Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

This may not be news to some of you, since it began in September of 2002, but this has been below my Rarebird radar until recently. The '60's band Ten Years After reunited in 2002, but without their famed singer/guitarist Alvin Lee. Lee has been replaced by a musician named Joe Gooch, who is in his late 20's. The other three original members (Leo Lyons, Chick Churchill, and Ric Lee) are on board. I know, I shouldn't really be surprised. After all, my site discusses many cases where well-known members of well-known groups have been replaced. But TYA without Alvin Lee? Some people (though not I) think that Alvin Lee was Ten Years After. When people think of TYA's 11-minute performance of "I'm Going Home" in the Woodstock movie, it is generally Lee that they see and hear. After TYA officially split in 1975, there were occasional reunions over the years. Up until 1999, every TYA reunion featured all four original members. Seeing this band replace its fro...

Today, Elektra/Rhino Records released "Deluxe Edition" reissues of the second through fourth Cure albums. Those are Seventeen Seconds (1980), Faith (1981), and Pornography (1982). Each one is a 2-CD set containing a remastered version of the original album plus a bonus disc containing bonus tracks selected by Robert Smith (mostly consisting of live, demo, and alternate versions of songs from the album). It makes sense that the three of them were released in one day; those albums are considered an unofficial trilogy of downbeat works, each one darker than the previous one. Elektra/Rhino recently gave the same treatment to the first Cure album, Three Imaginary Boys , from 1979. That album was technically unavailable in the U.S. until then; the American version was titled Boys Don't Cry, and contained a few different songs. I wonder if Smith and the record companies plan to continue reissuing the Cure's albums in this format. Their next two full-length albums were Japa...

An obscure album remotely related to the Doors' history is Panic Station , the only album recorded by a short-lived progressive rock band called the Acid Casualties in 1982. Doors guitarist Robby Krieger played on four of the album's eight tracks. The main quartet consisted of singer/bassist Mark Avnet (who worked on Krieger's 1983 solo album Versions ), synthesizer player Arthur Barrow (who also played on Versions and on all of Krieger's later solo studio albums), guitarist Lou Maxfield (who had previously played with Joan Jett's Blackhearts), and drummer Tom Brown. They were not exactly the type of psychedelic band that their name suggested; such a band would have been anachronistic in 1982. They were more of a Pink Floyd-type space-rock band, but they didn't have the Floyd's ability to create effective moods or otherworldly soundscapes. They actually covered the obscure early Floyd single "Point Me At The Sky", as well as the early T. Rex song ...

Finally! After about seven months of dragging my feet, I've finally added another spotlight album review. Here it is: http://rarebird9.net/distractions.html This group and album went by unnoticed in 1980, but the Distractions' Nobody's Perfect is one of rock's great lost treasures. It's not likely to ever be reissued, but there's always hope. It's an album worth discovering.

I've been informed that another album reviewed on my site has been reissued under the Extended Versions title, as part of BMG's Encore Collection. The Deep Purple Extended Versions CD is a truncated single-CD version of the double-disc import On The Wings Of A Russian Foxbat . (To confuse matters further, another version of the same live album was once available in the U.S. as King Biscuit Flower Hour: Deep Purple In Concert ). This album consists of concert performances by the 1975 lineup of Deep Purple: David Coverdale, Tommy Bolin, Glenn Hughes, Ian Paice, and Jon Lord. In any form and by any name, this album is only recommended for fans of the 1975 Purple album Come Taste The Band , and even that camp seems divided between those who love the live album and those who hate it.

BMG Music has recently reissued many live albums from artists too numerous to mention, each under the title Extended Versions. This series of reissues is called the Encore Collection, and the CDs are budget priced at $6.98 to $7.99. At least one of the albums reviewed on my site, Lou Reed's 1975 release Lou Reed Live , has been reissued as part of this series. Another CD that has fallen under this blanket is the 1993 reunion album by Big Star. This was originally titled Columbia: Live At Missouri University 4/25/93 . I had mistakenly thought that this album was out of print altogether, and it nearly became the subject of Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #8. For those who are unfamiliar with Big Star, they were an early-'70's power-pop band led by Alex Chilton, who had formerly been the teenage lead singer of the Box Tops. The band received plenty of critical praise in its day, but they were a commercial failure. Part of the reason for this was that their distribut...

There is an online petition for the release of the Buckingham Nicks album on CD. This is the album recorded in 1973 by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks before they joined Fleetwood Mac. The petition has been up for some time, but it looks as though it's not too late to sign: (link outdated) I hope that the petition will be forwarded to Mr. Buckingham when the time comes. Judging from what Nicks has said in interviews, Buckingham is the one who does not approve of a reissue of the album. As far as I know, he hasn't said why. 9/19/2025 Update : At long last! In September 2025, 20 years after this post was written, the Buckingham Nicks album was officially reissued by Rhino, in CD and digital formats. Also, a limited edition vinyl issue was sold through the Rhino website, limited to 5,000 copies. Rarebird's Buckingham Nicks Review: http://rarebird9.net/bucknicks.html

The Hoodoo Gurus were a garage-rocking Australian band who gained a cult following in the '80's but never achieved widespread mainstream success, at least not in America. Of the seven studio albums the band released between 1984 and 1996, only the two albums released on Elektra -- Mars Needs Guitars (1985) and Blow Your Cool (1987) -- are currently available in the U.S. Both of them (especially the former) are worthwhile. Also, their 1989 album Magnum Cum Louder is worth searching out. Their combination of humor and hooks was almost always entertaining. The Gurus were declared defunct in 1998, but three-fourths of them (singer/guitarist Dave Faulkner, guitarist Brad Shepherd, and drummer Mark Kingsmill) reunited in 2002, and with bassist James Kendall formed the Persian Rugs. This band first released a five-song EP in Australia called Mr. Tripper in 2002. It sounds as though the Gurus had been listening to Rhino's Nuggets box set, because this EP consisted of '60...