Ticket stubs: Thin Lizzy, Glasgow 1983.

This was my second gig, four years to the day after my first, Bill Haley, at the same venue, the Glasgow Apollo. Strange but true. My first proper teen years gig (I was 13). Look at that programme – Lizzy didn’t piss about. Full-sized poster, plenty to read.

What I remember: the tickets arriving, my mum putting them out on the wee table in the hall next to the phone, letting me find them for myself. One for me and one for my big sister (not quite as big a Lizzy fan but into her Quo and already a gig-going veteran). After the unbearable wait, seemed months, probably just a week or two, we’re there. The city as grey and dour as I remember it until we get to the the queue at the Apollo, an amiable sea of denim and leather, Lizzy t-shirts, long hair, fag smoke and beer breath. Home.

Inside, our circle seats (for standing on, of course) afford us a great view, by all accounts better than those down the front, craning their necks at the notoriously high stage. Mama’s Boys are the support, my first proper rock band, loud, with great fist-in-the-air songs. Pat ‘The Professor’ McManus blazing on lead guitar and fiddle, quoting the five tones from Close Encounters of the Third Kind in his solo spot. Needle in the Groove. Yes.

Thin Lizzy. Jesus, the sheer excitement of it all. Lights, smoke, flash-bombs. The songs, new and old, classics the lot. Jailbreak, The Boys are Back in Town, Cold Sweat, The Cowboy Song, Still in Love With You, The Sun Goes Down, The Rocker … and on and on. Awesome. LOUD. Those guitars – Scott Gorham, L.A. rockstar through and through, playing smooth and rough at the same time, new boy John Sykes tearing it up like his life depended on it. Brian Downey on drums a powerhouse and more. Darren Wharton’s keyboards coming on like a third guitar. And …

Phil Lynott, Phil Lynott, Phil Lynott. An actual rock god. Charming, handsome, funny, all leather and studs, great bass player, the poet of heavy rock. Cooler than a fridge full of jazz. Directing the reflection of the spotlight from his bass’s mirrored scratch-plate around the audience, dazzling you when it hit you in the eye. “We need those helping hands!” “B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-baby!”

A special guest is brought on. Brian Robertson. Already one of my favourite guitarists, another thrill. I wouldn’t get the significance for a long time but we’re now watching an augmented version of the classic lineup of Thin Lizzy. Something you don’t forget.

After the gig, I was deaf for two days. That’s rock and roll for you.

The Chris Robinson Brotherhood: Anyway You Love, We Know How You Feel (2017)

I don’t know why, but over the past year or two I’ve taken to listening to music that can get a bit mellow and which can lean towards the uplifting. Not like me at all. The Tesdeschi Trucks Band is one fine example. There’s even some ’70s Clapton in there. Who knew? The most recent addition to my go-to list of not-as-dark-as-you’d-expect tune merchants is The Chris Robinson Brotherhood.

Formed on the demise of The Black Crowes, vocals aside The CRB is a very different entity. Chris Robinson has clearly taken a divergent approach to his ex-Crowes bandmates, brother Rich and Mark Ford, whose Magpie Salute is pretty much The Black Crowes with a new, albeit soundalike, singer. Here, the general sonic template – essentially early ’70s sounds and vibes – are in place but less rocky, less Stones/Zeppelin and more Grateful Dead/Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac. They’re as prolific as a 1970’s act as well, with five studio albums and one double live set released so far since 2012.

I had some birthday cash to spend last month and happened upon a complete set of CRB CDs going for affordable on eBay.  I bought the lot. (Dig that clever play on words. Rest assured, there’s no more where that came from.)  I’ll be working my way through these for quite a while but I’m currently stuck on Anyway You Love, We Know How You Feel. Terrific album.

Narcissus Soaking Wet is the first CRB track I heard, via a live studio session on YouTube – on account of my being all modern and down with the digitals – and it makes for a funky opener here. In fact a lot of the tunes here carry a big funk element, with the abundance of vintage synths and the occasional burst of harmonica recalling prime time (Talking Book/Innervisions) Stevie Wonder. There are obvious nods to Bob Dylan (Forever as the Moon), a whole lot of southern rock and even mid-’70s Queen (Oak Apple Day). Sometimes, for these ears, the lead guitar stylings of Neal Casal are perhaps a tad too polite and those synths can sound a little incongruous but somehow it all works.

