Archive for the ‘Record reviews’ Category

Let’s look for the purple banana

Posted: June 1, 2014 in music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
2

In Seattle in the early ’80s there was a fannish group that lived together in a house called Star Base. It was part of an informal chain of Star Bases around the country, from the first generation of Star Trek fans. They had a charter and I think they were incorporated as a non-profit. (I was present when the charter was dissolved, but I was too distracted by one of the female board members and the sweater she was wearing to take in the details.)

Seattle’s Star Base was part of a larger group of science fiction fans who lived around Seattle, with a satellite group in Olympia. They threw raucous parties at their house on Phinney Ridge. Bet their neighbors liked that. It was mostly women living at Star Base, and from the outside this group looked as if a) every day was Gestalt Therapy Day, or b) they were training for a covert mission overseas.

I’m not making fun of these folks. For all the hijinks and emotional maelstroms that went on there, I have never met a group of people who got so much done in a day. If you had to get to the moon by close of business Friday, they’d get you there. They ran sci-fi conventions, held jobs, and saved lives.

I just noticed that “hijinks” has three dots in a row. Looks Danish.

Raspberry beret/The kind you find in a second-hand store
When I first met them, Michael Jackson ruled at Star Base (along with Rocky Horror and a true ’70s horror, Meatloaf). Every year at Norwescon, the region’s biggest convention, at midnight during the Saturday night dance, the djs played Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” from Off the Wall (1979). If you lived at Star Base or partied at Star Base or had sex at Star Base or wanted to have sex at Star Base, you got on the dance floor and participated in a group dance that I thought was kinda dumb but everyone had fun doing it so forget me.

But Prince was already making inroads among the female population of Star Base. Just look at the cover of Dirty Mind (1980):

Prince - Dirty Mind

Michael Jackson always seemed sexless to me. Not Prince.

Raspberry beret/And if it was warm she wouldn’t wear much more
I learned about Prince thanks to the Star Base population. I’ve never really written about him, probably because he’s released more albums than Chicago and I feel intimidated when I consider him as a subject. Today I’ll do a little to make amends.

You can’t think about Michael Jackson and Prince without noting the startling coincidences in the lives of the two men. They were both born in the Midwest in the summer of 1958. Michael Jackson started out as a Jehovah’s Witness. Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness as an adult. They began their solo careers within a year of each other. Michael Jackson named his son Prince. Prince would’ve done the same thing if he had felt like it. The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters. And so on.

Excuse me but I need a mouth like yours
But the differences are far greater. The Michael Jackson who launched his real debut effort (without his father hanging over him) with Off the Wall emerged with his sound fully formed. It didn’t change by a molecule until the day he died. Prince has experimented so much with his sound, he makes Beck look like he’s chained to a chair. Only David Bowie and maybe Paul McCartney can keep up with this guy.

Michael at his peak gave us “Billy Jean,” “Beat It,” “Bad,” and “Thriller,” but for overall accomplishment I’ll take Prince. Period. There’s a lot of uninteresting filler in Michael’s oeuvre. Of the songs I’ve heard on Prince’s army of albums, I can’t say that all of them are worth repeated listens, but rarely is something uninteresting. And as for high points – “1999,” “Delirious,” “Dirty Mind,” and “Let’s Go Crazy” are pretty good songs.

To help me forget the girl that just walked out my door
I’m launching The Prince Project beginning today. What is The Prince Project? Bill Murray to Dan Ackroyd in Ghost Busters: “I don’t know.” I’ll figure it out as I listen. Your thoughts and suggestions are welcome. You’re also welcome to keep me company in my little red corvette by loaning me a Prince CD. There are only about 35 to choose from.

If I could put Star Base to work on this, we’d finish this project before we began.

Random Pick of the Day
The Byrds, Mr. Tambourine Man (1965)
The superb Bob Dylan covers include the title cut and “Chimes of Freedom.” The Gene Clark originals, particularly “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” and “Here Without You,” are like folk versions of The Beatles. The song that really kills me is Pete Seeger’s “The Bells of Rhymney.” This is one of my favorite songs of the 1960s.

