Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

Jack White's debut solo album is coming in April

2012-01-30T21:08:00.000-08:00

Almost a year to the day of the announcement of the White Stripes' breakup comes a more encouraging announcement: Jack White's first solo album, titled Blunderbuss, is going to be released in late April. The first single, titled "Love Interruption", is being released next week on February 7th, with the non-album B-side "Machine Gun Silhouette". "Love Interruption" can be streamed at the link below:

http://jackwhiteiii.com/

The song serves as a very intriguing first taste of the album. It's a moody ballad that makes haunting use of an organ, acoustic guitar, and woodwind. White's lyrics use violent-sounding metaphors to describe how the singer feels about love. It almost sounds like a dark variation on the popular Fleetwood Mac sound from the '70's; Ruby Amanfu provides a Stevie Nicks-like harmony vocal that complements Jack White's disturbed Lindsey Buckingham. Let's hope that the rest of Blunderbuss is this strong.

Alex Chilton - "Free Again: The '1970' Sessions" (CD reissue)

2012-01-21T17:37:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month, on January 10th, 2012, Alex Chilton’s 1970 album was reissued by the Omnivore Recordings label, under the title Free Again: The “1970” Sessions. My review of the original 1996 release is here; in my previous blog post, I discussed the vinyl edition of the new reissue. This post focuses on the new CD edition.

This CD features new liner notes by Bob Mehr, who gives new and welcome insights on the sessions. Contrary to the album’s title, these recordings were made during the second half of 1969, while Chilton was still a member of the Box Tops. The sessions for this album were recorded virtually in secret, because Chilton was still under contractual obligation to the Box Tops; the reason the album was titled 1970 when it was released in 1996 was to avoid any potential legal troubles that may still have arisen from the recording dates. Also, the liner notes tell the tale about the initial search for a distribution deal for the album when it was first recorded. Some label execs showed interest, but Chilton was turned off by an offer from Atlantic which was based upon the success of a single; Chilton felt that this was too much like the types of business decisions he had to deal with in the Box Tops. Also, he shopped the album to Carl and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who liked what they heard, but nothing came of it.

The 13 tracks from the 1996 version are here, in a slightly different sequence. The “original mono mix” of “Free Again” that opens the CD is the same version that appeared on the 1996 version. The instrumental “Funky National” is appended to the end of the Big Star-like ballad “Every Day As We Grow Closer”, but to my ears, it doesn’t sound like those two tracks really belong together.

The Free Again CD contains eight extra tracks, six of which were previously unissued, and two of which appeared on a U.K. release called Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records Story in 2008. The ballad “All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain” is described in more detail in my previous blog post. The stereo remix of “Free Again” has a different vocal that sounds very much like the one Chilton re-recorded for the Lost Decade album, and is less preferable. There are now at least four different versions of the song in existence; the “original mono mix” on this album, sung in Chilton’s gruff Box Tops voice, is the best one. The original mono mixes of four other songs are all inferior to their final mixes. “Every Day As We Grow Closer” has denser instrumentation, and is less effective. On the other hand, “All I Really Want Is Money” has less instrumentation, but is better off with more. “Come On Honey” has a less appealing vocal. “The EMI Song” sounds almost the same, but sounds a bit less creamy toward the end. The last two tracks are demos which will be of interest to Chilton completists. Both of them sound quite personal. The piano-based “If You Would Marry Me Babe” may have been sincerely addressed to his first wife Suzie Green, although their marriage ended quickly. “It Isn’t Always That Easy”, co-written by Chilton and his Box Tops bandmate Gary Talley, is a somber ballad that likens a hotel room to a prison cell. Resembling a song from Big Star’s Radio City album, the song provides another hint as to why Chilton was longing to be “free again” from his Box Tops obligations.

Alex Chilton “Free Again: The ‘1970’ Sessions” (CD) (Omnivore OVCD-13) 2011

Track Listing:

1. Free Again (original mono mix)
2. Come On Honey
3. Something Deep Inside
4. I Can Dig It
5. The EMI Song (Smile For Me)
6. All I Really Want Is Money
7. The Happy Song
8. Jumpin’ Jack Flash
9. Every Day As We Grow Closer / Funky National
10. I Wish I Could Meet Elvis
11. Just To See You
12. All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain *
13. Sugar, Sugar / I Got The Feelin’
14. Free Again (stereo remix with alternate vocal) *
15. Every Day As We Grow Closer (original mono mix) **
16. Come On Honey (original mono mix) *
17. The EMI Song (Smile For Me) (original mono mix) **
18. All I Really Want Is Money (original mono mix) *
19. If You Would Marry Me Babe (demo) *
20. It Isn’t Always That Easy (demo) *

* -- Previously unissued

** -- Previously issued on Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records Story (Big Beat CDWIK2 273) 2008

Alex Chilton - "All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain"

2012-01-14T18:21:00.000-08:00

This past week, on January 10th, 2012, Alex Chilton’s 1970 album was reissued by the Omnivore Recordings label, under the title Free Again: The “1970” Sessions. The sessions for this album were actually recorded in 1969, shortly before the breakup of Chilton’s popular blue-eyed soul band The Box Tops, and before the formation of his revered power pop band Big Star. The album was never released until 1996, when it was issued as a CD titled 1970 by the Ardent label. That CD has been out of print for some time. The reissue by Omnivore comes in vinyl, CD, and digital formats. This post focuses on the vinyl edition, as well as a 7-inch single associated with it.

Unlike the CD and digital versions of the album, which contain several bonus tracks, the vinyl LP version of Free Again features only one previously unissued track, in place of the omitted “Sugar Sugar/I Got The Feeling” medley. The song is a Chilton composition titled “All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain”. It’s a somber folk ballad that would not sound out of place on Radio City, the second Big Star album. The lyrics are deeper than in most songs from Chilton’s bands, as he sings from the point of view of a person who (along with a companion) is left to live on the streets after being betrayed by friends. Chilton’s vocal is sung in a relatively low register that lies somewhere between his Box Tops gruffness and his Big Star high notes, and he effectively conveys the hopelessness of the characters in the song. Some of the songs from the 1970 sessions (especially “Free Again”) can be interpreted as songs about Chilton being freed from his Box Tops obligations. It’s possible that “All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain” might have reflected the downside of Chilton’s newfound freedom.

A limited-edition 7-inch single was issued at the same time as the Free Again album. It contained two alternate versions of “All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain”. The first side featured the original mix, which makes it sound even more like a Big Star song. In fact, this mix reminds me very much of the song “Thirteen”, although the subject matter is clearly more downbeat. Chilton sang in a slightly higher register for this version, and the harmony vocal provided by producer Terry Manning in the song's final mix is noticeably absent from this mix. This mix has less emotional impact than the final one. The second side of the single features the song’s demo, which sounds surprisingly good. The sounds of passing cars and other street noises were dubbed in by Manning; those sounds and the raw recording quality add some extra realism to the song’s lyrics about living on the street.

The single was limited to 500 copies. The first 1,500 copies of the vinyl LP were pressed in clear vinyl, and 500 of those were sold in bundles with the single through the Omnivore website.

Alex Chilton “Free Again: The ‘1970’ Sessions” (vinyl) (Omnivore OVLP-13) 2011

Track Listing:

1. Free Again (original mono mix)
2. I Can Dig It
3. Something Deep Inside
4. Just To See You
5. The EMI Song (Smile For Me)
6. All I Really Want Is Money
7. Come On Honey
8. I Wish I Could Meet Elvis
9. Every Day As We Grow Closer / Funky National
10. The Happy Song
11. Jumpin’ Jack Flash
12. All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain *

* -- Previously unissued

Alex Chilton “All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain” (single) (Omnivore OVS7-14) 2011

1. All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain (Original Mix)
2. All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain (Demo)

Third Man Records vinyl exclusives, Part 10

2012-01-09T17:14:00.000-08:00

Last week I received the tenth pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, who is the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, my package was sent on January 4th. I received it on the 6th.

This tenth set of items consists of a live album (pressed in black-and-blue split-colored vinyl) by the Raconteurs, recorded at the Third Man Records studio, as well as a 7” single containing “celebrity” remixes of two songs from Jack White-led bands, and a DVD documenting Third Man’s 2010 Halloween festival.

The single contains a remix of a White Stripes song by Beck (Hansen) on one side, and a remix of a Dead Weather song by Josh Homme and Mark Lanegan on the other. Both sides are labeled as A-sides, presumably so that one of the celebrity remixers will not be perceived as being more important than the other. Beck’s remix of “The Hardest Button To Button” is filled with heavily distorted techno beats that make it somewhat reminiscent of Nine Inch Nails. The staccato rhythms are sometimes striking, but are just as often annoying. For their remix of the Dead Weather’s “Hang You From The Heavens”, the guys from Queens Of The Stone Age rearrange the song into a duet between Mark Lanegan and Alison Mosshart, adding echo and filter effects to both voices. Most of the guitar work is mixed out, leaving long stretches of spare percussion that almost give the song an a cappella feel. Both sides of this single are basically hip curios for cognoscenti.

The Raconteurs’ Live At Third Man Records was recorded direct to 1” analog tape at the Third Man studio on September 14th, 2011. The usual quartet (Jack White, Jack Lawrence, Brendan Benson, and Patrick Keeler) were joined by Dean Fertita of the Dead Weather, who played keys and provided additional guitar and backing vocals. This was the Racs’ first show after a two-year hiatus, preceding just a handful of U.S. tour dates before the year’s end. The album sounds very much like a well-produced live album from the analog era. The performances are controlled, and the sound is clean, but it’s not clean to the point of digital-age sterility. There’s no new material here, unless you count the version of “Hands” with a few verses from the Who’s “I Can See For Miles” incorporated into it. But fans of the Racs’ two studio albums will not be disappointed by this well-played, well-recorded set. (For those who’ve been with the Vault service since its early days, this set has better sound quality than the Raconteurs’ Live In London album included in the second package, but has a less comprehensive selection of songs).

Update 1/11/12: The Raconteurs ended their set that night with a nearly-eleven-minute version of "Blue Veins", but this track clearly would not fit on the vinyl LP. However, as of this writing, an mp3 download has been made available at the Vault website for Vault members. It's a gloriously Zeppelin-esque extended jam that is worth hearing.

The DVD Devil’s Night at Third Man Records documents the Halloween party held at Third Man Records on October 30th, 2010, which featured performances by the Greenhornes and the Black Belles. (The term “Devil’s Night” has traditionally been used to describe the night before Halloween in Detroit, Jack White’s hometown). The half-hour “Feature Film” alternates between footage of the festivities – highlighted by the amusing interaction between hostess Elvira (a.k.a. Cassandra Peterson) and sword-swallowing performer Dan Meyer – and meatier parts involving the Greenhornes, whom we see rehearsing, discussing their then-forthcoming album titled ****, and performing songs for the studio audience while wearing ZZ Top costumes. The real pleasure of the DVD comes from the full live sets (accessed through different menu options) from the two bands involved. For their very first concert, the all-female quartet called the Black Belles (described by the hostess as “little baby Elviras in training”) played a fast-paced 10-minute set of four ‘60’s-style garage rock numbers. Both songs from their 2009 debut single are included (“What Can I Do” and the Knickerbockers’ “Lies”), but another song called “Casting My Spell On You” makes the strongest impression. Notwithstanding the ZZ Top gags, the Greenhornes’ set is no joke. Inspired by more vintage styles of ‘60’s rock, the band is able to cram 14 numbers (including six songs from ****) into a 44-minute time frame without short-changing any of them; they find enough time to deliver concise three-minute songs and British-style blues jams. Devil’s Night at Third Man Records is a fun DVD all around, but I do have one quibble: why is every aspect of this lighthearted event presented in arty black-and-white film? Some scenes just cry out for color.

A note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the forgotten practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is evident on these items. The Beck side of the single has “a psycho disco killer” carved in the dead wax; the B-side has “Dude took my drum stick. Gave it back” carved. Side One of the LP has “There’s magic in my eyes” etched in the runout grooves; Side Two has “As if no time has passed” carved.

The White Stripes “The Hardest Button To Button (Beck Remix)” / The Dead Weather “Hang You From The Heavens (Josh Homme & Mark Lanegan Remix)” (Third Man single TMR126) 2011

Track Listing:

a. The White Stripes – “The Hardest Button To Button” (Beck Remix)
a. The Dead Weather – “Hang You From The Heavens” (Josh Homme & Mark Lanegan Remix)

The Raconteurs “Live At Third Man Records” (Third Man TMR127) 2011

Track Listing:

1. Consolers of the Lonely
2. Salute Your Solution
3. Hands / I Can See For Miles
4. Old Enough
5. Top Yourself
6. Many Shades of Black
7. The Switch and the Spur
8. Broken Boy Soldier
9. Steady As She Goes

Devil’s Night at Third Man Records (Third Man DVD TMR 130) 2011

With full live performances from:

THE BLACK BELLES

1. What Can I Do?
2. Casting My Spell On You
3. Lies
4. The Witch

THE GREENHORNES

1. Instrumental
2. Saying Goodbye
3. Hard Times
4. Underestimator
5. Going To The River
6. Too Much Sorrow
7. Song 13
8. Shelter Of Your Arms
9. Things She Says
10. Jacob’s Ladder
11. La Grange
12. Better Off Without It
13. Need Your Love
14. Lost Woman

Paul McCartney and Rockestra

2011-12-31T08:51:00.000-08:00

The second Spotlight Album Review that I wrote for my website Rarebird’s Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews was for a Various Artists live album called Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, released in 1981. This double-LP, which has never been released on CD, was culled from four nights of concerts at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in December of 1979. These concerts were organized by Paul McCartney and Kurt Waldheim (who was then Secretary-General of the U.N.) to benefit victims of Pol Pot’s reign of terror in Cambodia. More information about the concerts and the album can be found on the review page.

There was a documentary film called Rock For Kampuchea made about the event, but to the best of my knowledge it has never been available on DVD. For the first eight years after I created the review page for the album, my review ended with the words: “So how about a DVD release?” Apparently, my wish has never been granted. Some are predicting that the DVD format will soon be obsolete anyway. But, would someone consider releasing Rock For Kampuchea on Blu-Ray? Maybe as a streaming Netflix video? Any format at all?

Anyway, my main reason for wanting to see the documentary was to see performance footage of Rockestra, a McCartney-led ensemble of at least 20 musicians. (The full credited list appears at the bottom of the review page). Fortunately, YouTube currently has good quality videos for all three of the Rockestra numbers. They are embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

To paraphrase what Mr. McCartney said at the end of the last video, Happy New Year!

Stoney and Meatloaf (1971)

2011-12-19T18:49:00.000-08:00

Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #22 is complete. The subject is an album which Meat Loaf recorded in 1971, a good six years before the release of his mega-selling Bat Out Of Hell album from 1977. It was a duet album with a singer/actress called Stoney, a stage name for Shaun Murphy. Murphy later worked as a back-up singer for Bob Seger and Eric Clapton, and became a full-time lead singer for Little Feat from 1993 until 2009.

My review of the 1971 Stoney and Meatloaf album is here:

http://rarebird9.net/stoney.html

Radiohead "The Daily Mail" and "Staircase"

2011-12-19T17:55:00.000-08:00

Continuing their unconventional methods of music distribution, Radiohead released a digital single today. The two songs, "The Daily Mail" and "Staircase" were recorded live for producer Nigel Godrich's From The Basement series. Both songs are quite impressive, not only because they could easily pass for studio recordings, but also because they have the classic Radiohead sound, more so than the songs on their recent album The King Of Limbs.

The entire performance is scheduled for release on DVD and Blu-Ray on January 31, 2012 as The King Of Limbs: Live From The Basement. The band performed all eight songs from The King Of Limbs as well as "The Daily Mail" and "Staircase" in Godrich's basement. Naturally, a digital-only version of the audio album from the BBC program is available from iTunes as of today.

The two tracks from the single can be purchased as downloads from Thekingoflimbs.com, Amazon.com, or iTunes.

Chick Churchill “You & Me” (1974)

2011-11-12T20:51:00.000-08:00

Besides singer/guitarist Alvin Lee, the only other member of the British blues-rock band Ten Years After who has ever released a solo album is keyboardist Chick Churchill. Churchill’s only solo album, titled You & Me, was released in 1974, when the original breakup of his usual band was all but final. Churchill wrote and produced the ten songs; besides playing the keyboards, he also arranged the strings. Two of his usual bandmates (bassist Leo Lyons, drummer Ric Lee) assisted on some tracks, as did Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson of Supertramp, Martin Barre, Cozy Powell, Bernie Marsden, and Bill Jackman. Churchill only sang the lead vocals on two tracks, “You’re Not Listening” and “Falling Down an Endless Day”. The other tracks were sung by journeyman vocalist Gary Pickford-Hopkins, who performed on Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth album that same year.

As you might have guessed after reading the names of the supporting players, the music on You & Me suggests that Churchill was considering a solo career in the then-dominant progressive rock genre. The album mainly consists of mellow art-pop. Although it’s not as stodgy as some entries in that genre, You & Me is also not particularly stimulating. Churchill’s playing distinguishes the material only slightly; it’s most effective on the pretty ballad “Dream of Our Maker Man” and the instrumental “Chiswick Flower”. The opening track “Come and Join Me” resembles a Rod Stewart song from the period, but has less vigor than Rod the Mod would have delivered. Churchill is able to carry the tunes on his two vocal turns, but he was wise to tap a professional to sing on the rest of the tracks.

Churchill did not continue to pursue a solo recording career. After the breakup of Ten Years After became official in 1976, Churchill continued to work in the music business as a publisher and promoter. Since then, Ten Years After have regrouped – but that’s another story.

Chick Churchill “You & Me” (Chrysalis CHR 1051) 1974

Track Listing:

1. Come and Join Me
2. Broken Engagements
3. You and Me
4. Reality in Arrears
5. Dream of Our Maker Man
6. Ode to an Angel
7. You’re Not Listening
8. Chiswick Flower
9. The Youth I Dreamt In Slipped Away
10. Falling Down an Endless Day

Third Man Records vinyl exclusives, Part 9

2011-11-01T17:55:00.000-07:00

Last week I received the ninth pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, who is the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, my package was sent on October 26th. I received it on the 28th.

Instead of recordings by White’s well-known bands, this ninth set of items consists of recordings in which White was a player, but where he ceded most of the spotlight to two elder statespeople who began their careers in the 1950’s. The package contains a live album (pressed in black-and-blue split-colored vinyl) by Wanda Jackson, recorded at Third Man Studios, as well as a DVD of the same concert, and a 7” single containing two 1998 recordings from Two-Star Tabernacle, a short-lived band which featured Jack White.

Two-Star Tabernacle was a late-‘90’s punk quartet consisting of a pre-Stripes Jack White, future Blanche founders Dan John Miller and Tracee Mae Miller, and future Detroit Cobras drummer Damian Lang. Their only official release before this Vault package was a 7” single recorded in 1998 with R&B veteran Andre Williams. (That single was “Ramblin’ Man” b/w “Lily White Mama & Jet Black Daddy”, released on Bloodshot Records, cat. no BS 041). Their Vault single was also recorded in 1998. The A-side is an early version of “The Big 3 Killed My Baby”, which was later recorded by the White Stripes for their 1999 debut album. This version is looser than the one by the Stripes, as Jack White and Andre Williams share lead vocals in raucous fashion. The B-side is a different version of Hank Williams’ “Ramblin’ Man” than the one which served as the A-side of the original Two-Star Tabernacle single. Where the original single’s version was a duet between Andre Williams and Dan John Miller, this version is sung only by Miller, and it has a more straightforward consistency. Good single. (By the way: happy birthday to Andre Williams, who turned 75 on the day this blog post was published).

Wanda Live! At Third Man Records finds 73-year-old rockabilly/country/gospel legend Wanda Jackson performing a set of oldies (and one Amy Winehouse cover) at Third Man Studios in January 2011, backed by an 11-piece house band featuring Jack White. The gracefully aged septuagenarian shows remarkable enthusiasm through her ten-song set (after the house band opens the show with the Bill Justis instrumental “Raunchy”). Her gravelly voice sounds only slightly more weathered than it did 50 years earlier, and the house band’s backing gives the set a neo-‘50’s vibe that feels both modern and nostalgic. Most of the songs date from the time of Jackson’s late-‘50’s, early-‘60’s career peak, including her own hit “Right or Wrong”; that song’s newly appreciated B-side “Funnel of Love”; “Let’s Have a Party”, a song made famous by both Jackson and her one-time boyfriend Elvis Presley; and “Like a Baby”, one of the King’s lesser-known songs. It’s an entertaining set, to be sure, though it’s hardly a major event.

As for the song that is not an oldie: the inclusion of Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” is arguably a case of bad timing. This concert was recorded six months before Winehouse’s alcohol-related death in July 2011, but this Vault package was delivered a few months after that tragic event. It was Jack White’s idea to have Jackson cover the Winehouse song, his reason being that Jackson was the “bad girl” of her day, and her cover of the Winehouse song enables her to sound like a more contemporary “bad girl”. But, my, how “bad girls” have changed since Wanda’s day: Jackson has lived a long life and matured into an elderly woman who can rock and roll with grace at age 73, but Winehouse self-destructed at the early age of 27 (see my most recent blog post before this one). Jackson notes during the concert that she was understandably reluctant to record the song. Jackson’s voice does fit the song well, giving it a whiskey-flavored dimension, but it’s best for the listener to forget that a 70-something is singing it. When watching the DVD of this concert, that’s not so easy to do. We see a clearly wise old woman singing lyrics about cheating, about boozing, and about her stomach dropping and her guts churning. Distasteful? A little bit.

Listening to the 40-minute concert on vinyl is adequate, but watching the DVD is a better way to experience it. Jackson’s enthusiasm and White’s control come through more clearly in the visual medium. In keeping with Third Man’s devotion to vinyl, the DVD’s packaging resembles a miniature LP jacket and inner sleeve.

Another note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the forgotten practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is evident on these items. Someone had fun carving the text into the single: Side A has “ole tre cantu sea, ewe dud culled la nord pole ice caps una mea ego” carved in the dead wax; the B-side has “una grande tray neco see ala maledicta puta mea una borne vida” carved. Side One of the LP has “Was that Sam Malone?” etched in the runout grooves; Side Two has “I think I saw Clara Clayton” carved.

Wanda Jackson “Wanda Live! At Third Man Records” (Third Man TMR085) 2011

Track Listing:

1. Raunchy (instrumental)
2. Riot in Cell Block #9
3. I’m Busted
4. You Know I’m No Good
5. Like a Baby
6. Right or Wrong
7. Fujiyama Mama
8. Funnel of Love
9. Blue Yodel #6
10. Let’s Have a Party
11. Shakin’ All Over

Wanda Jackson “Wanda Live! At Third Man Records” (Third Man DVD TMR 116) 2011

Track Listing is same as above.

2 ★ Tabernacle “The Big 3 Killed My Baby” (b/w “Ramblin’ Man”) (Third Man single TMR111) 2011

Track Listing:

a. The Big 3 Killed My Baby
b. Ramblin’ Man

The 27 Club

2011-07-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

By this time, you’ve most likely heard about the tragic death of British soul singer Amy Winehouse, who was found dead in her home in London this past Saturday, July 23, 2011. As of this writing, no official cause of death has been determined. However, Winehouse’s battle with drug addiction is well known. One of her hit songs was titled “Rehab”, and its lyrics were about refusing to enter it. For the record, Winehouse actually did go into rehab (some sources say she went as many as four times), but she could not overcome her demons. She was 27 years old. (Update: In October 2011, Winehouse's death was determined to have been alcohol-related).

Apparently, many a musician has met an early end at that peculiar age. Winehouse’s death has drawn new media attention to the so-called “27 Club”, a mythical pantheon of musicians who have died at the age of 27. Along with Winehouse, the most famous members of the 27 Club are Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain. The myth of the 27 Club was created in 1970 and 1971, when Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison all died within the same 12-month period. That series of events permanently gave rock and roll an even more dangerous image than it had before. When Kurt Cobain’s mother was informed of her famous son’s suicide in 1994, she remarked that he “joined that stupid club”.

Depending on which believer in the 27 Club you are listening to, the club’s original founding member was either ragtime pianist Lewis Chauvin (who died from syphilis in 1908) or blues legend Robert Johnson (who was apparently poisoned in 1938). Other names on the long list of musicians who died at 27 include: original Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones; original Grateful Dead keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan; Badfinger leader Pete Ham; Stooges bassist Dave Alexander; Big Star co-founder Chris Bell; Minutemen singer/guitarist D. Boon; Echo and the Bunnymen drummer Pete de Freitas; Gits vocalist Mia Zapata; and Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff. Also worth mentioning is Manic Street Preachers guitarist Richey Edwards, who vanished in 1995 at age 27, and is officially presumed dead.

Is it all just a macabre coincidence? Maybe. The superstitious might attribute it to a curse. Some others will speculate that (to paraphrase Kurt Cobain's mother) some musicians willfully meet their end at age 27 for the sake of being immortalized in the “Club”. Personally, I do wonder if musicians who live self-destructive lifestyles may possibly have tendencies to burn out when they reach age 27. To be fair, not all of the musicians mentioned above died from drug-related deaths. But the most famous among them generally did. When someone uses drugs for a number of years, they are likely to sink into a state of addiction from which they cannot recover. They may eventually be faced with making the hard choice between continuing down the road they are on (which, they may come to realize, will only become more painful and destructive) or getting clean (which can be frightening for someone who has become dependent on drugs). It is possible that when drug-dependent musicians reach age 27, they tend to reach that moment of reckoning, and lose their will to live. Also, their bodies may reach the point where they need to use heavy doses of potent drugs in order to achieve their desired highs. Their self-destructive lifestyles may finally break their bodies or their spirits (or both) at a time that happens to come before their 28th birthday.

It’s sad to see so many talented people die at early ages. Unfortunately, the trend will probably continue. We can preach “say no to drugs” messages until we are blue in the face, but some people will still not heed the warning, regardless of the number of lives we see ruined or lost. It seemingly always has been and probably always will be common for musicians to be drawn to wild and drug-addled party lifestyles. We can only hope that the deaths of Winehouse and several others in the 27 Club will open more eyes.

Third Man Records vinyl exclusives, Part 8

2011-07-18T21:56:00.000-07:00

Last week I received the eighth pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, who is the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, my package was sent on July 11th. I received it on the 13th.

This eighth set of items focuses entirely on the recently disbanded White Stripes, giving us glimpses of the very beginning and the very end of their performing career. It consists of a 2-LP live album (pressed in 180g vinyl) documenting the final White Stripes concert from 2007, as well as a 7” single containing two very early Stripes recordings from 1997, and a DVD documenting a concert that the duo gave in a small Minnesota bar in the year 2000.

The duo of Jack and Meg White performed their final concert at Snowden Grove Amphitheater in Southaven, Mississippi on July 31, 2007. The remainder of their tour, which was not meant to be their last, was cancelled due to Meg’s bout with acute anxiety. The double-LP Live In Mississippi enables us to hear that final show. It’s an intense and often ferocious set, with the Stripes giving it their all as if they knew it was the end. (During their closing performance of the traditional “Boll Weevil” blues song, Jack indeed does seem to make some kind of comment about their “last show”. Maybe I’m just hearing things). Jack dazzles with his guitar acrobatics, particularly on “Icky Thump” and “Ball and Biscuit”. Meg’s simple drumming pins the songs down nicely; “Blue Orchid” is a standout example of how well her drumming can complement Jack’s guitar playing. The best track of all is their cover of Son House’s “Death Letter”, which serves up a series of fascinating blues licks that culminate in a dizzying finish. However, there is one telltale sign of Meg’s troubles: her slightly awkward lead vocal on “In The Cold, Cold Night” suggests a possible feeling of insecurity. A riveting listen from start to finish, Live In Mississippi gives fans the golden opportunity to say a proper goodbye to the White Stripes. (Note: The album’s track listing is numbered backwards from 22 to 1 on the packaging instead of 1 to 22, like it’s the final countdown to the end of the final show. Now there is something that couldn’t be done on a CD package without causing some confusion).