Nice packaging on this as well (true of all of these CRB CDs), a card gate-fold with with a decent booklet of throwback line art. This type of sleeve has come along nicely in recent years – just in time for the decline of the format, of course. Still, said decline might yet prove survivable, particularly if this is how discs are being packaged. Regardless, I’m pretty sure this and the rest of CRB catalogue is available on vinyl for those of you with deeper pockets.  Dig in.

 

Tim Curry: Read My Lips (1978)

Quite the mental album this one and one of the most played records on my shelf ever since I was sixteen or so. The first of three albums Tim Curry recorded for A&M, Read My Lips is still something of an obscurity, having never been re-released in any form until just last year.

Produced by Bob Ezrin, it shares the sonic DNA of two of his earlier and best production jobs, Lou Reed’s Berlin (1973) and Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare (1975), not least due to his signature use of atmospheric sound effects. Ezrin also plays keyboards here as he did on those earlier releases with the rest of the principal players on Read My Lips made up of Berlin/Nightmare guitarist Dick Wagner, Michael Kamen on keyboards and Bob Babbet on bass alongside some top session players of the day as well as some interesting guests.

Curry wasn’t writing songs yet so the focus here is on his vocal interpretations and the fantastic Ezrin/Kamen arrangements. The set is a mix of cannily chosen covers with a couple of exceptional originals from Ezrin/Kamen and jobbing singer songwriter Tony Kosinec, here playing acoustic guitar.

Recorded in part in Ezrin’s native Canada, there’s a clear Canadian influence throughout, starting with the choice of a cover of Rough Trade’s Birds of a Feather as the opener. Literate hard rock with added horns, it’s good stuff. A pointer towards the relatively straight forward classic rock treats ahead? Well, no, not so much.

Now, remember, way up there in the first paragraph, when I said this album was ‘mental’? Just the second track in and it really earns those stripes. Wake Nicodemus is a 19th Century ballad about an African slave, written by Henry Clay Work. An abolitionist involved with the underground railroad, Work was also American, which makes the crazy-mad-bonkers arrangement here (by Ezrin and Stu Day) all the more of a mystery. With the help of The Regimental Pipers and Drums of the 48th Highlanders of Canada, what we have here is an epic piece of heavy rock conceptual storytelling in full Tartan face. Completely Scottished up. Wagner’s guitar affects a bagpipesque drone while Curry adopts a burr of heroic proportions. In fairness, his attempt at a Scots accent isn’t entirely cringe-inducing and though the track could have been an embarrassment it manages to pull all of its absurdities together and rock out royally.

A touch of whimsy follows as the Lennon/McCartney tune I Will is given a mellow reggae makeover. Still with the unfortunate accent choices, here the vocals are in a kinda-sorta Jamaican style but it stops mercifully shy of being offensive. The whole thing stays interesting by adopting a slightly Cajun flavour complete with Nils Lofgren on accordion, before left-turning into Brontosaurus, a slowed down, weirded up version of The Move’s late ’60s psychpop hit. Layered slabs of guitar, speeded up voices and industrial drum sounds all come to bear on this one, resulting in a psychedelic stoner rock fun time.

The left turns keep on coming – Kosinec’s Alan could be straight from a broadway musical, with Curry’s actorly delivery bringing its quirky lyric to life. The arrangement is all woodwind and piano with a fantastic turn from Wagner on lead guitar and the overall result is genuinely affecting.

Opening side two, Joni Mitchell’s All I Want is cheerfully re-imagined as a straight forward rocker which is cool and all but it provides no kind of preparation for the emotional sucker punch of the next tune. Written by Ezrin & Kamen, Sloe Gin is something special.

On this fragile, melancholy modern blues, Wagner’s guitar is masterful, Kamen’s Fender Rhodes part is perfectly judged and Curry’s edge-of-breaking interpretation, whether arrived at through experience or performance, is devastating. With its repeated refrain of “I’m so fucking lonely and I ain’t even high/I’m so fucking lonely and I feel like I’m gonna die”, the song taps into what seems like a very real vein of deep depression. It’s desolate and beautiful; you have to remind yourself to breathe while listening.

Sloe Gin fades into a soundscape of street noise, traffic and sirens before bursting into the bait-and-switch arrangement of Irving Berlin’s Harlem on My Mind, moving from heavy blues rock to 1930s pastiche without blinking an eye. The ’30s section features welcome guest turns on trumpet and violin respectively from jazz legends Max Kaminsky and Joe Venuti (in one of his last studio performances), the ideal match for Curry’s Noel Coward-meets-Al Bowlly vocal turn.