I rate this album a Must Buy, even though Mr. Tambourine Man falls apart in the final laps and even though “Eight Miles High,” “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star,” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” aren’t on it.

Random Pan of the Day
Bad Company, Bad Company (1974)
Bad Company is nowhere near as good as Free or Mott the Hoople, the bands that begat them. Bad Company is nowhere near as good as AC/DC, though it’s obvious that AC/DC wouldn’t have existed without Bad Company. Whether that’s reason enough to build a time machine and return to 1974 with a bazooka is your call.

So what do we have on their debut? The origins of the arena buttrock format: “Can’t Get Enough,” which is about sex, “Movin’ On,” which is about leaving after sex, and “Bad Company,” which is about why it’s tough to be Bad Company, so I guess you should have sex with them to make them feel better. And then there’s “Seagull.”

“Seagull” is a rock-star dues song. Just the thing to include on your first album. In this epic tonal composition, “seagull” means “our awesome band” and “never asking why” means “we are so stoned” and “until you are shot out of the sky” means “until they stop buying your records.” Bad Company gets major demerits for writing a dues song when they should’ve been paying fines.

Ernest Hemingway said it best: “As musicians they are fatal.”

 

Vacation, all I ever wanted/Vacation, time to eat five meals a day

Posted: May 29, 2014 in Miscellaneous, music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Special D and I have just returned from a week on the East Coast, visiting our families and old friends from Portland and Seattle. This is a review blog, meaning I have a duty to review the 17 people we corraled in eight action-packed days. But this is a music review blog, meaning I can escape the oath I took to the International House of Critics and save my own life. I’ll simply say, then, that on our journey we encountered all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, and all things wise and wonderful. Yep, the Lord God made the lot.

In the middle of the week we drove from Washington, D.C. to Raleigh and back again, five hours each way through the cradle of the Civil War. We drove the back roads and we were lucky enough to catch and eat superb Virginia road food both ways.

On the way south we stopped at Payton’s Deli in the metropolis of Standardsville. Payton’s doesn’t look like much, but we were starved and couldn’t resist the sign that said “Greene County’s Best Chicken!” Our lunch, which was cooked up in the back of a store so old that the wooden floors undulated, wasn’t just the best fried chicken in the county, it might’ve been the best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten.

Best fried chicken in Greene County
Bliss.

On the way north we tried the Cruis-In Cafe in beautiful downtown Keysville. The Cruis-In appears to be run by expat New Yorkers with accents a mile deep. Sounded just like my mother’s family. I had the hamburger steak with whipped potatoes and gravy followed by some sort of ice cream cake and nearly swooned. I didn’t have to eat again until Monday.

Cruis-In Cafe
I want to emulate their décor in my living room.

Despite all this excessive fun, I’m happy to be home and I’m ready for summer! Hope you are too, unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere and you’re getting ready for winter. Bundle up and keep rockin’.

Random Pick of the Day
Slint, Spiderland (1991)
Dark dark dark dark dark. The opener, “Breadcrumbs,” is a purgative for your soul. “Washer” is mired in melancholy, except where it veers toward the apocalypse. The rest of Spiderland circles the same patch of ashen ground.

The singing is worse than what Nirvana dished out, and for one dreadful moment I thought I was listening to Black Sabbath. This was Slint’s last album, I assume because everyone in the band committed suicide.

Overall, though, Spiderland belongs on your late-night listening playlist. Very late night. Not your thing? Go back to bed.

Random Pan of the Day
Neil Young, A Letter Home (2014)
Neil, cut this shit out. A Letter Home was recorded inside a cramped 1948 Voice-O-Graph booth using cramped 1948 phone booth technology. (“Like talking on the phone,” the original ad said, “but a thousand times more thrilling!”) Next I guess he’ll stick his head inside a 1957 Schiaparelli hat box or maybe sing through tin cans tied together with string.

