All star tribute albums come and go, but one that's laced with rock 'n' roll heavyweights in homage of the great Pink Floyd is a horse of another color. Covering that one soon...
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Friday, October 31, 2014
Who is the next up-and-coming Country star?
There are a lot of talented singer/songwriters in Nashville. Of them all, who is the next up-and-coming star in country music?
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Why 'Speak of the Devil' is the most Important Black Sabbath Album
"Speak of the Devil" is a solo live album by Ozzy Osbourne, but it proves to be the most important Black Sabbath album of all time. Find out here why soon.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Best Album of Which you have Never Heard
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| Many rock albums have come and gone since the 1960s but only one is the best of which you have never heard. Photo credit: Will Folsom / Foter / CC BY |
When Bill Haley
and His Comets were rocking around the clock in the 1950s, nobody knew if the
new music form was just a passing fad or a revolution of youth culture that
would upend the popular tastes that had endured since the 1920s. Somewhere
along the way, rock ’n’ roll got taken seriously. Singles were no longer the
only game in town. Long-playing (LP) records that could accommodate more than 20
minutes of music per side allowed artists to take what had been just loose
collections of songs and think of them as more of a continuing story arc. Fast-forward
to the post-Sgt-Pepper’s 1960s: magazines like Rolling Stone have come
along, rating rock albums on their artistic merits and not just their
booty-shaking quotients. These ratings were often left open to the very
subjective interpretation of the individual reviewer but at least there was some
effort to legitimize the work of the rock community.
However, for all their good works, rock reviewers have let many
albums slip through the crevices down the decades. Some would cite The Zombies’
Odessey
and Oracle, which contained the group’s posthumous hit “Time of the Season,” as
the missing link of the British Invasion in 1968. Others might say that something
harder edged such as Golden Earring’s 1973 album Moontan
with FM favorite “Radar
Love” deserves mention. And many hipster poseurs will pay homage to X with Exene
Cervenka, John Doe, DJ Bonebrake and Billy Zoom but very few of them could be
pressed to produce the title of any of their perfect post-punk-pop productions
from the early 80s, with the possible probability of the critics’ pet Los
Angeles.
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| Primal Dream from singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard Barone in 1990 is the best album of which not many people have ever heard. Photo credit:Derek Handova |
We are worthy!
All these LPs would be worthy candidates for best album of which you have never heard. However, it would take a great epochal event of the early 1990s pop culture to seal the fate of that best album: Primal Dream from singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard Barone. Though not associated in any strong way with the musical excesses of the 1980s, Barone and Primal Dream were nonetheless collateral damage of the Grunge blowback affecting everything that preceded it. After Nirvana’s Nevermind, nothing would ever be the same again.
All these LPs would be worthy candidates for best album of which you have never heard. However, it would take a great epochal event of the early 1990s pop culture to seal the fate of that best album: Primal Dream from singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard Barone. Though not associated in any strong way with the musical excesses of the 1980s, Barone and Primal Dream were nonetheless collateral damage of the Grunge blowback affecting everything that preceded it. After Nirvana’s Nevermind, nothing would ever be the same again.
Primal Dream has
everything a fantastic rock album needs: Top-notch songwriting, great guitar
riffs, heartfelt vocals, sophisticated arrangements, intricate rhythms and not
least of all attitude. “It was a coming of age album,” Richard Barone said in a
recent interview regarding Primal Dream.
“An album of discovery and rediscovery. It was an album about being a young
dude at that moment in time (1989-1990) and what he was feeling. The world was
basically his. He wanted answers to big questions, he wanted romance, he wanted
freedom. And he was willing to break out of his comfort zone to get what he
wanted.”
Barone, a former leading light of the now largely forgotten music
scene in Hoboken, N.J., in the early 1980s, has always been well connected in
the music business. And he has always shown his chops for bringing in the heavy
hitters, for example enlisting the help of Fred Schneider from The B-52's for
backing vocals on the “Mr. Used-to-be” track on Primal Dream. “I always enjoy working with Fred,” Barone says. “The
Bongos (Barone’s 80s band) were special guests on the entire first B-52’s tour.
