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Jose Feliciano –479, Freddy Fender–478

jMVC Rating: Fender 4.0/$$; Feliciano 4.0/$$

ALBUMS:  Feliciano!  (1968);  Freddy Fender, The Story of an Overnight Sensation (1978)

No, I didn’t put these two together because they both speak Spanish. Jose Feliciano is from Puerto Rico. Fender is a Texan of Mexican heritage.

I’m looking to double up on occasion and these guys happened to be in the alphabetical line-up, side-by-side.

Feliciano

One of my all time favorite singing performances is Marvin Gay,e’s rendition of the National Anthem at an NBA all-star game in 1982.  Gaye turned the Star Spangled banner inside out with beautiful singing a light beat and left it folded properly like a flag. It was greeted with strong strong feelings on both sides, fans either loved it or hated it

That was kind of a barrier breaker leading to more stylistic interpretations of the song, the vast majority in a loving way (Roseanne Barr being the most memorable exception.)

Gaye was lambasted in some quarters for defaming the National Anthem.

And before Gaye there was Feliciano with his Latin tingd version filled with Spanish  guitar flurriesl   at tje 1968. World Series. He was riding high on his big selling Feliciano!  record, an album of acoustic covers of popular songs, with probably the Doors’ ‘Light My Fire’ being his biggest hit.

The New York Times, looking back at that performance wrote:

“In an era when pop stars try lots of different styles with the anthem, it’s hard to fathom that Feliciano, the blind Puerto Rican singer and guitarist known for “Feliz Navidad” at Christmastime, could stir anger with his rendition.

And at a time when the nation is sharply divided over athletes’ body language during the anthem, it is a reminder that the song that has an unusual ability to provoke.”

On his other songs, Feliciano enjoyed international fame. ‘Light my Fire’ is a good example of his style, bluesy Spanish music,, with jazz-like singing. To many strings, though.

Freddy Fender

Fender’s album title is an ironic play on the fact that one o f his biggest hits, ‘Wasted Days and Wasted Nights’ was recorded and published in 1959 but didn’t become a hit until the 1970s. Between those time periods Fender battled the bottle while in the Marines, and was arrested  for pot possession in Louisiana. He served three years in prison for that.

He is also known for ”Before the Next Teardrop Falls’ which is not on this album. The album is fun though as re-listening to  the ‘King of Tex-Mex.’  a golden country voice, proves.  His producer described his voice as being very honest  like Hank  Williams.

After his solo success, Fender joined the Texas Tornadoes, which I  have on CD and highly recommend. One TT album won a Grammy.  in 1991 Fender described the group to the Chicago Tribune :   “You’ve heard of New Kids on the Block? Well, we’re the Old Guys in the Street.”

 

 

 

 

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File’ (Cajun dance band) — 480

ALBUM: Cajun Dance Band (1983)

MVC  Rating: 4.0

Dance. That’s what Cajun music is about. I also get hungry for some of the best food in the world when I hear the music.

The group is named after a spice used in Cajun cooking:

Mix the ingredients: Cajun French singing, gumbo cooking, creole, zydeco, fiddles, accordions, foot stomping, and hand clapping. That’s what’s cooking by this band which was around for about two decades before clocking out in 2002.

It’s a party record and it makes you feel good. File it next to Dr. John’s ‘Gumbo.’

Certainly there’s a time and a place, but when there’s a certain energy in the air, I could listen to this album 10 times in a row.

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The Flamingo Kid (Various) — 481

ALBUM: The Flamingo Kid (1984 soundtrack)

Soundtrack album I bought in a bargain bin to pluck songs for mixed tapes.

This was one of those where they had a beach-y type movie with Matt Dillon, early career, and needed some feel-good, finger-popping songs. So with Motown you can’t go wrong, right? Well.

These are tried and true, mostly great songs: ‘Heat Wave’ by Martha and the Vandellas, ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ by Little Richard, ‘It’s All Right’  by  the Impressions  (my favorite).

And there’s also ‘MySweet Lord’ oh I mean ‘She’s so Fine’ by the Chiffons. But there’s a little trick they play by dropping in a song or two that were actually new amid the time tested Top Motown Hits listed above.. With hopes of making it big as if the magic would transfer by being on the same disc.

