their universally acclaimed Neon Bible. But it didn't stay with me anywhere near as long as Neon did.

Even now, I'd be hard pressed to name a single song from it. Sorry, just being honest here. I'd also bet money that if some of you reading this were being likewise truthful, you might suffer from a similar memory lapse. I passed on their show at Key Arena here in Seattle this past fall for much the same reason. Yes, I was also broke and unemployed at the time. But if the album blew me away anywhere the same way as its predecessor did, I probably would have found a way to make the gig, by hook or crook.

Kanye? Well, Kanye is Kanye. Definitely a brilliant guy who is making some of the most creative sounding, yet commercially accessible hip-hop out there. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is also a vast improvement over the rather limp sounding auto-tunes found on 808 And Heartbreak.

But Kanye West, for me at least, is still mostly a taste I haven't fully acquired. For me, his ego and his goofball antics at awards shows and such also still have a tendency to overshadow his undeniable talent. I guess Kanye West is kind of my own personal hip-hop John Mayer that way.

As for the rest of what went on in 2010?

Well, Justin Bieber is up for a Grammy and Lady Gaga became the years biggest selling and most buzzed about artist. Katy Perry continued to have excellent breasts and record songs catchy enough to make you look away from them (for about a minute, anyway) while even a bodacious set of ta-tas couldn't make me buy the crap that Ke$ha was selling. Those things alone speak volumes about the state of music in 2010.

In between the newsmakers on the hit parade, a lot of great new artists probably slipped between the cracks too (at least outside of the few hundred fans and friends able to download an MP3 on the bands website, or find it by sifting through the pile on MySpace or iTunes).

Incidentally, I understand MP3 files can degrade over time. So, if you cherish the drum track on that trance jam you just ripped for free enough to keep it on your playlist into 2012, you might wanna look into a file backup service like Carbonite. In the meantime, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the sort of song that uniquely defines its time — the way "Smells Like Teen Spirit" did, for example. You'll be turning blue before you know it. Just thought I'd mention that.

So, while I fully expect this column is probably going to buy me some trouble in the comments section, I gotta call it the way I saw it. And 2010, while not outright awful, was still largely just a so-so year.

Interestingly, the records I heard this year that stuck with me the most were made mostly by the veteran cats.

Neil Young's Le Noise, the Daniel Lanois produced album of Young's solo electric guitar looped with Lanois' trademark ambient soundscapes, was also one of the legendary rocker's bolder creative efforts in years, and proof positive that Young still has a few remaining new tricks up his artistic sleeve. If I were to name an album of the year for 2010, Le Noise would probably be it.

Johnny Cash's supposedly final posthumous volume of American Recordings made with producer Rick Rubin, was another 2010 standout, and among the best of the latter-day Man In Black's albums. It is a meditation on death recorded in the artists final hours, that is absolutely worthy of the title Aint' No Grave.

Bruce Springsteen's The Promise features music recorded thirty years ago during the 1978 sessions for Darkness On The Edge Of Town, that remained officially unreleased until now. The songs are as good, if not better, than anything on Springsteen's last several albums, and as a stand-alone album I'd rank it as one of Bruce's four or five best records ever.

Other stuff I heard and liked this year included albums by the Jayhawks' Mark Olson, Riverside's Mariusz Duda, Porcupine Tree (the live Anesthetize DVD), The Pineapple Thief, Jeff Beck, Nels Cline, Seasick Steve, and reissues by Paul McCartney and Wings, Bob Dylan, Badfinger, and Iggy And The Stooges. So, not a total loss by any means, but still not enough great music this year to credibly fill out a top ten of 2010 list.

As for 2011, right now the crystal ball forecasts new albums early on from U2 and R.E.M. (well, okay I guess those two predictions are derived more from common knowledge than any true psychic ability). Also likely to arrive in 2011 are new releases from Radiohead, Wilco and Coldplay among others. There's probably a better than good chance for a fall 2011 Springsteen release as well (though a solo album is more likely than something with E Street Band). So, there's at least a few good new things to look forward to in 2011.

The Rockologist will also be keeping his eyes on ticket prices (which may fall dramatically by the time of the big summer tours). The ever-evolving MP3 marketplace will also be a continued subject of interest, as traditional record companies keep chasing the elusive dragon, new business models come and go at breakneck speed, and the ever-changing music market continues to evolve.