“And we've collaborated many, many times since. I especially like Fred's
version of Nilsson’s ‘Coconut’ that I produced for him in the 90s on the
Nilsson tribute album.”
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With upheld guitar in hand, Richard Barone signaled his
intention to rock on 1990's Primal Dream from the get-go. Photo credit: Derek Handova |
Let’s rock!
As fun and funky as “Mr. Used-to-be” is, Primal Dream is by far more about rocking out. “Primal Dream is most definitely a rock album, especially after the acoustic tones of its predecessor, cool blue halo,” Barone says. “The rhythm section on Primal was a total rock band—Jay Dee Daugherty (of Patti Smith Group), Ivan Julian, Thaddeus Castanis—augmented by the cool blue halo ensemble plus marimba and Mellotron (keyboards). It was a rather big band playing mostly live in the studio to create that sound. It rocked, but the melodies, harmonies and choruses were defiantly pop.”
As fun and funky as “Mr. Used-to-be” is, Primal Dream is by far more about rocking out. “Primal Dream is most definitely a rock album, especially after the acoustic tones of its predecessor, cool blue halo,” Barone says. “The rhythm section on Primal was a total rock band—Jay Dee Daugherty (of Patti Smith Group), Ivan Julian, Thaddeus Castanis—augmented by the cool blue halo ensemble plus marimba and Mellotron (keyboards). It was a rather big band playing mostly live in the studio to create that sound. It rocked, but the melodies, harmonies and choruses were defiantly pop.”
Bodies of water
An overriding theme on Primal Dream is the idea water; specifically rivers. As I’ve written previously in review of Rainbow Warriors, water is a very powerful metaphor. In the context of Primal Dream, Barone intended to draw forth the idea of constant change. As quoted in Heraclitus, an early pre-Socratic philosopher, “No man ever steps into the same river twice.” And so Barone similarly viewed the presence of water in his songs “River to River” and “Native Tongue” on Primal. “The river themes were intentional. I had been spending time in Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon River in Manaus,” Barone says. “The idea that the ‘black’ Rio Negro and the light-brown Rio Solimoes merge to form the mighty Amazon was nature at its most poetic to me.
An overriding theme on Primal Dream is the idea water; specifically rivers. As I’ve written previously in review of Rainbow Warriors, water is a very powerful metaphor. In the context of Primal Dream, Barone intended to draw forth the idea of constant change. As quoted in Heraclitus, an early pre-Socratic philosopher, “No man ever steps into the same river twice.” And so Barone similarly viewed the presence of water in his songs “River to River” and “Native Tongue” on Primal. “The river themes were intentional. I had been spending time in Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon River in Manaus,” Barone says. “The idea that the ‘black’ Rio Negro and the light-brown Rio Solimoes merge to form the mighty Amazon was nature at its most poetic to me.
“Coming back to New York, surrounded by the East River and the
Hudson, I was again inspired. The symbolism and metaphorical potential of
rivers and water is obviously inexhaustible! Constantly moving forces of
nature. They barely stay the same for a moment. At the time I was writing this
album, the notion of constant change was on my mind. Maybe I was just learning
to go with the flow.”
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Richard Barone usually prefers an acoustic guitar, but on
1990's Primal Dream he revealed an underrated talent with
electric axes. Photo credit: wfuv / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA
|
Overall, on Primal
Dream, the songs have an ebullient, optimistic tone, almost celebratory
vibe. And of course, Primal Dream is
a great album title. “The two things at play on this album title were the idea
of ‘prime,’ about being in the ‘prime’ of life, and, secondly, a concept I had
read and heard about via Joseph
Campbell, which is a theory that the human race has always had the same
dreams: The situations and specifics, of course, change as we enter different,
modern eras,” Barone says. “But even the earliest humans had dreams of the
chase, the hunt, anxieties, aspirations, etc. The same kinds of dreams we have
now. I felt the songs I was writing at the time were ‘primal’ in that sense.
The symbols are eternal, even if the lives and music are ephemeral.”
