ALBUMS: R&L ‘Shoot Out the Lights (1982); Richard Thompson ‘Hand of Kindness’ (Solo album 1983)
MVC Rating: R&L 5.0 $$$$$; Richard 4.0/$$$$$
Oh man, this is a good one, I had going in this was a 4.5. In other words a high quality, almost perfect album. But then I dropped the needle after about 25 years of not hearing this album — at least all the way through.
It’s a ‘5.’
And the Richard solo album is excellent especially if you are a fan of his unusual guitar style.
‘Shoot’ was reportedly a break-up album kind of like Rumours by Fleetwood Mac.
Richard and Linda, veterans of the English folk rock scene (Fairport Convention), broke up after about 10 years of marriage at the time this record was being made in early 1980s.
It is dark, full of pain, fraught with emotion. And wonderful because Linda has a beautiful voice. And Richard propels by guitar the mess of hurt through a carnival of dark shadows and broken dreams.
“I’m walking on a wire and I’m falling,” Linda sings.
More amusement ride imagery with both singing in a bouncy way that belies the words: “Won’t you ride on the Wall of Death one more time.”
The title song says the darkness makes it real — ‘real as a gun’ —shoot out the lights. Still another song plumbs the depths of human love and hate, and the confusion of the motives behind one’s actions.
‘Did she jump or was she pushed.’ A theme explored in depth by John A. Knowles in the novel. A Separate Peace.
Spun Gold is about the only song on here that I truly enjoy. It’s the last song on the album. Other decent songs are here but others are just irritating.
Singer Michael Quercio needs to learn exactly what to do with that high voice. I’m a fan of odd voices and even higher than usual ones (Freddy Mercury, Prince, Geddy Lee even). Quercio sounds great in Spun Gold, a swirling round of a song, but too often the voice is a distraction.
Guitarist Louis Gutierrez is a solid player. He just needs better songs to wrap around. The Three O’Clock was part of the so-called Paisley Underground, an LA based tag that plagued some of the artists in it. The Bangles were so labeled. I see the all female Bangles as less Paisley and more retro 60’s style. Green on Red is another so called Paisley Underground badge wearer but GOR was much more raw, rocking and funny to be Paisley anything.
The Three O’Clock were the Herman Hermits through a 1980s prism and Quercio is Davy Jones in a higher octave.
This is another of my Blue Note jazz albums, and as I’ve come to expect with the label, it is high quality, high fidelity jazz.
My ‘Blue Hour’ is a 1985 re-issue from the original tape of the 1960 classic.
In about 20 seconds after dropping the needle, Turrentine’s tenor sax slides in like butter. The sound on my re-issue is fabulous. I haven’t heard the 2000 re-master but it would be hard to beat the warm tones of this one. I give it an extra bump in the ratings for sound quality.
It’s late night, last call music. The Three Sounds know when to step up and when to step back. Bill Dowdy on drums, Andrew Simpkins on bass, and Gene Harris on piano.
And now for something completely different as Mr. Python used to say. A banjo record.
Sure enough all 11 songs on the Real Turkey Records label in San Francisco feature banjo and more banjo. By the cover it appears our six band members include an upright bass, a drummer, a singer, and three banjo players. There’s also piano on some tracks. Several try vocals occasionally but banjo is the theme.
And to put it on the turntable is to turn the beat around. Banjo is scene changer. And this one proves Steve Martin’s line: “The banjo is such a happy instrument–you can’t play a sad song on the banjo – it always comes out so cheerful.”
For that reason this might be fun throwing on when things need livening up or things are getting heavy. But I would recommend only one play (front and back) because too much banjo music has the opposite effect. In a longitudinal study, excessive banjo music (dubbed Banjomama) results in irrational fear of player pianos and suspenders.
Interestingly, I have another album that is based in banjo, but the two records couldn’t be more far apart. ‘Kaleidoscope’ is a California psychedelic album featuring future Jackson Browne guitarist and award winning banjo player David Lindley. Kaleidoscope was a jazzy progressive rock jam while Medicine Ball leans more on traditional songs and ‘happy’ playing.