The DVD Under Moorhead Lights All Fargo Night documents a relatively early live performance by the Whites at Ralph’s Corner Bar in Moorhead, MN, on June 13th of 2000, which Jack told the audience was the release date of the second Stripes album De Stijl. (The album was actually released a week later, on the 20th of that month – but, whatever). Jack’s voice was hoarse that day, which does prove to be a problem when he tries to sing Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. But that is the only song that is ruined by that problem. Otherwise, Jack is able to work around that obstacle quite well, even on the more pop-influenced numbers like “Apple Blossom” and “You’re Pretty Good Looking”. Instrumentally, the duo’s economical guitar-and-drums combo packs its usual punch throughout. “Little Bird” and Son House’s “Death Letter” have particularly gripping and authentic blues grooves; the latter song clearly has a way of bringing out the best in Jack White. This DVD effectively captures the feeling of seeing the White Stripes play in a small intimate bar. Pour me another beer! (About 36 minutes into the disc, right at the beginning of “Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise”, the DVD suddenly jumps to the main menu – a very annoying main menu, I might add – so you’ll need to use the Scene Selection option to play the three remaining songs).

The 7” single goes even farther back into the Stripes’ early days, containing two studio sides recorded back in 1997. That’s right: these two songs predate the duo’s 1998 debut single “Let’s Shake Hands”. The A-side is a cover of Love’s “Signed DC”; the B-side is a cover of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”. The A-side’s faithful version of the moody Arthur Lee ballad about drug addiction comes remarkably close to matching the original version’s feeling of detached hopelessness. The cover of Redding’s classic soul ballad on the B-side doesn’t come close to the soulfulness of the original, but it probably wasn’t meant to, as it’s converted into a minimalist garage rock song. These two recordings suggest that the Whites knew from the beginning what type of aesthetic they wanted for their band.

Another note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the forgotten practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is evident on these items. Side A of the single has “Don Conka or death certificate?” carved in the dead wax; the B-side has “We didn’t know this existed” carved. The double-LP has the following messages etched in the runout grooves: “suburban Memphis”, “birth place of suburban rock + roll”, “Meg told me before the show”, and “the prestige on the way home”.

White Stripes “Live In Mississippi” (Third Man TMR-100) 2011

Track Listing (numbered in reverse as on the packaging):

FIRST SIDE

22. Stop Breaking Down
21. Let’s Build a Home
20. When I Hear My Name
19. Icky Thump
18. Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground/As Ugly As I Seem
17. The Same Boy You’ve Always Known
16. Wasting My Time

SECOND SIDE

15. Phonograph Blues
14. Cannon/John the Revelator
13. Death Letter
12. Astro
11. Apple Blossom
10. You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)
9. In The Cold, Cold Night

3RD SIDE

8. I Want To Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother’s Heart
7. Hotel Yorba
6. A Martyr For My Love For You
5. Ball and Biscuit

LAST SIDE

4. 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues
3. Blue Orchid
2. I’m Slowly Turning Into You
1. Boll Weevil

White Stripes “Under Moorhead Lights All Fargo Night” (Third Man DVD TMR-096) 2011

Track Listing:

1. Let’s Shake Hands
2. Screwdriver
3. Wasting My Time
4. Jolene
5. Death Letter
6. Little Bird
7. Apple Blossom
8. You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)
9. Your Southern Can Is Mine
10. Sugar Never Tasted So Good
11. Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise
12. I’m Bored
13. Cannon/John the Revelator

The White Stripes “Signed DC” (b/w “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”) (Third Man single TMR097) 2011

Track Listing:

a. Signed DC
b. I’ve Been Loving You Too Long

Farewell, yourmusic.com (aka BMG Music Service)

2011-06-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

It’s official. The website yourmusic.com, which evolved from the mail-order music club BMG Music Service, is no more. The site closed down around midnight on June 29th, 2011. This probably does not come as a surprise to anyone. As CD sales have continued to decline, many music retailers have been closing up shop in recent years. It seemed like only a matter of time before this particular enterprise would come to its end.

But, personally, I hate to see it come to its end. I have fond memories of the time when I first became a member of the BMG Music Club. In 1989, after I acquired my first compact disc player, I finally couldn’t refuse those magazine ads for record clubs which I had been seeing since I was a child. As a youngster, I remember seeing ads offering certain numbers of LP records for only one penny. My older siblings repeatedly explained to me that there was a catch: I would be under obligation to buy more records later at full price. So, I had to wait until I “grew up”. And, by that time, vinyl LP records were (temporarily, it turns out) going out of style. CD’s were the new thing, and when I came to own my first CD player, I was anxious to buy CD’s to play on it. Being the fanatical music lover that I’ve always been, I did not wish to buy just a few. When I walked into music stores, I wanted to own virtually every CD in sight! CD’s were expensive, however. They tended to cost about $15 apiece, at a time when I was used to paying less than $10 apiece for records and tapes. Joining a mail-order CD club was the best option I had at the time to acquire CD’s at more affordable prices. Columbia House was the bigger name among CD clubs at the time, but a member of my household was already a member at Columbia House. So I joined BMG. (Many years later, in 2005, BMG acquired Columbia House and merged the clubs under the BMG name).

There were almost always good deals offered through the club. The deals were usually along the lines of “buy 1 CD, get 1 free”, or “buy 1 CD, get 2 at 50% off”; there were many variations. What it basically meant was that I was able to stock up on CD’s for an average price that was lower than the prices I would pay at a music store. These deals made me more willing to take chances on artists and albums that I was curious about. The catalogues offered an extensive selection of titles, usually including recent releases, compilations, back catalogue titles, etc. It’s safe to say that my CD collection would be much smaller if not for BMG. I don’t remember how many CD’s I was required to purchase as per the member agreement, but I had no trouble reaching that number.

I remember a controversy which surrounded the BMG and Columbia House music clubs at some time in the 1990's. Other types of music retailers criticized the clubs for undercutting their CD sales, and some artists complained that they were not receiving proper royalty payments from the clubs. Both of those parties argued that the original purpose of record clubs was to service parts of the United States which did not have easy access to brick-and-mortar music retailers in earlier decades. In the 1990’s, the retailers and artists argued, the clubs were doing more harm than good to the music industry. I can remember shopping at Tower Records and seeing some CD’s advertised as “not available from record clubs”. Of course, this controversy was mild compared to the controversies which later arose over mp3’s – which, as we know, are one of the reasons why the music clubs have become outmoded.

In the late ‘90’s, the BMG club began to seem like old news to me after I started to use the internet and discovered online music retailers. Still, it was there when I needed it, and I still made purchases through BMG fairly often. In fact, their website made even more CD titles accessible for purchase, and made it easier to respond to the monthly featured selections. Being the old-fashioned guy that I am, I long resisted their offers to “go paperless” by only receiving notifications through e-mail instead of postal mail; I also continued to send payments by check through postal mail, instead of paying online by credit card.

When BMG Music Service made its transition to yourmusic.com in mid-2009, they eliminated postal mail catalogues and monthly featured selections. All orders were placed through the website, and all customers were required to pay online with credit cards. They reverted to one standard deal which rarely changed: CD’s were usually priced at $6.99, with free shipping. A very good deal, to be sure. But I usually did not find many CD’s that I was willing to purchase. That may have been due to the fact that many newer artists I was interested in were on independent labels; BMG always mainly sold CD’s by major label artists. Whatever the case may have been, the yourmusic.com experience just wasn’t the same as the BMG experience which I used to take for granted.

After yourmusic.com sent e-mails in May informing its members that the service would close at the end of June, the site held “everything must go” clearance sales, the usual price being $3.99 per CD. I was glad to be able to get in on one last great deal from the old record club. I received an e-mail today (the day after the site officially closed) informing me that the last batch of CD’s I ordered have been shipped. I’m looking forward to receiving these discs and savoring my last record club purchase.

I saw the end coming, but it’s still disappointing to see the club go out of business after I have enjoyed their service for 22 years. Thank you, BMG/yourmusic.com, for all of those great years. You will be missed.

An Evening With Wild Man Fischer (1969)

2011-06-25T21:44:00.000-07:00

Larry “Wild Man” Fischer, a cult musician who suffered from mental illness, died earlier this month from heart failure at age 66. Fischer made sporadic recordings and television appearances beginning in 1968. A performance artist from the enigmatic genre known as outsider music, Wild Man Fischer may have been best known to fans of the Dr. Demento show. He had the distinction of being the very first artist to record for Rhino Records, beginning with a 1975 single called “Go To Rhino Records”. But the first person who was bold enough to give the Wild Man a record deal was Frank Zappa. In 1968, Zappa “discovered” Fischer while he was performing his songs on the sidewalks of L.A.’s Sunset Strip for passersby for ten cents a song. On his Bizarre label, Zappa produced and released Fischer’s two-record debut album titled An Evening With Wild Man Fischer. Recorded on a sidewalk in 1968 and released in April of 1969, the album is, by turns, a performance album by Fischer, a concept album about Fischer, and a documentary recording about Fischer. Zappa ended his association with Fischer after an altercation in which the Wild Man threw a tantrum – and a bottle – in Zappa’s home, understandably frightening Zappa’s family. As a result of this incident, An Evening With Wild Man Fischer did not stay in print for long, and it has never been released on CD. This long-lost album is decidedly not for the average listener’s taste, but for connoisseurs of outsider music, comedy records, and all things Zappa-related, it’s a must-listen.

The first of the album's four sides begins with the absurdly catchy “Merry-Go-Round” (which we are told “is Wild Man’s theme song, sort of”), followed by three tracks of the busker interacting with people on the street. The side closes with seven minutes of goofy Beat-style poetry by Kim Fowley and Rodney Bingenheimer, pretending to exalt the Wild Man.

The second side reveals Fischer’s bizarre song craft: it contains fifteen tracks which display Fischer’s often hilarious manner of street singing. The songs are mostly a cappella, give or take some tuneless guitar strumming on “Taggy Lee” and the amusingly creepy “Think Of Me When Your Clothes Are Off”. In his raspy and uninhibited voice, Fischer spouts oddball lyrics – sometimes using multiple voices to simulate dialogues between different characters – and imitates instrumental sounds with surprisingly good rhythm and timing. Most of the songs are sub-two-minute samples of the Wild Man’s strangely entertaining shtick, although the absurd black comedy of “Jennifer Jones” proves that he could stay on the same track for four minutes if he wanted to. It all plays like a stand-up comedy act from society’s fringe.

The third side sounds like a bizarre episode of VH1 Storytellers, as Fischer tries to tell the stories behind three songs he wrote as a teenager, all of which he thought could be pop hits. “The Taster” features full instrumental accompaniment by Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and is surprisingly accessible. Another song, titled “Serrano (Sorrento?) Beach”, sounds like it had the makings of a good surf-rock tune. Unfortunately, this side is padded with filler, namely the incoherent medley “Success Will Not Make Me Happy” and another seven-minute recording (like the one on the first side) of Fischer interacting with people on the Sunset Strip.

The fourth side is the one that really serves as a twisted documentary about the Wild Man. Aside from the Zappa-assisted song “Circle”, a manic psych-rock psych-out which is probably no worse than many other such songs from the period, this is the side where Fischer candidly bares his troubled soul. “The Wild Man Fischer Story” is a tragicomic piece of performance art in which Fischer tells us (in multiple voices) the tale of how he was twice committed by his mother to mental institutions as a teenager, and about the doubts he was having at age 23 about the possibilities of a career in music. The spoken-word tracks on this side find Fischer rambling about his philosophies on life, women, music, and why he is “normal”. But the final track ends the album on a tellingly sad note: on “Larry Under Pressure”, we hear an exhausted Fischer anxiously acknowledging that he was not normal, and felt that he probably never would be. Quite a revealing Evening, indeed.

Wild Man Fischer “An Evening With Wild Man Fischer” (Bizarre/Reprise 2XS 6332) 1969

Track Listing:

Side One: The Basic Fischer

1. Merry-Go-Round (This is Wild Man's theme song, sort of)
2. New Kind Of Songs For Sale (live on the strip)
3. "I'm Not Shy Anymore!" (Larry relives the past in the studio)
4. "Are You From Clovis?"
5. The Madness & Ecstacy (Kim Fowley & Rodney Bingenheimer provide an introduction to, and make prophesies about the future of Wild Man Fischer)

Side Two: Larry's Songs, Unaccompanied

1. Which Way Did The Freaks Go?
2. I'm Working For The Federal Bureau Of Narcotics
3. The Leaves Are Falling
4. 85 Times
5. Cops & Robbers
6. Monkeys Versus Donkeys
7. Start Life Over Again
8. The Mope
9. Life Brand New
10. Who Did It Johnny?
11. Think Of Me When Your Clothes Are Off
12. Taggy Lee
13. Rhonda
14. I Looked Around You
15. Jennifer Jones

Side Three: Some Historical Notes

1. The Taster (Fancy Version)
2. The Story Of The Taster
3. The Rocket Rock
4. The Rocket Rock Explanation & Dialog
5. Dream Girl
6. Dream Girl Explanation
7. Serrano (Sorrento?) Beach
8. Success Will Not Make Me Happy
9. Wild Man On The Strip Again

Side Four: In Conclusion

1. Why I Am Normal
2. The Wild Man Fischer Story
3. Balling Isn't Everything
4. Ugly Beautiful Girl
5. Larry & His Guitar
6. Circle (Larry’s first psychedelic hit)
7. Larry Under Pressure

Neil Young page updates

2011-06-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

I've recently added three reviews to the Neil Young page of my website. These reviews pertain to his 1986 album Landing On Water (which is out of print in the U.S. but still available in some countries) and two rare EP's: Eldorado (1989) and The Complex Sessions (1994). The page is located here:

http://rarebird9.net/young.html

The Neil Young page is one page that I haven't made many changes to since I first created it in 1999. The original purpose of the page was to highlight six albums which were then referred to by Young's fans as "the lost six". The first six albums reviewed on the page were out of print at the time, but four of them were reissued in 2003. The ones which are still unavailable are the 1972 movie soundtrack Journey Through The Past (no loss there) and the 1973 live album Time Fades Away (a definite loss; why hasn't it been reissued?).

One revision I've made to the page is one that I would rather not have. I wrote in '99 that "Young has remained relevant", but that statement is now debatable. Many of the albums that Young has released over the past decade are below the standards of his earlier body of work. In some cases -- for example, Greendale (2003) and Living With War (2006) -- it seemed that Young was struggling to remain relevant. Regardless of recent disappointments, Neil Young will always be regarded as one of rock's essential artists.

Twelve years!

2011-06-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

It’s amazing but true. It has now been twelve years since I first published my website Rarebird’s Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews. At first thought, it doesn’t seem as if it was that long ago. But then I start to think in depth about how much has changed since that time, especially as far as the music industry is concerned. In 1999, there was no such thing as iTunes, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter. Music was sold mainly on CD’s. Audiocassettes were just going out of fashion at that time, and controversies over online music file sharing were just beginning to heat up. Brick-and-mortar stores like Tower Records were still the places where most music was purchased, although online CD sales were certainly picking up speed. Also, many CD’s were purchased by mail through clubs like Columbia House and BMG Music Service. I used to love visiting my local used record stores to find rare and out-of-print recordings, although I had just recently discovered the joys of eBay and GEMM in '99. Do you know how I used to check which albums were in or out of print in the early days of my website? It was very easy: I would check to see which titles were currently available for sale at CDNow, an online music retailer that sold every CD in print – and only the CD’s that were in print. If a title was not available from CDNow, I immediately determined that it was suitable for review on my website.

Flash forward twelve years later. Songs and albums are largely sold by way of internet downloads. CD sales have been steeply declining. Many brick-and-mortar music retailers – including the once-mighty Tower Records – have gone out of business. Some people are predicting a complete end to in-store CD sales in the near future. The Columbia House CD club was acquired years ago by its competitor BMG, and BMG (which is now called yourmusic.com) is shutting down at the end of June. Used record stores and independent music stores are becoming rarer. And did I mention the long-forgotten CDNow? That online CD store was bought out many years ago by Amazon.com (which was primarily a seller of books back in the ‘90’s).

Ironically, one very interesting thing has recently happened which seems incongruous next to many of these trends: a vinyl resurgence! Two decades after the music industry did its very best to kill off the vinyl LP format, a new appreciation has come about for 12-inch and 7-inch vinyl discs. Many people who have forgotten how much fun it can be to collect vinyl – not to mention younger folks who don’t even remember vinyl’s heyday – have (re-)discovered the fascination of watching a record spin on a turntable, as well as the forgotten beauty of LP cover art. For someone who is used to mp3’s and small CD packaging, it can be fascinating to look at a 12-inch album cover, liner notes, and sometimes even a gatefold sleeve – and then realize that there is music inside the package, too! Turntables and accessories have become easier to purchase, and small indie record stores are able to highlight vinyl records to their advantage. Personally, I never gave up my hobby of collecting vinyl, and I was dreading the day when records and turntables would really become obsolete. Fortunately, that day now seems much farther away. Time will tell how long this vinyl resurgence will last. In the meantime, it’s a breath of fresh air for me.

So, what effect do these trends have on my website? Is the site’s concept any more or any less meaningful after so many changes in the music world? Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that one. I do know one thing: I plan to keep my site up and running for many years to come. Thanks for your support!

Third Man Records vinyl exclusives, Part 7

2011-04-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

Last week I received the seventh pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, my package was sent on April 15th. I received it on the 18th.

This seventh set of items consists of a 2-LP compilation of all Third Man Records singles released in 2010, and two 7” singles. One of the singles features two cover songs from the 5.6.7.8’s. The other single contains three covers by the White Stripes of Captain Beefheart songs, recorded in 2000.

The 5.6.7.8’s are the Japanese girl group who are best known to American audiences for their appearance in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1. The A-side of the single contains a cover of Jerry Lee Lewis’ 1957 classic “Great Balls of Fire” and the B-side contains a cover of “Hanky Panky”, the 1963 Raindrops song which became a #1 hit for Tommy James and the Shondells in 1966. Jack White plays guitar on both. It’s fairly amusing to hear the group belt out “Great Balls of Fire”, mostly in the ladies’ native tongue. But what do they do with the repetitive “Hanky Panky”? They sing that one in English – I suppose it wasn’t heard to learn that line – but its reward comes from an instrumental jam between White and the ladies. It was wise to put that song on the B-side; after all, that was the original purpose of the song when the Raindrops first recorded it, before Tommy James managed to turn it into a chart-topping A-side.

The White Stripes single is a reissue of a single which was first issued in 2000 exclusively through a Sub Pop Records singles club (which apparently was the inspiration for these Third Man Vault packages). It contains covers of three Captain Beefheart songs: “Party of Special Things to Do” is on the A-side; “China Pig” and “Ashtray Heart” are both on the B-side. The reissue was done as a tribute to Beefheart and to former Sub Pop marketing V.P. Andy Kotowicz, who both died in 2010. Pressed in red-white-and-black tri-colored vinyl, the single demonstrates the results of Jack and Meg White’s application of their minimalist blues-rock ethic to the late Captain’s quirkier creations. The Whites make Beefheart’s songs a bit tidier and easier to approach, but all three songs lose some of their original vibrancy. It’s hard to fault the Whites for this result, because there truly was only one Don Van Vliet. Still, the Stripes’ versions are quite good, especially when the duo works up a head of steam on “Ashtray Heart”. Visually, the tri-colored single is an exquisite vinyl curio; the swirl effect is especially unique. (Note: The catalogue number for the original red-and-white vinyl issue was Sub Pop SP 527).

The 2-LP set Third Man Records Single Releases 2010 compiles the A-sides and B-sides of the singles released on Third Man that year, beginning with catalogue number TMR-029 and ending with TMR-068. (This excludes the exclusive singles included in the earlier Vault packages, as well as the Dead Weather’s triple-decker record and the White Stripes Christmas single that was exclusive to their 2010 Christmas Package).

Included among the compiled tracks are the two potent Dead Weather singles from their 2010 sophomore album Sea of Cowards (“Die By The Drop”, “Blue Blood Blues”) and their B-sides: “Old Mary”, a bizarre variation on a traditional prayer; and a fast and furious live version of “Jawbreaker”, recorded at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre. Four other tracks on the compilation belong to Karen Elson, who was Mrs. Jack White at the time. The haunting title track from her respectable debut album The Ghost Who Walks is a good opening track for any album. Maybe it’s just me, but listening to the song on vinyl seems to make its murder-ballad lyrics more effective. That song’s B-side, “Stolen Roses”, is similarly gothic but a shade less striking. The other Elson single, “The Truth is in the Dirt”, is passable but easier to forget; its non-album B-side is an adequate cover of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch”.

The Greenhornes, who have two members in common with the Raconteurs, recreate vintage British Invasion-era rock sounds on their three delightful tracks, two of which appeared on their confidently titled 2010 album **** (as in “four stars”). The other track, “Stay Together”, is a non-album B-side, and it actually comes after “Song 13” on this album, not before it as the back cover's track list has it sequenced.

This year’s spoken-word single from Third Man comes from late-night TV survivor Conan O’Brien, who also recorded a live album of cover songs for the label(!). The A-side is a comedy monologue from the point of view of Dr. Frankenstein; the B-side is an “interview” by Jack White, which basically consists of eight minutes of Jack and Conan playing off each other’s humor. Both sides are mildly amusing, especially if you’re looking to hear Conan goof on Jay Leno, but the single is for Conan-lovers only.

The young English folksinger Laura Marling offers simple, lovely acoustic covers of Jackson C. Frank’s “Blues Run The Game” (recorded in one take) and Neil Young’s “The Needle and the Damage Done”. The Secret Sisters, made up of Alabama siblings Laura and Lydia Rogers, contribute energetic and densely arranged versions of Johnny Cash’s “Big River” and the ancient American folk song “Wabash Cannonball”, with help from White, Carl Broemel of My Morning Jacket, and the Greenhornes/Raconteurs rhythm section. The two songs from ‘50’s rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson both appear on her recent album The Party Ain’t Over. Her rollicking rendition of Bob Dylan’s 2006 song “Thunder On The Mountain” name-checks her old friend Jerry Lee Lewis instead of Alicia Keys; her immediate version of the Bailes Brothers’ righteous “Dust On The Bible” is a welcome reminder of the country and gospel phases of Jackson’s history.

As for some of the lesser known artists included here…The two songs by Pujol are enjoyable straight-ahead rock and roll numbers that border on punk-like simplicity. The trio called Drakkar Sauna come across as creators of children’s songs for adults; imagine if Jack White produced They Might Be Giants. Their two cheerfully nonsensical songs, complete with references to Michael J. Fox and The Fly, are fun to hear. The Thornbills -- made up of Michigan cousins Tamara Finlay and Jim Weigand -- play a unique brand of folk-pop. The A-side, “Uncle Andrei”, is a Russian waltz partially sung in that language; the B-side, “Square Peg”, is a gentle, pretty tune involving the use of an autoharp. The Thornbills are the Third Man artist that I most hope to hear more from in the future.

Third Man Records Single Releases 2010 demonstrates an improvement in refinement and consistency over last year’s crop of Third Man singles. Third Man Records continues to be a vital indie label for its time; here’s hoping it doesn’t lose that vitality anytime soon.

Another note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the forgotten practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is evident on these items. Side B of the 5.6.7.8’s single has the words “long live mad mike monsters” carved in the dead wax. Side A of the White Stripes single has “Two amazing spirits” carved; the B-side has “gone too soon” carved. The double-LP has the following messages etched in the runout grooves: “used to be little graves”, “confused about Roger’s sisters”, “now with no fade”, and “shaky meet zim”.

Various Artists “Third Man Records Single Releases 2010” (Third Man TMR077) 2011

Track Listing:

SIDE ONE

1. THE GHOST WHO WALKS – Karen Elson (TMR 029)
2. STOLEN ROSES – Karen Elson
3. DIE BY THE DROP – Dead Weather (TMR 036)
4. OLD MARY – Dead Weather
5. AND THEY CALL ME MAD? – Conan O’Brien (TMR 047)
6. INTERVIEW BY JACK WHITE – Conan O’Brien

SIDE TWO

1. BIG RIVER – The Secret Sisters (TMR 050)
2. WABASH CANNONBALL – The Secret Sisters
3. BLUE BLOOD BLUES – Dead Weather (TMR 055)
4. JAWBREAKER (live) – Dead Weather
5. THE TRUTH IS IN THE DIRT – Karen Elson (TMR 054)
6. SEASON OF THE WITCH – Karen Elson

SIDE THREE

1. BLACK RABBIT – Pujol (TMR 051)
2. TOO SAFE – Pujol
3. SAYING GOODBYE – The Greenhornes (TMR 060)
4. SONG 13 – The Greenhornes
5. STAY TOGETHER – The Greenhornes
6. LEAVE THAT HOLE ALONE – Drakkar Sauna (TMR 052)
7. BRUNDLEFLY, MY CHARIOT – Drakkar Sauna

SIDE FOUR

1. BLUES RUN THE GAME – Laura Marling (TMR 044)
2. THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE – Laura Marling
3. UNCLE ANDREI – The Thornbills (TMR 058)
4. SQUARE PEG – The Thornbills
5. THUNDER ON THE MOUNTAIN – Wanda Jackson (TMR 068)
6. DUST ON THE BIBLE – Wanda Jackson

The 5.6.7.8’s “Great Balls of Fire” (b/w “Hanky Panky”) (Third Man single TMR078) 2011

Track Listing:

a. Great Balls of Fire
b. Hanky Panky

The White Stripes “Party of Special Things to Do” (b/w “China Pig/Ashtray Heart”) (Third Man single TMR-079) 2011

Track Listing:

a. Party Of Special Things To Do
b. China Pig/Ashtray Heart

Radiohead "Supercollider" and "The Butcher"

2011-04-23T11:15:00.000-07:00

Those of us who purchased the Radiohead album The King Of Limbs as a digital download before April 18th received a pleasant surprise this week. The band thanked us by offering free downloads of two additional tracks, titled “Supercollider” and “The Butcher”.

These tracks were released on a limited edition 12-inch vinyl single as a Record Store Day item. The song on the B-side, “The Butcher”, was recorded during the King Of Limbs sessions. The A-side, “Supercollider”, was begun during those sessions but was finished this past March. Although both songs use the same basic ingredients – jittery beats, languid soundscapes, low-volume falsetto vocals – as the songs on The King Of Limbs, both of these tracks would probably stand apart (and stand out) if they had been included on the album. “Supercollider” is a seven-minute song with a fuller sound than most of the tracks on The King Of Limbs. Its use of keyboards makes it somewhat reminiscent of the more laid-back entries in the ‘80’s synth-rock genre. “The Butcher” has a somewhat more organic sound, although it could very well have been recorded the same way as the other songs from these sessions. That song has a spooky aura possibly created with the use of a Theremin.

When I listen to The King Of Limbs, my feeling is that it would not have been well-received if it were simply released through traditional commercial channels, especially on a major label. But the two tracks on this single do not leave the same impression. If Radiohead were still on EMI, for example, it’s not hard to imagine that label releasing these two songs. It’s hard to speculate whether this more accessible sound was conscious or accidental. In any case, both of these songs are quite good, though neither is as challenging as much of the band’s past work. Either Radiohead have stopped attempting to break new musical ground, or the world has caught up with them.

Radiohead “Supercollider” b/w “The Butcher” (single) (Ticker Tape Ltd. TICK002) 2011

Track Listing:

a. Supercollider
b. The Butcher

Note: Some of the vinyl copies had the stickers placed on the wrong sides of the vinyl, labeling the “Supercollider” side as the “Butcher” side and vice versa.

Liz Phair “Juvenilia” EP (1995)

2011-04-07T16:22:00.000-07:00

Depending on your reference point, Liz Phair is either a daring alternative artist from the ‘90’s, or a commercial-minded one-hit-wonder from the ‘00’s. Phair made a name for herself with her 1993 debut album Exile In Guyville, an amazingly confident set of 18 lo-fi songs (some of which had very explicit sexual lyrics) which opened the door for similar female alternative artists that followed. She continued to push the envelope with her next two albums: the polished Whip-Smart (1994) and the sophisticated whitechocolatespaceegg (1998). But Phair’s next course of action was unexpected: after a five-year hiatus, she returned in 2003 with the self-titled Liz Phair album, a slickly produced set that was evidently designed to appeal to the Avril Lavigne crowd. That album yielded a Top 40 single called “Why Can’t I?”, but it also prompted a backlash from her older fans who felt she had sold out. She tried even harder to sell out on her 2005 album Somebody’s Miracle, an unabashed collection of Sheryl Crow-like mainstream pop, but the album failed to deliver a commercial miracle. It was either irony or poetic justice that Somebody’s Miracle sold fewer units than any of Phair’s previous albums.

