Archive for the ‘Record reviews’ Category

New location, same great prices

Posted: July 10, 2016 in Miscellaneous, music, Record reviews
Tags: , , ,
3

Last week, we celebrated my birthday (the best day of the year) by taking our lucky dog Lucky on his first hike: Lookout Mountain!

Steve Lucky Mt Hood 070316
Left to right: Run-DMSteve, Lucky, Mount Hood

Lucky enjoyed being out in the wild. You’d think he was an animal or something. At midday we rested in the shade, with a view of Mount Jefferson to the south and Hood to the west. To the north was Adams and, breaching a stream of clouds like a dolphin, the snowy fin of Rainier.

Fear of a Trump planet
Fear of a Trump planet.

That night we celebrated my birthday with pizza, ice cream, and Acana Free-Run Poultry Formula kibble.

I didn’t throw a party for myself this year, but we did go to a party last night. It was called a Friender Blender. The idea was to mix as many strangers as possible and see what happens. This could easily have turned into a fender bender, especially since I knew beforehand that Special D and I would be way older than the rest of the crowd. For backup we brought along another couple from our rapidly deflating age group.

When we lived in Boise, there was a local home repair business with the slogan, “Your problem is no problem!” We always thought that was confrontational. My problems are my problems, OK? Well, my worries were no worries. It was an interesting party with people who are poster children for the Pacific Northwest. I can’t do justice to them all so I’ll just mention a few.

Our hands-down favorite was the woman who ghostwrites online dating profiles. When she embarked on this career path, most of her clients were men. Now most are women. Bonus: Years ago, she married her teenage sweetheart and has never done any online dating. I’m not sure she’s done any dating.

The ghostwriter brought a friend who’d tried out for the Portland Thorns women’s soccer team. (Football to you foreigners.) Though she was only in her late 20s, she was older than most of the other women trying out. Join the club, kid, this isn’t going to stop.

Then there was the lady who had published a coloring book about animal penises. Ducks! OMG. Who buys this kind of thing about things?

I overheard this conversation:

Playwright: I’m living in a great place now. My housemates are really friendly.
Tattooed graphic designer: That’s cool.
Playwright: Yeah, it’s better than the cokeheads I was living with. I was just back to visit and I can’t believe I fucking lived there.

We were all supposed to make name tags with a secret on it. One guy wrote, “I downloaded Pokémon today.” Pokéman and I had a clash of generations:

Me: Isn’t Pokémon like 20 years old?
Pokéman: I know, right?

I eventually discovered that Pokémon is 20 years old and that my new acquaintance was right at the front of the line for Opening Day of Pokémon Go hunting season. He thought I was marveling at the franchise’s longevity. I thought I was saying WTF. You can excuse me for knowing what was going on. I am old and I know nothing until I see it in Reader’s Digest.

Shortly before we left, one of the co-hosts asked me, “Have you done something different with your head?” I think she meant my hair, or maybe I have a new dent.

But you know something, I am doing something different with my head. As I begin this new year of my life, I’m trying to see the world and my place in it differently. I’m trying to think and act differently. I have some ideas…but they don’t involve coloring books or Pokémon.

Ducks! OMG.

A few thoughts on the Church of Latter-Day Rolling Stones
People stop me on the street and ask: “Run-DMSteve! There are 1000s of Stones albums. What should I do?” The first thing you should do is pay me for writing this blog. What? No? OK.

As Ross Perot, the first Donald Trump, used to say, “Pretty simple, really!” The last good Stones album was Some Girls in 1978. (Frankly, Donna Summer’s Bad Girls is better.) You could stop right there. The Stones showed some spark on their next two outings, Emotional Rescue (1980) and Tattoo You (1981), sort of like a batting champion who coughs up a couple of seasons in the .270s before slipping into the abyss.

Athletes retire, but the Stones just keep going. What do you do with all these latter-day records? Ignore all except these:

Steel Wheels
1989
Nothing on this album is any good except for “Rock and a Hard Place” and “Sad Sad Sad,” and that’s because those two could’ve come from Some Girls. This is the challenge facing any popular band that has lived into old age: competing against yourself. In the past 30 years, I’ve liked the Stones best when they’ve resurrected their first 20.

Voodoo Lounge
1994
No shortage of ideas here, most of them bad. But on Voodoo Lounge they do more experimenting than they have since Exile on Main Street.