It should be a very interesting year. Happy Bird Kill 2011.

This article was first published as Music 2010: Merciful Goodbyes And An Uncertain Future AT Blogcritics Magazine.

2010-12-25T01:13:00.000-08:00

The Cinematic Scope of Mariusz Duda's Lunatic Soul 2

Music Review: Mariusz Duda - Lunatic Soul 2

One of the first things that strikes you about Lunatic Soul 2 — the second solo album from Mariusz Duda, frontman for progressive rock cult favorites Riverside — is that it has such a big cinematic feel to it.

But this is not so much in the same way as your everyday, garden variety ambient film soundtrack (although there are plenty of those same type of prerequisite atmospherics here). Instead, this is an album where the words and music conjure actual, visual images of a somewhat weary traveler as he makes his way through, what in this case appears to be, a journey into the different shades and stages of the afterlife.

The album is in fact a continuation of Duda's first Lunatic Soul album, released in 2008. The cover art is even a reversed image in white of the black sleeve of the original, prompting some fans to call it "White Lunatic Soul."

But rather than just explore the lighter shades the white cover might suggest, Duda instead takes you through a series of songs which also offer glimpses into the darker side of what lies just beyond the veil. The common thread with all the songs is the journey itself. These are songs where you are literally put into the shoes of the traveler, as he makes his way through the musical purgatory conveyed so effectively through Duda's often quite stunning words and music.

Musically, the album draws from a broad range of genres and even geographic locales. You can hear bits and pieces of oriental, middle eastern, and Indian influences in songs like "Escape From ParadIce" and the instrumental "In Between Kingdom" which opens the record.

The prog influences are also there. Both "Otherwhere" and "Suspended In Whiteness" recall Steven Wilson's recent, more headier sounding work with Porcupine Tree on albums like The Incident, and on his own solo album Insurgentes. You even get a bit of the grand sweep of early Peter Gabriel-era Genesis on "Transition" (which reminded me a lot of some of the middle parts of that group's twenty plus minute opus "Suppers Ready").

But mostly, the music conveys a sense of drama throughout that is oddly, but pleasingly quite compelling. The music ebbs and rises in direct proportion to Duda's lyrics about a man making his way through the darkness and light associated with the afterworld of his loosely told story. Like I said, it plays almost like a movie, and often within a single song.

On "Suspended In Whiteness" for example, the first half of the song (sub-titled "This Heaven") features dreamy sounding chimes, keyboards and flutes floating lightly in and out of the mix, before they are overcome by the huge drums and deep, doomy bass tones of the darker second part ("Don't Feel Alive"), as our traveler asks himself "where the heaven am I now?" (clever play on words there).

On the album's best track, "Asoulum" (which is apparently Duda's way of spelling "Soul Asylum"), acoustic guitars and lush vocal harmonies seem to rise to heaven itself, before finally crashing down in a wave of darkness as the spoken word lyrics forebodingly warn "I watch as this place starts to change."

This is just a beautifully haunting track.

Although much of what is heard on Lunatic Soul 2 might be described as trippy, dreamy or even a bit New-Agey — think of a slightly more rhythmic Daniel Lanois or a harder sounding Dead Can Dance and you'd be in the general ballpark here — the album also has its share of more rocking moments. The heaviest of these is "Escape From ParadIce," where despite the absence of electric guitars (there are none to be found on the entire album), the mid-eastern sounds and big tribal drums make plenty enough noise on their own.

This is also a solo album in the truest sense of the word. From the percussion to the voices, Duda plays and sings virtually every note here, save for the occasional flute part or keyboard loop.

But the most impressive thing about Lunatic Soul 2 is the way it weds music to drama without the aid of pictures. Rarely does music achieve the feat of transporting you to another place in the same way as a good film can. This album, most remarkably, does exactly that. In that sense, it's about as close to a cinematic musical experience as it gets.

This article was first published as Music Review: Mariusz Duda - Lunatic Soul 2 at Blogcritics Magazine.

2010-12-21T22:40:00.000-08:00

Rod The Bod And Glen The Boyd

Thanks to Annette Deymonaz for reminding me that I once hung out with rock stars, that I once actually looked that good...and most of all, for making me ask once again what the fuck happened, and where it did it all go so terribly wrong? LOL...

Yeah, right, thanks Annette.... (just kidding...seriously though, this brought a smile to my face after a stressy week).