After another five-year hiatus, Phair returned with her 2010 album Funstyle, which was initially sold as a digital download on her official site. On this album, she bears more resemblance to the irreverent Liz Phair who made waves in the ‘90’s, and she often makes fun of music industry commercialism in the lyrics. It’s fun to hear Phair casually run carefree and wild in indieland for the first time in over a decade. However, her use of flimsy hip-hop stylings sounds utterly phony, as if she is trying too hard to regain her hip credibility.

But the physical Funstyle CD is worthwhile for Phair’s long-time fans because of its bonus disc, which contains ten tracks from her much-bootlegged “Girly Sound” recordings. The original “Girly Sound” tapes were recorded in 1991 (before Exile In Guyville) on a four-track tape recorder. These demo-like tapes were circulated among a small number of people before some of the tracks were submitted to Matador Records, leading to Phair’s recording deal with that indie label. This bonus disc actually does restore Phair’s hip credibility, even though these tracks were recorded 20 years ago. These ten songs, recorded by Phair alone with an electric guitar, are provocative lo-fi delights, loaded with irreverent and subversive lyrics.

Before Funstyle, there was only one official release of any of Phair’s “Girly Sound” tracks. Five of the songs were included on her 1995 EP titled Juvenilia, which is now out of print.

Tracks 4 through 8 on Juvenilia are tracks from the “Girly Sound” tapes. One of them is “California”, which is also included on the Funstyle bonus disc, but that is the only overlapping track. That song and “South Dakota” (which is sung to the tune of Iggy Pop’s “Funtime”) both make joking references to sex with cows. The other three “Girly Sound” tracks (“Batmobile”, “Dead Shark”, “Easy”) are better examples of the blunt effectiveness of Phair’s early recordings. Unless these three tracks are officially re-released in the future, they may make Juvenilia worth owning for Phair’s avid fans. Still, half an EP’s worth of “Girly Sound” tracks doesn’t make much of an impact on the listener. While the Funstyle bonus disc makes the “Girly Sound” recordings seem like unearthed indie-rock treasures, Juvenilia makes them sound like they’re no big deal.

The other three tracks on Juvenilia are negligible. “Jealousy” is from the Whip-Smart album; it lacks strength as an opening track for the EP. The piano ballad “Animal Girl”, recorded live for Dutch radio, is not well-served by Phair’s vocal limitations. And her inferior cover of the Vapors’ “Turning Japanese” is interesting only because Phair is backed by Material Issue and sings it as a duet with the late Jim Ellison.

Liz Phair “Juvenilia” EP (Matador ole 129-2) 1995

Track Listing:

1. Jealousy
2. Turning Japanese
3. Animal Girl
4. California
5. South Dakota
6. Batmobile
7. Dead Shark
8. Easy

Jack White quote was taken out of context

2011-03-03T16:23:00.000-08:00

Shortly after the breakup of the White Stripes was announced, Q Magazine quoted Jack White as having said this:

I won’t join another band again. Three’s enough for one lifetime. If I can’t say it in any of these bands, then I’ll say it by myself.

Of course, this caused some consternation among White's fans. Although White's other two bands have not officially disbanded, the situations in those bands are not the same as in the White Stripes. In the Raconteurs, White shares frontman duties with Brendan Benson; in the Dead Weather, White takes a backseat to frontwoman Alison Mosshart. Fans who wanted another band that would mainly center around Jack White were worried that there would never be such a thing again.

But when this quote was mentioned in user comments on the Third Man Records website, Ben Swank from Third Man gave this response on March 2, 2011:

FYI, the interview that contained the comment you are referring to was conducted late last year before any news of the White Stripes ending their career was even imagined and it was taken out of context of a bigger subject he was discussing regarding his production work.

I interpret this as meaning that there is a possibility White may change his mind about joining another band later. Just thought I'd pass this on.

Radiohead "The King of Limbs"

2011-02-19T17:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, on February 18, 2011, Radiohead released their new album The King of Limbs. If you were not aware of this news, there is a good reason for that. Radiohead announced the album’s release on their official website all of five days ago. The album was intended for release through their website today (February 19), but because the site was technically ready for the release yesterday, the band decided not to wait the extra day.

Now, when an album is described as being “released”, we assume that means it is available in stores, either online or brick-and-mortar, and that it can be physically purchased on CD and possibly on vinyl. But that is not the case with The King of Limbs – yet.

The album is currently available only as a download from the official site. This brings back memories of the way the band originally distributed their excellent 2007 album In Rainbows. The release of that album’s mp3 download was announced ten days before the fact. And when the songs were made available for download on the official site, the band allowed consumers to pick their own price for the purchase. (Not surprisingly, more than half of them chose to download the album for free). On the first day of 2008, In Rainbows was released in physical CD form by the ATO indie label, with better sound quality than the previously available mp3s. (You get what you pay for).

It was quite a bold experiment in music distribution which understandably made the music industry nervous. The industry was already worried about a sharp decline in CD sales in recent years, and about how they could adapt to the ever-changing digital environment. Radiohead’s unconventional distribution method for In Rainbows had the potential to completely turn the traditional music business model on its head.

Their means of distribution for The King of Limbs is equally bold. There was almost no window of time between the announcement and the release. There is a set price for the album this time, however. The mp3 download of the eight songs costs $9 USD; the higher quality WAV files cost $14 USD. (Remember, you get what you pay for). The album will also receive a conventional release at a later date, as it is slated for release on CD and vinyl on March 28th. Also, a pricey version called the “Newspaper Album” (priced from $48 to $53) will be released May 9th. According to the site, this package will consist of:

• Two clear 10" vinyl records in a purpose-built record sleeve.
• A compact disc.
• Many large sheets of artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork and a full-colour piece of oxo-degradeable plastic to hold it all together.
• The Newspaper Album comes with a digital download that is compatible with all good digital media players.

Needless to say, Radiohead’s method of self-releasing their album has set off a whole new storm of speculation about how the music industry will be affected. The industry is already on shaky ground as it is. If established artists can find ways to profitably distribute their music without the help of a record label, then what will happen to record companies in the future? One way or another, Radiohead always seem to be expanding the boundaries of music as we know it.

Then again, maybe not always. Now that I’ve actually listened to The King of Limbs, I’m beginning to wonder if Radiohead are running out of new directions. Although The King of Limbs is certainly not a bad album, it breaks no new musical ground – and that’s not what we’ve come to expect from a Radiohead album. Where In Rainbows showed Thom Yorke and company mellowing with age, The King of Limbs shows them mellowing even further, and settling into now-familiar territory. The eight tracks generally consist of jittery beats, languid soundscapes, and Yorke’s eerie falsetto vocals. It’s a compelling mixture of elements, to be sure, but it’s nothing that Radiohead fans haven’t heard before. I would hardly say that The King of Limbs is a failure, especially since it gets better as it goes along. The two best songs come near the end: “Codex” and “Give Up The Ghost” deemphasize the beats found in the other tracks and possess a melancholy loveliness. The album also improves slightly with repeat listenings. However, it is likely to disappoint fans who are hoping for more of the challenging musical adventures that Radiohead have been known for in the past.

Radiohead “The King of Limbs” (self-released download) 2011

Track Listing:

1. Bloom
2. Morning Mr. Magpie
3. Little By Little
4. Feral
5. Lotus Flower
6. Codex
7. Give Up The Ghost
8. Separator

The end of the White Stripes

2011-02-03T19:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, on February 2, 2011, the White Stripes announced on their official site that they will no longer record or perform together. I am certainly disappointed to hear the news of the duo’s breakup, but I’m not necessarily surprised. Jack White has been keeping himself very busy with his Third Man Records label, not to mention his other two bands. And the duo needed to cancel most of their last tour in 2007 when drummer Meg White suffered from acute anxiety. The Stripes have remained inactive ever since, although they did release the 2007-recorded live album and documentary film Under Great White Northern Lights in 2010.

The band’s statement says that the breakup has nothing to do with health issues. Meg has apparently recovered from her anxiety, but she may not be eager to go back out on the road again after such an experience. Jack has seemingly been producing and playing on nearly every record released on Third Man. Jack’s other two bands, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather, seem to be on hiatus, but (assuming that those bands do not also split) he is still technically a member of two bands at this time.

I don’t want to speculate on their personal lives, but the formerly married Whites (no, they are not brother and sister) have both remarried. I can’t help but wonder how their current spouses would feel about them touring together again. Besides, it’s possible that Meg may want to, you know, settle down.

I’m sure that Jack will continue recording and performing, either as a solo artist, or with his other two bands, or maybe even other bands that he will form later. But Meg will be missed.

It is at least nice to know that more unreleased White Stripes material is on the way, either through the Vault service or through normal channels. And there’s a good chance that the duo will reunite one day. Lots of bands with more than two members have done it, right?

In any case, I want to thank the White Stripes for giving a much-needed shot in the arm to rock and roll during its weakest decade. Their music returned rock and roll to its simplest essence, which is where it needs to go when it is in trouble.

Here is the complete statement from the White Stripes website:

The White Stripes would like to announce that today, February 2nd, 2011, their band has officially ended and will make no further new recordings or perform live.

The reason is not due to artistic differences or lack of wanting to continue, nor any health issues as both Meg and Jack are feeling fine and in good health.

It is for a myriad of reasons, but mostly to preserve What is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way.

Meg and Jack want to thank every one of their fans and admirers for the incredible support they have given throughout the 13 plus years of the White Stripes’ intense and incredible career.

Third Man Records will continue to put out unreleased live and studio recordings from The White Stripes in their Vault Subscription record club, as well as through regular channels.

Both Meg and Jack hope this decision isn’t met with sorrow by their fans but that it is seen as a positive move done out of respect for the art and music that the band has created. It is also done with the utmost respect to those fans who’ve shared in those creations, with their feelings considered greatly.

With that in mind the band have this to say:

“The White Stripes do not belong to Meg and Jack anymore. The White Stripes belong to you now and you can do with it whatever you want. The beauty of art and music is that it can last forever if people want it to. Thank you for sharing this experience. Your involvement will never be lost on us and we are truly grateful.”

Sincerely,
Meg and Jack White
The White Stripes

Eyes Adrift (2002) and Volcano (2004)

2011-01-18T13:15:00.000-08:00

Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #21 is completed. The subject is the self-titled 2002 release from Eyes Adrift, a short-lived supergroup featuring Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets, Krist Novoselic of Nirvana, and Bud Gaugh of Sublime. Kirkwood and Gaugh also recorded an album in 2004 under the name Volcano; that self-titled album has become quite difficult to find. Both albums are reviewed here:

http://rarebird9.net/eyesadrift.html

Third Man Records vinyl exclusives, Part 6

2011-01-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

I received the sixth pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, my package was sent on January 5th. I received it on the 7th.

This sixth set of items features an LP of previously unreleased demos from the Greenhornes (who share the same rhythm section as the Raconteurs), as well as a 7” picture disc containing remixed versions of the 2000 White Stripes single “Hello Operator” and its B-side “Jolene”. Also, the package contains a concert shirt originally designed for a 2001 joint tour by the White Stripes and the Greenhornes.

The Greenhornes are the Cincinnati trio made up of Jack Lawrence (bass), Patrick Keeler (drums), and Craig Fox (vocals and guitar). Boscobel Blues contains seven demos recorded in February 2004, including three songs that later were included in finished form on their 2005 EP East Grand Blues. That Brendan Benson-produced EP contained five vintage-sounding British Invasion-inspired gems. Listening to the East Grand demos on Boscobel reveals what Benson’s production hand contributed to the finished EP. The East Grand version of “I’m Going Away” sounded like a great lost Byrds song; the Boscobel demo sounds more like an early Kinks tune. It’s a fine song either way. “Pattern Skies” sounds almost the same as the EP version, although the demo is noticeably missing at least one small production layer and sounds a bit less poppy. The “Shelter Of Your Arms” demo is less reminiscent of the Animals than the East Grand version, and is a bit more reminiscent of the Yardbirds, but it takes on an emotional life of its own, especially during its instrumental finale.

Two other demos on Boscobel Blues turned up in finished form on the 2010 album titled **** (Four Stars). Both of them, “I Need Your Love” and “Saying Goodbye”, have a rougher-edged garage-like directness in their respective demos. Another track on Boscobel Blues is an aggressive cover of the 1960 James Brown song “I’ll Go Crazy” that has the authentic feel of a raw ‘60’s recording. The other track, “Open Your Eyes”, is similarly riveting; it’s a Greenhornes original, but (to the best of my knowledge) it has not been released as a finished studio track.

Boscobel Blues could almost pass for a genuine “basement tapes” recording by a ‘60’s British invasion band – and in this case, that is definitely meant as a compliment. (It’s worth mentioning that the entire seven-song LP barely runs 20 minutes in total. The cover art consists of two photographs taken in Nashville in 1864, which may be of interest to Civil War buffs and Nashville residents).

The 7” single included with the package is a picture disc containing remixed versions of the songs that originally made up the A- and B-sides of a White Stripes single released in 2000. The A-side was/is “Hello Operator” from the album De Stijl; that song had recently been used in a Converse commercial. The B-side was/is a non-album cover of Dolly Parton’s classic 1973 country ballad “Jolene”, which the Stripes often perform live. The new “Hello Operator” mix shows some added refinement in sound; at the end, instead of the track fading out, the playing speeds up and then comes to a surprisingly graceful stop. Nice touch! Although it has always been decidedly odd to hear Jack White sing “Jolene” from a woman’s point of view, the Stripes manage to infuse the appropriate feeling of pleading and dread into their interpretation. For the new mix, the instrumentation has been made to sound denser, and White’s voice has been filtered for an echo effect in some spots. Whatever floats Jack’s boat; personally, I prefer the more natural sound of their original “Jolene” B-side. The picture printed on the disc is one of Meg White sitting next to her peppermint-striped bass drum. Cute. (The original version of this single was released by Sympathy For The Record Industry, cat. no. SFTRI 619. There was a picture disc released at that time also, cat. no. SFTRI 619P, but a different picture was used).

The concert shirt is black-bodied and white-sleeved, and on the front it has an illustration of a green bull (symbolizing the Greenhornes) with red-and-white peppermint eyes holding a peppermint in his hooves (symbolizing the White Stripes). The shirt was designed by Patrick Keeler. It’s a thin shirt with long sleeves. It looks cool and unique, but I’d rather hang it on my wall than wear it in public.

Another note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the forgotten practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is once again evident on these items. Side A of the single has the words “300 people cheering out in West Virginia (1971)” carved in the dead wax; Side B has “PW knows the truth” etched. The LP has the following messages etched in the runout grooves: “I like Nashville Skyline Chili” on Side A, and “But Geotta is Bettah” on Side B.

The Greenhornes “Boscobel Blues” (Third Man TMR 061) 2010

Track Listing:

1. I Need Your Love
2. Pattern Skies
3. I’m Going Away
4. Open Your Eyes
5. Saying Goodbye
6. Shelter Of Your Arms
7. I’ll Go Crazy

The White Stripes “Hello Operator” (remix) b/w “Jolene” (remix) (Third Man picture disc single TMR 067) 2010

Track Listing:

a. Hello Operator (remix)
b. Jolene (remix)

The “Winter Weezerland” Christmas EP

2010-12-22T19:22:00.000-08:00

Rarebird’s Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews would like to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, or whatever you personally call this time of year.

During the Christmas season in 2000, Weezer issued a two-song Christmas CD to members of their official fan club, and also sent the CD to radio stations as a promo item. It was simply titled Christmas CD, and its two tracks ran for a total of five-and-a-half minutes. The same two tracks were sold on iTunes beginning in 2005, under the title Winter Weezerland. The songs have not been offered on iTunes since 2008. (This EP should not be confused with the 2008 digital EP Christmas With Weezer, which does not contain either of these two tracks). Sometime between 2000 and 2005, the tracks were available as free downloads on Weezer’s official web site. Some rabid fans were evidently unhappy that formerly free downloads were later being sold as commercial downloads, and expressed their supposed outrage on Weezer and iTunes related message boards. To my mind, this was as trivial as pay-per-song controversies get. If fans did not care to download the songs when they were free, then it should not have been a major concern when they were being sold for 99 cents each. Anyone who was so disadvantaged as to pay for both mp3s ended up paying all of $1.98. Somehow, I don’t feel their pain.

These two songs were recorded around the same time as Weezer’s self-titled “Green Album” from 2001. The first track, “The Christmas Song”, is stylistically closer to their Pinkerton album from 1996. Not to be confused with the Mel Torme classic, “The Christmas Song” is a melancholy song about a guy who gets stood up by his girlfriend on the holiday. It’s quite good. The other track, “Christmas Celebration”, is more lighthearted and uptempo, sung from the viewpoint of a guy who’s fed up with the usual holiday festivities. It’s a fairly average Weezer song that would have fit into the “Green Album” well enough.

A note on the cover art: The front cover of Christmas CD showed a photo of the four band members wearing Santa suits. The art for the iTunes download was originally the back cover photo for Christmas CD, showing Rivers Cuomo standing on a roof in his Santa outfit.

Weezer “Christmas CD” EP (Geffen INTR-10267-2) 2000

Weezer “Winter Weezerland” EP (mp3 download) (Geffen) 2005

Track Listing:

1. The Christmas Song
2. Christmas Celebration

Captain Beefheart's real avant garde masterwork

2010-12-20T16:06:00.000-08:00

Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, died on Friday, December 17, 2010, at the age of 69, from complications caused by multiple sclerosis. Beefheart recorded 11 studio albums between 1967 and 1982. On his 1967 debut album Safe As Milk, Beefheart came across as a blues-rocker in the Stones/Animals mold. But his sound became more avant garde on the albums that followed. He and his sometime collaborator Frank Zappa had been friends since boyhood; amazingly, Beefheart’s off-the-wall recordings tended to be more bizarre than Zappa’s. Beefheart has been cited as a major influence on many artists, especially from the alternative rock genre. In 1982, Beefheart quit the music business to focus full-time on painting, and never recorded another album for the remaining 28 years of his life. Some people interpreted his refusal to re-enter the music biz as a telling statement about that industry. Although it is easy to believe that Beefheart disliked the “business” side of the music business, it is likely that his departure from recording and touring also had much to do with his health. At the time his final album (1982’s Ice Cream For Crow) was released, the Captain appeared to be growing weary, physically and otherwise.

As of this writing, Beefheart’s 1970 album titled Lick My Decals Off, Baby is out of print. It does not seem to currently be available on CD in any country, nor does it seem to be available for legal mp3 download. This was the album which followed Beefheart’s 1969 double album Trout Mask Replica, which is widely regarded as his masterpiece.

Before I discuss the out-of-print album, I want to say a few words about Trout Mask Replica, which is currently available. Trout Mask Replica appears on many lists of the best albums of all time, and seems to be the album most discussed in recent articles about Beefheart’s death. I want to advise anyone who is new to Beefheart’s work that Trout Mask Replica is a very difficult album to understand and appreciate. Even some of the pundits who sing its praises have admitted that it took them more than six listens to finally “get” it. The album’s 28 tracks were recorded over the course of about five hours – after Beefheart and his Magic Band had rehearsed them for eight months! The resulting album completely deconstructs everything we know about music, and consists of mutant blues-rock combined with free-form jazz. At first listen, Trout Mask Replica sounds like an endless cacophony of random noise; in truth, the songs were constructed under the unique vision and rigorous control of Beefheart, who spent several months teaching his band how to play his musical oddities. It is not my intention to trash this album. I am well aware of the album’s importance as Beefheart’s creative turning point, as well as how it paved the way for many other musicians who have defied convention. But I want to make it clear that Trout Mask Replica is not the place to start discovering Beefheart. Where is the best place to start? It’s hard to say, because a musician who is as unconventional as Beefheart can be hard to approach from any angle. My advice is to start with 1967’s Safe As Milk before investigating Beefheart’s more avant garde works.

Now that I’ve said my piece about that much-acclaimed album, I want to discuss its follow-up. Lick My Decals Off, Baby is the logical successor to Trout, because it continues in the same audaciously strange vein, but is a vast improvement over its predecessor. Beefheart produced this album himself, clearly taking a more hands-on approach than Zappa did on Trout, and (understandably) realizing his intentions better than Zappa could. This album’s free-jazz chord progressions are just as illogical as those on Trout, but somehow the surrealism comes through clearer this time. Decals can hardly be described as “no-nonsense”, because the music is the audio equivalent of abstract painting. But Decals takes far less time than Trout does to get where it’s going, and the ride is easier despite its uncompromising unconventionality. Vocally, the Captain alternately growls and moans like a deranged blues singer; on some tracks, such as “Bellerin’ Plain” and “Space-Age Couple”, he talk-sings his strange poetry with delirious vivacity. The instrumental “Japan in a Dishpan”, which closes the first side, is propelled by Beefheart’s wild saxophone playing; the album’s final track, “Flash Gordon’s Ape”, is a no-holds-barred saxophone orgy. Although Lick My Decals Off, Baby probably could not have been made without Trout Mask Replica being made first, Decals is a more finely tuned example of Captain Beefheart’s twisted artistic individuality.

Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band “Lick My Decals Off, Baby” (Straight RS 6420) 1970

Track Listing:

1. Lick My Decals Off, Baby
2. Doctor Dark
3. I Love You, You Big Dummy
4. Peon
5. Bellerin’ Plain
6. Woe-is-uh-Me-Bop
7. Japan in a Dishpan
8. I Wanna Find a Woman That’ll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go
9. Petrified Forest
10. One Red Rose That I Mean
11. The Buggy Boogie Woogie
12. The Smithsonian Institute Blues (or the Big Dig)
13. Space-Age Couple
14. The Clouds Are Full of Wine (not Whiskey or Rye)
15. Flash Gordon’s Ape

More vinyl creativity by Jack White

2010-12-18T10:46:00.000-08:00

Jack White continues to amuse me with his creativity with vinyl records, among other things.

A few insights from Gene Simmons

2010-12-13T18:06:00.000-08:00

I just read an interview with Gene Simmons of Kiss at the MSN reality TV site:

http://tv.msn.com/reality-tv/gene-simmons-interview/story/feature/?gt1=28103

I don't always agree with Gene, but it's almost always interesting to hear his insights. When it comes to expressing his opinions, Simmons certainly doesn't bite his famous tongue.

There are two insights from the interview which I felt compelled to share on this blog. Here is the first one:

Interviewer: What motivates you to work as hard as you still do after such a long career?

Simmons: Every day you want to wake up and do something, otherwise what good are you? The simple idea is, if you have enough money for food and stuff, and then you quit working, you're just waiting to die. The hours go by and the years go by and what have you got to show for it? At the end of the day, you've got to be able to look in the mirror and say, "I used this day." When you work hard you get to sleep really hard and food tastes good and you appreciate everything.

Interviewer: But everybody's not like that, right? I imagine plenty of rock stars are content to simply count their gold records and vacation somewhere tropical.

Simmons: That's a short pleasure. Satisfaction only exists in doing something. The word pride doesn't exist in vacation. Work is a privilege in most of the world. And as a point of fact, there are some very populated countries that often sell their children so they can have a job. Even with unemployment being so high, work is a privilege, it's not a birthright.

Gene had this to say about the obstacles that young bands now face:

Interviewer: Is it harder for a young band to get attention nowadays or is it easier?

Simmons: Much harder because of piracy. Because music is being downloaded and file shared and if you're a new band, how do you make a living?

Interviewer: But hasn't technology aided in getting discovered though?

Simmons: It's easier to get discovered because you can be anybody and go on YouTube or MySpace, but so what? When you go on iTunes and you want to find a song, there are 15 million choices. You'd spend weeks and weeks just going down the list. If I burped and farted and put it up on iTunes, it'd be right alongside the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and KISS, so there's no filter.

Not surprisingly, the interviewer's next question had something to do with Simmons being "outspoken".

The Bubblemen Are Coming! (1988)

2010-10-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

The Bubblemen were a pseudonymous side project for Love and Rockets, the alternative trio who scored an unlikely smash hit called “So Alive” in 1989. The band’s three members – David J, Daniel Ash, and Kevin Haskins – dressed up in bumblebee costumes for this endeavor. The same costumes were sometimes seen in Love and Rockets videos, during concerts, and in the between-videos segments of their 1991 VHS release The Haunted Fishtank.

Under the Bubblemen name, the trio released one 12” single called “The Bubblemen Are Coming!” in 1988. For your viewing pleasure, I have embedded a creative YouTube video for the song below.

Without the chuckle-inducing visuals, the recorded track is an enjoyably trippy five minutes of inside-joke silliness, with a slow-building whimsical intro that is omitted from the video edit. This novelty song portrays the title characters as friendly aliens from the planet Girl. The B-side track (alternately known as “Bees” and “B Side”) consists of over three minutes of non-musical buzzing bee sounds – because it’s the B side, get it? Belaboring the joke a bit more, “Bubblemen Rap” is a goofy British-accented hip-hop track, rapped from the point of view of the aliens; “Sorted!” seems to be their favorite word. The Dub Version of the “Bubblemen Rap” removes most of the words and emphasizes the track’s techno-trippy soundscapes. Fans of the Bauhaus family tree will get a kick out of this 12” single. For everyone else, the embedded video above will be all the Bubblemen experience they’ll ever need.

Notes: The single was released as a 7” in the U.K. (Beggars Banquet BUB1), containing only the title track and “Bees”, and it came with a comic book, which the above video utilized. The four audio tracks were added as extra features to the 2003 DVD Sorted! The Best of Love and Rockets (Beggars Banquet BB 021 DVD). The comic book can also be viewed on the DVD.

The Bubblemen “The Bubblemen Are Coming!” (RCA 8335-1-HDCB) 1988

Track Listing:

Side A:

1. The Bubblemen Are Coming!
2. Bees (aka “B Side”)

Side B:

1. Bubblemen Rap (Extended Version)
2. Bubblemen Rap (Dub Version)

Def Leppard's pre-1980 recordings

2010-10-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

Although Def Leppard will always be remembered as the definitive pop-metal band of the 1980’s, they originally came from the late-‘70’s scene referred to as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which also gave rise to less melodic metal bands such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Def Leppard’s earliest work showed them in a somewhat different light than their classic mega-selling albums Pyromania (1983) and Hysteria (1987) did. Before they were produced by Mutt Lange, the band’s recordings had a slightly heavier and less polished sound. Joe Elliott’s vocals sounded quite different on these early recordings than they did years later. From the second Def Leppard album (1981’s High ‘n’ Dry) onward, Elliott sounded like he was partially influenced by AC/DC’s Brian Johnson. But these late-‘70’s recordings predate AC/DC’s Back In Black, and if you contrast these early Def Leppard recordings with their later work, it provides telling evidence of that AC/DC album’s impact on heavy metal.

One thing which Def Leppard never lacked is ambition. In 1979, the teenage band from Sheffield, England independently recorded and released their 3-song debut EP, having borrowed money from Elliott’s father to pay for studio time. The first song on the self-titled EP is “Ride Into The Sun”. It’s an energetic rocker that proves that the band did not need to rely on big-budget production to deliver thrills. “Ride Into The Sun” was re-recorded at least twice, first as the B-side to the 1987 “Hysteria” single, and again for the 1993 album Retro Active. The 1987 version has more power, and the Retro Active version received the most refined treatment, but the raw early version on this EP packs its own little punch. The other two tracks on the EP were “Getcha Rocks Off” and “The Overture”, both of which were re-recorded for the band’s 1980 debut album On Through The Night. “Getcha Rocks Off” has an exciting guitar attack, courtesy of original guitarists Steve Clark and Pete Willis, although it comes through clearer on the album version. The seven-and-a-half-minute “Overture” is a more complex prog-rock opus which gave an even larger picture of what these Sheffield teenagers were capable of doing. Although the EP version of the song is not as professional as the album version, the EP version has a more direct, down-to-earth feeling.