Neil gives his pre-Industrial Revolution, country treatment to Rod Stewart (“Reason to Believe”), Bruce Springsteen (“My Hometown”), Bob Dylan (“Girl From the North Country”), Willie Nelson (“On the Road Again”), Patsy Cline (“Crazy”), and you get the idea. The sound quality is, of course, abysmal, and many times I wondered if Neil’s heart was really in this.

If Gene Autry or Roy Rogers were still alive, would they shoot Neil full of holes? No – on the strength of one song, Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.” Suddenly I heard the whole point of this project. For four minutes, in this strange acoustical environment, everything works. Is one song enough to recommend this disc? In other cases I’ve said yes, but A Letter Home is so strange that this time I must say no.

Neil Young is still a god. Write that down.

 

The LinkedIn 500

Posted: May 14, 2014 in Miscellaneous, music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
11

In the first week of May, I made my 500th connection on LinkedIn. What does this mean?

I don’t know. But it must be a milestone because 500 is a cool number. It’s not a prime number, but it’s right next door to one: 499. So when I made my 400th connection I decided to work very seriously on my next hundred. Because these numbers look like career homerun totals, I made a game of it, announcing each stage to my wife:

407: “I’m neck and neck with Duke Snider.”
439: “I’ve got Andre Dawson in my rearview mirror.”
453: “Bye-bye, Yaz!”
493: “Did you know that Crime Dog was tied with Lou Gehrig? What? Who is Crime Dog? Why am I talking to you?”

I stood at 499 for about two weeks. I wondered if I should invite someone special for my 500th. The obvious choice was Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, but I figured he was kinda busy being a co-founder and I didn’t want to wait 200 years for Reid to say yes. I also thought it would be fun to connect with someone who had the same name as a person I admired, but either that person had no presence on LinkedIn or there were 119 of them (as with David Bowie).

Number 500 arrived when I wasn’t looking – an invitation I’d extended weeks before and forgotten about. Lucky 500 is an editor who works with a publisher I once worked for. As with many of my connections, I’ve never met this person, but if he’s one of my guys you can be sure that he rocks.

(Note: At this point I didn’t actually have 500 people in my network, because at least one had died. Her profile is still active. If we’re connected and you’re still breathing, write and say hi. I’d love to hear from you.)

When I hit 500 feedbacks on eBay, they sent me a certificate. Actually, they sent me a link to a certificate that I could print myself. I wasn’t expecting LinkedIn to give me a handjob and a parade, but still I was disappointed when nothing happened. Then I thought, maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. Maybe I’m the one who should be doing something, and not just my end-zone dance. Maybe I should be printing T-shirts for my posse. (Don’t send me your shirt size. I’m not doing this.)

LinkedIn (the site also spells it “Linkedin”) long ago transformed itself from sparkly toy to networking ninja. If I want to find out who I know at a particular company, I can do it in seconds. Before LinkedIn, this would’ve taken days or weeks, if it could be done at all.

So if nothing much happens when you make your 500th connection, so be it. In fact I’ve moved past that mark now. I believe I’m tied with Eddie Murray (504), but then, who’s counting?

Random Pick of the Day
Various artists, The Crow (1994)
This movie is about a murdered man resurrected by a mystical crow to reign death and destruction upon his enemies. Please don’t make me write a sentence like that again. The heart of the soundtrack is “Burn” by The Cure, closely followed by Nine Inch Nail’s cover of Joy Division’s “Dead Souls,” “Snakedriver” by The Jesus and Mary Chain, and the dreamy “Time Baby III” by a band called Medicine. (The vocal on that one is by a former Bangle.)

As for the other 10 songs, Stone Temple Pilots’ “Big Empty” has had so much radio play that it bounces off my brain. The remaining nine are interchangeable, but appropriately mopey, metal.