The album ends on a high with Anyone Who Had a Heart, an early ’60s Bacharach & David tune which was a hit in the USA for Dionne Warwick and for Cilla Black in the UK. Here, Curry absolutely owns it, his impassioned torch song delivery perfectly complimented by a full orchestral arrangement which reaches John Barry levels of Bondian pomp. Lovely stuff.

Curry followed Read My Lips with two more albums, Fearless (1979) and Simplicity (1981), both of which featured songwriting contributions from the man himself (an earlier, originally unreleased album had a digital-only release in 2010 as … From the Vaults). They all have their strengths but for me, this is the best of them. It really does hold its own against its “older brothers”, Berlin and Welcome to My Nightmare.

For a while there it seemed that its legacy would be limited to the fact that a painfully shallow, neutered cover version of Sloe Gin has become well enough known in recent years to ensure that pub rock bands the world over now murder it by rote on a weekly basis. That would have been a real shame. Happily, last year all three of Curry’s A&M albums appeared on CD for the first time.

I’ll be checking out the reissue of Read My Lips soon enough, given the snap, crackle and pop my LP has developed after thirty-odd years of service – you should too, unless of course you can find yourself a decent vinyl copy.

The Who: Live at Leeds (1970)

It’s Halloween and the obligatory horror movie viewing is on its way but there’s time first to revisit some classic sounds. Live albums are for some an acquired taste – for me they’re often as not the high water mark of an artist’s output and this is the fucking king of them all, The Who’s Live at Leeds.

Over the last decade or two this album has been revamped and re-released several times. The thing about live albums, particularly from ‘back in the day’ is that limitations of space on vinyl – even double albums – would often lead to large parts of a set list being left off of the finished result. Now by my reckoning, this was no bad thing for the live album as a format.

Particularly in the world of rock music, the live gig is more than “just” the music. In fact, even at a great gig the music may well be slightly compromised by a physically demanding performance, not to mention the missing visual and visceral impact of a spectacular light show. Lasers. Fireworks. That sort of thing.

Don’t believe me? Then try listening all the way through pretty much any live version of the guitar solo from Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused without recourse to Jimmy Page’s theatrics or the fancy laser show. Seriously. Mind, that’s not so much a recommendation as a dare.

So, trimming out these numbers from a live recording can lead to a more cohesive listening experience – a better album. Adding tracks from original concert recordings back in to a live album reissue has become common practice over the years and, while good for completists, it’s not always the best thing for the album itself.

Among the most notable Live at Leeds reissues is a great mid 1990s expanded version presenting the complete kinda-sorta first set played on the night. That’s the version I’m most familiar with … and it is awesome. Then there’s the twice-as-long-again version from the early 2000s which features the entire kinda-sorta second set which is a performance of Tommy in its entirety. I’d avoided listening to that one for a very long time indeed (too much, I felt, of a good thing) but finally checked it out recently … and it is awesome. Since then it’s had the full box set treatment with a whole other concert from the same tour added. I haven’t heard that one … I expect it’s awesome.

Here’s the thing, though. Live at Leeds has long been held as one of the very best live albums, often cited as the greatest of them all. That reputation didn’t come from any digitally remastered two hour spectacular; it came from the original single album, a mere six tracks long.

I have the original tape release here, still sounding great. The CD reissue opens with a phenomenal version of Heaven and Hell which isn’t on the original at all. Yes, I miss it, but this kicks off with Mose Allison’s Young Man Blues, a real gut punch of a slab of heavy electric blues at its most brutal. It sets up the album perfectly and all these years later begs the question, why isn’t Pete Townshend’s rep as one of the great ’60s/’70s guitar heroes more in line with the giants of that scene – Clapton, Beck – yes, even Hendrix? Here, Townshend’s playing is phenomenal (lead and rhythm both). Savage and attacking like virtually no other player of the day – it really doesn’t get better than this. An epic take on My Generation brings the first side to a close (the tape’s running order being different to that of the LP) while Side Two opens with The Who completely owning another couple of covers – an explosive version of Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues and a gloriously sleazy Shakin’ All Over (originally by Johnny Kidd & the Pirates). Back to the Townshend originals for definitive takes on Substitute and Magic Bus, each member of the band at the very top of their game.