“You Got Me Rocking” and “I Go Wild” sound like the old them; “I Go Wild” is a slo-mo “When the Whip Comes Down” or something off Exile. The new them (“Moon Is Up,” “Out of Tears”) is not my thing.

I give the Stones credit for trying new stuff. But if The Rolling Stones of 1974 had heard The Rolling Stones of 1994 recording “Sweethearts Together,” they would’ve jumped in a chippie van and run themselves over.

A Bigger Bang
2005
If the Stones of today are at their best when they remind you of yesterday, this record quietly delivers. It’s not innovative; it’s polite; it rocks. Sometimes they even sound like Bruce Springsteen on The River. But the big bluesy “Back of My Hand” takes us right back to Beggars Banquet. Not bad for a band that released its first record 41 years before this one!

 

Hillary Clinton explained

Posted: June 17, 2016 in Miscellaneous, music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , ,
2

Mr. Wm Seabrook holds down the U.K. desk for Run-DMSteve Worldwide. He’s performing within acceptable parameters, despite his occasional musical lapses (Béla Bartók). In response to my last post about things I have lived long enough to see (which I wrote the day after Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party’s candidate for president), Wm writes:

I would add to the list:

  • Moon landing
  • Destruction of the Berlin Wall
  • A black president…in South Africa

Excellent choices, Wm. I see what you’re getting at, but I only had to live 14 years to get to the Moon landing, whereas it took me 53 years to arrive at Barack Obama’s inauguration as pesident.

But your list has made me think of even more things I have lived long enough to see:

  • The Mars Rover
  • The International Space Station
  • The Muslim mayor of London
  • The teenage prime minister of Canada

Wm adds this question: “But why is Hillary Clinton seen as so divisive in the U.S.?”

It would be easier to sequence the human genome from stone knives and bear skins than to offer a definitive answer, but I’ll give it a try.

An Englishman’s guide to why Hillary Clinton is so divisive
A preliminary study by Run-DMSteve

  1. She’s a woman.
  2. She’s an ambitious woman. She craves power.
  3. She’s an ambitious woman who won’t defer to ambitious men who crave power.
  4. She refused to shut up while her husband was president.
  5. She doesn’t know how to use email. She forwarded “100 Reasons Why Kirk Is Better Than Picard” to Kim Jong-un!
  6. While she was in the State Dept., she was a terrible secretary. She always forgot to order paper for the printers and she mixed up everyone’s plane reservations.
  7. When Bill ran for president in 1992, his campaign’s theme song was Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.” Fleetwood Mac promptly re-formed and went on tour. The Republicans have been waiting 25 years to use this one against her.
  8. Her husband cheated on her.
  9. She didn’t divorce his ass when he cheated on her.
  10. Why is Hillary Clinton so divisive? For the same reason Capt. Janeway never got her own movie: She’s a woman.

I hope this helps, Wm.

We also heard from:

Run-DMSteve Platinum Club member Accused of Lurking, who writes about our list: “I’m still waiting for an end to hunger” (what a compassionate man) “and the popularization of personal jet packs” (what a self-absorbed twit).

A rookie, Dr. D, who suggests “DC United wins a fifth MLS Cup.” That’s their real name? In a city that can’t agree on the time of day or the color of the sky, their team is called DC United?

And, finally, SexySandersGuy4788, who says, “Never give up! Never surrender!” I know why you boys are so angry. You joined the Bernie Sanders campaign to get laid, didn’t you? Nerds!

Random Pick of the Day 1
Laura Nyro, Gonna Take a Miracle (1970)
LaBelle recorded seven albums on their own, but they were at their best at the dawn of their career when they backed Laura Nyro, particularly on Nyro’s covers of “Dancing in the Street,” “Nowhere to Run,” and “Jimmy Mack.” You older kids will be out of your chair in seconds, singing and dusting off your Shirelles moves. Fuck you, Fleetwood Mac! Nyro’s version of “Spanish Harlem” is another standout. If you loved the music on Carole King’s Tapestry, you’ll love Laura Nyro’s Gonna Take a Miracle.