Between the recordings of The Def Leppard E.P. and On Through The Night, the band recorded at least seven other studio tracks for a scrapped project. In 1984, after Def Leppard achieved mega-stardom, their former managers Pete Martin and Frank Stuart-Brown released an unauthorized EP called First Strike, which contained seven tracks from these 1979 sessions. Subsequent legal action led to the EP being pulled from distribution. The two ex-managers were credited as the producers. Four of the seven tracks were re-recorded for On Through The Night; the other three never appeared on any official release.

All three of those obscure songs (“Heat Street”, “See The Lights”, and “Glad I’m Alive”) make a fairly good impression, particularly “See The Lights”. Although they sound a bit under-produced, the energetic guitar sound more than compensates, suggesting that these three songs could have been strong ones if they were re-recorded on one of the proper albums. In fact, inferior production is the only thing that keeps the other four tracks from being the equals of their respective versions on On Through The Night. The versions on First Strike are basically demos, but very good ones. “Wasted” does not pack as potent a punch as the better-produced album version, but the song’s unforgettable riff is intact. The leaner version of “Answer to the Master” is a standout on the EP.

Def Leppard “The Def Leppard E.P.” EP (Bludgeon Riffola MSB 001) 1979

Track Listing:

1. Ride Into The Sun
2. Getcha Rocks Off
3. The Overture

Def Leppard “First Strike” EP (Flash 843007) 1984

Track Listing:

1. Heat Street
2. Answer to the Master
3. See the Lights
4. When the Walls Come Tumbling Down
5. Wasted
6. Sorrow Is A Woman
7. Glad I’m Alive

New INXS album with guest vocalists is coming in January

2010-10-18T19:30:00.001-07:00

A long-in-the-works album by INXS is finally set for release on January 11th, 2011. The album titled Original Sin will feature remakes of songs which originally were recorded with their late original lead singer Michael Hutchence, recorded with various guest vocalists. Here is the USA Today story:

http://usat.ly/aO1PyJ

Here is a key paragraph:

The resulting album, Original Sin, out Jan. 11, features such latter-day artists as Ben Harper (on the first single, Never Tear Us Apart), Rob Thomas, Nikka Costa, Tricky and Train's Pat Monahan providing vocals for songs made famous by original INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, who died in 1997. John Mayer also appears, playing guitar on one track; another features J.D. Fortune, who sang on 2005's Switch album after winning the CBS reality series Rock Star: INXS.

You read that right. J.D. Fortune, who started a ridiculous feud with INXS early last year, has rejoined them. He has been performing live shows with the band, and they are considering recording another full studio album with him. We'll see where it goes.

Distractions "Come Home" EP (2010)

2010-10-09T21:43:00.000-07:00

More great news for those lucky few of us who are fans of the Distractions, the unjustly overlooked Manchester band who released only one full-length album called Nobody’s Perfect in 1980. The U.K. music label Occultation, who recently brought us a three-song EP of previously unreleased Distractions recordings from a short-lived mid-‘90’s reunion, are now set to release an EP featuring three songs resulting from another Distractions reunion earlier this year.

The official Occultation site has streaming audio of the three complete songs from the Come Home EP, which the label plans to release on 12” vinyl in early November:

http://www.occultation.co.uk/Occultation_Space/Releases/YMIR7DA008/ymir7da008_previ.html

The three songs on the Come Home EP were recorded in June of 2010, by a lineup consisting of original vocalist Mike Finney, original guitarist Steve Perrin, bass player Nick Garside (who was a part of the mid-‘90’s lineup), drummer Stuart Mann, and guitarist Nick Halliwell.

The first two songs, “Lost” and “Nicole”, were both written by Perrin. These songs are no more upbeat than the ones on the recently released Black Velvet EP – which was recorded 15 years earlier – but they are slightly more up-tempo, with a more noticeable guitar sound. Both songs convey complex emotions, but Finney’s touching vocals make the listener feel those emotions as if they were simple to understand. The subtly ringing guitar sound gives those songs an added emotional undercurrent. This guitar sound may be partially attributable to Halliwell, who was on loan from Occultation label-mates Granite Shore. Halliwell is described as a “long-time fan of the band”, and he is the author of the EP’s third and final track “Oil Painting”. “Oil Painting” is a five-minute ballad that is more reminiscent of the Black Velvet EP. Halliwell’s uniquely expressive lyrics are well-matched with Finney’s convincingly emotive vocals, and that gently ringing guitar sound gives the song a fitting foundation. It’s hard to immediately determine if the Come Home EP is in the same class as earlier Distractions recordings, but it certainly does show them in fine form after their second 15-year hiatus, displaying many of the same qualities which made them special in the past. Let’s hope that more new recordings are forthcoming, with less time in between.

The Distractions “Come Home” EP (Occultation YMIR7DA008) 2010

Track Listing:

1. Lost
2. Nicole
3. Oil Painting

Third Man Records vinyl exclusives, Part 5

2010-09-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

I received the fifth pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, my package was sent on September 24th. I received it on the 27th.

This fifth set of items revolves around a live show performed by the Dead Weather at Third Man’s custom-designed studio on May 3rd, 2010. It consists of a live LP on which the band performs their entire 2010 album Sea of Cowards, pressed on split-colored black-and-blue vinyl, as well as a single featuring the two encores from that concert. Also, the package contains a DVD of the entire filmed concert. Each of these three items is packaged in a reflective jacket.

The concert is excellent. The performances of the songs are faithful to the studio versions and are reproduced amazingly well in this live-in-the-studio setting. Where live albums by the White Stripes and the Raconteurs from previous Vault packages had sound quality that was just one notch above bootleg-level muddiness, Sea of Cowards Live has pristine sound of the sort that you would expect to hear on a commercial release. The songs don’t lose anything in this setting: the dark atmosphere, the echo effects, the spacey and fuzzy elements of the Dead Weather’s sound -- they all come through loud and clear. The instrumentation (Jack White on drums, Jack Lawrence on bass, Dean Fertita on guitar and organ) is nearly as flawless as it could have been, and Alison Mosshart’s vocals often have more direct power than they do on the album, especially on “The Difference Between Us” and “Gasoline”. Anyone who loves the Sea of Cowards album will have a field day with this package, and it makes a strong case for Third Man’s custom-built studio.

The vinyl LP’s sound quality does not seem to have been affected by the split-color pressing, probably because the approximate 40-minute length of the 11-song set fits well for this medium. If it’s not my imagination, the six songs on Side Two sound a bit more distant than the five on Side One. No matter.

The 7” single included with the package contains the two encores from the concert. Those two songs were “Hang You From the Heavens” and “I Cut Like A Buffalo” from the band’s 2009 debut album Horehound. These two performances are also faithful to the original versions, and sound just slightly different than they did on Horehound. This is probably due mainly to the change in setting, but it also may have something to do with the band becoming tighter over the course of one year. Whatever the reason, both encores sound good.

The DVD presents the concert in crisp black-and-white, which is suitable for the dark nature of the Dead Weather’s music. The disc provides a welcome glimpse at the specially designed studio for those of us who haven’t been able to visit Nashville recently. Mosshart’s manic stage persona is something to see, as is White in his dual role as a performer and as the master of ceremonies. The only disappointment is that the show’s two encores are not included on the DVD. But if you own the 7” single that came with this package, that’s no big deal.

Another note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the forgotten practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is once again evident on these items. Side A of the single has the word “encore” carved in the dead wax; Side B has “Do you want more?” etched. The LP has the following messages etched in the runout grooves: “It’s tingling…Do you know what that means?”, and “It means it’s working…to hell with the show this is science!”.

The reflective jackets that each of these three items are packaged in are attractive, although time will tell how durable they are. My LP jacket is already beginning to show signs of splitting along the top edge, probably because the disc itself barely fits in the inner sleeve, which in turn barely fits in the gatefold jacket…grumble, grumble.

The Dead Weather “Sea of Cowards Live at Third Man Records” (Third Man TMR 040) 2010

Track Listing:

1. Blue Blood Blues
2. Hustle and Cuss
3. The Difference Between Us
4. I’m Mad
5. Die By The Drop
6. I Can’t Hear You
7. Gasoline
8. No Horse
9. Looking at the Invisible Man
10. Jawbreaker
11. Old Mary

The Dead Weather “Hang You From the Heavens” (live at Third Man Records) b/w “I Cut Like a Buffalo” (live at Third Man Records) (Third Man single TMR 041) 2010

Track Listing:

a. Hang You From the Heavens (live at Third Man Records)
b. I Cut Like a Buffalo (live at Third Man Records)

The Dead Weather: Sea of Cowards Live at Third Man Records DVD (Third Man DVD TMR 043) 2010

Track Listing:

1. Blue Blood Blues
2. Hustle and Cuss
3. The Difference Between Us
4. I’m Mad
5. Die By The Drop
6. I Can’t Hear You
7. Gasoline
8. No Horse
9. Looking at the Invisible Man
10. Jawbreaker
11. Old Mary

The cream will rise to the top, as always.

2010-09-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

Do you ever find yourself bemoaning the current state of music? I know I do. I'm probably at the age where it is hard to appreciate new music. And I know I'm not the only one. When I watch videos for old songs on YouTube, the comment boards are usually loaded with remarks about how "they don't make music like this anymore", and "music sucks these days"...you get the general idea. Is this anything new? Not really. I have always heard older people -- and even some young people -- complain that music just isn't any good anymore. Some of them say that there was a certain year that music stopped being good. Some people say they don't like anything recorded after 1975, or after 1980, or some other year. And I have always known people like this.

Are they just being close-minded? In some cases, maybe. Everyone has personal preferences, and biases, and sometimes we simply don't want to like certain things.

I used to tell myself that I would never let this happen to me. I thought I would never get to the stage where I stopped keeping up with the latest trends, especially in music. I think I still do a fairly good job of keeping up with such things, but that is mainly due to habit. Music just doesn't excite me the way it once did...or, at least, newer music doesn't.

When I listen to music by newer artists, I often feel as if I've heard it all before, and better. Sometimes I find myself thinking that if I were 20 years old, I would probably like what I'm hearing. But at my age, it's hard to get excited about new music that doesn't sound fresh to my ears. This is possibly due to the amount of recorded music which has accumulated over the decades, and my personal overexposure to much of it.

But, while watching one YouTube video, I read one insightful comment that put things into better perspective. In response to someone who complained about how new music didn't compare to that particular song from the '70's, someone said that the reason these older songs sound so good to us now is because we are not forced to hear them as often as we did in the heydays of the songs. The cream has risen to the top, the person said, and the cream of today's music will also rise one day.

And that person is absolutely right. Before we know it, we will come to a time when we have nostalgic memories of 2010 and the years around it. In accordance with human nature, we will tend to look back on the good times we had during the current time period, and think less about the bad times. Some of the experiences we have later will make us nostalgic for this time, and we will suddenly miss certain songs that we heard at this point in time. They may even be songs that we don't like at this point in time, because we may not be able to get away from hearing them. But when we get to the point where we won't hear those songs so often, and our minds are able to associate them with pleasant memories, we will be looking up the songs on YouTube (or whatever websites will exist to serve similar purposes) and we'll say, with heavy sighs, "They just don't make music like this anymore". I can also go on about how some music improves with age, or how time can reveal the better qualities of a certain artist, or song, or album. Or about how obscure artists can be later brought to our attention for their innovation or influence. But each of those points could lead to a long commentary in itself.

Here's my main point: all time periods produce both good and bad music. Sometimes it's hard to recognize the good stuff while it's being played side by side with the bad. In this day and age, it's become more difficult to find the good music, because radio and MTV don't serve it up the way they used to. Finding today's good music can require active searching on the part of the listener, and many people do not wish to spend their precious time searching for music which they may or may not like. But, as the wise YouTube commentator said, the cream of today's music will someday rise to the top.

Third Man Records offers more creative vinyl items

2010-09-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

Jack White and his Third Man Records label have done it again. White has designed something called a "triple decker record", which probably could never have been dreamed up by anyone else. What is a triple decker record, you ask? I'll let the video below do the talking.

Slipknot "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat." (1996)

2010-08-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #20 is completed. The subject: Slipknot's 1996 independent CD titled Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. This CD is now officially considered to be the modern metal band's demo. Only 1,000 legitimate copies were reportedly pressed. It predates their self-titled 1999 debut album by three years, and features original lead singer Anders Colsefni. Here is the review:

http://rarebird9.net/slipknot.html

Distractions "Black Velvet" EP (2010)

2010-08-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

The Distractions were a band from Manchester, England who recorded only one full-length album called Nobody’s Perfect in 1980. In my view, that album is one of rock’s long-lost treasures. It was technically a “new wave” album which drew inspiration from three decades of music history before it, and had many moments of genuine emotional poignancy. For those of us who lament the fact that the Distractions had such a short and overlooked lifespan, it is exciting to learn that new and unearthed Distractions recordings are coming soon from the U.K. music label Occultation.

Here is what the Occultation site says about it all:

It is with enormous pleasure that Occultation Recordings would like to welcome Manchester's most unsung heroes, The Distractions. The band's first release for us will be the Black Velvet EP. This will be a digital download only but, as with other Occultation releases, we will be pressing a limited number of promo CDs and those of you who prefer to own a physical copy will have the chance to purchase these highly collectible items from us. The EP features three tracks recorded back in the mid 1990s by original core members Mike Finney (vocals) and Steve Perrin (guitar), with Nick Garside on bass and Bernard van den Berg (drums).

All tracks have been freshly restored, remixed and mastered by Nick Garside and sound simply stunning. Previews will appear on this website over the next few weeks and we'll start taking orders for the promo CDs once we have a definite date for their delivery. If that weren't enough - and frankly it's not - this EP will be followed by a new Distractions release, recorded in Liverpool in June 2010, again featuring Messrs. Finney, Perrin and Garside, this time working with Nick Halliwell from fellow Occultation artists The Granite Shore, aided and abetted by Richard Turvey of The Wild Swans - who also engineered the session - on keyboards and drummer Stuart Mann. We hope to release this on 12" vinyl around early November. The final part of the initial triptych of Distraction will be an archive album entitled Nothing. Precise content is still being finalised but we plan to include the band's first two singles, including both sides of the classic Factory (FAC12) Time Goes By So Slow / Pillow Fight '45 plus more of the mid-1990s material.

The official Occultation site now has streaming audio of the three complete songs from the Black Velvet EP, and also offers the three mp3s for sale. Also, limited edition promo CDs are available while supplies last.

http://www.occultation.co.uk/Occultation%20Space/Releases/YMIR7DA007/ymir7da007_previ.html

The three songs on the Black Velvet EP were recorded in or around 1995, and have a surprising American country music feel to them. The six-minute title track (not to be confused with the Alannah Myles song of the same name) and the five-minute “If You Were Mine” are quietly powerful pieces of melancholy pop, both written by guitarist Steve Perrin. The other track, “Still It Doesn’t Ring”, is a remake of a song from Nobody's Perfect. The song has matured into a touching adult-alternative work, with a more country-influenced flavor than the original. The EP makes for a cogent 15-minute listening experience.

The Distractions “Black Velvet” EP (Occultation YMIR7DA007) 2010

Track Listing:

1. Black Velvet
2. Still It Doesn’t Ring
3. If You Were Mine

A previous blog post on the mid-'90's recordings:

http://rarebird9.blogspot.com/2010/01/distractions-official-website.html

The official Distractions website:

http://www.thedistractions.co.uk/home.html

"Songs by George Harrison" bonus discs

2010-07-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

In 1988 and 1992, two books were issued by the British company Genesis Publications titled Songs by George Harrison. Each of the two volumes was released as a 2,500-copy limited edition. (These books are of no relation to the 2009 compilation CD Let It Roll: Songs by George Harrison). These two volumes each featured watercolor paintings by Wales-based artist Keith West, images which aimed to illustrate the lyrics of many of Harrison’s compositions. Each volume contained an afterword written by Harrison. Volume One had a foreword by Jeff Lynne and a middleword by Elton John; Volume Two contained a foreword by Ringo Starr and a middleword by Harry Nilsson. Each volume was hand-crafted in a three-quarter leather binding and came in a Solander box. Each volume came with a bonus disc (offered in vinyl and CD formats) which contained four rare Harrison recordings apiece.

I have not had the pleasure of holding these books in my hands. However, I have been able to listen to the eight audio tracks from the two bonus discs.

Four of these eight tracks were songs that were omitted from Harrison’s 1981 album Somewhere In England, reportedly at the insistence of Warner Brothers. The disc from Volume One contains “Sat Singing”, “Lay His Head”, and “Flying Hour” from this subset; the disc from Volume Two contains the other one, “Tears of the World”. The reported reason for the omission of these songs from Somewhere In England was that they were too downbeat. Ironically, the lovely “Sat Singing” and the agreeable “Flying Hour” are easily more upbeat than many of the songs that were kept on that album. On the other hand, “Lay His Head” and especially “Tears of the World” are of a more downbeat nature, which would have helped them to fit in well on the album, considering the album’s generally bitter tone. Another Somewhere In England-related track is the demo version of “Life Itself”, on which Harrison played all of the instruments. This version is actually prettier than the finished version on the album, though it does not make the listener see the song in any new or different way.

The track “Hottest Gong In Town” is a swinging 1930’s-style jazz delight that Harrison recorded for Shanghai Surprise, the wretched 1986 Sean Penn and Madonna film which Harrison executive produced. Rounding out these eight tracks, each disc features one live performance recorded in Washington, D.C. in 1974. On the disc from Volume One, the live track is “For You Blue”. This bluesy rendition of the Beatles song is very well-played instrumentally, particularly by bassist Willie Weeks, though Harrison’s voice sounds as road-worn as it reportedly was. The live track from the Volume Two disc is “Hari’s On Tour (Express)”, the instrumental from the Dark Horse album. This performance has a more organic sound than the studio version, with Harrison’s slide guitar making a stronger impression.

Notes: A few of these tracks have turned up in other places. “Lay His Head” was the B-side of Harrison’s 1987 #1 single “Got My Mind Set On You”. A remixed “Tears of the World” was a bonus track on the 2004 CD reissue of Thirty-Three and 1/3. “Flying Hour” is available for download on the mp3 version of Somewhere In England.

Bonus disc track listings:

Songs by George Harrison, Volume One (Genesis SGH 777) 1988

1. Sat Singing (recorded March 1980)
2. Lay His Head (recorded April 1980)
3. For You Blue (recorded live in Washington, D.C., December 1974)
4. Flying Hour (recorded March 1978)

Songs by George Harrison, Volume Two (Genesis SGH 778) 1992

1. Life Itself (demo version, all instruments by George Harrison)
2. Hottest Gong In Town
3. Tears of the World
4. Hari’s On Tour Express (recorded live in Washington, D.C. in 1974)

Rarebird's George Harrison Reviews
http://rarebird9.net/harrison.html

Third Man Records vinyl exclusives, Part 4

2010-07-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

I received the fourth pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, my package was sent on June 17th. I received it on the 19th.

This fourth set of items consists of a 2-LP live album from the White Stripes, pressed on 180g vinyl, and a Raconteurs single featuring demos of two songs from their second album Consolers of the Lonely. The package also includes a Dead Weather t-shirt.

The A-side of the Raconteurs single gives us about two-and-a-half minutes of an in-studio rehearsal of the Led Zep-like blues-rock number “Top Yourself”. It’s an enjoyable little jam, marred only by a distracting part where White casually utters a few vocal verses during this otherwise instrumental recording. The B-side is the better one, containing a raw demo of “You Don’t Understand Me” sung and strummed by White on an acoustic guitar. If you only heard this demo, you’d probably never guess that the finished song would become a Beatlesque ballad with wild piano riffing. And that’s what makes the demo good: it stands alone as a spontaneous solo recording by White. This track should have been on the A-side.

The 2-LP set compiles live recordings from the White Stripes’ 2007 tour of Canada, which was the subject of the 2009 documentary film Under Great White Northern Lights. That arty cinema verite film followed Jack and Meg White as they played in Canadian towns big and small, performing in such places as bowling alleys, pool halls, vehicles, and other unlikely venues. The unusual nature of that tour makes the movie interesting to watch. These “B-Show” selections were not included on the commercially released soundtrack album, and are of bootleg quality. According to the liner notes, most of these performances are from relatively unplanned daytime shows and were recorded on the fly using non-professional devices.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take too long to become acclimated to the muddy sound quality. It’s easy to get into the groove before Side One is over; by the time you reach Side Four, the sound quality has long ceased to be an issue. “Hello Operator” and “A Martyr For My Love For You” are standout cuts. The same goes for a thumping version of “Icky Thump” apparently recorded in a pool hall, with no bagpipes to be heard.

There are a surprising number of early Stripes songs included here, including six selections from their self-titled 1999 debut album. “Cannon” is combined with “John The Regulator” just as it was on the album. “I Fought Piranhas” casually incorporates Gun Club and Hound Dog Taylor covers into a medley. The Robert Johnson song “Stop Breaking Down” doesn’t sound as different from the Stripes’ studio version as the liner notes might lead you to think.

The album’s wildest moment is a bizarre version of “Ball and Biscuit” that uses a Mellotron and blistering guitar sounds. The most surprising selection is the traditional folk song “Canadee-I-O”, which the duo reportedly never performed before this tour. The album ends superbly with a fiercely determined performance of “Screwdriver”.

In the film, White explained that the purpose of these “B-Shows” was to perform for people in small Canadian towns who didn’t get to see many concerts in their areas. Although the album could hardly duplicate the feeling of actually being at these events, B-Shows still captures the spirit of White’s intentions. For fans of the White Stripes, this album is nearly as special a treat as the actual shows were for the people in attendance.

Another note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the forgotten practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is once again evident on these items. Side A of the single has the words “check the Brit slang” carved in the dead wax. The double-LP has the following messages etched in the runout grooves: “Poutine pour ma reine”, “R. Kelly couldn’t have said it better himself”, “Can we just call it the synthesizer museum?”, and “The punks stole my hat”.

The album’s sleeve contained a small card providing a code that allows the buyer to download “an unreleased track” from the album. This track, which is simply titled “White Stripes Vault Exclusive Download”, is all of three seconds long. It is a recording of the one-note show that the Stripes did in St. John’s, Newfoundland on July 16, 2007. It consists of a single thudding guitar note, and it plays repeatedly until you stop it. Very funny, Jack.

Raconteurs “Top Yourself” (rehearsal demo) b/w “You Don’t Understand Me” (acoustic demo) (Third Man single TMR037) 2010

Track Listing:

a. Top Yourself (rehearsal demo)
b. You Don’t Understand Me (acoustic demo)

White Stripes “Under Great White Northern Lights B-Shows” (Third Man TMR038) 2010

Track Listing:

SIDE ONE

1. Intro/Royal Black Watch
2. Let’s Shake Hands
3. Baby Blue
4. Lafayette Blues
5. Hello Operator
6. Stop Breaking Down

SIDE TWO

1. Canadee-I-O
2. A Martyr For My Love For You
3. Hotel Yorba

SIDE III

1. I Fought Piranhas/Ghost on the Highway/For the Love of Ivy/Gimme Back My Wig
2. Apple Blossom
3. Ball and Biscuit

SIDE FOUR

1. Cannon
2. John the Revelator
3. Icky Thump
4. Do
5. Screwdriver

Cheap Trick reissues: June 8, 2010

2010-06-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

This week, the Wounded Bird label is reissuing three Cheap Trick albums on CD. Those albums are Standing on the Edge (1985), The Doctor (1986), and Busted (1990). I am glad to see these CDs made available for those who wish to purchase them. However, speaking as a long-time fan of Cheap Trick, I do not recommend any of them. The first two of these albums are from the period in the 1980’s when bassist Tom Petersson was temporarily absent from the group, and was replaced by Jon Brant for a four-album stretch. The third, Busted, could easily be mistaken for an album from that period.

Before we go any further, I should point out that the first two Petersson-less albums from the ‘80’s were recently issued as a 2-on-1 CD by the Friday Music label. When One On One (1982) and Next Position Please (1983) were first released, they were quite discouraging. It was clear that the absence of their original bass player had a noticeable effect on Cheap Trick’s chemistry, and Jon Brant made no impression as Petersson’s replacement. Both of these albums were a comedown from the band’s earlier works, but in retrospect they are actually quite good in comparison to much of Trick’s later work (for example, the three albums being reissued this week). Both albums benefit from strong producers: One On One was helmed by Roy Thomas Baker, and Next Position Please was produced by Todd Rundgren. However, this point also reveals one problem that the band had at this point in time: they were becoming too dependent on their producers. In fact, this part of the band’s history is often referred to as their “Next Producer Please” phase.

The third Cheap Trick album recorded without Petersson is among this week’s reissues. Standing on the Edge reunited the band with producer Jack Douglas, who helmed their superb 1977 debut album. But lightning didn’t strike twice, because Standing on the Edge painfully confirmed the downfall of these arena rock icons. Song doctor Mark Radice co-wrote all of the songs and played keyboards. The result is an album that was slickly calculated to appeal to mid-‘80’s audiences, but didn’t succeed. It does, however, show some signs of life in the lovely ballad “Tonight It’s You” and two revved-up rockers (“Cover Girl” and the title track) that sound more like the Cheap Trick we used to know.

The band proceeded to fall over the edge with The Doctor, another of this week’s reissues. Tony Platt (who mixed Standing on the Edge) was this album’s overbearing producer; Platt gives most of the songs too much speed and too high of a pitch. Paul Klingberg, who was the engineer and co-mixer, played keyboards – which explains why it is the dominant instrument on most of this misguided mess of an album. Cheap Trick don’t even sound like the stars of their own album here; The Doctor sounds like it was recorded by Starship after a sugar-and-caffeine binge. If you buy this CD, I recommend that you program your player to play the title track, “Kiss Me Red”, and “Take Me To The Top”.

The other Cheap Trick CD being reissued this week is Busted, which was recorded after Petersson returned to the fold, and after the band reached their all-time commercial peak with the 1988 album Lap of Luxury. These events should have brought the band back to good form, right? Wrong. Busted was an often embarrassing attempt to keep the band on the charts, complete with cringe-inducing ballads (“Can’t Stop Falling Into Love”, Diane Warren’s “Wherever Would I Be”) and a song co-written by Foreigner’s Mick Jones (“If You Need Me”) that belongs on someone else’s album. Busted is saved (barely) by “I Can’t Understand It”, “Walk Away” (with Chrissie Hynde), “Had To Make You Mine”, and Roy Wood’s “Rock ‘N’ Roll Tonight”.

But there is one good reason to buy the Busted reissue: it also contains all four tracks from the 1980 EP Found All The Parts, as well as that EP’s bonus single “Everything Works If You Let It”. Those same tracks were previously included on a 2006 CD reissue of the All Shook Up album, but that edition has already been discontinued.

Here is a question for both of the labels that have reissued Cheap Trick albums this year: Is there any way to re-release the band’s self-titled album from 1997, which was originally released on the short-lived indie label Red Ant? Now there is an album that deserves to be available.

One more Cheap Trick-related note: their 1999 live album Music For Hangovers, which was released on CD and on DVD, is now out of print in both formats. I have added a review of the album to the bottom of my Cheap Trick page.

Buckner & Garcia “Pac-Man Fever” (1982)

2010-06-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

How old does this make you feel? The video game Pac-Man turned 30 years old this past May. For those who may actually be unfamiliar with this game, its title character is a yellow circle whose mouth opens and closes. The Pac-Man runs around a labyrinthine maze eating dots, while four monsters which look like colored ghosts try to catch him. Does this sound simplistic? By today’s video game standards, it is. That’s the way video games tended to be at the beginning of the 1980’s. They were simply-drawn, adrenaline-releasing no-brainers. And they were very addictive. They used to cost 25 cents per game credit at the arcade, but literally billions of quarters per year were dropped into arcade video game machines in the early ‘80’s. These games thrived at a time when the U.S. economy was in a slump that was nearly as severe as the recent one. One particular industry that suffered at that time was the music business, and the video game craze was often blamed for this. The general consensus was that the money which the youth market once spent on records and tapes was now being eaten up by Pac-Man and other video games of that era.