Here in its original form Live at Leeds is a wonder. At well under 40 minutes it is barely more than half the length of the running time of that terrific ’90s reissue but the sheer impact here is undeniable. “The Greatest Live Album Ever”? Not the kind of terminology I like to apply to music but in this instance, I’m not going to argue.

Amanda Palmer And The Grand Theft Orchestra: Theatre Is Evil (2013)

Over on my “industry” blog Channel Nowhere, I used occasionally to post a “Top 10 albums of the year” type thing. 2013 was a decent year for music with releases from the old guard leading the field – ZZ Top, The Cult, Van Halen, Neil Young and so on. The top spot, however, went to Amanda Palmer’s Theatre is Evil, of which I had the deluxe download version, having been a cheapskate-level Kickstarter backer.

In the years since, Palmer’s output has been hard to keep up with. Via the Patreon crowd-funding platform, she regularly issues individual songs, EPs and so forth. There have been Bowie and Prince tributes and more besides, including an album of duets (recorded with her dad), a book – and a baby. There’s even been a solo vocal/piano version of Theatre is Evil in its entirety, Piano is Evil. Coming up is a new studio album recorded in collaboration with Edward Ka-Spel of The Legendary Pink Dots. I haven’t heard half of that lot, but I’ll catch up in time.

In the meantime, I’ve been revisiting Theatre is Evil, having recently picked up a copy on CD – it’s a handsome object, a slip-cased three-panel digi-pack with a lavish lyrics-and-art booklet.  What follows here is an updated version of the original review I posted as part of that “Top 10” piece from 2013, which began: Much heralded due to a remarkable Kickstarter campaign, it would be too easy, amongst all the stats and admittedly startling figures, to lose sight of the fact that this is a superb album …

Out-with being only slightly familiar with the music of her punk cabaret duo, Dresden Dolls, I first became aware of Amanda (Fucking) Palmer a few years ago, when doing some industry research regarding sales and distribution models (sorry to break it to you folks, but it ain’t all glamour, this business we call show).  It was about the time that Palmer had ditched her previous label, Roadrunner, and released what was for me the song of 2010 (Do You Swear To Tell The Truth The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth So Help Your Black Ass).  This led me to check out her sole Roadrunner release, Who Killed Amanda Palmer? which turned out to be an apparently effortless fusion of rock, cabaret, prog, electronica and more; great songs, all backed with a bunch of cool videos.  I was sold.  Then there was an excellent 2011 EP, Nighty Night, as part of art-rock supergroup project 8in8 which was, you guessed it, one of my favourite releases of that year (although I gave her ukelele-led Radiohead covers album a miss, what with not being a fan of either Radiohead or the ukulele).

Palmer’s second ‘full-on’ solo album, Theatre Is Evil – actually her first with impressive new band The Grand Theft Orchestra – builds on everything that came before it.  There are kitchen-sink arrangements, the sound is huge, and the influences are much as described before – cabaret, prog, art rock, electronica, with hints of straight-up rock, pop and punk.  There are echoes of Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd and David Bowie which are largely subtle, part of the musical palette. Other references are made more knowingly with a pair of back-to-back tracks – Massachusetts Avenue and Melody Dean – giving nods to the same Prince song (I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man) while still managing to sound entirely distinct from each other (Melody Dean also quotes My Sharona both musically and lyrically), and on Bottomfeeder, guitarist Chad Raines stylistically quotes Count Ian Blair’s work from The Rocky Horror Picture Show to great effect.

Most importantly though, underneath all the ambitious instrumentation and clever intertextuality lies a set of great songs, brilliantly performed.  Palmer delivers like Patti Smith meets Debby Harry by way of the theatricality of Tim Curry or Freddie Mercury, with the latter’s penchant for a piano flourish. As a lyricist she combines the raw poeticism of Smith or Lou Reed with the verbal dextrousness of Ani DiFranco and the unsettling frankness of Loudon Wainwright III, crafting pieces that are at once funny and moving.  This is best illustrated by The Bed Song, the only solo piano/vocal performance on the album, telling the story of the core of a relationship unravelling from the beginning to the very end, as melancholy as it sounds but still taking time out to name-check Van Halen and Slayer. Scoring huge “album of the year” points right there, obviously. Meanwhile Do It With a Rock Star comes on like a hard-edged party anthem spin on Wainwright’s plaintive Motel Blues.