Random Pick of the Day 2
Girlschool, The Very Best of Girlschool (2012)
British female pioneers of heavy metal who took up arms in the prehistoric year of 1978. Listening to these 14 songs sent me into a pleasant dream where Deep Purple chilled with Joy Division in ZZ Top’s garage. Probably best suited for serious scholars of metal, though “Demolition Boys” from their 1980 debut, Demolition, seriously rocks.

Random Pan of the Day
The Raincoats, The Raincoats (1980)
Another all-female British group. The Raincoats were punk and post-punk. On this, their debut album, they chant like Siouxsie & The Banshees and sing like The Roches. They’re not good at either. Not recommended even for historians, though some of these songs (“Black and White,” for example) are catchy, at least for a little while. The Raincoats’ cover of The Kinks’ “Lola” is the high point. But c’mon, girls, it’s all the same key, I think.

 

It was hot enough in Portland today to melt Donald Trump’s orange face paint

Posted: June 4, 2016 in music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
4

Astounding songs on atrocious albums, part 1
The Zombies, Odessey and Oracle (1967)

Britpop Invaders The Zombies have reunited! They’ve recorded a new album. They went on tour. They came to Portland! I considered going until I read that they had hired extra musicians so they could play their final album of the ’60s, Odessey and Oracle, from start to finish.

Rock critics routinely refer to Odessey and Oracle as a neglected masterwork. It is not. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not that. Odessey and Oracle is like psychedelia and bubblegum trapped in an abusive relationship. The first 11 tracks lack depth, bite, and interest. Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” Strawberry Alarm Clock’s cover of “You Keep Me Hanging On,” and even The Lemonpipers’ “Green Tambourine” are better. I’d rather listen to the drum solo in Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (baby).

However! Odessey and Oracle has 12 tracks. That’s one louder than 11. The 12th track is “Time of the Season.” In any library of the best songs of the ’60s, “Time of the Season” is part of the core collection.

If The Zombies had promised to play “Time of the Season” 12 times, I might’ve gone to their stupid show.

Astounding songs on atrocious albums, part 2
Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, Nancy & Lee (1968)

Nancy Sinatra will always be revered for recording “These Boots Are Made for Walking” and for posing in Playboy at the age of 55.

(Taking her clothes off was the only way she could get people to pay attention to her first album in 25 years. That says much more about the music business than it does about her.)

Lee Hazlewood produced “These Boots” and other hits for Nancy. He produced many artists, wrote hit records, recorded obscure records mostly to satisfy himself, and was by all accounts a man who went his own way.

In 1968, Sinatra and Hazlewood capitalized on their success together and recorded Nancy & Lee…one of the worst records I have ever heard. It sold a million copies in its day, which only demonstrates that people in 1968 were nuts.

The album begins with a cover of The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” Based on the evidence presented here, I don’t believe Nancy and Lee ever had a loving feeling to lose. I don’t believe they’ve even met before.

The album proceeds from this point in a countrified direction, which Lee is suited for but Nancy is not. When she sings “Alabam” for “Alabama,” she doesn’t sound like a country girl, she sounds like a carpetbagger.

“Greenwich Village Folk Song Salesman” doesn’t notice the Vietnam War and riots in the streets, “Lady Bird” is not about the First Lady, it’s about a bird, and Jesus Christ in a chicken basket, they trample Johnny and June Cash’s signature duet, “Jackson.” You got married in a fever? You did not!

The sole reason to listen to Nancy & Lee is “Some Velvet Morning,” a psychedelic journey starring Phaedra, an ancient Greek god who is really into nature. It was written by Hazlewood (in 2007, he recorded a duet of this song with his granddaughter…Phaedra) and sung memorably by both of them.

What’s it about? I hope it about made them a lot of money. Is it good? Applying words such as “good” or “bad” to “Some Velvet Morning” is as futile as resisting the Borg or waiting for the Cubs to win the World Series. “Some Velvet Morning” stands alone. There’s nothing like it in the popular music of the 1960s. Should we celebrate or mourn that fact? No one can say.

Every year in this country, this hemisphere, this planet, there is a 20-year-old DJ at a college radio station who slaps this record onto a turntable and says, “You gotta hear this!” That’s how I heard “Some Velvet Morning” the other day, and for three minutes and 39 seconds I was right there with her. Yeah. You gotta hear this.