The best attribute of Primal
Dream is Barone’s approach. In contrast to a lot of 80s and 90s music
trends, Barone charted his own course, neither overly bombastic nor exceedingly
moody, eschewing musical categories all along the way. Of his approach, Barone
says, “It’s simple. I’m guided by what I like, and by whom I want to work with,
and never by market trends or doing ‘what I’m supposed to do.’ ” As it should
be.
If you are up for a treat, I recommend Primal Dream in the original CD format. Fortunately, you never have to worry about it being out of stock.
Amazon has it available for ordering
on-demand with its AutoRip recording technology. Very cool! Even cool blue halo cool!
-Derek Handova
Appreciative Listener
Appreciative Listener
Thursday, July 31, 2014
What's the Most Underrated Album in Rock 'n' Roll History?
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What's the most underrated album of the rock era? Photo credit:
|
No doubt, you are familiar with Rolling Stone’s series of Greatest Albums of the 70s, 80s, 90s, all
time, etc. However, have you ever stopped to think about what are the most
underrated rock ’n’ roll albums of all time? What would be on your list? Would
you pick Pink Floyd’s Meddle, the album
immediately preceding its commercial and artistic breakthrough on The Dark Side of
the Moon? Or would it be something signifying the closing of an era
such as Led Zeppelin’s In Through the
Outdoor, which turned out to be its studio swan song after the untimely
demise of drummer John Bonham?
While those may both be worthy finalists for the most
underrated rock ’n’ roll album of all time, they would both be a bit too
obvious. To get to the kernel of the idea, you have to think a bit more broadly
about rock ’n’ roll. Think about geniuses bringing together influences from Tin Pan Alley,
the greats of jazz and even the Beat poets.
The most underrated rock album would be from a ridiculously successful band
that shot out of the gate on their debut, striking gold—literally and figuratively.
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| Steely Dan's Countdown to Ecstasy is the most underrated rock album of all time. Photo credit: Derek Handova |
The outfit of which I write is one Steely Dan, which debuted
in 1972 with their best selling LP Can’t Buy a Thrill
that was propelled by future FM radio staple “Reelin’ in the Years.” Of course,
Can’t Buy a Thrill cannot be the most
underrated album in rock ’n’ roll history given the foregoing. However, its
followup disc, Countdown to Ecstasy,
would be the song platter that is most underappreciated in the rock era.
As in many sophomore scenarios, Countdown to Ecstasy had the heavy burden of great expectations to
fulfill coming on the heels of Steely’s first effort. Add to that the fact that
Steely Dan constantly toured during its recording, which led to the
retrospective belief by band founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen that their
studio sessions were rushed and the material suffered in the process. While
that sentiment is absurd it is true the compositions on Countdown to Ecstasy tended to be longer than average, with many of
them clocking in at more than five minutes apiece, making time-sensitive radio programmers
unfriendly toward them. Regardless of the length of these recordings, Becker
and Fagen are merely suffering the 20-20 hindsight of pop perfectionists never
satisfied and not familiar with Voltaire’s phrase “do
not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
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| Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were the brain trust behind Steely Dan. Photo credit: Marco Raaphorst / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) |
By way of comparison, Countdown
to Ecstasy also endured the Middle Child Syndrome coming out as it did
between Can’t Buy a Thrill and Steely’s
next album Pretzel Logic, which
charted at No. 8 in 1974 backed by No. 4 hit “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number.” Countdown to Ecstasy, despite having densely
cryptic lyrics and intricate jazz chord progressions, and its musical
masterpieces were outside of the rigid three-minute pop music ideal of the time.
But by bringing the touring band into the studio, Steely Dan caught all the energy
and tight precision of a group doing one-night stands across the country. All
the vibe of the live group is appropriately captured on Countdown to Ecstasy.
With that in mind, it’s no wonder that songs like “Bodhisattva,”
“Boston Rag,” “Your Gold Teeth” and “King of the World” off this 1973 album would
assume a large portion of Steely Dan’s live set over the next couple of years
before the brain trust behind Steely—Becker and Fagen—grew weary of the road
and broke up the original lineup in favor of working with professional sidemen
in the studio before they went on a nearly 15 year hiatus in 1981. The catalog
of music on Countdown was so
important to Steely as a live act that it has been described as having been the
Steely Dan album most recorded for performance. For example, “Bodhisattva” was
the only official live track available of Steely—and then only as a B-side—until
Becker and Fagen produced the full-length live album Alive in America in 1995.