MVC Rating: James Taylor 4.0/$$$$; Greatest 4.0/$$$$
I grew into James Taylor. Mainly through my future wife, Catherine, who was a huge fan. While I had all my rock and roll mixtapes, she consistently pined for JT, Carol King, Carly Simon — the holy triumvirate of soft folk rock in the 1970s. (The Carpenters were a favorite but were more pop than folk.) So, of course I made mixtapes with these songs for her.
I remember she talked me into buying concert tickets when they went on sale at Auburn University, which Cat and I attended (and graduated). This was was one of these all day in line things, complete with folding chairs to snag tickets before they were sold out.
We got tickets and I proceeded to have about as enjoyable a concert as I have had in my 21-year-old life. He played all the classics ‘Fire and Rain,’ You’ve got a Friend,’ Carolina on My Mind,’ ‘Shower the People,’ and How Sweet It Is.’ But he also rocked out in the encores, playing some Chuck Berry I believe and others that have slipped through the memory of time. I just remember marveling at the concerts’ quality from songs to musicianship, coupled with a laid back easy personality that is his trademark.
The Greatest Hits may be all you need if you are just coming into JT. But all of his albums I know are good. I have his self-entitled debut which had ‘Carolina on My Mind’ with Paul McCartney on bass. Many of the other songs on this first album are unfamiliar these days but show a young man with a talent for simple songs that say more than they seem.
It doesn’t surprise me that he, now in his 70s, is still filling concert venues.
How many other musical artists can say they had Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton play on their solo album?
Stephen Stills is one I can think of. In fact, the only one I can think of off the top of my head. Clapton and Hendrix played on different tracks, recorded at different times on this Stills’ album, so it wasn’t like they were physically in the same room at the same time.
But a nice score for Stills nonetheless.
Two good songs too. Hendrix plays lead guitar on ‘Old Times, Good Times.” (Hendrix fun fact: He played the guitar left-handed so he would flip a right-handed guitar and re-strung it for a lefty.)
Although known for his aerial string-bending assault on the boundaries of music, he was quite restrained here and also quite tasty.
Clapton plays lead on ‘Go Back Home,’ his Fender Stratocaster cutting through all the other instruments as he takes off on his precision runs.
And Stephen Stills is no third-stringer here, playing lead guitar throughout most of the rest of the album (and organ too).
Good solid album. The hit was ‘Love the One Your With.’
In his many iterations Stills has sold 35 million albums.
ALBUMS: The Classic Performances of Ten Years After (1975); A Space In Time (1971); Undead (Live) 1968.
MVC Rating: Classic (4.0/$$$$;) A Space in Time (4.0/$$$$); Undead (4.5/$$$$$$)
Ten Years After was a hard rock, blues band from England that had their career launched into orbit after their performance at Woodstock.
Alvin Lee played guitar like a man possessed with picking so fast that some have called him the father of the shredding style of guitar playing which emerged a decade or more later in the 1980s.
At Woodstock the group’s ‘I’m Going Home ignited the crowd.
The group’s highest charting hit was ‘I’d Love to Change the World.” It’s a nearly perfect rock songs musically with slow picking intro, segueing into power chord riffing as the vocals kick in amid it all.
The only thing that made me uncertain about the song were the lyrics.
‘Everywhere there’s/ freaks and hairies/dykes and fairies/ Tell me where is sanity .. Tax the rich/ feed the poor till there are no rich no more
I’d love to change the world … but I don’t know what to do
It’s hard to figure what the group meant by the lyrics which insinuate by these examples the world is messed up. The question surfaces in the actual examples themselves, it sounds a bit like an old, crotchety man blaming the state of the world on those long hairs. Yet the message seems slightly odd coming from a group of four musicians with hair down past their shoulders. But, hey, the music sounds good.