Random Pan of the Day
The B-52s, Cosmic Thing (1989)
Why am I panning this record? I love The B-52s. Cosmic Thing was their big comeback. It has “Love Shack,” “Roam,” and one of their best lines, on the eternal topic of shaking your booty: “Don’t let it rest/on the president’s desk!”

But most of Cosmic Thing is easy-listening filler. “Roam” still sounds good, but “Love Shack” is getting tired. When this record came out, the mellifluously named Bart Becker, music editor at my paper, Seattle Weekly, wrote that this was a band that had pretty much lost it. Twenty-five years later, I reluctantly agree. By 1989, The B-52s were not even all that wacky anymore. I can only recommend Cosmic Thing to confirmed idiots such as myself. For anyone else, The B-52s and Wild Planet are all you need.

Bart Becker would’ve been the perfect name for an infielder on the San Francisco Giants.

 

Turn off your mind, relax and read this blog

Posted: May 4, 2014 in music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
13

Loyal Reader Laurel recently celebrated a birthday. Though she appears to be a mere sprig of her girl, she is old enough to have seen The Beatles 17 times in her native LA. She also carried on a brief but intense postal correspondence with a prominent member of the late George Harrison’s family. In honor of Laurel’s birthday, here’s a quick look at one of the most-covered Beatles’ songs, Revolver’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” (1966).

(“Tomorrow Never Knows” is one of the most-covered Beatles songs? How did I figure that one out? Entirely unscientifically, so shut UP.)

“Tomorrow Never Knows,” the final track on Revolver, is a nightmare of a drug trip complete with lyrics from the Tibetan Book of the Dead (which is currently ranked 8,836 on Amazon, with 78 mostly positive customer reviews). It appeared in August, a month after another altered-consciousness classic, The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” (on the album Fifth Dimension). What a summer that was for non-linear thinking…“Tomorrow Never Knows” features pioneering technical effects and a strong Indian influence. In just 2 minutes and 58 seconds it terrified parents and thrilled middle-schoolers like me.

The Mirage, Tomorrow Never Knows – The Pop Sike World of the Mirage: Singles & Lost Sessions (2006)
The first band to cover this epic song was The Mirage – a British psychedelic act that’s so obscure they’re practically frozen in a block of carbonite. In the fall of 1966 they released their version, which sounds like U.S. garage rock minus the accents. Some simple yet effectively melancholic piano in the middle. Perhaps because they knew their own limitations, they wisely held their song to 2:36 – the only cover here that’s shorter than the original.

801, 801 Live (1976)
801 was a short-lived avant-garde outfit put together by Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera while on sabbatical from Roxy Music. Between my disco phase and my punk phase I had a brief avant-garde phase, which was a struggle for me because I don’t smoke, I don’t look good in a beret, and I have a generally positive view of life. Eno and Manzanera’s version, which they called “TnK,” is the longest I know (6:15). It’s breathtaking.

Monsoon, Monsoon Featuring Sheila Chandra (1995)
Sheila Chandra has an indelible voice. She had a hit in the U.K. in 1982 with “Ever So Lonely.” Sometime in the ’80s she also recorded “Tomorrow Never Knows.” I like this Britpop/Indian hybrid, but it’s maybe a little too comfy, given the subject matter. Running time: 4:05.

Various artists*, The Craft: Original Soundtrack (1996)
The Craft is a sensitive, incisive look at four teenage witches who learn about life and love at a Catholic school in LA. The soundtrack is even worse than what I wrote in the last sentence. However, Canadian rockers Our Lady Peace turn in an excellent 4-minute cover that bows respectfully to The Beatles while also giving you a state-of-the-union message on mid-’90s alternative rock. It’s the opening track, too, so you can hit Eject immediately after.
* When I say “artists,” I’m being generous.

Invert, Between the Seconds (2003)
Invert is, or was, a classical string quartet that inverted the normal string-quartet lineup and presented us with violin, viola, and two cellos. Heavy on the bass! No singing on their cover but lots of spacey space sounds. They clock in at a relatively svelte 3:12.