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Steely Dan was not above targeting
themselves for derision, singing
about the "Show Biz Kids" with
the Steely Dan T-shirts who don't
give a f*** about anybody else.
|
These same kids from 1973 with the Steely Dan T-shirts are
now the Baby Boomers who routinely pay close to a hundred dollars—if not hundreds
of dollars—for face-value tickets to see the Becker-Fagen duo in concert in
intimate venues across the country. Even though they had not toured for nearly
two decades, Steely Dan returned to the arena circuit without missing a beat,
their devoted fan base only having been stoked by the scarcity of a supply of
Steely. In the ensuing years, these people—shall we call them Steelheads?—only
grew in force and enthusiasm while their heroes worked on side projects and rested
and rejuvenated themselves.
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The kids from 1973 now regularly pay
|
Fully recharged, Becker and Fagen now find the road most
inviting as a method to stave off creeping decrepitude, as a paraphrase of
their contemporary attitude toward touring. If you have never had the pleasure
of listening to Steely Dan—in particular Countdown
to Ecstasy—you should do yourself a favor and catch them
on tour or get
the album.
-Derek Handova
Appreciative Listener
Appreciative Listener
Friday, June 6, 2014
Why do we listen to Music? One group gives us the Answers
Why do we listen to music? To express regret? To get our
nerve up? To relive a memory? Crimson Glory delves into feelings of recrimination,
love lost, determination, horror and more on their little known masterwork Transcendence from 1988 (MCA
Records/Roadracer Records). Caught up under the label of “hair band,” it was
partially their faults—they looked the part—this group compares favorably to a better known 1980s progressive metal band, Queensrÿche, who thought enough of the
group as to recruit
one of their later lead singers when their own vocalist Geoff Tate had a
falling out with the rest of the band.
Splitting into several camps during the 1980s, heavy metal
evolved the genre with the emergence of speed metal and had forward motion in progressive rock, as well. Crimson Glory took on the mantle that some had thought
handed off by Rush at the start of the decade with their more radio and MTV
friendly compositions. More than up to the task, Crimson Glory put up amazing
effort in Transcendence having an alternate-reality,
forward-looking perspective of material with a science fiction/fantasy theme in
large part.
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| Original Crimson Glory lead singer Midnight looked the part of heavy metal singer on 1988's Transcendence, but sang with much depth and emotion. |
Crimson Glory showed a lot of prescience in anticipating the
explosion of fantasy themes in the media with their song “Where Dragons Rule,” which
brings to mind a martial marching number with its rat-tat-tat-tat backbeat
courtesy of drummer Dana Burnell. Before there were Lord of the Rings and Reign of Fire movies and
other stories of reptilians of lore, Crimson Glory was singing of creatures
rising from the lake of fire on wings of steel. And the chorus of all the
members of the band answering to lead singer Midnight’s call, “In a world
between myth and strange reality | In a world where dragons rule,” they answer,
“Mission: Kill”. And in similar fashion,
Midnight asks, “We die for the dragon—is there a reason?” This song really
stirs the soul, striking a chord of defiance. When that Millennial blaring the
latest 50
Cent Hip Hop iTune download comes barreling up alongside you in his daddy’s
BMW, give him a blast of Old School Heavy Metal from Crimson Glory to snap him
back to the real world.
The band also takes a very literary tack on “Masque of the
Red Death,” which encapsulates the entire plot and character development of the
Edgar Allan Poe short story
of the same name into a mere four minutes and 15 seconds. We join the king and
his guests at the masquerade ball while the pestilence ravages the land outside
his high castle walls. But Crimson Glory relates how the personification of
disease and death makes his way into the dance and takes all with him.