2010-12-15T15:54:00.000-08:00

Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band: Songs From The Promise Performed Live

"Songs From The Promise" Setlist:

"Racing in the Street ('78)
"Gotta Get That Feeling"
"Ain't Good Enough For You"
"The Promise"
"Blue Christmas"

2010-12-15T04:03:00.000-08:00

Finding Lost: Can You Go Home Again?

Book Review: Finding Lost - Season Six: The Unofficial Guide by Nikki Stafford

For those of us who have deeply and sorely missed our weekly Lost fix ever since the often perplexing, but undeniably groundbreaking ABC series faded to black for good this past spring, Nikki Stafford's Finding Lost - Season Six: The Unofficial Guide makes for the same kind of bittersweet experience as attending your thirty year high school reunion.

Reading through Stafford's intricately detailed recaps of every episode of Lost's sixth and final season, you become intimately reacquainted with the already foggy memories associated with its most unforgettable characters (Jack, Locke, Hurley, Linus, Sawyer) and even its biblical deities (Jacob and Smokey).

With the added benefit of rear view hindsight, you might also even be able to finally make sense of the island's deepest mysteries (or, much like that high school reunion, maybe not).

Mostly though, Stafford's book will leave those Losties who became the most emotionally invested in it, with the same feelings of longing, regret and finally resignation as the series finale itself did.

For those who "got" Lost — which was admittedly, not always the easiest task — it was an epic story of good vs. evil. The great, if not always easily deciphered writing, wove together elements pitting the basic arguments of religion and faith against those of science and free will. But it was also a story where the lines were always ambiguously drawn enough to never clearly favor one school of thought over the other.

For those who didn't ("get it," that is) — or perhaps just want to take a fresh new stab at getting Lost all over again on the DVDs — Stafford's definitive guide also goes a long way towards peeling away many of these same layers of mystery.

It is for this latter group, that Finding Lost - Season Six: The Unoffical Guide may hold the greatest overall value. As something of a Lost scholar — Nikki Stafford's deep knowledge of this series isn't at all unlike Blogcritics' own Barbara Barnett's expertise on all things House. The author gives a detailed, chronological run-down of each of the season six episodes that also provides just enough backstory to get the newbies mostly caught up to speed.

The fact that she also does this without revealing any future spoilers along the way, makes this book a great resource for any unanswered questions that may linger following the viewing of each episode (for those who choose to do so).

Of course, there is also plenty enough new Lost trivia to satisfy the hunger of even the most insatiable, more seasoned Lost nerds. The revelations here range from fairly common knowledge like the Springsteen references to "Spanish Johnny" and "Rosalita" in the "Everybody Loves Hugo" episode, to the lesser known fact that the mysteriously anonymous "Man In Black" (a.k.a. the Smoke Monster) was in fact, at one point scripted with a biblical name (which Stafford reveals).

In between the episode recaps, Stafford also goes into considerable detail on the cultural and literary influences woven into the storylines of Lost by primary writers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. These range from Star Wars (prompting a complimentary letter from George Lucas) to Milton's Paradise Lost and Stephen King's epic apocalyptic novel The Stand.

Stafford also attempts — and mostly convincingly — to solve most of the many lingering mysteries and questions left unanswered by the series finale, as relates to the Dharma Initiative, "The Others," the Smoke Monster, Hurley's lottery numbers, and — well everything else.

Whether or not Lost follows other sci-fi television classics like Star Trek and The X-Files onto the big screen remains to be seen. But I'd bet a six pack of Dharma generic beer that ten years or so down the line it will.

If and when that happens, the most obvious challenge will be in topping the unprecedented scope of the original six seasons of this series, and condensing them down to a mere two, or even three hours. To that I say, good luck and Namaste.

Perhaps the more daunting task however, will be rekindling the original magic of this amazing series, and finding new ways to expand upon it. For those of us who loved and still miss Lost, Nikki Staford has mostly done that with this book.

Ten years down the line, on the other hand? Well, much like that thirty year reunion, you can never go home again...but then again, maybe you can.

Nikki Stafford's Finding Lost - Season Six: The Unofficial Guide is the final installment in her series of Finding Lost books. She continues to write about the series — even now — on her blog Nik At Nite.

This article was first published as Book Review: Finding Lost - Season Six: The Unofficial Guide by Nikki Stafford at Blogcritics Magazine.