So there you have it.  In a year in which I took great joy in the on-form output of the hoary rock gods of my youth, Amanda Palmer knocked me out by outdoing them all. I said in that original Channel Nowhere piece, “Theatre Is Evil is a stunning album – maybe the first Great Album of the decade”. I stand by that – four years on it’s just as commanding. 

Check out Amanda Palmer’s website: www.amandapalmer.net

The Obligatory “Top Ten of 2016” Post

The obligatory Top Ten of 2016 post – it is what it is. And what it is, more or less, is split into halves: 2016 releases and older stuff I picked up throughout the year.  There’ll likely be full reviews of a lot of these titles to follow over the next wee while.

Albums

Some 2016 releases I haven’t been able to check out or pick up yet including at least a couple of heavy hitters, most obviously David Bowie’s Blackstar and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Skeleton Tree.  There are undoubtedly others.  I was sadly underwhelmed by Iggy Pop’s Post Pop Depression, ZZ Top’s Live Greatest Hits From Around The World (as perfunctory as its title) and The Cult’s latest but I’ll give them all a second chance at some point.  The same can’t be said for Sturgill Simpson’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth.  It’s had its second chances.

Albums: Top 5 2016 releases

5.  The Claypool Lennon Delirium – Monolith of Phobos
Endlessly entertaining psych-prog.
4.  The Monkees – Good Times!
Their first new album since 1996’s Justus and it’s rather good.
3.  Jeff Beck – Loud Hailer
Beck hooks up with London duo Bones to make what is easily his most compelling album since Guitar Shop.
=1.  Tedeschi Trucks Band – Let Me Get By
A lush, soulful, roots-rock diamond of an album.
=1.  The Rolling Stones – Blue and Lonesome
A covers album, no less; a wonderfully jagged-edge contemporary take on Chicago blues (reviewed HERE).

Albums: Top 5 “finds” of 2016

5.  Dave Arcari & the Helsinki Hellraisers – Whisky In My Blood (2013)
Yer raucous, rootsy alt.blues.
4.  Donovan – Barabajagal (1969)
Properly groovy psych-folk (with contributions from Jeff Beck).
3.  Prince and 3rdEyeGirl – Plectrumelectrum (2014)
One of Prince’s best latter-day releases, much of it straight-ahead heavy rock.
2.  James Gang – Rides Again (1970)
No matter how much music you listen to over the years, there’s always a stone classic that’s passed you by.  Damn!
1.  Eli Radish – I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier (1969)
Outlaw Country forerunner, a set of covers of wartime songs (from the American Civil War through to Vietnam) given the Woodstock-generation treatment.  I’d been ages looking for this one and it was worth it.

Movies.  

I didn’t get to see half of what I might have wanted to; cinema is a too-expensive night out these days.  I’ll no doubt catch up on home releases (anyway, this blog is meant to be about physical formats, right?).

I’m sick to death of superhero movies, though.  I made the mistake of double-billing Batman v Superman and Captain America: The Winter Soldier in one seemingly endless night; watched through heavy eyes, it turns out they’re exactly the same film.

Movies: Top 5 2016 releases

5. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Underrated comedy drama based on a true story starring Tina Fey as a TV reporter in Afghanistan.
4. 10 Cloverfield Lane
A tense and enjoyable wee sci-fi suspense thriller (even if the basic set up was pillaged from the pages of Métal Hurlant).
3. Hail, Caesar!
Brash, bright and loud – the Coen brothers at their least subtle with a very funny send up of McCarthy-era Hollywood.
2. The Nice Guys
A quality addition to Shane Black’s long list of quality buddy-comedy /thrillers.
1. The Lobster
Mental, though eh.

Movies: Top 5 “finds” of 2016

5. The Vanishing (1988)
Superior Dutch/French thriller which takes some surprising turns.  Until the dodgy ending, right enough, which unfolds as if from a rejected script for Tales of the Unexpected.
4. Empire Records (1995)
Hollywood knock-off of Clerks is way more entertaining than it has any right to be; a throwback to old rock’n’roll movies and ’70s fare like FM.
3. Bread (1971)
Obscure British movie trying to appeal to that elusive “hippies who are big Robin Askwith fans” demographic.  Lots of great footage of little-known rock bands of the day.
2. St. Ives (1976)
J. Lee Thompson directing Charles Bronson as a writer-cum-private-eye, with Jaqueline Bisset being all sexy-like. Can’t go wrong.
1. Calvary (2014)
Bleakly funny, if ultimately just bleak.  Brendan Gleason, though.  Wow.