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| De rigueur mysterious symbols accompanied Crimson Glory's liner notes on the 1988 release Transcendence. |
I am sure there must have been other groups that have
interpreted other pieces of literature into song, but I would have to believe
that Crimson Glory is one of the few groups in heavy metal who has done so. Vocalist
Midnight sings of “feeling” the disease flowing through his veins. And you can
nearly experience the terror of falling into the bleeding arms of the stranger.
Midnight (John Patrick Jr. McDonald 1962-2009)
performed exceptionally on Transcendence but
perhaps with the most dramatic presentation and dynamic vocal range on “Masque
of the Red Death,” hitting and sustaining high notes that would make operatic-style
singing archetypes Bruce Dickinson or Rob Halford proud.
On “Burning Bridges,” Crimson Glory really channels the
emotional side. As a gut-wrenching ode to love lost and isolation, Midnight
croons about never wanting to cause pain, never wanting to cause sorrow. Seriously,
these lyrics made me misty, nearly bringing a tear to my eye. The metaphor of
burning bridges makes a powerful statement of irrevocable loss and irredeemable
regret:
Now I feel the bridges burning
Flames reflecting in my eyes
The feelings much too cold to share
Smoke clouds dream I’ve left behind
This song can really get under your skin after repeated listening—but
in a good way. You may find your mind wandering to those who you might have
wronged in the past. Could small slights lead to failed relationships? They say don’t sweat the small stuff—and it’s all small
stuff. This song gives me pause to think that the reverse is truer.
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| Circa 2011, Crimson Glory now rock on without their late and previously separated singer Midnight. |
Another outstanding track, “In Dark Places,” uses a
sea-as-woman metaphor as an unnamed ingénue entices Midnight forward to a
solitary and shadowy world beneath the waves. Clocking in at a little over
seven minutes, it’s by far the longest cut on Transcendence and most haunting one, as well. It is really a
cryptic hymn about someone considering ending it all by drowning, saying
goodbye to the sunlit world for the permanent freedom of the great beyond—in
dark places we will be free.
Transcendence seems
to have been out of print for some time, but Amazon.com does list an import
edition available
on an orderable basis, though as of this writing it was temporarily out of
stock. There are also numerous new
and used
CDs from individual sellers and MP3
download files for the entire album. If you are interested in
mind-expanding music you missed the first or second time around Crimson Glory’s Transcendence is worth a look.
-Derek Handova
Appreciative Listener
Appreciative Listener
Saturday, May 17, 2014
4 Facts you do not know About David Bowie’s Young Americans
By the time David Bowie recorded and released his album Young Americans in 1975, he had
undergone at least three previous transformations from the Space Oddity to Heavy
Metalhead to Proto Punker to Ziggy Stardust. Now cooling his jets from leading
the glam rock revolution, the tall Brit settled down in Philadelphia to cut the
album that would define his next great transformation as The Thin White Duke. Someone
at the time described Bowie as the whitest man he had ever met—translucent
white. An odd sobriquet given that he was going to put down the grooviest work of
his even-then legendary oeuvre. Working with future R&B Grammy winner
Luther Vandross, Bowie successfully made his transition to the hip, laidback
grooves en vogue in the mid 1970s where funkified rock-pop planted its flag in
the Disco Era.
I bought Young
Americans in the compact disc (CD) format in the used bin at The Wherehouse
in Lakewood or Long Beach, California, circa 1997 or 1998. And as with a bunch
of the other CDs I have been spinning in recent times, I was not completely
familiar with this material despite having it on hand all of these years. Oh
sure, I’ve heard the title cut “Young Americans” and “Fame” on and off over the
years on classic rock radio stations. I have even seen the iconic performance
of “Fame” from TV’s all-time hippest
trip Soul
Train, when Bowie became just the second or third white recording
artist to make the reverse crossover.
So it was pleasant surprise to hear the depth of content on this
set of songs. To be sure, The Thin White Duke is tied to the times of 1974 and
1975 singing on “Young Americans”:Do you remember, your President Nixon?
Do you remember, the bills you have to pay?
Or even yesterday?
Have you been the un-American?