At least one attempt was made to market music to the era’s video game addicts. A duo named Buckner & Garcia scored a Top Ten single called “Pac-Man Fever” in 1982. Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia were two guys from Ohio who wrote novelty songs, radio jingles, and occasional songs recorded by other artists. CBS Records signed the duo, and the success of the single caused the label to order up a full-length Buckner & Garcia album consisting of songs about popular video games, recorded over a one-month period. The resulting album was also titled Pac-Man Fever, and consisted of eight such songs.

The song “Pac-Man Fever” is a fun, if cheesy, novelty song for those who remember the early ‘80’s. Its commercial sound is from the same school as Huey Lewis and the News and the Fabulous Thunderbirds; its lyrics refer to strategies and character names related to the Pac-Man game itself, and evoke a few memories of what it was like to be addicted to the video games of that period (“I don’t have a lot of money but I’m bringin’ everything I made, I’ve got a callus on my finger and my shoulder’s hurtin’, too”). The song is also loaded with sound effects from the game, and it opens with the game’s intro music – which was said to have been the most-played piece of music of 1981 because of the number of times the game was played that year. The “Pac-Man Fever” single belongs in a time capsule.

But the full-length album...maybe not so much. It is undoubtedly difficult to make an entire album based around popular video game concepts, and Pac-Man Fever doesn’t quite hold together as a whole. It’s too sincere to be campy, and too cheesy to be respectable. Not to say that it doesn’t have its charms. “Froggy’s Lament” (which is about the game Frogger) is made likable by froggy talk-sung vocals of the type that are not uncommon among novelty songs. “Mousetrap” is a decent song that could be mistaken for some kind of metaphor if you didn’t know what album it came from. “Ode To a Centipede” (about Centipede) and “Hyperspace” (about Asteroids) are good illustrations of what ‘70’s progressive rock had evolved into by the early-‘80’s, and both make good use of sound effects from the respective games. But on “Do The Donkey Kong”, it is obvious that the duo were trying too hard to score another hit single. “The Defender” is much too cheesy and simple-minded even for this album. And a gentle ballad peppered with sound effects from the nightmarish Berzerk game is a concept that just doesn’t work. Clearly, Pac-Man Fever is the kind of album that is trash to some and a treasure to others. You know who you are.

In 1999, Buckner and Garcia re-recorded the album after failing to obtain the rights from CBS, who had no intention to reissue the album as a CD. The new version was first released independently by the duo in 1999, then released again by K-Tel in 2002 (K-Tel 3012). It is probably a difficult task to recreate any album 17 years after the fact, but an attempt at an exact reproduction of such an of-its-moment album as Pac-Man Fever is likely to be a futile one. To their credit, the duo do a surprisingly good job of reenacting the album’s early-‘80’s pop sounds, which were decidedly anachronistic by 1999. But they just aren’t able to recapture that 1982 feeling. The 1999 version of the album sounds more like a failed attempt to relive a past moment than like an actual souvenir to commemorate that moment. This is especially true on “Mousetrap”; the duo was unable to re-record the sound effects from the long-lost game, so they used actual animal sound effects instead. The song now sounds even less evocative of a video game than it was before. The 1999 version of “The Defender” is a slight improvement over the original, because at least some of its cheese was skimmed off the top. But anyone who wants to really experience the glorious retro-silliness of Pac-Man Fever is better off searching out a vinyl copy of the 1982 original.

Buckner & Garcia “Pac-Man Fever” (Columbia/CBS RC 37941) 1982

Track Listing:

1. Pac-Man Fever -- (about Pac-Man)
2. Froggy's Lament -- (about Frogger)
3. Ode to a Centipede -- (about Centipede)
4. Do the Donkey Kong -- (about Donkey Kong)
5. Hyperspace -- (about Asteroids)
6. The Defender -- (about Defender)
7. Mousetrap -- (about Mouse Trap)
8. Goin' Berzerk -- (about Berzerk)

Eleven years!

2010-06-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

Time continues to fly. It has now been eleven years since I first created my website Rarebird’s Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews. This is one time when I cannot say that little has changed with the site in the past year. When my old web page service was discontinued by the provider a few months ago, I moved the site to its new domain at rarebird9.net . It’s something I probably should have done a long time ago. Besides having an address that is easier to remember (and, in this day and age, easier to Tweet), I am now provided with more detailed information about the traffic that comes to my site. If I went by the external counter on my home page – which I have been going by for nearly six years – I would think that only 1 or 2 people visited the site each day. According to my web provider’s stats, the site is actually used by more than 30 unique visitors each day, and that includes the home page. Apparently, many types of hits do not register on the Amazing Counters counter.

Much has changed since 1999, including the music industry. Eleven years ago, music was primarily something that people purchased on a CD, or (to a lesser extent at that point) a cassette or LP. Notwithstanding the current vinyl resurgence, music is fast becoming something that we download instead. Some people, including Sir Richard Branson, are predicting an end to in-store music sales in the near future.

Thus, it is becoming less easy to define a “rare” or “out of print” album than it was when I first created the site. Many songs and albums which are no longer sold in physical form are still available as legal downloads from Amazon.com and iTunes. Such albums can still be classified as “out of print”, but can we really consider them to be “rare” if you don’t need to leave your computer in order to purchase them?

And, if the distribution of music in physical media really does become obsolete, does that mean that every album will technically be out of print? Personally, I’m dreading the thought of a future without album cover art and liner notes. I guess I’m a dinosaur who takes pride in owning albums instead of just having mp3 files stored in a computer. Seriously, where is the fun in that?

If we really are facing a future such as that, I can’t stop it. But I do intend to keep my website up and running for many years to come, even if we reach a point where the concept of the site stops making sense. Once again, I want to thank everyone who has visited and supported the site in any way over the past 11 years. It has been very encouraging to learn that there are more of you than I thought.

The Cure - "Disintegration" alternative rarities

2010-05-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

The release of the 3-CD deluxe edition of the Cure's 1989 album Disintegration is still forthcoming. It is now scheduled for release on June 8th -- although I must warn you that the date has been pushed back at least twice already. In any case, I've just been alerted to this official web page which features streaming audio of additional Disintegration-era rarities which will not be included on the set. The site is here:

http://thecuredisintegration.com/bin/#/altrarities/

Many of these tracks are instrumental demos and rehearsals; some others are live tracks; and others are alternate studio mixes. It's good listening, especially for a rainy day. Those who are familiar with these types of Cure rarities know what to expect, and won't be disappointed.

Here are the tracks that are streaming now:

1. Closedown -- (RS home instrumental demo, 05/88)
2. Last Dance -- (RS home instrumental demo, 05/88)
3. Lullaby -- (RS home instrumental demo, 05/88)
4. Tuned Out On RTV5 -- (band instrumental rehearsal, 06/88)
5. Fuknnotfunk -- (band instrumental rehearsal, 06/88)
6. Babble -- (band instrumental rehearsal, 06/88)
7. Plainsong -- (band instrumental demo, 09/88)
8. Pictures of You -- (band instrumental demo, 09/88)
9. Fear of Ghosts -- (band instrumental demo, 09/88)
10. Fascination Street -- (band instrumental demo, 09/88)
11. Homesick -- (band instrumental demo, 09/88)
12. Delirious Night -- (band instrumental demo, 09/88)
13. Out of Mind -- (studio instrumental jam, 10/88)
14. 2Late -- (studio "WIP" mix, 11/88)
15. Lovesong -- (studio "WIP" mix, 11/88)
16. Prayers For Rain -- (studio "WIP" mix, 11/88)
17. The Same Deep Water As You - Live (Dallas Starplex, 15/09/89)
18. Disintegration - Live (Dallas Starplex, 15/09/89)
19. Untitled - Live (Dallas Starplex, 15/09/89)
20. Faith - Live (Rome Palaeur, 04/06/89, crowd bootleg)

5/24/10 Update: As of May 24th, the Alternative Rarities tracks are still available for streaming. In addition, another exclusive stream has been added: a September 1989 concert performance of the Disintegration album in sequence, performed at the Dallas Starplex. As is the usual case with Cure live recordings, these 12 tracks sound almost the same live as they do on the studio disc, but it is impressive how well Robert Smith and company are able to recreate the album's mood in a live arena setting. The stream is here:

http://www.thecuredisintegration.com/bin/#/dallas/

Ronnie James Dio: the doo-wop singer

2010-05-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

An internet report which was initially dismissed as a hoax has been confirmed to be true: singer Ronnie James Dio died this past Sunday, May 16th, 2010. Dio succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of 67. Those who are well-versed in the world of heavy metal are well aware of the distinguished career of the diminutive man with the powerful voice. Besides fronting his namesake band Dio from 1983 onward, Mr. Dio was also the original lead singer of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow in the ‘70’s, and replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath in the early ‘80’s. Dio recently reunited with two of his former Sabbath bandmates to form Heaven and Hell, which was named after one of the studio albums that Sabbath recorded with Dio. Also, Dio fronted the blues-rock band Elf in the early ‘70’s.

But Dio was an even more seasoned veteran of the music industry than those credentials reveal. When he was in his teens and twenties, Dio fronted a doo-wop group whose first single was released in 1958. That’s right – the man who popularized the “devil horns” gesture among metalheads was making music back in the early days when rock and roll was called “the devil’s music”.

In the beginning, this doo-wop group was called Ronnie and the Red Caps, and Dio used his real name Ronnie Padavona. Their first single was released in 1958. The A-side “Lover” was sung by a different member of the group named Billy DeWolfe, and its B-side “Conquest” was an instrumental on which Dio played the trumpet. But the teenaged Dio sang the lead vocal on their 1960 sophomore single “An Angel Is Missing”, on which he already proved to be an impressive crooner.

The band soon changed their name to Ronnie Dio and the Prophets. Under this name, they released at least eight singles between 1962 and 1967, and one full-length album in 1963. That album, Dio at Domino’s, was supposedly recorded live at a Cortland, New York restaurant, but the 12 songs sound suspiciously like studio tracks. Regardless, it’s a very enjoyable listen. On this set of doo-wop standards and originals, the future metal icon comes across as a gentle young romantic, albeit one with a definite masculine timbre in his voice. Dio’s heartfelt crooning distinguishes these recordings, particularly “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” and “Don’t Take Your Love From Me”.

The earlier Prophets singles tended to be in the same vein, and were generally the better ones. Their 1962 single released on Atlantic is the standout Dio composition “Love Pains”, which also appeared in different form on Dio at Domino’s. The sound of their later singles showed a mild British Invasion influence, particularly on the Beatlesque “Smiling By Day (Crying By Night)”. Their transition into that territory often sounded awkward and hesitant, suggesting that they were reluctant to change with the times. But Dio’s vocal range and versatility continued to impress, especially on the Rat Pack-inspired “The Way of Love”.

The Prophets broke up in 1967, after which Dio and guitarist Nick Pantas formed the band Electric Elves. That band recorded one single under that name, both sides of which sound like weak imitations of early Who songs; Dio’s voice is virtually unrecognizable on both. The band’s name was then shortened to the Elves, whose two singles released on Decca sounded more like American chamber pop from the late ‘60’s. The first of those was “Walking In Different Circles”, a different version of a song previously recorded by Ronnie Dio and the Prophets. The second, “Amber Velvet”, is the better one. The band then evolved into Elf in 1970, after Pantas was killed in a car accident. Elf recorded three albums and toured with Deep Purple, which led to Ritchie Blackmore enlisting Dio to be the lead singer of Rainbow, and the rest is history.

Ronnie and the Red Caps – singles:

"Lover” (b/w “Conquest”) -- (Reb 59-45-105) 1958

“An Angel Is Missing” (b/w “What’d I Say”) -- (Seneca S 178-102) 1960

Ronnie Dio and the Prophets – singles:

“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” (b/w “Bad Man In Town”) -- (Swan, unreleased acetate) 1962

“Love Pains” (b/w “The Ooh-Poo-Pah-Doo”) -- (Atlantic 45-2145) 1962

“Gonna Make It Alone” (b/w “Swingin’ Street”) -- (Lawn L-218-G) 1963

“Mr. Misery” (b/w “Our Year”) -- (Swan S-4615-M) 1963

“Love Potion No. 9” (Valex 001) 1964

“Say You’re Mine Again” (b/w “Where You Gonna Run To Girl”) -- (Kapp K-697) 1965

“Smiling By Day (Crying By Night)” (b/w “Dear Darlin’ (I Won’t Be Comin’ Home)”) -- (Kapp K-725) 1965

“Walking Alone” (b/w “The Way of Love”) -- (Kapp K-770) 1965

“Walking In Different Circles” (b/w “10 Days With Brenda”) -- (Parkway P-143) 1967

Ronnie Dio and the Prophets “Dio at Domino’s” (Jove J-108) 1963

Track Listing:

1. Follow Me
2. Blue Days
3. I Left My Heart In San Francisco
4. Red Top
5. An Angel Is Missing
6. Irresistible You
7. I Told You So
8. Everybody's Got A Dance
9. Don't Take Your Love From Me
10. Johnny Blue
11. Great Balls Of Fire
12. Love Pains

Electric Elves – single:

“Hey, Look Me Over” (b/w “It Pays To Advertise”) – (MGM K13839) 1967

The Elves – singles:

“Walking In Different Circles” (b/w “She’s Not The Same”) – (Decca 732507) 1969

“Amber Velvet” (b/w “West Virginia”) – (Decca 732617) 1970

Third Man Records vinyl exclusives, Part 3

2010-04-17T17:11:00.000-07:00

Last week I received the third pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, my copies were sent on April 9th. I received them on the 12th.

This third set of items consists of a 2-LP compilation of all Third Man Records singles released in 2009, and a Dead Weather single featuring first takes of two songs from their upcoming second album. The package also included a fold-out poster featuring the cover images for all of the singles, as well as three Third Man Records postcards, and a turntable slipmat designed by Rob Jones.

The Dead Weather single contains first takes of the songs “No Horse” and “Jawbreaker” from the forthcoming Sea of Cowards, which will be released on May 11th. “No Horse” has a spontaneous, improvisational feel, almost as if it was recorded while they were making it up. Most of its first minute does not come through my right stereo speaker; the band still seems to be working on the song when the recording fades out. Its sound is reminiscent of Foghat’s “I Just Want To Make Love To You”. The piano-based “Jawbreaker” sounds more fully formed and fine-tuned, though the recording still sounds rough. The single provides a short but illuminating glimpse at the Dead Weather’s creative process; it will be interesting to compare these demo-like sides to the finished product.

Update: I’ve now heard the finished tracks. “No Horse” turned out to be a concise three-minute track on the order of the White Stripes’ early work. It’s still reminiscent of blues-based ‘70’s hard rock, though it sounds less like the aforementioned Foghat song than I thought it would. “Jawbreaker” sounds very different from its piano-based demo, consisting of spacey, fuzzy guitar and organ sounds. Both tracks exceeded my expectations based on the first take recordings.

The 2-LP set Third Man Records Single Releases 2009 compiles the A-sides and B-sides (where applicable) of the singles released on Third Man that year, beginning with catalogue number TMR-001 and ending with TMR-024. (This excludes the exclusive singles included in the first and second Vault packages, as well as the live White Stripes single that was exclusive to the Under Great White Northern Lights box set). All of the songs except the Carl Sagan track were produced by the irrepressible Mr. White, who also provides backing on many of them.

Included among the compiled tracks are the three Dead Weather singles from their 2009 debut album Horehound (“Hang You From The Heavens”, “Treat Me Like Your Mother”, “I Cut Like A Buffalo”) and their non-album B-sides: an effectively dark and fuzzy cover of Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”, and fairly faithful renditions of Them’s “You Just Can’t Win”, and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band’s “A Child of a Few Hours is Burning to Death”. Jack White’s solo track “Fly Farm Blues” is a spontaneous two-track recording which shows what White is capable of on the spur of the moment.

Three of the singles were recorded by noteworthy rockabilly artists. The Dex Romweber Duo is a White Stripes-like pair fronted by former Flat Duo Jets frontman Dexter Romweber; the drummer is Sara Romweber, Dex’s sister (no, really!). White joins them for their tracks: the first is a vintage-sounding rave-up; the second is a modern take on a 1930’s Geeshie Wiley blues song. Alabama-based Dan Sartain is another performer who has much in common with the Stripes, but his two tracks here are rather laid-back, and their tone is bitter. The most surprising contribution comes from 72-year-old country/rockabilly/gospel veteran Wanda Jackson, who covers Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” and the much-covered Johnny Kidd & the Pirates classic “Shakin’ All Over”. Jackson sings both songs with remarkable feeling, making good use of her wizened voice.

The two Mildred and the Mice songs are amusingly deranged punk screamfests about killing rodents. Rachelle Garniez’s “My House of Peace” is a more intricate novelty song, with backing by Jack White and Jack Lawrence. The female duo Smoke Fairies deliver two lovely psych-folk tunes. Transit is a mellow soul band made up of employees of the Nashville Transit Authority. Their A-side is a serene advertisement for their service; their B-side is about socializing after work. Both songs are charming, although Transit probably shouldn’t quit their day jobs. The most promising new act featured is the Black Belles, a female quartet whose sound is at once reminiscent of White’s bands and of ‘60’s garage-rockers. Their original “What Can I Do?” and their rethink of the Knickerbockers’ “Lies” make me look forward to a full-length album from these ladies.

Carl Sagan’s “A Glorious Dawn” samples spoken words from the late astronomer’s 1980 PBS series Cosmos, processes those words with Auto-Tune, and sets them to electronic musical arrangements by John Boswell. Another spoken-word track comes from veteran rock and roll DJ and publicist B.P. Fallon, who has probably associated with every rock legend you can name. His A-side is a monologue about fame and its potentially destructive nature. That single has two B-sides: one is a name-dropping interview with Fallon; the other is an actual song that further explores Fallon’s philosophy.

As a whole, Third Man Records Single Releases 2009 makes the encouraging case that Third Man is everything an indie record label should be, providing distribution opportunities for obscure and deserving talents, and pushing the envelope in the process. Keep up the good work, Jack, because this label may well keep rock and roll alive.

Another note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the forgotten practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is evident on these items. Side A of the single has the words “of course, of course” carved in the dead wax. The double-LP has the following messages etched in the runout grooves: “deceased Kentucky hobo meteorological event”, “a pair of crimson tide buss boss blues”, “expired climate astronomer pixie”, and “Irish queen upstarts”.

The Dead Weather “No Horse” (First Take) (b/w “Jawbreaker” (First Take)) (Third Man single TMR028) 2010

Track Listing:

a. No Horse (First Take)
b. Jawbreaker (First Take)

Various Artists “Third Man Records Single Releases 2009” (Third Man TMR027) 2010

Track Listing:

SIDE ONE

1. HANG YOU FROM THE HEAVENS – The Dead Weather (TMR 001)
2. ARE ‘FRIENDS’ ELECTRIC? – The Dead Weather
3. I LIKE MY MICE (DEAD) – Mildred and the Mice (TMR 003)
4. SPIDER BITE – Mildred and the Mice
5. MY HOUSE OF PEACE – Rachelle Garniez (TMR 004)
6. TREAT ME LIKE YOUR MOTHER – The Dead Weather (TMR 007)
7. YOU JUST CAN’T WIN – The Dead Weather

SIDE TWO

1. THE WIND DID MOVE – Dex Romweber Duo (TMR 009)
2. LAST KIND WORD BLUES – Dex Romweber Duo
3. BOHEMIAN GROVE – Dan Sartain (TMR 011)
4. ATHEIST FUNERAL – Dan Sartain
5. C’MON AND RIDE – Transit (TMR 012)
6. AFTERPARTY – Transit
7. FLY FARM BLUES – Jack White (TMR 013)

SIDE THREE

1. I CUT LIKE A BUFFALO – The Dead Weather (TMR 016)
2. A CHILD OF A FEW HOURS IS BURNING TO DEATH – The Dead Weather
3. A GLORIOUS DAWN – Carl Sagan (TMR 020)
4. GASTOWN – Smoke Fairies (TMR 021)
5. RIVER SONG – Smoke Fairies

SIDE FOUR

1. FAME #9 – B.P. Fallon (TMR 022)
2. INTERVIEW – B.P. Fallon
3. I BELIEVE IN ELVIS PRESLEY – B.P. Fallon
4. YOU KNOW I’M NO GOOD – Wanda Jackson (TMR 023)
5. SHAKIN’ ALL OVER – Wanda Jackson
6. WHAT CAN I DO? – The Black Belles (TMR 024)
7. LIES – The Black Belles

Farewell to the old website location

2010-04-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

It has finally happened. The old location of my website Rarebird’s Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews has completely ceased to exist. In case you didn’t know, the site has been moved to http://rarebird9.net . From its creation in May 1999 up until this past February, the site was hosted by the AT&T Personal Web Pages service. I moved the site on February 20th, after AT&T notified its members that their web page service would be discontinued as of March 31st. For six weeks, I was able to use the pages of the old site as redirect pages which brought visitors to the new site. As of April 8th, the old AT&T-hosted site finally disappeared.

One disadvantage to the site move is that many potential visitors may have a harder time finding the site, now that the redirecting pages are gone. The good news is that most of the major search engines have indexed the new site. The bad news is that many other websites on the internet have linked to the old site, and many of them will now have dead links. In some cases, this can be changed. But in many cases, it probably can’t be helped.

If you are a webmaster who has linked to my site in the past: first of all, I want to thank you for doing so. Secondly, I hope you will find it worthwhile to update the links to the corresponding URLs now located at http://rarebird9.net .

I also want to thank everyone who has visited the site over the past eleven years. I hope that you will continue to visit and enjoy the new site.

Last but not least, I want to give special thanks to AT&T Worldnet Service for hosting the site for its first ten-and-a-half years, and for providing the tools that enabled a web design amateur to create the site from scratch in 1999. I hope that other webmasters who used the AT&T Personal Web Pages service have found other hosting solutions.

Ace Frehley reissues

2010-04-11T20:14:00.000-07:00

It recently came to my attention that the Wounded Bird label has reissued three long-lost Ace Frehley releases from the ‘80’s. This past January, the label released a 2-on-1 CD containing the full-length album Second Sighting and the EP Live + 1, both of which are 1988 releases from the former Kiss guitarist’s ‘80’s band Frehley’s Comet. Also, Frehley’s 1989 solo album Trouble Walkin’ has been reissued.

The main attraction of the 2-on-1 CD is the Live + 1 EP, which featured four worthwhile live tracks from Frehley and his band. Two other members of that quartet were drummer Anton Fig and vocalist/guitarist Tod Howarth. The entire band makes a good impression, including Howarth on his two vocal turns. The other track from that five-song EP was a studio outtake from the 1987 album Frehley’s Comet titled “Words Are Not Enough”; that song is as good as any of the songs on the album from which it was excluded.

The full-length album Second Sighting is less exciting. It was recorded with a different drummer (Jamie Oldaker), and half of the singing and songwriting duties were unwisely entrusted to Howarth. The tracks written and/or sung by Frehley make up the album’s better half, but Howarth’s trite pop-metal style sinks his contributions. In particular, Howarth’s keyboard-laden ballad “It’s Over Now” belongs on some other hair-metal band’s album.

After the Comet disbanded, Frehley recorded his 1989 solo album Trouble Walkin’, which mainly consisted of straight-ahead hard rock. Peter Criss and Anton Fig are both credited with percussion. Ace’s unapologetic rocking-out is infectious on this album, particularly on his renditions of Jeff Lynne’s “Do Ya” and the simultaneously-released Kiss song “Hide Your Heart” (which Ace recorded without the blessing of Paul Stanley, one of the song's authors). After Trouble Walkin’, Frehley took a long hiatus from recording new studio solo albums; his next one was Anomaly in 2009, twenty years later.

Rarebird’s Kiss Rarity Reviews
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Alex Chilton “Live In Anvers” (2004)

2010-03-31T19:01:00.000-07:00

The last Alex Chilton solo title released during his lifetime was Live In Anvers, which was released in France in 2004 and in the U.S. in 2005. Live In Anvers captures Chilton during a January 2004 concert at De Nachten in Belgium. Backed by a trio of musicians from that region, Chilton performs two songs from his distant past (“Bangkok” and Big Star’s “In The Street”), four covers from his last two studio albums, and six other cover songs, spanning such genres as jazz, r&b, classical, and Italian pop. (“Ah Ti Ta Ti Ta Ta” is better known as “Te-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta” by Ernie K-Doe). Chilton is in fine form throughout, especially when you consider that he only had one rehearsal session with his pick-up band. The tone is generally mellow, and Chilton sounds quite comfortable performing in such spontaneous fashion. Particularly effective are Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “Hook Me Up”, Chilton’s own “Bangkok” (which he tells the audience is a song he created when he was “a drunken hooligan” in the 1970’s), and Adriano Celentano’s “Il Ribelle”. The album ends beautifully with Chilton’s heartbreaking guitar-based rendition of “It’s Too Late To Turn Back Now” by Brothers Cornelius and Sister Rose. That song – and Live In Anvers as a whole – serves as a poignant elegy to Chilton’s career.

Alex Chilton “Live In Anvers” (Last Call 3093182) 2004, (Rykodisc 10808) 2005

Track Listing:

1. Intro
2. Ah Ti Ta Ti Ta Ta
3. Song Intro
4. In The Street
5. Song Intro
6. 634-5789
7. Hook Me Up
8. Il Ribelle
9. Song Intro
10. Bangkok
11. Shiny Stockings
12. Claim to Fame
13. Sonata, Grave
14. Autumn in New York
15. Sick and Tired
16. It’s Too Late to Turn Back Now
17. Concert Outro

Alex Chilton's '90's solo albums

2010-03-31T18:58:00.000-07:00

Continuing our focus on the late Alex Chilton’s obscure and rare solo recordings, we now turn our attention to the three solo albums that Chilton recorded in the ‘90’s. Those albums are Clichés (1994), A Man Called Destruction (1995), and Set (2000). (Chilton also released an album called 1970 -- which was recorded that year -- during the '90's. A review of that album is here).

Clichés is a collection of 12 gentle acoustic numbers performed in the studio by Chilton alone during a single evening. Eleven of them are covers of old songs originating from the 1920’s through 1950’s, from such performers as Nina Simone, Nat King Cole, Chet Baker, and Ray Charles. There’s also a brief instrumental based on Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Gavotte”. Chilton does well with all of the selections, and seems more focused on his singing and playing than he had in many a moon. This album is decidedly not the average Box Tops or Big Star fan’s cup of tea, but the warm and intimate approach reveals a side of Chilton’s talent and musical interests that he had never shown before. Mel Tormé’s “Christmas Song” and Buddy Johnson’s “Save Your Love For Me” are the tracks with the most immediacy.

By contrast, Chilton recorded A Man Called Destruction with the help of several supporting musicians, and placed six originals among the covers. (A Man Called Destruction was Chilton’s only post-1989 solo album to feature new Chilton compositions; two of them – “It’s Your Funeral” and “Boplexity” – are instrumentals). Not surprisingly, the Chilton compositions generally tend toward the type of rockabilly sound that was common on Chilton’s solo albums. The exception is “It’s Your Funeral”, which is derived from Frédéric Chopin’s funeral march. Although Chilton still does not acknowledge his past exploits with Big Star, his rendition of Daniel Pearson’s 1978 r&b ballad “What’s Your Sign Girl” could pass for a sequel to Big Star’s “September Gurls”. He sounds as lively as he ever did on his cover of Adriano Celentano’s fast-paced Italian classic “Il Ribelle”. And his cover of “New Girl In School”, a song Brian Wilson penned for Jan and Dean in 1964, is as charming as it is anachronistic. For an album that roams all over the musical map, A Man Called Destruction is a remarkably stable set. It’s one of Chilton’s more accessible solo works, though it still won’t appeal to all tastes.