The third album I have is a live one cleverly called ‘Undead” and it gives us ‘Woodchopper’s Ball,’ a Woody Herman song that Alvin Lee tore the cover off of. Lee grew up listening to his father’s record collection, heavy on jazz and was pushing the group toward jazz at every turn.
So, I’m at an historic mile-marker in my quest to review the 678 vinyl records that I bought or were given over the past 50 years.
I’m down to 100.
I’m doing this to raise awareness of Lewy body dementia.
My goal is to finish before I die of that degenerative brain disease.
Starting with 678, I’ve done 578; I have 100 to go.
How much time I have is unknown. I’m 61, diagnosed in 2016. The average life span is 4 to 8 years after diagnosis. I’m into my fifth year and have every intention lasting another five years or at least until I’ve finished this project.
The terminal illness, for reasons unknown, causes a proliferation in the brain of naturally occurring alpha synuclein proteins, which willy nilly coat parts of the brain, smothering brain cells. Parkinson’s disease works in the same manner, only the killer proteins affect different parts of the brain, resulting in varying symptoms.
Given time, in many cases, near the end of its disease stage, a Parkinson’s patient will look just like a Lewy body patient.
Upon hearing the bad news I had Lewy body dementia, I came upon this idea to count down my beloved record collection. It’s a hodgepodge for sure and certainly not a high end collection. Lots of cut-outs and promotional records. I tended to drift toward the bargain bins.
My father gave me that record, not that he was a big fan but he saw how much I enjoyed their songs on the car radio. Remarkably, they are a band whose straight ahead rock and roll from the 60s and 70s more than holds up today.
I also had a Jackson 5 album, ABC, at about this time. Jackson was 11 when that album was released; I was 10.
In my parents’ childhood, there really wasn’t rock and roll unless you knew how to pick up a blues station on the AM dial at night.
The radio stations were more diverse when I was 10 or 11 than they are now. Terry Jacks’ ‘Seasons in the Sun’ would come on right after “Hey Jude,’ followed by Tony Orlando and Dawn’s ‘Candida,’ then Wilson Pickett doing ‘Land of 1,000 Dances.’
My mother took me to guitar lessons for a few months and I learned three chords. I just wasn’t musical in that sense but I loved music. I still dance like no one’s watching, even when people are watching. Although my dancing is less fluid rhythmic swaying to the beat and more episodic spasmodic dystonia.
‘No,’ I reply, unable to stop. ‘It’s doing me.’
Certainly the disease has affected my life and our family system. Heck, the effects have even trickled down to our dog, Gus, a yellowish poodle mix who at 15 or 16 seems to be hanging around for me. Sometimes we just sit and stare at each other like we’re building a Stareway to Heaven.
But until that’s completed I am hanging in there and learning the best practices on living with Lewy Body Dementia.
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They say life is short but I say life is long
Full of pretty faces and beautiful songs
You can think too much about moseying along
It’s best to stay calm
Life is long, life is long, life is long
–Jared Mees, ‘Life is Long’ from the album Life is Long.
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I don’t drive anymore after an accident several years ago. More recently, as in three weeks ago, I had to get my head stitched up after fainting.
Only six stitches, but the fainting is a condition –orthostatic hypotension — I’ve warned about on this blog. I was not following my own protocol when I stood up quickly from the couch and began walking toward the stairs. I kerplunked and my head hit the floor. So we are escalating my attempts to thwart this blood pressure problem. More salt in diet. More fluids in diet, standing slowly, deep breathing and putting my head down to feel the blood rush back to my brain.
We take my blood pressure frequently to monitor. I think the typing of these blog posts is stimulating my brain in a way that is slowing my Parkinonian effects, as well as my cognition effects. I think putting together words in sentences and paragraphs are all stimulating my brain. I think looking for a record that I just saw yesterday and now can’t find even though I know it was there and it makes me want to scream is stimulating my brain. It’s certainly raising my blood pressure, which is good also!