Astounding songs on atrocious albums, part 3
The American Breed, Bend Me, Shape Me (1967)

This series could go on forever, like the line for the bathroom at a rave. I’ll stop with “Bend Me, Shape Me.” Aside from this song, the only reason to pay any attention to this band is that two of the Breeders went on to play in Rufus. Which means they knew Chaka Khan. I’m not worthy!

 

Alarmed

Posted: June 2, 2016 in music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
4

Electric Folklore Live
The Alarm
1988

If in 1988 you had wanted to make a movie about U2’s early years, you could’ve hired The Alarm to play them. They were Welsh, not Irish, but they were all inspired by The Clash and were intensely righteous. The Alarm sounded like U2. They sounded like U2 on the day they strummed their first note and I’ll bet they sound like U2 today. Middle-aged U2.

The Alarm were good. They weren’t built for a marathon, like U2, and they weren’t able to evolve, like U2, but they could be magnificent in a sprint. Like U2. Plus the gentlemen in The Alarm had serious hair.

The Alarm

Electric Folklore Live is The Alarm’s answer to U2’s Under a Blood Red Sky (1983). On the first three tracks they go head-to-head with U2’s legendary live album and emerge with a draw, including one first-class pop song: “Rain in the Summertime,” a bouncier version of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” (by, of course, U2).

Sadly, Electric Folklore has three more songs, and the quality drops like a ball rolling off a table. Well, that saves time! Once you’ve played the first half of Electric Folklore Live, put that record down and go check out two other songs by The Alarm: “The Stand” and “Sold Me Down the River.” Then I recommend you go directly to the album that The Alarm failed to record but U2 did: The Joshua Tree (1987).

If The Alarm came to Portland and played the Oregon Zoo Amphitheatre, I would probably go. The tickets would be way cheaper than tickets to U2.

Random Pick of the Day I
Siouxsie & The Banshees, Kaleidoscope (1980)
If you want an artist who can whip up a mood of despair and sometimes carry a tune, Siouxsie is your girl. I enjoy these glimpses of hopelessness because I’ve spent so much of my life working in corporate America. Feeling buoyant, joyful, vivacious? Give Kaleidoscope a chance to let some of the air out of your life.

Random Pick of the Day II
John Cougar Mellencamp, Uh-Huh (1983)
John Mellencamp’s early career was a struggle. His record company changed his name to Johnny Cougar and forgot to tell him. Sorry, kid, our bad. All of his early albums feature glamour-boy photos of him as if he were David Cassidy’s smarter younger brother. Critics dismissed him for sounding like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, and The Rolling Stones. I refused to buy his records. How do you survive such a storm of disdain?

Mellencamp can’t write as insightfully as Springsteen, Petty, etc., and thanks to my boycott he was practically living out of a cardboard box. But he was persistent. By 1983 he had managed to sneak his real name onto his albums. Critics were reconsidering his work. Even I started to like him.

Uh-Huh is a good place to start some Mellencamping. It has some solid songs in the first half, particularly the opener, “Crumblin’ Down.”

Random Pick of the Day III
R.E.M., Life’s Rich Pageant (1986)
Once or twice a year I trip over Life’s Rich Pageant and I ask myself, How did I get here? How do I work this? This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife! Then I ask myself, Why do I own this record? It packs several things I dislike inside one jewel case:

  1. Music by R.E.M., the most self-important, humorless band of the 1980s. (USA division – U2 takes the title in the U.K.)
  2. Michael Stipe’s monotonal, monocultured voice. You get more emotional nuance from Weird Al singing “Another One Rides the Bus.”
  3. The song list is hard to read plus it’s in in the wrong order double plus it doesn’t mention the one song that was a hit.

But then I start to play it and by the time I get to the last track I’m eager to hear the first one again. R.E.M. had an immense talent for being boring, which is why I forget them for most of the year. But it’s hard to imagine an ’80s Hall of Fame jukebox that doesn’t include at least half of what’s on this disc, including “Cuyahoga,” “Hyena,” “Begin the Begin,” and that hit I mentioned, “Superman” (the one song they didn’t write and that Stipe doesn’t sing).

No Trump jokes tonight. I was making myself ill.

 

Almost famous

Posted: June 1, 2016 in music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Boomtown
David + David
1986

David Baerwald and David Ricketts were Californians with musical roots in Bruce Springsteen’s The River. They called themselves David + David on Boomtown, their only album.