The same can probably be said for Set, which Chilton recorded during a single evening in February 1999 with bassist Ron Easley and drummer Richard Dworkin. (The album was released that year in Europe under the vulgar title Loose Shoes and Tight P****, which is based on an obscene remark reportedly made by Earl Butz in the ‘70’s). It covers some of the same ground as Clichés with its covers of old jazz selections (even containing a different, snappier version of Chet Baker’s “There Will Never Be Another You”), and also features covers of r&b tunes from later decades (the newest one being Ollie Nightingale’s unique 1996 number “You’ve Got a Booger Bear Under There”), and Gary Stewart’s 1978 country song “Single Again”. The use of a basic rock combo and a one-take recording technique give the songs a bar-band-like spontaneity. Of course, this was the type of spontaneity that Chilton was comfortable with – and excelled at – by this time. For example, his version of Brenton Wood’s “Oogum Boogum” sounds surprisingly good for a one-take recording. Chilton’s vocals sometimes sound strained, but he is in good form here as a guitarist. There will indeed never be another Alex Chilton, and Set is another good souvenir to keep as a reminder of this talented, independent musician who did things his own way.

Alex Chilton “Clichés” (Ardent 7-1506-2) 1994

Track Listing:

1. My Baby Just Cares For Me
2. Time After Time
3. All Of You
4. Gavotte
5. Save Your Love For Me
6. Let’s Get Lost
7. Funny (But I Still Love You)
8. Frame For The Blues
9. The Christmas Song
10. There Will Never Be Another You
11. Somewhere Along The Way
12. What Was

Alex Chilton “A Man Called Destruction” (Ardent 7-1507-2) 1995

Track Listing:

1. Sick and Tired
2. Devil Girl
3. Lies
4. It’s Your Funeral
5. What’s Your Sign Girl
6. Il Ribelle
7. You Don’t Have To Go
8. Boplexity
9. New Girl In School
10. You’re Lookin’ Good
11. Don’t Know Anymore
12. Don’t Stop

Alex Chilton “Set” (Bar/None AHAON-110) 2000

Track Listing:

1. Never Found A Girl
2. Lipstick Traces
3. Hook Me Up
4. Oogum Boogum
5. You’s A Viper
6. I Remember Mama
7. April In Paris
8. There Will Never Be Another You
9. Single Again
10. You’ve Got A Booger Bear Under There
11. Shiny Stockings
12. Goodnight My Love

Alex Chilton - "High Priest" (1987) and "Black List" (1989)

2010-03-30T17:10:00.000-07:00

Continuing our focus on the late Alex Chilton’s obscure and rare solo recordings, we now turn our attention to the 1987 album High Priest and the 1989 EP Black List.

After releasing two EPs in as many years in the mid-‘80’s, Chilton continued his creative momentum with a full-length album in 1987. High Priest was an impressively eclectic set, venturing into such diverse genres as r&b (“Take It Off”, Lowell Fulsom’s “Make A Little Love”), jazz (“Forbidden Love”), old-fashioned pop (the King/Goffin composition “Let Me Get Close To You”), rockabilly (“Dalai Lama”, the Bill Justis instrumental “Raunchy”), Delta blues (“Trouble Don’t Last”), and gospel (“Come By Here”). Somehow, the whole thing has a surprising consistency, possibly an unexpected benefit of Chilton’s no-frills production. Chilton’s choice of covers on this album is also surprising, not only because he does a seemingly respectful rendition of “Volaré”, but also because he covers a song by his old Box Tops mentor Dan Penn; could he have been trying to communicate to Penn that he was indeed “Nobody’s Fool”? Chilton originals such as “Thing For You” and the jokey “Dalai Lama” showed that there was still spark in his songwriting. High Priest was Chilton’s most solid and satisfying work since Big Star’s breakup.

The French CD version of High Priest (New Rose ROSE 130CD) contained four bonus tracks which showed Chilton covering even more musical territory. His original song “Junkyard” is a tense rockabilly ballad. His lively covers of Charlie Rich’s “Lonely Weekends” and the 1921 Eddie Cantor hit “Margie” further display Chilton’s firm grasp of music history. Best of all is his genuinely haunting rendition of Porter Wagoner’s “Rubber Room”.

Chilton’s 1989 EP Black List was a six-song set originally released only in France. It’s basically a continuation of High Priest, as Chilton gives us another entertaining lesson in music history, covering Ronnie and the Daytonas’ ‘60’s hot-rod tune “Little GTO”, Frank Sinatra’s “Nice ‘N’ Easy”, and the 1928 Furry Lewis blues classic “I Will Turn Your Money Green”. But Chilton’s three originals are equally noteworthy: the perceptive “Guantanamerika”, the sleazy “Jailbait”, and the slinky “Baby Baby Baby”.

Note: In 1994, the Razor & Tie label released the 2-on-1 CD High Priest/Black List (Razor & Tie RE 2033), which contained three out of four of the bonus tracks from the French CD version of High Priest. Unfortunately, “Rubber Room” was omitted. On the positive side, the Razor & Tie CD did contain a Black List bonus track called “Magnetic Field”, a fast-paced and accessible rock and roll song.

Alex Chilton “High Priest” (Big Time 6047-1-B) 1987

Track Listing:

1. Take It Off
2. Let Me Get Close To You
3. Dalai Lama
4. Volaré
5. Thing For You
6. Forbidden Love
7. Make A Little Love
8. Trouble Don’t Last
9. Don’t Be A Drag
10. Nobody’s Fool
11. Come By Here
12. Raunchy

Bonus tracks on French CD release:

13. Junkyard
14. Lonely Weekends
15. Margie
16. Rubber Room

Alex Chilton “Black List” EP (New Rose ROSE 194CD) 1989

Track Listing:

1. Little GTO
2. Guantanamerika
3. Jailbait
4. Baby Baby Baby
5. Nice ‘N’ Easy
6. I Will Turn Your Money Green
7. Magnetic Field (American CD bonus track)

Alex Chilton - "Feudalist Tarts" (1985)

2010-03-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

Continuing our focus on the late Alex Chilton’s obscure and rare solo recordings, we now turn our attention to the 1985 EP Feudalist Tarts and the 1986 EP No Sex. Both of these EPs marked a welcome return to work, and return to relevance, for this talented musician.

In the early ‘80’s, Chilton moved from Memphis to New Orleans, and took an interest in that city’s jazz-oriented music scene. After a six-year absence from studio recording, Chilton reappeared revitalized on the six-song EP Feudalist Tarts in 1985. Gone were the sloppy devil-may-care tendencies of Bach’s Bottom and Like Flies On Sherbert. The older and wiser Alex Chilton showed remarkable restraint on these six jazz-influenced numbers, crooning confidently and playing rockabilly-style guitar amid tasteful horn arrangements. Although it was clear that Chilton had mellowed out considerably, the song “Lost My Job” showed just enough attitude to prove that he hadn’t lost his edge.

In fact, that edge manifested itself with a vengeance on his next EP. The title track of the three-song No Sex was a brutally frank reaction to the spread of the AIDS virus in the ‘80’s. The other two Chilton originals (“Under Class” and “Wild Kingdom”) also percolate with social anxiety. The horn sound is still present on these tracks, but it is deemphasized in favor of a basic (if old-fashioned) guitar/bass/drums rock sound.

Note: In 1994, the Razor & Tie label released the 2-on-1 CD Feudalist Tarts/No Sex (Razor & Tie RE 2032), which contained all nine tracks from the two EPs. All nine tracks were also included on the French compilation CD called Stuff (New Rose ROSE 68CD) in 1987.

Alex Chilton “Feudalist Tarts” EP (Big Time BTA 005) 1985

Track Listing:

1. Tee Ni Nee Ni Noo – Tip On In
2. Stuff
3. B-A-B-Y
4. Thank You John
5. Lost My Job
6. Paradise

Alex Chilton “No Sex” EP (Big Time 6013-1-BD) 1986

Track Listing:

1. No Sex
2. Under Class
3. Wild Kingdom

Alex Chilton - "Like Flies On Sherbert" (1979)

2010-03-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

Continuing our focus on the late Alex Chilton’s obscure and rare solo albums, we now turn our attention to Like Flies on Sherbert, which turned out to be Chilton’s first full-length solo release in 1979. Chilton had a hard time getting his early solo work distributed, and this album turned out to be no exception. Like Flies On Sherbert was first released on a Memphis label called Peabody in 1979. Reportedly, only 500 copies of this first edition were printed. The following year, the album was re-released on the British label Aura, with one different track and different track sequencing. This edition supposedly used the wrong master tapes and had inferior sound quality.

Still, “sound quality” only makes so much difference in this case, because Like Flies On Sherbert is a colossal mess in any form. Everything about the album is technically inept: the singing, instrumentation, production (by Jim Dickinson), recording – everything! At the beginnings of many tracks, it sounds like a start button is being pressed on a tape recorder with low batteries. Clearly recorded during a troubled time in Chilton’s life, this willfully sloppy recording divides listeners between those who simply hear it as a bad album, and those who hear it as an enjoyably anarchic recording that shows the true spirit of rock and roll as it was originally meant to be. Count me among the naysayers. Although Chilton’s cover of Ernest Tubb’s “Waltz Across Texas” and his original “Hey! Little Child” have their ragged charms, most of Like Flies On Sherbert merely sounds like the work of clownish karaoke singers and amateur not-ready-for-bar-band musicians goofing off in a recording studio without any technical guidance. Those of us who know what Chilton was capable of can only wonder what the whole thing would have sounded like under better circumstances. Just because an album is intentionally bad, it doesn’t mean it’s any good – especially when we know that the artist has real and special talent.

The 2005 CD reissue of Like Flies On Sherbert on the French label Last Call contains five bonus tracks, two of which appeared on the original Peabody issue. One of those is an outlandishly incoherent cover of the Carter Family’s “No More The Moon Shines On Lorena”. Another is “Baron of Love, Part II”, an obnoxious four-minute psychobilly rant which is sung (so to speak) by its author Ross Johnson. Say what you will about the Aura-released version of the album; someone had good sense to leave those two tracks off it! The other three bonus tracks on the Last Call reissue include a restrained Chilton-penned rockabilly number called “Baby Doll”, and covers of two 1958 Allen Page songs: “She’s The One Who’s Got It”, and an instrumental version of “Stranded on a Dateless Night”. None of those three tracks are must-haves, but they are easily better than the tracks from the proper album.

Now…for a good set of sloppy rock and roll performances from Chilton, try the 1982 release Live in London, which was also released by the Aura label. Live in London was recorded in May 1980 at Dingwalls in London, England, with a backing trio that featured members of the Soft Boys (bassist Matthew Saligman and drummer Morris Windsor) and the Vibrators (guitarist Knox). The set list basically consists of five songs from Flies, four Big Star songs, one Box Tops classic, and a few other covers (including a version of “Stranded on a Dateless Night” which is not an instrumental). Chilton reportedly had little time to rehearse with this trio, but the relatively loose atmosphere is part of what makes this album fun. The Big Star songs, particularly the two from the Third album, are given surprisingly satisfying treatment here, even when Chilton flubs a lyric or two. An even bigger surprise: the songs from Sherbert are quite enjoyable in this setting. And it’s hard not to smile when you hear Chilton let loose on a hard-rockin’ rendition of “The Letter”. My advice: forget about Like Flies On Sherbert and instead search out Live in London to represent this time in Chilton’s history.

Alex Chilton “Like Flies On Sherbert” (Peabody P-104) 1979

Track Listing:

1. Baron of Love, Part II – (Johnson)
2. Girl After Girl – (Shelton)
3. My Rival – (Chilton)
4. No More The Moon Shines On Lorena – (Carter)
5. I’ve Had It – (Orbison/Wilson)
6. Rock Hard – (Chilton)
7. Waltz Across Texas – (Tubb)
8. Alligator Man – (Chance/Newman)
9. Hey! Little Child – (Chilton)
10. Hook or Crook – (Chilton)
11. Like Flies On Sherbert – (Chilton)

Alex Chilton “Like Flies On Sherbert” (re-release) (Aura AUL 710) 1980

Track Listing:

1. Boogie Shoes – (Casey/Finch)
2. My Rival – (Chilton)
3. Hey! Little Child – (Chilton)
4. Hook or Crook – (Chilton)
5. I’ve Had It – (Orbison/Wilson)
6. Rock Hard – (Chilton)
7. Girl After Girl – (Shelton)
8. Waltz Across Texas – (Tubb)
9. Alligator Man – (Chance/Newman)
10. Like Flies On Sherbert – (Chilton)

Alex Chilton “Live In London” (Aura AUL 723) 1982

Track Listing:

1. Bangkok
2. Tramp
3. In The Street
4. Hey Little Child
5. Nightime
6. Rock Hard
7. Alligator Man
8. The Letter
9. Train Kept A-Rollin’
10. Kanga Roo
11. My Rival
12. Stranded on a Dateless Night
13. September Gurls
14. No More The Moon Shines On Lorena

Alex Chilton's "Bach's Bottom" recordings

2010-03-25T10:33:00.000-07:00

I was saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Alex Chilton last week. The former lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star died on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 from an apparent heart attack at the age of 59. Chilton was scheduled to perform at the SXSW Festival with the revamped Big Star lineup. That evening turned into a tribute by various artists to Chilton and Big Star.

There probably isn’t much for me to say about the band Big Star that hasn’t already been said during the past seven days. However, I can refer you to my earlier posts about Big Star’s history, their 2005 studio album, and my web page about Chilton’s solo album 1970.

I want to use this blog to talk about Chilton’s obscure and mostly rare solo albums. With this post, I’ll start with Chilton’s 1975 recording which eventually came to be released under the title Bach’s Bottom.

In 1975, shortly after the demise of Big Star, Chilton attempted to record a solo album with producer Jon Tiven, whose main claim to fame at that time was as a music critic. Unfortunately, Chilton was heavily abusing drugs and alcohol at this point, and the 1975 recording sessions were chaotic in the extreme. Unlike the third and final Big Star album Third/Sister Lovers, which is widely considered a shambolic masterpiece, Bach’s Bottom is merely shambolic. For Chilton lovers, Bach’s Bottom provides a horrible fascination; for anyone else, it may be unlistenable.

The first time any of these recordings surfaced was in 1977, when a 5-song EP called Singer Not The Song was released on the New York punk label Ork Records. In 1980, those tracks and five more were released in Germany as a full-length album called Bach’s Bottom. (The title is a Box Tops pun. “Box bottom”, get it?). In 1993, Bach’s Bottom was released on CD in the U.S. with bonus tracks, and with some remixing and augmentation by Tiven.

The first three tracks (“Take Me Home”, “Every Time I Close My Eyes”, “All of the Time”) are decent pop songs that could have been very good under more disciplined conditions. Fans of Big Star will appreciate them, mainly because they will understand how good those songs should have been. (On the American CD, Tiven added a six-second guitar solo by Big Star’s Chris Bell to “All of the Time”, but you’ll miss it if you sneeze). Once you get beyond those tracks, you begin to hear just how troubled these sessions were. Sloppy versions of Chilton’s “Free Again” and “Jesus Christ” allow us to hear the mistakes, the false starts, and Chilton’s criticisms of his supporting players. Chilton comes off better with effective covers of the Rolling Stones’ “Singer Not The Song” and the Beatles’ “I’m So Tired”, the latter of which rings uncomfortably true. But Chilton shamelessly staggers through the endless second version of “Take Me Home”, and through his truly awful rendition of “Summertime Blues”. (The Singer Not The Song EP contained only a one-minute snippet of “Summertime Blues”; the version on Bach’s Bottom unfortunately lasted a minute-and-a-half longer).

The four bonus tracks on the American CD include Chilton’s debauched 1978 new wave single “Bangkok”, as well as its b-side: a hammily sung, enthusiastically played cover of the Seeds’ “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine”. The other two bonus tracks (“Walking Dead”, the third version of “Take Me Home”) were recorded in 1975, but not during the Tiven sessions. Chilton produced those two tracks and played all of the instruments himself, and he sounds like he was in a complete stupor while doing so.

The track listings for all of the Bach's Bottom-related releases are listed below. Some tracks were labeled differently on each release.

Alex Chilton “Singer Not The Song” EP (Ork 81978) 1977

Track Listing:

1. Free Again
2. Singer Not The Song
3. Take Me Home & Make Me Like It
4. All The Time
5. Summertime Blues

Alex Chilton “Bangkok” b/w “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine” (single) (Fun XX-1250) 1978

Track Listing:

a. Bangkok
b. Can’t Seem To Make You Mine

Alex Chilton “Bach’s Bottom” (German edition) (Line LLP 5081) 1980

Track Listing:

1. Take Me Home and Make Me Like It
2. Everytime I Close My Eyes
3. All of the Time
4. Oh Baby I’m Free (Part 1 & 2)
5. I’m So Tired (Part 1 & 2)
6. Free Again
7. Jesus Christ
8. Singer Not The Song
9. Summertime Blues
10. Take Me Home Again (Part 1 & 2)

Alex Chilton “Bach’s Bottom” (American edition) (Razor & Tie RE 2010) 1993

Track Listing:

1. Take Me Home And Make Me Like It (version 1)
2. (Every Time I) Close My Eyes (version 1)
3. All of the Time
4. Free Again (version 1)
5. I’m So Tired (pts. 1 + 2)
6. Free Again (version 2)
7. Jesus Christ
8. Singer Not The Song
9. Summertime Blues
10. Take Me Home And Make Me Like It (version 2)
11. (Every Time I) Close My Eyes (version 2)
12. Bangkok *
13. Can’t Seem To Make You Mine *
14. Walking Dead *
15. Take Me Home And Make Me Like It (version 3) *

* - bonus tracks produced by Alex Chilton

The website has moved!

2010-02-20T17:08:00.000-08:00

I knew this day would come, and it has. I have moved my website Rarebird's Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews to a new location. The new address is:

http://rarebird9.net

This new address should be easier to remember, and easier to Tweet. I hope you don't mind the GoDaddy ads which appear at the top of each page. It helps to make the site easier to afford. I hope to see you there!

Distractions official website

2010-01-31T16:23:00.000-08:00

There is now an official website for the Distractions, a late-‘70’s, early-‘80’s quintet from Manchester who sadly disappeared after recording only one overlooked album in 1980. That album was Nobody’s Perfect, one of rock’s lost treasures. (My review of the album is here). The official site is still under construction as of this writing, but it already contains a welcome wealth of information about this little-known band. The site is located at this address:

http://www.thedistractions.co.uk

The most amazing feature of the site is the inclusion of sound clips of five demo recordings from 1995. According to the site, original Distractions singer Mike Finney and guitarist Steve Perrin formed a new quintet with the same name at that time, and “played half a dozen gigs in and around Manchester and Liverpool”. They also recorded studio demos, and five of them can be heard on this page:

http://www.thedistractions.co.uk/Media/Audio/1995demos.html

Surprisingly, these songs sound very much like modern American country music. Still, this description of the original Distractions sound still applies: vintage-sounding pop with a melancholy undertone. The six-minute “Black Velvet” (not the Alannah Myles song) and “Where Were You When I Needed You?” are the most solid tracks among the five, showing that Finney and Perrin were still able to convey musical emotions with subtle power. “Good Girls Don't Get To Paris” was written in 1979 but never recorded until 1995; the demo contains enough guitar feedback to remind us of the Distractions’ new wave origins. The other two tracks, “I Thought You Were Dead Josephine” and “The Land Of Opportunity”, are rougher samples, but both had the potential to be fully developed into strong songs. For those of us (including myself) who never knew that the Distractions ever existed after 1981, these 1995 recordings are a fascination.

Stanley Kubrick’s “Fear and Desire” (1953)

2010-01-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

I recently viewed the debut feature by the late, great film director Stanley Kubrick. That film is Fear and Desire from 1953, which is little-seen because Kubrick pulled it from circulation shortly after it was first released and often prevented public screenings many years later. To this day, it has never been (legitimately) available on home video. The longest known print runs 72 minutes, and can be viewed at Google Video. The film is also viewable on YouTube in eight parts, but that version runs approximately 61 minutes.

The grainy low-budget movie is about four soldiers fighting in a fictional war in an unnamed country, who find themselves trapped six miles behind enemy lines after their plane crashes. One of the soldiers is played by Paul Mazursky, who has also become a renowned film director. Another is played by Frank Silvera, who also starred in Kubrick’s 1955 film Killer’s Kiss.

Kubrick was in his mid-20’s when he made this film, which he directed, produced, photographed, and edited. He could hardly have been expected to be a great filmmaker at this age – and he wasn’t, yet. The film is technically amateurish, and its ruminations on life, death, and morality are heavy-handed and muddled. But some scenes are quite potent just the same. Although the violent scenes are not filmed in a particularly profound way, they still manage to pack a strong punch.

Despite its many flaws, Fear and Desire will be of interest to Kubrick’s admirers. It demonstrates how independent-minded the director was from the beginning, and it contains more noticeable embryonic Kubrick elements than, say, Killer’s Kiss. In particular, it would be a fitting companion piece to either of Kubrick’s better-known war films: Paths of Glory (1957) and Full Metal Jacket (1987).

The YouTube clip below contains one of the film's most memorable (and arguably most Kubrickian) sequences. Mazursky's character is guarding a civilian girl whom the soldiers are holding captive to prevent her from revealing their presence to the enemy, and the soldier on guard is going insane.

The surprisingly good soundtrack to Porky's Revenge (1985)

2010-01-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

Sometimes terrible movies have good soundtrack albums. One of the most obvious examples I can think of is Porky’s Revenge. You’re reading that right. The third and worst movie of the ‘80’s Porky’s teen-sex trilogy actually had a respectable soundtrack album. It was masterminded by Dave Edmunds, who was able to enlist the aid of many big-name friends.

The soundtrack generally consisted of pseudo-1950’s music, mixing covers and originals. Edmunds’ tracks, however, owed more to the early-‘60’s Beach Boys. One of them, in fact, is a rendition of “Do You Want To Dance” that is faithful to the Beach Boys version. “Queen of the Hop” and “High School Nights” are equally fine examples of pre-Beatles-style party rock. On the other hand, Edmunds’ title instrumental “Porky’s Revenge” sounds totally 1985 to me.

The amazing thing about the soundtrack is the number of big names who participated. George Harrison contributed a tender song called “I Don’t Want To Do It”, a Bob Dylan composition that Dylan never recorded. Two famous ‘50’s instrumentals are covered by modern masters: Jeff Beck does Santo & Johnny’s “Sleepwalk”, while E Street saxophonist Clarence Clemons tackles the Peter Gunn theme with gusto. Carl Perkins sings his own “Blue Suede Shoes” with backing from the Stray Cats rhythm section, and Willie Nelson covers “Love Me Tender” exactly the way you imagine him singing it. There’s even an authentic-sounding cover of Charlie Rich’s “Philadelphia Baby” by a one-off supergroup featuring Robert Plant as its lead crooner.

This surprisingly tasteful soundtrack to a tasteless movie was once available as a Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab CD (MFSL MFCD 797). It is currently out of print, but many of its tracks can be purchased as mp3’s through iTunes. Also, “I Don’t Want To Do It” is available on the 2009 George Harrison compilation Let It Roll.

Various Artists “Porky’s Revenge Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” (Columbia JS 39983) 1985

Track Listing:

1. HIGH SCHOOL NIGHTS – Dave Edmunds
2. DO YOU WANT TO DANCE – Dave Edmunds
3. SLEEPWALK – Jeff Beck
4. I DON’T WANT TO DO IT – George Harrison
5. STAGGER LEE – Fabulous Thunderbirds
6. BLUE SUEDE SHOES – Carl Perkins with Slim Jim Phantom & Lee Rocker
7. PETER GUNN THEME – Clarence Clemons
8. QUEEN OF THE HOP – Dave Edmunds
9. LOVE ME TENDER – Willie Nelson
10. PHILADELPHIA BABY – The Crawling King Snakes (Robert Plant, Phil Collins, Paul Martinez with Dave Edmunds)
11. PORKY’S REVENGE – Dave Edmunds with Chuck Leavell, Michael Shrieve & Kenny Aronson
12. HIGH SCHOOL NIGHTS (reprise) – Dave Edmunds

Bonus tracks on 2004 reissue:

13. HONEY DON’T – Carl Perkins
14. DON’T CALL ME TONIGHT – Dave Edmunds

Deluxe edition of the Cure's "Disintegration" coming in June

2010-01-05T15:18:00.000-08:00

If anyone thought that no more deluxe editions of the Cure's albums were forthcoming: a 3-CD edition of the 1989 album Disintegration is being released on June 8th. (Amazon.com calls it the "20th Anniversary Edition", although the album is 21 years old this year). The first disc will consist of the 12 proper tracks. The second disc will consist of 20 previously unreleased rarities recorded in 1988 and 1989. The third disc will contain all twelve songs in sequence from the concert utilized for the live Entreat album from 1990, which originally contained only eight of the songs. A remastered version of the original 8-song Entreat is intended to be made available online. A full track listing for this edition can be found at the Cure's official site.

And that's not all the Cure reissue news that the site reports. Robert Smith also promises "a lot more remastered Cure stuff in 2010". This would include DVD reissues of the long-deleted concert videos In Orange (1988) and Show (1993), as well as a CD called Mixed Up 2 (apparently a sequel to the 1990 remix album Mixed Up) and a box set(!) titled The Cure @ the BBC. This seems like a lot to release in one year. But even if the release dates get spread out, Cure addicts can at least be confident that more items from Smith's bottomless vault are now intended for future release.

5/20/10 Update: Sorry I haven't been keeping better tabs on the ever-changing release date for the Disintegration set. It's been pushed back twice already! I wouldn't count on those other planned 2010 releases being released on time, either.

5/22/10 update: As of this writing, an official Cure site is featuring streaming audio tracks of 20 additional rarities from the Disintegration era. Here is the site:

http://thecuredisintegration.com/bin/#/altrarities/

Third Man Records vinyl exclusives, Part 2

2009-12-28T20:28:00.000-08:00

Last week I received the second pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, the records were sent on December 18th. I received mine on the 22nd.

This second set of items consists of a 2-LP live album from the Raconteurs on 180g vinyl, and a White Stripes single featuring alternate versions of two early songs. The package also included a screen-print poster of the Dead Weather’s Horehound album cover image, designed by Rob Jones, which fits neatly inside the LP’s 12-inch sleeve.

The White Stripes single contains alternate takes of the two songs which were released on the duo’s first single in 1998 (Italy Records 003), recorded during the same sessions. “Let’s Shake Hands” is the A-side, and a cover of Marlene Dietrich’s “Look Me Over Closely” is on the B-side. The version of “Let’s Shake Hands” released in 1998 is a great two-minute demonstration of the duo’s small-scale Led Zeppelin ethos. On the other hand, the Dietrich cover on the original single is a somewhat unappealing bit of lo-fi camp. The alternate take of “Let’s Shake Hands” is inferior to the one on the original single; it’s similarly short, with harsher vocals and less coherent chord progressions. By contrast, the alternate take of “Look Me Over Closely” has cleaner sound, a less comical White vocal, and an added second vocal track. It’s an improvement over the take that was originally used, as it now sounds like a proper and credible White Stripes song instead of a case of Jack White mimicking a German torch singer.

The Raconteurs Live In London is from a 2008 show, so it should not be confused with an earlier limited-edition live album issued in 2006. The band co-led by Jack White and Brendan Benson perform 10 songs from their 2008 album Consolers of the Lonely, 4 from their 2006 debut album Broken Boy Soldiers, and a pair of blues covers (“Little Red Rooster” and Charley Jordan’s “Keep It Clean”). Once you get used to the slightly muddy sound quality -– which probably wouldn’t go over well on a proper commercial release –- Live In London delivers the goods. Since the two Raconteurs albums (especially the second one) use a considerable amount of studio effects, it’s good to hear the band prove they are able to perform the songs with raw and ragged glory. “Top Yourself” and the lengthy “Blue Veins” are vintage-sounding blues-rock jams. The band also stretches out comfortably on the epic “Carolina Drama”. White unleashes a burst of infectious energy on the Stripes-like “Salute Your Solution”. Most of the other songs are also well-done; “Hold Up”, “Level”, and “Many Shades of Black” are among the standouts. The only disappointing cut is “Steady As She Goes”, the band’s best known song; it ends up sounding too chaotic, with White and Benson singing around each other in discordant fashion. That unfortunate low point aside, Live In London is a useful though not essential accessory to the Raconteurs’ studio works.

Vinyl lovers will get a kick out of the cover art for Live In London. It intentionally makes the outer sleeve look worn and faded, as if the album has been sitting in someone’s record collection for decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Vault members didn’t get the joke and complained to Third Man Records about the quality of the sleeve. A note to those who sell it on eBay: you may need to explain this inside joke to buyers.