The Rolling Stones: Blue & Lonesome (2016)

So.  Actual rock gods The Rolling Stones are in the studio recording new material when they get stuck.  They break into an off-the-cuff version of Little Walter’s Blue and Lonesome (luckily the engineer, unbidden, hits “record”) and have such a dashed good time with it that they decide to carry on in that vein and record a blues album.  This they do, without the luxury of overdubs, in three days.

Since 1989’s Steel Wheels you’d hear of each new Rolling Stones album that it’s “their best in years” (usually qualified with that old chestnut: “their best since Exile on Main Street“).  Well, it’s a no brainer this time that it is indeed their best in years – compilations aside, they haven’t released a studio album since the mostly-excellent A Bigger Bang twelve years ago.

Blue & Lonesome is an outstanding album of raucous, unpolished takes on various Chicago blues numbers.  They make no attempt to ape the originals – why would they?  They’re the fucking Rolling Stones.  Pioneers of the British Blues Boom, as important to British blues as Howlin’ Wolf et al. were to Chicago’s.  Honest to goodness legends and the grand old men of the scene – older by a distance than the originators of these songs were at the time of the original recordings.

Long past the stage as musicians where their idiosyncrasies first coalesced into their signature styles, the aural nastiness that seemed to have entered the band’s DNA by the mid-’70s is on full display here, most obviously in Keith Richard’s loose-limbed rhythm and gnarly as-and-when leads but also the aggressive snarl and sneer of Mick Jagger’s lead-guitaresque harmonica. His vocals too, tempered by age, are better here than ever, so much so that you don’t even miss what is usually a Stones album highlight – Keith doesn’t take a lead vocal on this one.  Ronnie Wood’s playing, always more conventional than Keith’s, still has a “broken bottle” edge to it while Charlie Watt’s drumming, of course, remains the bedrock.  Stalwarts of the Stones’ touring band, Darryl Jones and Chuck Leavell add a little session player sheen (though even that’s been scuffed up over the last few decades on the road), while Eric Clapton is press-ganged from his own sessions in an adjoining studio to supply some pleasingly rough-and-ready slide on Everybody Knows About My Good Thing and more expectedly fluid leads on I Can’t Quit You Baby.

The Stones always had more of an affinity with the likes of the Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters bands than most of the British Blues Boomers who followed.  The Mayall and Yardbirds schools were all about extended soloing and Freddie King worship but the Stones were more akin to that Willie Johnson/Hubert Sumlin approach.  Nowadays I think it’s the “alt.” side of blues that has more in common with those players and the Stones today are closer in attitude and execution to that than the “purists” (thankfully), here filtering the spirit of the original performances through post-British blues, post-rock’n’roll and over half a century of living the life.  Of course, I’m sure in time we’ll see a few pelters aimed at this album from the blues-nazis … oh well.  Mangy old corgis nipping at the ankles of an oblivious silverback gorilla.

The twelve songs here are well chosen, culled from the the catalogues of Wolf, Waters, Eddie Taylor and others.  Only two really qualify as obvious blues standards – quality renditions of Wolf’s Commit a Crime (memorably covered already by the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan and The Groundhogs) and Otis Rush’s I Can’t Quit You Baby (probably best known in its Led Zeppelin incarnation though I sneakily prefer John Mayall’s version and the belting, late-career Gary Moore take). The remaining ten cuts will likely be new territory for the casual listener.  There’s at least a couple I was only dimly aware of (not being the biggest fan of, say, Magic Sam or Little Walter) and I was completely unfamiliar with one of the album’s highlights, Everybody Knows About My Good Thing and its originator, Little Johnny Taylor.  I look forward to rectifying that.  The album really is almost uniformly cracking but other highlights, if I had to choose, include Lightnin’ Slim’s Hoodoo Blues and Blue and Lonesome – that surreptitiously recorded one-take catalyst left here untouched. It’s got a bruised grandeur all its own while threatening to fall apart at any second.