Emmanuel Santarromana, FAB4EVER (2006)
The Italian Santarromana produced an interesting collection of Beatles covers. His “Tomorrow Never Knows” is more of a novelty number, as fun as Sheb Wooley’s “The Purple People Eater” or Afroman’s “Because I Got High” but not something to place in regular rotation. The vocalist sounds like Max Headroom’s younger brother. Running time: 3:29.

Giacomo Bondi, A Lounged Out Homage to the Beatles (2007)
Signore Bondi hired an Italian Beatles cover band (The Apple Pies) to faithfully record the songs on this disc. Then he ran their work through his software, supposedly to reconstruct (or deconstruct) everything. The songs come out different, I’ll give him that. I vote for “Paperback Writer” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” The running time on the latter is 4:53, which is too long, and the opening sounds like the last 10 superhero movies I’ve seen, but it’s definitely worth a listen. (There are two versions of this album. I briefly reviewed the one from 2010.)

I like all of the covers here, some much more than others, but I have to say that no one has topped John Lennon and Paul McCartney. As in most things. Happy birthday, Loyal Reader Laurel, and I’ll try to write about The Beatles again before your next birthday.

And there ain’t nothin’ I can do about it

Posted: May 3, 2014 in music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , ,
8

The Best of Diana Ross & The Supremes: The Millennium Collection
Diana Ross & The Supremes
1999

Special D and I were talking about all-female tribute bands – Hell’s Belles, Iron Maidens, Zepparella, Judith Priest, PRISS – when she asked, “Why are there no all-male tribute bands?”

Leave it to Special D to ask uncomfortable questions that upend the male-dominated hierarchy bestowed on us by God. Might as well ask why male roller derby disappeared while female roller derby flourished. But I’ll take this question on.

The bands women impersonate tend to be metal. The inherent excesses of the genre make it promising ground for parody. Watching women sing this testosteronic, misogynistic material subverts it. I’m not sure what a group of men could subvert by forming a Bikini Kill tribute band. Unless you’re playing the Republican National Convention, do you really want to come out against Riot Grrls and female empowerment? Besides, Bikini Kill had a guy in it. Hole had one guy and The Breeders had two.

It’s been said (by my wife) that women gain status by acting like men, whereas men lose status by acting like women. Oh yeah? I was quick to retort, and then I changed the subject: There aren’t a lot of all-female bands for men to pay tribute to.

The Slits were empowering, but they weren’t very good. The Donnas are already a copy of The Ramones. How about The Runaways? Disqualified. A bunch of guys singing “Cherry Bomb” wouldn’t make sense because no one cares if a boy is a virgin* whereas our entire world economy and all of our literature, art, and music are based on female virginity: why you must fight to preserve it, 1,001 hot hot hot ways to surrender it, and how to live with yourself now that you’re a slut.

* I am of course writing from a heterosexual male perspective.

Your Runaways all-male tribute band would have to be drag queens. Same with Madonna, Bananarama, Destiny’s Child, and Diana Ross & The Supremes. In fact we saw a drag-queen ensemble impersonate The Supremes and they were absolutely fabulous.

This leads me out of dangerous ideological territory and into the safe haven of The Best of Diana Ross & The Supremes. Buy it! All of the ’60s milestones are here, including three songs that haven’t lost one goddamn bit of their femininity: “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” “Love Child,” and “Reflections.” If you’re a woman of a certain age and you spent some time as a teenager practicing your girl-group moves in front of a mirror, this record will send you into orbit. I don’t qualify, but I just now played “Reflections” three times.

Bonus: This record does not include “The Happening.”

Random Pan of the Day
Beck, Morning Phase (2014)
It saddens me to pan this one because I think so highly of Beck, but this record, while beautiful, is perfect for combating insomnia. If you liked The Moody Blues’ Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, you might like Morning Phase, but be warned that nothing here moves as quickly as “The Story in Your Eyes.”

 

Older Entries
Newer Entries