Another note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the forgotten practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is evident on these items. Side A of the single has the words “rescued from eBay out of…” carved in the dead wax; Side B has “… the hands of an extortionist Detroit engineer” carved. The Live in London double-LP has the following messages etched in the runout grooves: “The Legion”, “Indiana farm boy”, “Blonde BB gun”, and “Mongo”.

The White Stripes “Let’s Shake Hands” (Alternate take) (b/w “Look Me Over Closely” (Alternate take)) (Third Man single TMR017) 2009

Track Listing:

a. Let’s Shake Hands (Alternate take)
b. Look Me Over Closely (Alternate take)

The Raconteurs “Live In London” (Third Man TMR 018) 2009

Track Listing:

SIDE ONE

1. Intro
2. Consoler Of The Lonely
3. The Switch And The Spur
4. You Don’t Understand Me
5. Top Yourself

SIDE TWO

6. Old Enough
7. Hold Up
8. Keep It Clean
9. Level
10. Steady As She Goes

SIDE THREE

11. Rich Kid Blues
12. Blue Veins
13. Many Shades Of Black

SIDE FOUR

14. Little Red Rooster
15. Intimate Secretary
16. Salute Your Solution
17. Carolina Drama

Alan Mann “Christmas On The Block” (1983)

2009-12-23T19:05:00.000-08:00

Rarebird’s Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews would like to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, or whatever you personally call this time of year.

I’m sure that most of you have been hearing plenty of holiday music lately. I’d like to share with you a Christmas song that most of you probably haven’t heard lately, if ever: “Christmas On The Block” by Alan Mann, from 1983.

This song was released only as a 7” single by a small indie label, and it is now very hard to find. However, the miracle of YouTube enables you and me to hear the song and watch its video right here and now.

Alan Mann was a musician based in the Philadelphia, PA area who was little-known outside of that region. But he did gain wider fame during the Christmas seasons in the mid-1980’s, when the then-young MTV network would air the video for “Christmas On The Block”. It’s a moving, one-of-a-kind song inspired by the people who then lived in a group house for the blind in the Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby. Each year, the residents of that home would decorate a Christmas tree that would be displayed in front of the house. Even though the blind residents could not see the lights and colors themselves, they still showed their holiday spirit by making this tree look pretty for others to see. Mann was so moved by this annual gesture that he wrote and recorded this song about it, and had this video filmed outside of the house.

This poignant Dylanesque song is a precious gift to the world from Mann, who usually displayed a more punk-like aesthetic (as evidenced by the single’s B-side “No Deal – No Sleep”). Tragically, Alan Mann passed away four years after the making of this song and video. In October 1987, at the age of 33, Mann apparently jumped from the second-story window of a burning building. Less than two weeks later, he died from complications caused by his injuries.

Alan Mann “Christmas On The Block” (single) (A&R 0020) 1983

Track Listing:

a. Christmas On The Block
b. No Deal - No Sleep

Bryan Adams’ 1979 disco single

2009-12-20T18:25:00.000-08:00

The first single Bryan Adams recorded as a solo artist (following his departure from the Canadian band Sweeney Todd) was called “Let Me Take You Dancing”. The surprising thing is that it was a disco single! The original version of the song, released in Canada in 1978, sounded much like a recording by Nick “Hot Child In The City” Gilder. (Adams had replaced Gilder in Sweeney Todd). The 18-year-old Adams sang in a higher pitch than he did in his later recordings. For the single’s 1979 American release, the song was given a disco remix by John Luongo. Luongo sped up Adams’ vocals to the point where he sounded like a chipmunk! (Luongo was probably aiming to make Adams sound like Off The Wall-era Michael Jackson). For that reason, Adams has always distanced himself from the song, even though it was a minor disco hit, and soon led to Adams being fully signed to A&M Records. Adams has refused to allow the song to be included on any of his subsequent releases.

The single was released in both 7” and 12” formats. The 7” versions usually contained the John Luongo disco mix on the A-side, and a song called “Don’t Turn Me Away” on the B-side. The 12” versions usually contained an extended 5-minute disco mix on the A-side and an instrumental version of “Let Me Take You Dancing” on the B-side.

The shorter Luongo mix does have its charms. It’s quite amusing to hear Adams’ voice altered in this way, and it is fascinating from a historical viewpoint to hear the very uncharacteristic recording that launched the career of this famous commercial rocker. The song is also a better-than-average disco specimen from its time period, although that may be faint praise.

However, the extended Luongo mix found on the 12" version easily wears the song out. And the instrumental version is mostly dull and repetitive without the vocals.

“Don’t Turn Me Away”, the B-side to most of the 7” pressings, is an energetic bit of power pop that is unfortunately marred by the cloying Nick Gilder-ism of Adams’ vocals.

For more insights on this single and to hear snippets of the different versions of “Let Me Take You Dancing”, I recommend visiting the website of Jim Vallance, the song’s co-creator.

Track Listings:

Bryan Adams “Let Me Take You Dancing” b/w “Don’t Turn Me Away” (7” single) (A&M 2163-S) 1979

a. Let Me Take You Dancing (disco version)
b. Don’t Turn Me Away

Bryan Adams “Let Me Take You Dancing” (12” single) (A&M Disco SP-12014) 1979

a. Let Me Take You Dancing (disco version)
b. Let Me Take You Dancing (instrumental version)

Notes: Some early 1978 Canadian promo copies of the single contain the same original version of “Let Me Take You Dancing” on both the A- and B-sides. Some U.K. copies are labeled as containing “Don’t Turn Me Away” on the B-side, but actually contain the instrumental version of “Let Me Take You Dancing” on that side instead. U.S. promo copies of the 7” single contained the shorter disco version of “Let Me Take You Dancing” on both sides.

Attila with Billy Joel

2009-12-07T17:37:00.000-08:00

Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #19 is complete. The subject: the self-titled 1970 album by Attila, a heavy metal duo featuring singer/organist Billy Joel. (You read that right). The review is here:

http://rarebird9.net/attila.html

The Cure "Fade Away: The Early Years Vinyl Box Set" (2009)

2009-12-02T16:33:00.000-08:00

For those who are extreme lovers of vinyl and extreme lovers of the Cure, the Vinyl Lovers label is serving up a pricey limited edition package called Fade Away: The Early Years Vinyl Box Set on December 15th. The 7-LP set is limited to 1,000 copies, and contains 180g vinyl discs of the first four Cure albums: Three Imaginary Boys (1979), Seventeen Seconds (1980), Faith (1981), and Pornography (1982). The other three discs in the set contain a total of 29 bonus tracks (including the epic instrumental Carnage Visors), all of which are available on the 2-CD Deluxe Editions of the three latter albums which were released in 2005. A complete track listing for the Fade Away box set can be found here. For those who intend to shell out nearly $200 USD for the set, it can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com.

Velvet Underground and Nico: original 1966 acetate

2009-11-16T18:13:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a general consensus that the most valuable record in existence is the original acetate copy of the first Velvet Underground album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, from 1966. This acetate was originally presented to Columbia Records, who rejected it. (The album was released by the Verve label in 1967). Earlier this decade, the acetate was purchased at a yard sale in New York for 75 cents, and was sold on eBay for a whopping $25,000! The full story is here. The fragile acetate is now reportedly stored in a safe place. But, thanks to this blog entry by New York indie radio station WFMU (91.1 FM), the rest of us can listen to it online.

The acetate contained rougher mixes of 9 of the album’s 11 tracks. (“Sunday Morning” and “There She Goes Again” are absent). One thing that is odd is the sequence of the tracks, which is virtually in reverse order from that of the finished album. Placing the bizarre “European Son” at the beginning was an ill-advised idea, and it probably made a bad first impression on the folks at Columbia. This version of “European Son” is noticeably easier on the ears than the released version, even though the mostly instrumental track is no less strange. Nico’s voice sounds closer in the acetate's mix of “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, and it sounds more distant on “I’ll Be Your Mirror”. She muffed one of her lines on the latter song – or did she? An entirely different take of “Heroin” was used; it has a demo-like quality, but it does build up to an impressively intense climax. An entirely different take is also used for “Venus In Furs”; it mostly lacks the hallucinogenic mood of the released version. The acetate's take of “I’m Waiting For The Man” also sounds like a demo, but it does have a rugged live-in-the-studio type of appeal. Still, it’s easy to understand why the people at Columbia were probably not charmed by Lou Reed’s vocal on this version. The differences in the other three tracks (“Run Run Run”, “Femme Fatale”, and “Black Angel’s Death Song”) are audible but insignificant.

This acetate does not contain any startling revelations, but it is still fascinating to listen to the rough draft of this classic, influential, and ground-breaking album.

Velvet Underground and Nico: original 1966 acetate (Scepter Studio XTV-122402) 1966

Track listing and sequence:

1. European Son
2. Black Angel’s Death Song
3. All Tomorrow’s Parties
4. I’ll Be Your Mirror
5. Heroin
6. Femme Fatale
7. Venus In Furs
8. I’m Waiting For The Man
9. Run Run Run

Katy Hudson (aka Katy Perry)

2009-11-14T20:29:00.000-08:00

Several years before she scored a controversial worldwide smash hit about kissing a girl and liking it, brash pop singer Katy Perry recorded something that is arguably the polar opposite: a Christian music album, under her real name Katy Hudson. (She has since changed her name to avoid confusion with the actress Kate Hudson). The self-titled 2001 CD Katy Hudson was released on the now-defunct Red Hill label. The singer was 16 years old at the time of its recording.

Perry’s hit 2008 album One Of The Boys is a generally repellent collection of noisy, in-your-face pop songs, long on attitude and short on song craft. Perry is essentially the Alanis Morissette of the late ‘00’s, having been mentored by Glen Ballard on creating angst-ridden songs which are unlike the ones she recorded as a teenager.

At first, the Katy Hudson album doesn’t sound completely different from her newer work; the first two tracks have a similarly edgy pop sound with recognizable vocals. Also, the message of “Spit” gets lost in excessive hard-rock noise. But much of the album manages to break out of these mundane trappings to show greater depth and more vocal range. “Faith Won’t Fail”, “Search Me”, and “When There’s Nothing Left” are fairly transcendent expressions of faith. On “My Own Monster”, Katy’s emotions sound real as she begs the Lord to deliver her from evil. “Naturally” and the droll “Growing Pains” have an arty Fiona Apple feel. (This similarity may have been accidental. Katy is the daughter of two non-denominational church pastors, and she was reportedly not allowed to listen to secular music when she was a teenager).

Katy Hudson is not an extraordinary album. After all, Katy was only 16 when she recorded it. However, it does show that she is capable of far more than the obnoxious contemporary trash-pop found on One Of The Boys. Now that she has succeeded at becoming famous, let’s hope that she will utilize more of her talent for her next pop offering.

(Side note: For those who are fans of Perry’s One Of The Boys album, it is worth noting that its Wal-Mart-only bonus track “Cup of Coffee” and its iTunes bonus track “I Think I’m Ready” are better than most of the album’s proper tracks. Go figure.)

Katy Hudson “Katy Hudson” (Red Hill RHCD 2223) 2001

Track Listing:

1. Trust in Me
2. Piercing
3. Search Me
4. Last Call
5. Growing Pains
6. My Own Monster
7. Spit
8. Faith Won't Fail
9. Naturally
10. When There's Nothing Left

AC/DC studio rarities

2009-11-09T22:52:00.000-08:00

A new AC/DC box set titled Backtracks is being released this week. It contains 2 CDs and one DVD. The first CD contains 12 rare studio tracks, while the second CD contains 15 live cuts recorded between 1977 and 2000.

Although my hobby of searching out rare rock recordings did not fully develop until I was 20 or so, my first Rarebird moment came when I was a teenage metal-head in 1983. Although I owned every American-issued AC/DC album released up to that point (up until Flick of the Switch, to be exact), I still made a habit of flipping through the AC/DC bins every time I walked into record stores. One night, I came across an import copy of the band’s 1976 album High Voltage with different cover art. I had heard that the Australian versions of most of the Bon Scott-era albums contained at least one different track apiece. I was quite surprised when I examined the Australian High Voltage track listing, and found that it contained six songs which were unavailable in the States! (Most of the tracks from the American High Voltage release were released in Australia on an album called T.N.T.). As a kid who took pride in owning all of AC/DC’s albums, I was dying to hear these six songs that I didn't have. So I purchased my first rare/import album.

It’s hard to describe the feeling I got when I took it home and put it on the turntable. I thought it was so cool that I had six AC/DC songs that most fans probably did not know existed. And I liked all six of those songs, to boot. About one year later, four of those six songs were released in America on the 5-song EP ’74 Jailbreak. But the other two songs remained unreleased in the U.S. until now, as they are included on Backtracks. One of them, titled “Stick Around”, is exactly the type of unapologetically raunchy hard rock song we expect from AC/DC, and it rocks. However, the other newly reissued song from the Australian High Voltage is unlike anything else they have ever done. “Love Song” is just what its title says it is; it’s a tender and totally uncharacteristic glam-rock ballad, with a (gasp!) sensitive-sounding Bon crooning like a romantic softie. Some AC/DC fans hate the song, arguing that it’s the opposite of everything that the band has ever been about – but I love it.

The other track that was issued in America on the ’74 Jailbreak EP was the song “Jailbreak”, which was from the Australian version of the 1976 album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. There was another song from that album’s Australian edition which was unreleased in the States until it was included on Backtracks. “R.I.P. (Rock In Peace)” is a decent rocker that fits into the Dirty Deeds template, although its lyrics are actually sillier than most of the others. Another related cut included on Backtracks is “Fling Thing”, the B-side to the Australian “Jailbreak” single; it’s an odd instrumental, based on an old traditional Scottish song.

Backtracks also contains two nifty tracks from the 1977 Let There Be Rock sessions. “Crabsody in Blue” was released on the Aussie version of that album. Although its lyrics are in bad taste, it’s a good mid-tempo tune, similar to “Ride On” from Dirty Deeds. The other one, “Carry Me Home”, was the B-side of the Aussie single “Dog Eat Dog”. It’s a wilder song, with a more uninhibited Bon vocal.

Backtracks contains one other obscure Bon Scott-era studio track: “Cold Hearted Man” was the Australian B-side of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Damnation”. It’s not great, but admirers of the 1978 Powerage album will take interest in it.

The other five studio tracks contained on the first Backtracks disc are rarities from the Brian Johnson era. Four of them (“Snake Eye”, “Borrowed Time”, “Down on the Borderline”, and “Cyberspace”) are Australian B-sides. The other one, “Big Gun”, was first released on the soundtrack for the 1993 Schwarzenegger movie The Last Action Hero. All five songs deliver the reliable, if predictable, hard-nosed attack that we expect from the Johnson-fronted AC/DC.

There are at least three Australian-released tracks which are conspicuously absent from Backtracks. The aforementioned T.N.T. album contained a cover of Chuck Berry’s “School Days”. That song was made available on the 1997 box set Bonfire. It’s listenable but hardly inspired. And where, oh where, is the very first AC/DC single? The original version of “Can I Sit Next To You Girl”, featuring their original vocalist Dave Evans, was the A-side of their 1974 debut single (Albert Productions AP-10551). The B-side was the Evans-sung “Rockin’ In The Parlour”. Evans was a fairly dynamic singer with a Burton Cummings-like voice, but he seems very tame in comparison to Bon Scott and Brian Johnson. Although most people probably don’t care about this long-forgotten part of the band’s history, I personally wish that the two Evans-sung tracks could have been included on Backtracks.

It’s good to see so many of these tracks finally receiving a long-overdue release in the United States. Although the younger Rarebird once felt like some sort of elitist for having these songs in my collection, I’m now at the age where I am simply happy that more AC/DC fans will have easy access to these songs.

Third Man Records vinyl exclusives, Part 1

2009-08-31T17:25:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I received the first pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, the records were sent on August 28th. I received mine the next day.

The first set of items consists of a mono version of the White Stripes’ 2007 album Icky Thump on 180g vinyl, and a Dead Weather single with two non-album tracks. The package also included a black t-shirt with a label logo on the front.

The mono version of Icky Thump certainly sounds different with its sound layers flattened into one. The non-stereo sound often makes this modern album sound like a blues-rock recording from another time. More than ever, it sounds like a work by early Led Zeppelin on a very experimental day. Instead of a 21st-century rock band experimenting with bagpipes, the Stripes could be mistaken here for a band from the psychedelic or the prog era, using the instrument for similarly bold purposes. Listening to the album by four different album sides, each containing three or four songs, also makes its impact different than when it is heard all at once on CD. The medium really does make a difference. The band’s younger fans may not know what to think of this version of Icky Thump, but those who grew up in -- and miss -- the analog era would understand the intent, and would probably enjoy the result.

The Dead Weather single contains covers of two obscure songs, one from the cult metal band Pentagram, and another from the British cult r&b band Downliners Sect. Pentagram’s “Forever My Queen” was conceived around 1973, although it was not released until decades later, after that band actually began to release recordings. The Downliners Sect’s “Outside” originates from 1966. It is fitting that the Dead Weather would cover songs such as these, considering that their album Horehound has the feel of an outside-the-mainstream recording from one or both of those time periods. Although the covers are basically faithful to the originals, the Dead Weather make them their own with their distinctively dark and fuzzy sound. This single is a cool collectible item.

A note for fellow vinyl aficionados: the forgotten practice of engraving text in the dead wax, or runout grooves between the sticker and the last track’s grooves, is evident on these items. The A-side of the single has the words “rent a scam” carved in the dead wax; the B-side has "sectual healing" carved. The Icky Thump double-LP has the following messages etched in the runout grooves: “Do as your told”, “money-n-aluminum”, “Faygo – crème soda”, and “hot water”.

The Dead Weather “Forever My Queen” (b/w “Outside”) (Third Man single TMR010) 2009

Track Listing:

a. Forever My Queen
b. Outside

The White Stripes “Icky Thump” (mono LP version) (Third Man TMR 002) 2007/2009

Track Listing:

SIDE UNO:

1. Icky Thump
2. You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)
3. 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues

SIDE DWA:

4. Conquest
5. Bone Broke
6. Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn
7. St. Andrew (This Battle Is In The Air)

SIDE THREE

8. Little Cream Soda
9. Rag And Bone
10. I'm Slowly Turning Into You

SIDE FOWER

11. A Martyr For My Love For You
12. Catch Hell Blues
13. Effect and Cause

White Stripes single from Sub Pop

2009-07-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

The website for Jack White's new record label Third Man Records has piqued my interest with a service called the Vault. The Vault offers the expected online goodies (i.e. streaming video and chat rooms) for all of its members. But for its "Platinum Members" who pay $20 per month, the label is offering exclusive vinyl items, in the form of LP's and 7-inch singles. More information is at the site:

http://www.thirdmanrecords.com/vault.html

While explaining why prospective members should spend 20 of their hard-earned bucks per month on this service, the site mentions this:

In 2001 the White Stripes were featured in the Sub Pop singles club. It was a subscription-only service where the lucky subscriber received a 7" every month for a very reasonable price. A six-month subscription in 2001 would have cost you $35. The White Stripes' Sub Pop single on Sub Pop now consistently sells for $250 on reputable online auction sites.

What "Sub Pop single on Sub Pop" are they referring to, you ask? That single was actually pressed in December of 2000. Party of Special Things To Do, pressed in red-and-white-colored vinyl, contained three Captain Beefheart covers. The Stripes’ version of the titular 1974 Beefheart song was its A-side, and their covers of Beefheart’s 1969 song “China Pig” and his 1980 song “Ashtray Heart” were on its B-side. Beefheart was such an odd and original musician that he made his friend Frank Zappa seem like a normal guy by comparison. It’s probably impossible for anyone besides Beefheart to fully duplicate a genuine Beefheart groove, but Jack White’s renditions of Beefheart’s songs are respectable enough. White’s versions are a bit more accessible but less vibrant than the originals, as he logically applies his own minimalist blues-rock style to that of the Captain.

White Stripes “Party Of Special Things To Do” (b/w “China Pig/Ashtray Heart”) (Sub Pop single SP 527) 2000

Track Listing:

a. Party Of Special Things To Do
b. China Pig/Ashtray Heart

Lou Reed reviews added

2009-07-16T18:32:00.000-07:00

I've added reviews of three more albums to the Lou Reed page: The Blue Mask (1982), Set The Twilight Reeling (1996), and Perfect Night: Live In London (1998). Here is the page:

http://rarebird9.net/reed.html

The Blue Mask was reissued shortly after I added the review, and that's good news, because that album marked a major creative turning point for Reed. The other two albums are perhaps not among Reed's essential recordings, but most of his fans will want them in their collections.

Ten years! And counting...

2009-05-31T21:15:00.000-07:00

Wow! It has now been a full decade since I first created my website Rarebird's Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews. How many personal websites stay online that long? However many or few there are, I am proud to count my site among them.

In previous years in which I posted anniversary messages like this one, I found myself explaining why I hadn't added any new artist pages recently. But this year is different. For the first time since 2004, I have recently created such a page. It felt like old times while I put together my new Kiss rarity review page, and it quickly turned into one of the largest web pages I've ever created. I don't know for sure if I will create more such pages related to more artists in the future, but I'm never saying never. Inspiration might sneak up on me again. And, of course, I will periodically add more spotlight album review pages to the site.

In the meantime, I've noticed that some of the site's existing pages are due for updates. I've added four reviews to my Mott The Hoople page. This week, I plan to add one short review to the Eve's Plum page. And during the summer months, I hope to update the Lou Reed and Matthew Sweet pages. I'll keep you posted.

As always, I want to thank everyone who has ever supported the site in any way over the last ten years. Let's see if I can keep it up for another ten!

Mott The Hoople page updated

2009-05-30T21:55:00.000-07:00

It came to my attention recently that the Mott The Hoople page on my website was due for an update. So I've added reviews of four more Mott albums which have gone out of print. Those albums are Brain Capers (1972), Live (1974), Two Miles From Heaven (1980), and World Cruise (1993). Here is the page:

http://rarebird9.net/mott.html

By the way, five Mott the Hoople 40th anniversary shows will be taking place in October at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. The original lineup -- Ian Hunter, Mick Ralphs, Overend Watts, Verden Allen, and Dale "Buffin" Griffin -- will be performing together for the first time in 35 years. And on June 3rd, Hunter is turning 70!

Kiss Rarity Review page

2009-05-14T17:45:00.000-07:00

Finally! For the first time in over four years, I've created a new page on the website containing multiple album reviews pertaining to a certain artist, instead of just a spotlight album page containing a single review. The subject is a band who are loved by some and hated by others: Kiss! What brought this on? It recently came to my attention that the band's 1998 album Psycho-Circus is out of print. I originally planned to make that album the subject of a spotlight review. But I soon found that, although all of the other proper Kiss albums are currently in print, many related albums have been discontinued. One review led to another, and my Kiss page turned into the second-largest page on my website! I hope you enjoy it:

http://home.att.net/~rarebird9/kiss.html

INXS deny firing JD Fortune

2009-02-24T22:31:00.000-08:00

A spokesperson for INXS has denied JD Fortune's recent claim that he was fired from the band and left stranded at a Hong Kong airport. INXS' creative director and global business strategist, C.M. Murphy, said the band was "shocked" and "horrified" by JD's allegations. Murphy told the BBC:

The band have always stated to me that Fortune's services could
potentially be contracted again when INXS next tour. In fact, he was next on my list to call regarding a very big recording project I am putting together for INXS at present. I guess I have no reason to call him now.

So, who do you believe? Personally, I've never trusted JD since I first saw him on Rock Star: INXS in 2005. I have to wonder if his "homeless and living in a car" story was possibly a reality show ploy then and possibly a publicity stunt now.

As for INXS...what's their next move? Another season of Rock Star: INXS? I still miss that show. Think about it, guys!

Feist - "Monarch Lay Your Jewelled Head Down" (1999)

2009-01-29T11:01:00.000-08:00

Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #18 is complete. The subject is an independent 1999 CD by modern jazz-pop artist (Leslie) Feist. Monarch Lay Your Jewelled Head Down was an album which Feist recorded with the help of a grant from the Canadian government, and was sold mainly at her shows. Of course, it is now quite rare. Here is the review:

http://rarebird9.net/feistmonarch.html

hindu love gods 1990 CD reissued

2009-01-29T10:44:00.000-08:00

Another long-lost album which was reissued last August by Rhino Encore was the self-titled 1990 cd by an unofficial supergroup called the hindu love gods (the lower-case spelling was theirs), which was the subject of Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #6. This band consisted of the late Warren Zevon and three-quarters of REM (drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, and bassist Mike Mills). Their one casual album was recorded in 1987 but released in 1990. It consisted of blues cover songs and a very Zevon-like version of Prince's "Raspberry Beret". More information about the album and a still-obscure single can be found here:

http://rarebird9.net/hlg.html

More Alice Cooper reissues

2009-01-29T10:07:00.000-08:00

It has come to my attention that, following the May reissues of the first two Alice Cooper albums, four more of Cooper's albums have been reissued on CD by Rhino Encore (a reissue label billed as "the back-in-print imprint"). The long-out-of-print albums which were reissued last August are Muscle of Love (1973), Lace and Whiskey (1977), From the Inside (1978), and Flush the Fashion (1980). My reviews of these albums are on my web site.

This brings the vast majority of Alice's official album releases into print. The ones that are still missing are three albums from his early-'80's oblivion period. If Special Forces (1981) and Zipper Catches Skin (1982) remain out of print, it will be no great loss. But Rhino Encore may want to consider reissuing the 1983 album Dada. It's the album which reunited Coop with producer Bob Ezrin, and it's one of Alice's most underrated works. If it does not get reissued, Dada is worth searching out for Cooper's fans.

Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboardist Billy Powell dies at 56

2009-01-28T19:44:00.000-08:00

Billy Powell, the longtime keyboardist for the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, died early this morning (January 28th, 2009) of an apparent heart attack. He was 56. Here is the Reuters story:

http://www.reuters.com/article/peopleNews/idUSTRE50R7ME20090128

Powell was one of the survivors of the 1977 plane crash which took the lives of original lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines. Two of the other crash survivors, guitarist Allen Collins and bassist Leon Wilkeson, have also since passed away. There are now two members who survived the crash who still live: original guitarist Gary Rossington (who still performs with the current Skynyrd lineup) and drummer Artimus Pyle (who is no longer involved with the band).

Powell was fortunate to survive the plane crash and live (and perform) for three more decades. Still, it is sad to hear of his passing at an early age. Of course, his famous keyboard intro to "Free Bird" will live on forever.

I am reminded of an eerie coincidence involving the last album released by Skynyrd in the '70's. In a classic, morbid case of bad timing, the 1977 album Street Survivors was released three days before that tragic plane crash. The above right image was the original cover art, which was deemed to be tasteless after the crash. Future pressings of the album substituted the cover art on the left. Adding to the macabre coincidences, the LP originally came with an order form for something called the Lynyrd Skynyrd Survival Kit, and both versions of the cover art showed Ronnie Van Zant wearing a shirt that referred to Neil Young's album Tonight's The Night. Newer CD editions of Street Survivors have restored the original fiery cover image.

Various Artists - Just In Time For Christmas (1990)

2008-12-13T17:50:00.000-08:00

I would like to belatedly thank the person who posted a response on this blog last year, making me aware of a Christmas song by Klark Kent (a.k.a. Stewart Copeland) which did not appear on the Kollected Works CD. The song “Yo Ho Ho” was part of a 13-track various artists CD called Just In Time For Christmas, which was released in 1990 on the now-defunct I.R.S. Records. Those who appreciate the rest of the Klark Kent repertoire will enjoy this comical Yuletide song as well. If I didn’t know better, I would think that Copeland’s jokey vocals on the song were mimicking the style of Psychedelic Furs singer Richard Butler.

There are other enjoyable items on the CD as well, by other artists who recorded for the Miles Copeland-run label. This collection generally eschews the classics and covers that fill current holiday CDs in favor of originals, although there are some familiar tunes here, including a sincere minimalist treatment of “Silent Night” and a reverent Steve Hunter guitar instrumental of “We Three Kings”. The CD also offers an electronica variation on “Hark” (as in “The Herald Angels Sing”) and a complex mashup by parodists Dread Zeppelin of Spike Jones’ “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” with Elvis’ “Viva Las Vegas” and Led Zep’s “How Many More Times”. The Jules Shear-led band called Reckless Sleepers provided an agreeably warm take on William Bell’s “Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday”.