Jagger/Richards is among the great songwriting teams and although it’s been a long time since they last reached the social significance of their late ’60s/early ’70s heyday, they have continued to write excellent songs, most recently with the 2012’s Doom and Gloom.  Also, they do rootsy ballads like no-one else and I might have hoped for some of that on Blue & Lonesome.  So it’s hard to entirely ignore the fact that this is a covers album and, time will tell, but I’m not sure it will be regarded as a truly great Stones album with that lack of original material.  After all, I can’t imagine that too many serious “best of the Stones” lists would include their first couple of covers-heavy releases.  They were significant in that they were the starting point for the British Blues Boom, but not great albums in the way that Let It Bleed, or Beggars Banquet or … yeah, okay, Exile were.  Not even close.  The obvious comparison to the new one is their debut, The Rolling Stones, as it’s arguably their only other all-blues release and features just a handful of (unremarkable) originals.  It’s a more than worthy listen – and it would be tough work to ignore the pleasures of Route 66, Carol etc. but for me Blue & Lonesome is the better bet.  I’d rather be listening to old masters with those gloriously idiosyncratic styles and nothing to prove than to an ambitious, inexperienced young band finding its feet.  Plus the sound of Blue & Lonesome is grittier, with a much harder edge than on the early mono recordings – a near-perfect piece of production by Don Was & the Glimmer Twins.

At forty-three minutes or so, the album seems to have been recorded with vinyl in mind (the band having been guilty in the past of over-egging their latter day CD releases with bloated running times).  Unfortunately the mystifying decision was made to split it over two records, making the vinyl release unnecessarily expensive. There’s also a deluxe version of the CD, boxed with a book and so on, which is more expensive still.  So, standard CD it is.  Disappointing cover design aside, it’s a nice piece of kit, coming in a three-panel digipak with a booklet featuring sleeve notes in the form of an interview with Don Was and quotes from the band with some cool photographs.  Crucially, it also contains background information on each song, giving the listener a jump start on checking out the originals.

Worse case scenario, history will view Blue & Lonesome as an engaging footnote to an illustrious career.  Best case?  It could just prove to be the Stones’ American Recordings.

Prince: Chaos and Disorder (1996)

In amongst everything being written about Prince (my thoughts here), this album hasn’t had much of a mention – even this review was largely written up before the news of his death.  A pity, as Chaos and Disorder really is an unjustly overlooked gem which is well worth searching out, particularly if you’re a fan of his rockier tendencies.

Part of the career-damaging run of contractual obligation releases towards the end of his symbol/AFKAP phase, Chaos and Disorder was not a success.  It spawned only one minor hit single and barely troubled the album chart here in the UK.  However, of all those releases, from 1993’s Come to 1999’s The Vault: Old Old Friends For Sale, this is by far the most interesting.

Opening the album, the title track is in-your-face heavy funk rock at its best, the arrangement having started life as the end-jam from early live versions of Peach.  Lyrically though, it’s a social commentary-led close cousin to the likes of Sign O’ the Times and Lovesexy‘s Dance On.

Prince as guitarist is to the fore throughout – Zanalee is straight-up blues rock while The Same December and Into the Light are spiritual psych-pop numbers which would not sound out of place on Around the World in a Day.  Dinner With Delores, the aforementioned hit, is more of the same, a great wee track cut from the same cloth as Starfish and Coffee.

Of the eleven tracks only the more overtly commercial, poppier funk number I Rock Therefore I Am and the bizarrely cod-country tinged Right the Wrong don’t quite cut it but there’s still enough outrageous instrumentalism going on to keep things interesting.  The closing track Had U (a slight song, built on a Mellotron-like guitar and vocal), is ostensibly a relationship number but we know it’s really about Warners, with the last words on Prince’s final album under his original contract for the label being “fuck you – had you”.

1996 tape in good order, £8 online (late 2015).  Unavailable in any format for a while but look out for that cynical reissue programme anytime now …

 

 

ZZ Top: Fandango! (1975)

Following 1973’s Tres Hombres and released in 1975, Fandango! was ZZ Top’s fourth album. Again produced by Bill Hamm, here the 34 minute running time is divided between a live side and a studio side.   The studio cuts are a match for Tres Hombres in quality but the live element stops it quite equalling its predecessor’s status as a classic.

The three live tracks that make up the first side are good, rough and raw.  Kicking off with Texas Blues perennial Thunderbird (curiously credited to ZZ Top though it’s a Nightcaps cover) and Jailhouse Rock, it’s a covers-heavy set with the only originals a retread of Rio Grande Mud‘s Backdoor Love Affair and a new song Back Door Love Affair No. 2, both here in a medley with Willie Dixon’s Mellow Down Easy and John Lee Hooker’s Long Distance Boogie.  These are enjoyable enough, hard rocking numbers but it’s all fairly heavy-handed, particularly in Backdoor Medley, and the overall effect is one of “you had to be there”.