David Baerwald and David Ricketts should not be confused with David Whitson and David Phillips, two Texans who also recorded one album: the country-rock A Song for You. Those Davids called themselves David & David.

David + David and David & David should not be confused with the David and David who are two guys at my postcard club. Those are way other Davids.

David + David’s Boomtown is a chronicle of folks going nowhere during the Reagan years. Springsteen and David + David are good at observing losers, but only Springsteen can find their nobility. Springsteen’s people may be headed for defeat, but they’re going down in a last-chance power drive. David + David’s people are slipping quietly into that dark night.

Time has not helped this record, unless you swoon over synthesizers. As singers, the Davids are serviceable. They don’t take chances, except once when they rap, but it passes quickly. They’re the infielder you send into the game in the sixth inning when your regular guy pulls a hamstring. And the song “Ain’t That Easy,” sung from the point of view of an abusive boyfriend, is creepy. The romantic violin doesn’t help.

However: The writing often pops. On “Swallowed By the Cracks,” the line “We would talk through the night/about what we would do/if we could just get started” is a descendant of Pink Floyd’s “No one told you when to run/you missed the starting gun.” On “Heroes” they rhyme “bad guitar players” with “dewy-eyed teenage dragon slayers.”

The opening track, “Welcome to the Boomtown,” briefly broke into the Billboard Top 40. It’s the kind of song that college radio stations adore…for a couple of semesters. It’s also the only song I know with “succulent” in the lyrics:

So I say, I say welcome, welcome to the Boomtown
Pick a habit, we got plenty to go around
Welcome, welcome to the Boomtown
All that money makes such a…suc-cu-lent…sound

I guess time travel really is possible, because after tripping over “Welcome to the Boomtown” recently, I not only recognized it, I was immediately transported to a drizzly night in Seattle in what must’ve been the late ’80s, waiting in the doorway to get into a Ballard club with Special D. The club was playing a mixtape, and “Welcome to the Boomtown” drifted out of the PA system like a lost soul.

This record is worth a listen. But maybe not on Date Night.

Naturally, the first name of the man who produced Boomtown was Davitt.

Same era, different results
Wall of Voodoo, Call of the West (1982)
The Nails, Mood Swing (1984)

Wall of Voodoo’s specialties were alienation, hopelessness, and robotic laments. Singer Stan Ridgway sounded a lot like The B-52s’ Fred Schneider. When I first heard their song “Tomorrow,” I thought it was The B-52s. “Tomorrow” is a catchy tune with a galloping rhythm à la Men At Work’s “Down Under.”

Wall of Voodoo would be a whisper today, known only to ethnomusicologists, were it not for “Mexican Radio.” The guitar explodes off the starting block and the lyrics leave fun syllables in your mouth:

I wish I was in
Tijuana
Eating barbequed iguana
I’d take requests on the telephone
I’m on a wavelength far from home

The Nails had some serious skills, and Marc Campbell, their singer, had a big, distinctive voice. Their material was not up to their talent. They generally kept things dark and quirky, but they brightened up on “88 Lines About 44 Women.”

Deborah was a Catholic girl,
she held out to the bitter end.
Carla was a different type,
she’s the one who put it in.

There’s humor in this song, as well as motels, money, murder, madness, but it all ends sweetly:

Judy came from Ohio,
she’s a Scientologist.
Pomegranate, here’s a kiss,
I chose you to end this list.

Boomtown isn’t as good as Springsteen’s debut, Greetings from Asbury Park, but it showed potential. And yet nothing happened. Wall of Voodoo and The Nails together released 10 undistinguished albums. Why not David + David? Timing? Connections? The turn of an unfriendly card? “Mexican Radio” and “88 Lines About 44 Women” will live forever on comps of ’80s music. “Welcome to the Boomtown” will not.

My only thought here is that “Mexican Radio” propels and “88 Lines” makes you laugh. “Welcome to the Boomtown” haunts. When excavating the past, which would you’d rather be? Propelled, amused, or haunted? And that’s not haunted as in “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” but haunted as in somebody’s going to die. Alone.

Well, what’s fame anyway? David Bowie wrote a bitter song about it, but he said later that he didn’t care anymore. “I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.” And the chance to lead the Republican Party. I’d prefer a seat in a restaurant.

 

Older Entries
Newer Entries