But the rest of the disc is packed with listenable and
danceable tracks that transcend time and could feel at home in any decade that
knows how to swing. You could probably even put Young Americans in the headphone album category—of course, that
would be the iPhone earbud category nowadays. That’s unless you have some of Beats by Dr. Dre audio headphones.
An outstanding track that gets overlooked is “Fascination,” on
which Bowie really gets down with Carlos Alomar riffing stylistically on guitar
with syncopation in tow. Saxman David Sanborn, later to be hailed as one of the
progenitors of Smooth Jazz, wails along—sho ’nuff, oh yeah—lending new credence
to the by-then moribund theory that the instrument was the tool of Old
Nick hisself!
As it turns out, Alomar would become a longtime collaborator
of Bowie’s, working with the Human Chameleon over the many changes he would
conjure forward for the next 30 years plus, but most heavily during Bowie’s “Berlin
Trilogy” period on the albums Low, Heroes,
and Lodger culminating with his
commercial mass-market MTV smash followup to Let’s Dance, Tonight.
Of course, as I have already alluded, what really makes all
of Young Americans work is the
omnipresent saxophone work of David Sanborn. On just about every track, Sanborn
shines through with sultry sax lines that exude an atmosphere of elegant
decadence amidst a world-weary attitude toward libidinous behavior.
Speaking of libidinous behavior, “Can you Hear Me” offers an
interesting lover’s lament where Bowie could be chiding his ex paramour spurning
him by not taking his affections to heart. Or it could also be read as a double
entendre where Bowie asks, “Can you feel me inside?...Why don't you take it?”
Perhaps, I digress.
There are several bonus tracks on the CD version of Young Americans: “Who Can I be Now?”, “It’s
Gonna be Me”, “John, I’m Only Dancing Again”. These were all tracks that were recorded
contemporaneously with the rest of the Philadelphia masters. But they were
dumped in favor of “Fame” and “Across the Universe,” which were recorded a few
months later in New York City, although “John” was released as the A-side of a
single to work the promotion of the album in 1975. These tracks have merit, but
obviously Bowie thought better of them during the original production and only
reconsidered their release on the full album due to marketplace expectations
for the number of songs to be present on a higher-cost CD in comparison to the
lower cost/quality cassette tapes and vinyl records the then still dominant
form factors for major label music releases in the early 1990s.
For all of its Philadelphia infused soul sound, the most
famous song on this album was recorded in New York City at the site of so much
rock music history, Electric Lady Studios. The track of course is “Fame,” which
was a collaboration with former Beatle John Lennon. Resulting from a jam
session, according to Songfacts, the music
for “Fame” came together very fast with the track being based on the jam and
Bowie quickly dashing off the lyrics in about five minutes. Lennon was given a
co-writing credit as he gave Bowie the inspiration for the lyrics based on
their discussion of the how fame itself takes a little piece of your personal life
every day. Bowie was later
quoted as saying:
I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.
While most people are aware that Bowie and Lennon co-wrote
and sang together on “Fame,” Bowie’s first chart-topping No. 1 hit in America
and his breakthrough to the pop mainstream, there are several other facts about
Lennon’s involvement with Young Americans
perhaps only the most ardent of Bowie fans will actually recognize, such as
did you know that:
- Lennon also played rhythm guitar on “Fame”?
- “Across the Universe” on Young Americans is a cover of the Lennon/McCartney song of the same name?
- Lennon also played and sang backup vocals on this Bowie cut?
- And you might know—but it’s easy to miss—the nod to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band tune “A Day in the Life” in the title cut: “I heard the news today, oh boy”
So where does the legacy of Young Americans leave us today? There is so much to consider in the
career of Bowie that it’s difficult to know where to start and stop. Perhaps,
the answer is not to look too closely behind the curtain that this master
illusionist of rock ‘n’ roll has woven but just marvel at the wondrous auditory
landscape beneath our very ears. But if you like to indulge additional senses,
such as vision, and you live in Europe, you may want to take
in a new exhibit that has just opened examining the years Bowie spent in
the German capital (though it was not at the time).
-Derek Handova
Appreciative Listener
Appreciative Listener
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