The six track studio side, however, is a thing of wonder – it’s no mystery that half of the cuts here made it to 1977’s The Best Of ZZ Top. The side kicks off with the brilliantly titled Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings which is a perfect piece of ’70s rock.  Then there’s Blue Jean Blues.  One of the great electric blues ballads, its melancholy air serving as a backdrop for one of the finest blues leads you’ll hear.

Balinese offers up a slice of straightforward Southern rock before the loose-limbed Mexican Blackbird, with its killer slide and affectionately unromantic lyric  (“If you’re down in Acuna and you ain’t up to being alone/Don’t spend all your money on just any honey that’s grown/Go find the Mexican Blackbird and send all your troubles back home”).

Heard It On The X is a propulsive paean to the Mexican radio stations of the ’60s, all of which were known by call signs beginning with an X.  Tush is one of those songs that always seems to have been there (it was probably the Girlschool version I knew first). A stone cold classic.

The part live/part studio format isn’t one that’s easy to get right. ZZ Top tried it again in 1999 with the underrated XXX.  Cream did it in the ’60s with Wheels of Fire, though that was a double with one disc studio and one live; in the ’90s, both Sabbath and the Stones garnished live albums with a couple of studio cuts (Reunion and Flashpoint respectively) but the only other “half-and-half” release which really got it right, that I can think of, is Loudon Wainwright III’s Unrequited (released, like Fandango!, in 1975.  Maybe it was a thing).   The two types of performance and recording often don’t really gel and that’s the issue with Fandango!  The studio side is so damn good you can’t help but want more.

Original Warners paper labels issue, about £4 online.

Motörhead: No Sleep ’til Hammersmith (1981)

I’ve deliberately avoided writing an obituary-style piece on Lemmy.  There are many of those out there, better and more insightful than anything I might have contributed.  Suffice to say I am a huge fan of Motörhead.  As a musician, they’ve long been a massive influence (I’ll Be Your Sister was a regular part of my solo blues set for a fair few years and the Dog Moon Howl track Punching Walls was intended as a cheeky wee Motörhead nod).  I was looking forward immensely to seeing them in Glasgow this month.  Sadly it wasn’t to be.  Lemmy’s death took the wind out of my sails somewhat, half expected and yet utterly inconceivable – the unstoppable force that stopped.

I’ve been trawling through the albums and various live videos and the likes and in the end the best way I could think of to remember Lemmy was to listen to No Sleep ’til Hammersmith with a Jack Daniel’s or two.  So I did …

Jesus, what a band Motörhead were.  Proof?  Not only did they have Ace of Spades in their arsenal but they could open with it – a great version at that – and not have the gig go downhill from there.  The many highlights here include: Stay Clean, with its awesome bass solo, those great slightly-psych leads from Eddie Clark on Iron Horse and then there’s No Class with its riff lifted from ZZ Top’s Tush, improving on perfection.  Overkill, the template for the entire thrash scene and still the best.  Furious.  Phil Taylor’s drumming.  Oof.  On We Are the Road Crew, Lemmy’s lyrical skills and knack for looking at things from an unexpected perspective bring us a “rock’n’roll excess” song but from a roadie’s vantage point (“Another bloody customs post/Another fucking foreign coast/Another set of scars to boast/We are the road crew”).  Capricorn is a heavy slab of moody psych-rock.  A real favourite of mine, betraying Lemmy’s Hawkwind roots (and, as per his introduction, his idea of a “slow one”!).  His war/militaria obsession comes to the fore in Bomber, as classic as it gets with this version giving the original studio cut a run for its money. Motörhead, the song, finishes things on a high.

No Sleep ’til Hammersmith is one of a clutch of live albums from the ’70s and early ’80s which were arguably their respective artists’ definitive statements.  Certainly, it stands with Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous and UFO’s Strangers in the Night among the greatest of live rock recordings.  It might be perfect.

I always knew – the only way
Is never live – beyond today
They proved me right – they proved me wrong
But they could never last this long
My life – my heart 
Black night – dark star
Capricorn

The original Bronze tape refused to play so a Castle reissue made do.