Most of the rest of the tracks are originals. The dB’s sprightly folk-rock ditty “Home For The Holidays” is not related to the well-known classic of the same name. Deborah Holland, who worked with Stewart Copeland in a trio called Animal Logic, contributed “It Only Comes Once a Year”, an uplifting song that found its way onto in-store satellite broadcasting networks. Tracks from Squeeze and Timbuk 3 succeed moderately well at pseudo-hip humor, but Wall Of Voodoo’s bad-taste contribution is rather excessive. Also, Rebel Pebbles’ “Cool Yule” suffers from too much girl-group cuteness.

Just In Time For Christmas could definitely serve as a quirky alternative to the current crop of holiday CDs. It’s out of print, but is worth searching out for fans of pre-grunge alternative rock, especially those who feel that they must own that rare Klark Kent track.

Various Artists “Just In Time For Christmas” (I.R.S. X2 13052) 1990

Track Listing:

1. SQUEEZE – Christmas Day
2. REBEL PEBBLES – Cool Yule
3. KLARK KENT – Yo Ho Ho
4. TORCH SONG – Hark
5. RECKLESS SLEEPERS – Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday
6. STEVE HUNTER – We Three Kings
7. THE dB’s – Home For The Holidays
8. MOLLY JOHNSON & NORMAN ORENSTEIN – Silent Night
9. DEBORAH HOLLAND – It Only Comes Once A Year
10. TIMBUK 3 – All I Want For Christmas
11. KENNEDY ROSE – More Than One Night A Year
12. DREAD ZEPPELIN – All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth
13. WALL OF VOODOO – Shouldn’t Have Given Him A Gun For Christmas

Van Halen's Legendary M&M's Rider

2008-12-13T17:14:00.000-08:00

The folks at the Smoking Gun website have provided me with a hilarious '80's flashback. They have published Van Halen's infamous 1982 concert contract rider that stipulates that no brown M&M's should ever be included in their backstage servings. Here it is:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/1211081vanhalen1.html

Here is what the Smoking Gun site says about the rider:

While the underlined rider entry has often been described as an example of rock excess, the outlandish demand of multimillionaires, the group has said the M&M provision was included to make sure that promoters had actually read its lengthy rider. If brown M&M's were in the backstage candy bowl, Van Halen surmised that more important aspects of a performance--lighting, staging, security, ticketing--may have been botched by an inattentive promoter.

While the concert riders of famous musicians are now old news, it is revealing to thumb through the 53-page VH rider to see examples of the detailed demands that such artists make. Personally, I would find it hard to blame some promoters from missing certain details of these riders. Reading the lengthy VH rider becomes mind-numbing after a while.

If you want to cut to the chase, the stipulation about the brown M&M's is found on page 9 of the rider. Farther down on the same page, it stipulates that the band was entitled to "One (1) large tube KY Jelly". Well, that killed my M&M craving.

Did Coldplay rip off Joe Satriani?

2008-12-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

American rock guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani is suing Coldplay, claiming that the title track from the Britpop band's 2008 album Viva La Vida "copied and incorporated substantial original portions" of his 2004 track "If I Could Fly". Hmmm...Coldplay stealing from Satch? When I first heard this, I thought it sounded almost as unlikely as, say, Avril Lavigne ripping off the Rubinoos. It is hardly uncommon for two songs to resemble each other purely by coincidence. In fact, Coldplay were already accused of stealing that song's melody from an obscure Brooklyn band called Creaky Boards. But this clever YouTube video supports Satriani's claim quite well:

Maybe Coldplay should have asked Satch's permission to sample it. Just kidding. In any case, the plagiarism-or-coincidence argument may boil down to this question: How likely is it that Coldplay listen to Joe Satriani?

Led Zeppelin to tour without Robert Plant?

2008-10-31T19:37:00.000-07:00

The notion of Led Zeppelin without its legendary frontman Robert Plant seems unthinkable to many, but apparently not to the other surviving members of Led Zep. Billboard.com reports that Led Zep may tour with Alter Bridge singer Myles Kennedy if Plant will not come on board. Here's what the article says:

Kennedy has rehearsed with Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer Jason Bonham on several occasions, according to sources in the know. In a recent BBC interview, Jones confirmed the band was planning to tour but didn't refer to Kennedy by name.

Although he was onboard for a one-off reunion in December 2007 in London, Plant has steadfastly declined to hit the road with Zeppelin. In late September, he issued a statement saying he has "no intention whatsoever of touring with anyone for at least the next two years," and also wished Page, Jones and Bonham "nothing but success with any future projects."

Hmmm. To my ears, Kennedy sounds like a second-generation Plant imitator. The vocalist whom Kennedy most closely resembles is Chris Cornell, who has always struck me as a Plant follower.

Replacing Plant in Led Zeppelin is a risky proposition at best. Considering the countless Plant clones who have popped up over the last four decades, a Led Zeppelin lineup with a somewhat-soundalike singer could end up sounding like just another rip-off band. (Anyone remember the 1993 Coverdale/Page project?). YouTube videos of Alter Bridge covering Kashmir and Rock and Roll suggest that a Kennedy-fronted lineup could work, but I for one would not be buying a ticket.

The article also says this:

There may be one unintended side effect should Kennedy bolt Alter Bridge, which has released an album each for Wind-Up and Universal. That band features the non-singing members of Creed, who split with frontman Scott Stapp in 2004. But sources indicate there would be big bucks in a Creed reunion tour and that the band may indeed rise again.

Uh oh.

New Cheap Trick album finished, but no release planned yet

2008-10-31T18:53:00.000-07:00

This article from Billboard.com reports that Cheap Trick have completed a new studio album, but no label, title, or release date are set yet.

This is good news for me and other Trick fans, but the uncertainty about its release brings back bad memories. For example, CT's 1998 re-recording of their early album In Color was supposed to be released years ago on the indie label Big3 Records. Now, in this article, CT leader Rick Nielsen is saying again that it will be released, but he doesn't know when. (Just the fact that the still-unreleased work was recorded ten years ago says something, right?). Also, there was a long wait for their 2003 CD Special One to be released while the band searched for a distribution deal that satisfied them. I hope they don't take too long to work out a distribution deal for this CD.

In any event, considering that Cheap Trick have just released a 30-year anniversary edition of their live album At Budokan, it is nice to see that the band is still looking forward, and (based on Nielsen's description of the new album) still willing to try new things. Nielsen says that CD and DVD releases of recent concerts are also planned.

Dr Pepper is making good on their Guns N' Roses offer

2008-10-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, the people at the Dr Pepper soft drink company promised that if the new Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy was released before the end of 2008, everyone in America would get a free can of the soda. They probably felt safe making this bet, but as fate would have it, the much-delayed GNR album is scheduled for release on November 23rd of this year. So the beverage company is keeping its word. Here's how it will work: fans are asked to visit DrPepper.com on the November 23rd release date and register online to receive a coupon for a 20-oz. Dr Pepper redeemable wherever the drink is sold. Here's the catch: the coupon will only be available for 24 hours and will expire on February 28th.

By the way, if you haven't yet heard the first single, which is the album's title track, you can listen to it (legally) here:

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003876302

It sounds half-interesting, but I hope it's not the best song on the album! See what you think.

"Original rapper" Rudy Ray Moore dies

2008-10-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

Rudy Ray Moore, the raunchy '70's comedian, died this past Sunday, October 19th, from complications caused by diabetes. The Associated Press story says that Moore was 81, but some sources are saying he was born in 1937, which (if correct) would make him 71 at the time of his death. Surprisingly enough, the AP article states that his mother is still living! Moore is best remembered as the producer/star of Dolemite, a quite awful 1975 blaxploitation flick in which he played (I kid you not) a kung fu pimp.

Moore has been called "the original rapper", and he is probably as deserving of that title as anyone. The recorded history of rap music basically begins in 1979, but Moore was doing it at least four years before then, as this clip from Dolemite demonstrates. (Warning: profanity is contained therein).

One quote from the AP article is quite revealing:

Moore said he developed the (toasting) style, later a feature of rap music, by listening to men sitting outside joints "drinking beer and lying and talking (expletive)."

Okay! If nothing else, I want to thank the late Mr. Moore for finally explaining rap music to me.

Alex Chilton "1970"

2008-10-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

I've completed my 17th Spotlight Album Review. The subject is Alex Chilton's "1970", a solo album which was recorded during the title year by the former lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star, but which was unreleased until 1996. The CD is out of print, but fans of any of Chilton's work are advised to search it out. It actually serves as the missing link between several phases of Chilton's strange career. Here is the review:

http://rarebird9.net/chilton.html

New Guns N’ Roses album finally being released

2008-10-13T18:15:00.000-07:00

Chinese Democracy is coming at last. No, the Communist government of the People's Republic has not been overthrown. I'm referring to the new album from Guns N' Roses, which has been (I kid you not) ten years in the making. At least, its upcoming release is being reported. I do remember hearing once before that the album would "definitely" be released before the end of the year -- but that year was 2003. In any case, it will be released on Sunday, November 23rd, and it will be a Best Buy exclusive (I hate when they do that!), according to this article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27106927/?GT1=43001

So, do people still care at this point? People whom I've spoken to about it say that they very much don't. I guess the sales figures will tell if this is the general consensus. When this album was first talked about a decade ago, people wondered about its chances for success, because "music had changed" since the last GNR album, The Spaghetti Incident?, was released in 1993. Well, to state the obvious, music has changed more in the last ten years. Let's see if Axl Rose and his crew have any relevance to today's music scene.

By the way, in case you didn't know, Axl is the only original GNR member involved with the album. Slash, Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum are currently in Velvet Revolver. Original drummer Steven Adler is taking part in the second season of the VH1 reality series Celeb Rehab with Dr. Drew. I don't know what Izzy Stradlin has been up to since his 2002 solo album On Down The Road.

Dennis Wilson "Bambu"

2008-07-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

I recently picked up the new deluxe edition of Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue, the 1977 solo album from the late Beach Boys drummer. The remastering job done on the CD is very good. The album could be described as a '70's variation on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, but with much grittier vocals. Although I am still not a great admirer of the album (as many others seem to be), it was worthwhile to upgrade to CD from my ancient cassette copy. It is now easier to appreciate the musical arrangements, although Dennis' worn and ragged singing voice is still a flaw in my view. "River Song", "What's Wrong", "Time", and "You And I" are tracks that I am happy to program my CD player to play, sometimes repeatedly. In addition to the 12 original album tracks, the Pacific Ocean Blue disc features four bonus tracks. Two of them, "Tug Of Love" and "Only With You", are basically more of the same. The other two bonus tracks, "Holy Man" and "Mexico", are both gently affecting instrumentals -- and the latter is strangely reminiscent of King Crimson's "In The Court of the Crimson King".

The thing that interested me most about this reissue is that it features a second disc which contains the recordings that were made for Dennis' unreleased second solo album, titled Bambu. Although this album is considered unfinished, most of the sixteen tracks sound almost as fully realized as Pacific Ocean Blue. The only songs with a hint of being unfinished are the abruptly ending "Are You Real", the thin "Album Tag Song", the instrumental "Common", and perhaps "Piano Variations On Thoughts Of You", which really should have been a bonus track on the first disc. Also, there are presumably some missing recordings from the Bambu sessions. It has often been noted that a number of the songs on the Beach Boys' L.A. (Light Album) from 1979 were originally intended to become part of Bambu, but "Love Surrounds Me" is the only one that appears in any form on this disc.

Bambu is largely in the same vein as Pacific Ocean Blue, especially the tracks which Dennis again co-wrote with Gregg Jakobson. However, Dennis' voice tends to be less of a liability in this case. His gruff voice seems to blend better with the arrangements in this case, which is probably a result of modern mixing technology. The best songs on the disc (namely, the first two) were written by frequent Beach Boys sideman Carli Munoz. "Under the Moonlight" is a bright opening number, and the emotional chorus of the ballad "It's Not Too Late" is sung by Dennis' brother Carl. This moving contribution by Carl is one of the high points of the whole set.

The Bambu disc features one very noteworthy bonus track. Taylor Hawkins, who is best known as the drummer for the Foo Fighters, was commissioned to write and sing lyrics for "Holy Man", the instrumental from the first disc. Hawkins did a surprisingly good job with the song, and his vocal mimicry of Dennis is quite eerie. All in all, this second disc makes the set worthwhile even if (like me) you think Pacific Ocean Blue is overrated.

Dennis Wilson's "Pacific Ocean Blue" CD reissue coming June 17th

2008-06-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

Sony Legacy will be releasing a deluxe edition of Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue on June 17th, 2008. The long-unavailable 1977 album was the only released solo album from the late Beach Boys drummer, who died from drowning in 1983. This edition will be released in 2-CD and 3-LP formats, which will not only feature bonus tracks for the original album but will also feature the entire unreleased Bambu album, which was intended to be Dennis' second solo release.

This will be a dream come true for many Beach Boys fans, some of whom regard Pacific Ocean Blue as a long-lost masterpiece. Personally, I do not share this view of the album. Although it did prove that Dennis could withstand comparison to his brother Brian in the songwriting and production departments, Pacific Ocean Blue suffers from a tragic flaw: Dennis' vocals. The aging Beach Boy's voice had become worn and ragged, and it tended to clash with the album's well-crafted arrangements. Pacific Ocean Blue is a unique recording with undeniable emotional depth, but it's arguably an acquired taste.

Still, I do intend to purchase this new edition, not only because my ancient cassette copy is crying out for an upgrade, but also because I've always been curious to hear the previously unreleased Bambu.

Understandably, the coming re-release of Dennis' solo album is overshadowing the recent reissue of another 1977 solo album by a former Beach Boy. The thoughtful people at Wounded Bird Records released Blondie Chaplin's self-titled solo album on CD this past April. Chaplin was one of two South African musicians (along with Ricky Fataar) who were members of the Beach Boys from 1972 until 1974. Chaplin is best known for singing the lead vocal on the band's 1973 hit "Sail On Sailor". His 1977 release Blondie Chaplin is sometimes mistakenly referred to as Rock + Roll, because those words appear in the front cover photo. It's certainly not false advertising, because the album rocks and rolls from beginning to end. There isn't a dull song in the bunch; Chaplin's soulful vocals are perfectly matched with the Little Feat-style r&b grooves of the backing musicians (including Fataar, Garth Hudson, and Dave Mason). Blondie Chaplin is a most enjoyable and satisfying rock + roll album.

Rarebird's Beach Boys solo album reviews:
http://rarebird9.net/beachboys.html

Nine years!

2008-06-01T18:07:00.000-07:00

It has now been nine years since I first made my website Rarebird's Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews viewable to the public. Time is certainly flying, because it seems like only yesterday that I was surprised that eight years had passed since the beginning. I've probably made fewer additions to the site in the past 12 months than in any previous 12-month period in the last nine years. The reason is because I have basically accomplished what I wanted to accomplish with the site. However, I will continue to make updates and additions as I see fit, and I will point them out on this blog when I do. In the meantime, I want to once again thank everyone who has visited and supported the site over the years. I hope to keep the site online for many more.

Reissues of Alice Cooper's first two albums

2008-05-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

The folks at Rhino Records are reissuing the first two Alice Cooper albums on CD on June 10th. The albums Pretties For You (1969) and Easy Action (1970) were quirky low-budget recordings that were originally released on Frank Zappa’s Straight label. Both had previously been available on CD from the Enigma label, which has been defunct for over a decade.

Alice Cooper was the band name in the beginning; lead singer Vincent Furnier later took the name for himself when he went “solo” in 1975. Although the original band did not yet become masters of shock rock when the first two albums were released, they had already achieved a different type of notoriety. Zappa signed them to his label for the opposite reason that most artists get signed: they had a rep for clearing out the venues in which they played, and Zappa admired them for it.

On the debut album Pretties For You, Alice and company gleefully explored bizarre musical ground that he/they never revisited. Whenever I have played the album for friends, they have said, “This is Alice Cooper?”. The debut is an intriguingly strange freeform hodgepodge of British Invasion-style pop rock, progressive rock, psychedelia, and Zappa-like weirdness. The 13 tracks alternately sound like rougher-edged mutations of the Beatles, Byrds, Who, King Crimson and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. It’s pretty cool stuff.

Easy Action is also a cool album. It’s a bit more cohesive and conventional than Pretties For You, and a bit less interesting. Although it retains some of the weirdness of its predecessor (mainly in the Zappa-like oddity of "Still No Air" and the prog-rock noodling of "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye"), this album shows the band moving toward its better-known style of basic rock, which is probably the reason that many people prefer it to Pretties. The most surprising track is “Beautiful Flyaway”, a nicely Beatlesque ballad sung by guitarist Michael Bruce. It showed evidence of technical progress and, sure enough, the Alice Cooper band hit the big time the following year with their third release, Love It To Death.

Rarebird's Alice Cooper Reviews
http://rarebird9.net/alicecooper.html

Rainy Day (1984)

2008-04-16T17:36:00.000-07:00

Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #16 has now been added to the site. The subject is a 1984 covers album titled Rainy Day, which was put together by David Roback (formerly of Rain Parade, Opal, and Mazzy Star). The album was recorded by a loose collective of musicians from the early-'80's California music scene known as the "Paisley Underground", including two members of the then-little-known Bangles. The review is here:

http://rarebird9.net/rainyday.html

I've learned that this album was the inspiration for the 2006 album Under the Covers, Vol. 1, a similar-minded covers CD recorded by Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs. I came across this interview with Sweet and Hoffs from '06, which is mainly about Under the Covers, but there is also some discussion about Rainy Day in the second half of the interview.

10,000 hits on the home page!

2008-02-25T10:41:00.000-08:00

Today, the web counter on the Rarebird's Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews home page finally surpassed 10,000 hits. The site has been online since 1999, but it bears mentioning that more than 8,000 of these visits were logged since mid-2004. For the first five years of my site's existence, it only had a counter on the links page. (You don't want to know why). And, after five years, that counter had only registered about 1800 hits. As I recall, I was actually beginning to think that no one was visiting the site anymore, simply because no one was visiting the links page. Finally, I installed a working hit counter on the home page around June of 2004, and learned that my site is visited nearly every day. In the nearly four years since, the home page has been visited more than 8,000 times, while the links page has only been visited about 400 times. I'll never know how many visits the home page got during the first five years, but there's no point in crying over spilt milk. It's nice to see the counter finally break 10,000.

You may have noticed that I haven't done much updating in the past six months, since I haven't posted to the blog in that time. My life has been a busy one lately, but I did find time to add a few reviews to the site in recent months:

Steve Winwood's Talking Back To The Night (1982):
http://rarebird9.net/winwood.html

John Hiatt's The Tiki Bar Is Open (2001):
http://rarebird9.net/hiatt.html

Robby Krieger's Cinematix (2000):
http://rarebird9.net/doors.html

The 2003 release Le Bataclan '72, which documents a live 1972 reunion concert by three members of the Velvet Underground:
http://rarebird9.net/vus.html

And two Flying Burrito Brothers-related albums: Sons Of The Golden West from 1999, the last official FBB studio album; and Children Of The Fifties, a 2001 CD from a Gib Guilbeau side project called Brothers.
http://rarebird9.net/burrito.html

Led Zeppelin set to reunite for one-off concert

2007-08-31T18:30:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph reports that Led Zeppelin are planning to reunite later this year, with original members Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones joined by Jason Bonham (who will replace his late father John Bonham on drums). But don't sell off your Van Halen tickets just yet. Led Zep are only planning a one-off concert at the O2 arena in London, apparently as a tribute to the late Ahmet Ertegun, who signed the legendary band to Atlantic Records. Here is the article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/31/nzeppelin131.xml

Who knows how the quartet will sound? (I'm sure we'll find out; those of us who can't make the show will surely be able to view it on the internet, or on television, or on DVD). Even if they perform badly, as they did when they reunited for the 1985 Philadelphia Live Aid concert with Phil Collins on drums, it will be a night to remember for those who are present at the event. I say this as someone who attended the Live Aid concert.

INXS notes: JD solo album, Hutchence biopic in the works

2007-08-31T17:39:00.000-07:00

For those still keeping tabs on the post-Rock Star INXS story, the Australian band is still touring with Canadian singer J.D. Fortune, who became their frontman after winning a competition on a CBS reality show in 2005. But Fortune has also been working on a solo album called Death of a Motivational Speaker. It is a concept album that Fortune apparently intended for INXS, but will instead become J.D.'s solo debut. It is slated for a December release. Also, INXS plan to complete and release a new album sometime next year. Both of these albums should be interesting to hear. We'll get to see what Fortune comes up with when he is not constrained by INXS, and we'll get to hear an INXS album which is fully developed with J.D.'s participation. (Fortune made his debut with INXS on their 2005 album Switch, but many of his contributions were added after he won the contest).

Meanwhile, the late original INXS frontman Michael Hutchence is about to become the subject of a film bio. Slide Away is going to be directed by music video director Nick Egan, who plans to use a macabre plot device to tell Hutchence's life story. In the film, Hutchence's ghost will visit his 11-year-old daughter and take the child on a tour of his sex-and-drug-filled life, even taking her to the hotel room where he was found dead from hanging in 1997. Egan defends this method of storytelling by saying:

I have always made it very clear I wanted to avoid the traditional biopic, it's been done ad nauseam and I'm trying to raise the bar.

Understandable. But there's something disturbing about the idea just the same.

Here's a related article:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22271708-5012974,00.html

Klark Kent (aka Stewart Copeland)

2007-08-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

A compilation of solo tracks by Police drummer Stewart Copeland was released today. The Stewart Copeland Anthology contains 21 tracks from Copeland's solo works, most of which are instrumental. However, the first track is not an instrumental. "Too Kool To Kalypso" was a song recorded by Copeland in 1978 under the pseudonym of Klark Kent. Up until 1980, Copeland recorded over a dozen tracks under that name before his true identity was revealed. Eight of those songs were released on a 10-inch green vinyl EP called Klark Kent: Music Madness From The Kinetic Kid, which remains a cool collectible item for both its appearance and its sound. A few other songs were released as singles and B-sides (sometimes pressed in green vinyl as well). In 1995, a collection of the complete Klark Kent recordings was released on I.R.S. Records, which was founded by Copeland's brother Miles. Kollected Works is now out of print, as are the original Klark Kent releases, and it has become the subject of Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #15. Click here for the review.

Bands of the living dead

2007-08-05T18:53:00.000-07:00

I was rather amused to read this MSN article, which talks about bands "long thought to have disbanded" who "soldier on...long after even loyal fans believed them to no longer be in existence."

There certainly are countless bands like this still out there; my brother recently went to see shows by some kind of Thin Lizzy lineup and by some kind of Kansas lineup. The MSN article doesn't go that far in depth on the subject; among the bands they use as examples are Cheap Trick, Def Leppard, and the Who(!). But, anyway, I did think the article was worth reading, and the first two paragraphs sum up the trend well:

http://entertainment.msn.com/music/features/bandsofthelivingdead

Imagine if you found out that new episodes of "Laverne & Shirley" were still being made. Perhaps not with the entire original cast and certainly with the remaining cast members looking kind of old and out of breath. But still, the show was technically on the air somehow, somewhere, being watched by someone. Or imagine if you learned that Ernest Hemingway was still pumping out the occasional novel, it's just that barely anyone was reading them. You'd probably think to yourself, "That's odd, I could have sworn that show was canceled and that author died a really long time ago."

Sounds like a weird dream. It's also rock 'n' roll reality, as bands long thought to be disbanded soldier on, releasing albums and riding the tour jet (and later, tour bus) long after even loyal fans believed them to no longer be in existence.

Tower Records lives -- online

2007-08-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard this, here is a portion of the e-mail I received from the Tower.com CEO in June:

Dear Tower.com Customer,

We are very pleased to report to you that the legacy of Tower Records will live on through Tower.com. We are currently in the final stages of the sale of Tower.com to Tower.com Inc., which is committed to upholding and maintaining the integrity of Tower Records, and positioning Tower.com as your preferred online shopping experience.

Thank you again for your business and your loyalty to Tower Records and Tower.com.

Joseph L. D'Amico
CEO
Tower.com

Didier Pilon
CEO
Tower.com Inc.

Starbucks music label debuts with new Paul McCartney CD

2007-06-04T19:21:00.000-07:00

If anyone doubted that the Starbucks coffee company was serious about getting further into the CD distribution business, you've got another think coming. The company's new Hear Music label releases its first CD this week, and its first signed artist is none other than Paul McCartney. McCartney's new CD Memory Almost Full is the label's first release, and the CD will be constantly played in the thousands of Starbucks stores worldwide on Tuesday, June 5th. Here is the story:

http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=264337>1=7702

The ex-Beatle has only signed a deal for one album with the label, but he may sign for more if things go well. And the label plans to sign two more artists this year and eight next year. According to the article, Memory Almost Full "will be sold at most Starbucks stores worldwide, in all major music retailers, and on Apple Inc.'s iTunes online music store, making it the first of McCartney's 21 solo albums to be released digitally."

This could be a major new development in the ever-changing world of music retail.

Stewart Copeland blasts Police reunion concert

2007-06-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

I was expecting to hear some negative words about the Police reunion tour from the media, but not from one of the band members. But drummer Srewart Copeland is the first person I've heard lambast the reunited trio's live show. Apparently, Copeland only had bad things to say about last Wednesday's corcert in Vancouver when he wrote about it on his website the next day. Here is the AP account:

http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=264124

Personally, I think Copeland should keep these comments to himself. Having performed onstage myself in small bars, I can tell you that the members of the band will notice small mistakes more than the audience will. Of course, the band should work hard to avoid the mistakes, and I do respect the Police's attempts at perfectionism. But the flubs that Copeland points out were possibly not noticeable to the audience, so why illuminate them? Just give us your all, boys, and let the people decide if the performances are good or bad.

If you look at the user comments at the above web page, one person who claims to have attended that show gave the band and the concert very high marks.

Eight years!

2007-06-01T09:42:00.000-07:00

The passage of time never ceases to amaze me. It has now been eight years since the day I made my website Rarebird's Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews viewable to the public, on May 31, 1999. It doesn't seem like such a long time ago, even though the world is certainly a different place now than it was in 1999. When I first created this site, the world was worried about a Y2K crisis that didn't happen. 9-11 was just a phone number that people called in case of emergencies. And me? I was deliriously in love with a girl who is now married to someone else; she and her husband now have a four-year-old son. So, any way I look at things, the world has definitely changed since I first created my site.

But the site still stands. The day I first unveiled it, it contained six album reviews by four different artists. Now, it contains reviews of over 275 recordings by more than 40 artists. I've basically accomplished what I wanted to accomplish with the site. In fact, the day I began working on it, I had no idea how big it would get. About three years ago, I went through the entire site to complete a format update, and was actually amazed to find how many reviews I had written.

There is a popular saying in the web design business which states that a website is never finished -- it is only abandoned. Rest assured, Rarebird's Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews is not an abandoned website. Updates will be made to the site when I feel they are appropriate. And, of course, more Spotlight Album Reviews will be coming in the future. When updates are made, I will point them out on this blog.

I want to thank everyone who has visited the site, and who has supported it in any way during the last eight years. I am very proud of this site, and I hope it will still be standing for years to come.

RTZ - "Return To Zero" (1991)

2007-04-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

After I heard the news in early March about Brad Delp's suicide, I was reminded of a side project that the Boston lead singer took part in at the beginning of the '90's. RTZ (short for Return To Zero) was a five-man band featuring Delp and original Boston guitarist Barry Goudreau. Their 1991 album Return To Zero is currently out of print. I've written a review on my site:

http://rarebird9.net/rtz.html

This was not the only time that Delp and Goudreau collaborated outside of Boston. Delp also took part in Goudreau's self-titled 1980 solo album, and the two of them also formed a band called Orion The Hunter, who issued a self-titled album in 1984. Both of those albums have been reissued on CD by the Razor And Tie label. Perhaps Razor And Tie (or another label) might consider a Return To Zero reissue as well.