It gets tricky when you are looking for that one record which could be in one of three rooms, on two levels. They were fairly well organized alphabetically when I started.
I’ve become more philosophical about the disease. Getting the diagnosis was such a shock to the system but not a shock that I really let anyone see. I’d make jokes about it (still do). ‘We all die sometime’ became the cliche’ of my life.
Years ago I lived every day as if I had a month or so. Now the years have come and gone; my daughter Claire got married, my daughter Hannah moved here from Korea with her husband; and my daughter Emily moved to be close to me — all not knowing how long Dad had.
The years went by.
I still don’t have an answer to the question: If I had to do it all over again, what would you change?
(BTW it took me a good minute to find the question mark sign on my keyboard just then. That ‘s how the memory effects of Lewy body manifest themselves in little ways. But finding it was a mental exercise or, put another way, it was exercise for the brain.)
Just about a year ago, I went through a hallucinatory stage where I became immersed in another world: I communicated with other beings and talked to people no one else could see. I retired from my job at AL.com. Fixed the hallucinations for now. And here I am writing still on this blog I started four years ago.
I’ve written 578 album reviews, all available right here right now on this blog, www.myvinylcountdown.com
One hundred to go.
No, I still don’t have any more understanding of how we all ended up here on this big ball of mud, third from the sun.
While my disease has reinforced my belief that the universe can be a soul-crushing crucible and that its understanding is beyond human reach, I gotta believe God is good.
The sound of the record was what struck me first. Though it may be available remastered now, it wasn’t when I picked it up in high school in Athens, Ga, at WUXTRY. The guitar solos were executed wonderfully and seemed to hang in the air allowing it to sink into your cerebellum.
This is one where teen-age audiophiles would pick to show of their super sonics. That, and of course, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The thread that binds these albums, nay not thread, the ROPE, tying them together was Alan Parsons of the Alan Parsons Project and producer of DSOFTM and Year of the Cat.
One day about 15 years ago, I was working at the Oakland Tribune newspaper and Alabama News Group. when I got a call from my wife that Al Stewart was playing for free at a church in Marin County (Ross to be exact). It was on my way home and I got there to find standing room only. It was him on guitar and, I believe, a piano accompanist.
This is one I’m giving a ‘5’ and I’ll admit it is partially for nostalgic reasons. It also had an appeal to musicians who liked the interplay between guitar, keyboards and strings. If you’ve followed my blog you know I don’t give out ‘5’s very much at all. But this one does it with literacy, musicianship and that it was different then pop/rock that was coming out at the time. Rick Wakeman, of the progressive rock group Yes played on this record. If you can’t tell from many of the song’s names, Stewart writes on historical events and weaving his own story within the historical context.
Fine reggae music. Tosh’s smooth as syrup baritone provided a nice contrast to Mick Jagger’s usual, well you know, Jagger-voice.
A Jagger-Tosh duet,(You) Got to Walk and Don’t Look Back was a hit single for them or ‘dem’ as we use the Jamaican vernacular — as in this lyric from the album: Dem ha fe get a beaten dem ha fe get a beaten/dem can’t get away
That song ‘Dem Ha Fe Get a Beaten’ is a call to fight the financial inequities in their country. The song starts:
Do (sic?) to unfavorable financial conditions/I’m unable to cope with this financial shituation (maybe not sic)/It’s causing an inflation upon creation
One way to stimulate the economy Tosh sings is:
Dem legalize marijuana, right here in Jamaica, Dem say it cure glaucoma/ I man a de Bush Doctor
Forty years later, Tosh’s words sound prophetic as states and countries around the globe decriminalize and legalize its use.
The album ends with a hymn of sorts with a spoken word recitation of the creation story (If you’re unfamiliar with Rastafarian religion, Jah = God.)
In the beginning was the word/And the word was with Jah/ And the word was Jah … Jah is my keeper/Jah is my health and my strength/So who shall I fear
Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare — the world’s best rhythm section, do their usual bottom best.