On this album, that song is the lead song, , ‘Breakaway’ by Jesse  Frederick. Never heard of it? Nor have many people. But there’s Dion chasing Runaround Sue.

Summed up, lots of good songs, but songs that are available on myriad compilations.

 

 

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Fleetwood Mac– 483, 482

ALBUMS: Rumours (1977): Mystery to Me (1973)

MVC Rating: 5.0/$$$$

Fleetwood Mac  was another ‘soundtrack-of-high-school record for me, it was 1977 andI I was 17. The girls liked this record because it was relationship oriented, albeit, broken ones. And it was melodic. The boys loved it because Stevie Nicks was a good looking, sultry singer. And the band could rock. In other you wouldn’t go wrong on date night with t is cassette. Unless you listen too closely to the words,  but  most didn’t do that,  it seems.

I have two of their albums on vinyl. The world renowned ‘Rumours’ and the lesser known ‘Mystery to Me,’ an album before the arrival of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. I am told by purists that the older Fleetwood Mac with  Peter Green was the  best, but I’m not familiar with it. I have seen Green on best guitarists lists over the years.

On ‘Mystery’ there’s a song called ‘Hypnotized’ that people I’ve played it for fall in love with upon first listen. But few can guess that it’s Fleetwood Mac. The ethereal song summons a semi-tropical hazy glaze. It’s the best thing on this album other than the wild cover art featuring a baboon -like creature painting his lips with coconut oil? Dunno, but it fits the hypnotic vibe. As for Rumours what can you say. An album in the realm of classic like Carol King’s ‘Tapestry’ or Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon.’

fleetwood.jpegMike Oliver | moliver@al.com

Practically every song is a hit and high quality and man I got tired of hearing them on every single radio station all day and all night back in the late 1970’s.

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Flash and the Pan — 485, 484

 ALBUMS:  Flash and the Pan (1978);  Lights in the Night (1980)

MVC Rating: Flash: 4.0/$$$;  Lights: 3.5/$$

This is an odd group with an odd, albeit catchy, style.  It was essentially Harry Vanda and George Young, former members of the breakout Australian group -the-Friday-on-my-mind-band, the Easybeats.

Vanda and Young went on to manage and produce songs for AC/DC, for whom Young’s younger brother played.

But between the soaring and crashing of the Easybeats and world domination of AC/DC was Flash and the Pan.

I plucked their self-titled 1978 debut from a bin at WUXTRY  in Athens, Ga.

Their hypnotic studio sound was a little like nothing you’d heard. Although I heard some people describe them as quirky, otherworldly in a 10cc way.

I think the members of 10cc were more clever songwriters. But Flash and the Pan certainly had the stranger sound, starting with their vocals.  The lead vocals delivered usually in a talk/sing style sounded as if it were filtered by a toy megaphone. I guess you could say  it sounded like a voice that could have been used on 10cc’s prison riot hoedown,  Rubber Bullets, The sing-song semi-electronic groove would then explode into a catchy chorus, that across the two albums I have starts sounding a little formulaic.

Best songs on first album: ‘Hey St.  Peter,’ ‘Walking in the Rain’ (covered by Grace Jones, and ‘Down Among the Dead Men,’ a song about the sinking of the Titanic. On the second “Headhunter’ ‘Make Your Own Cross’ and  ‘Calling Atlantis are interesting.

They barely dented US charts, but the second album, Lights in the Night, was No. 1 in Sweden.

The American cover of the debut album (shown at top) is as odd as the sound. People sitting on the beach with Frisbees flying all around them. In the distance is a mushroom cloud. On the back cover, the people are all gone but not the chairs and Frisbees.  Hey St. Peter take me home.

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Fire Town — 486

ALBUM: Fire Town In the Heart  of the Heart Country (1986)

MVC  Rating: 4.0/$$$

For some reason, I have great clarity on how or at least why I bought this.

Critic Steve Simels, then of Stereo Review magazine, said it was one of the best records he had heard. Ordinarily I’d take that with a grain of salt. But Simels was the guy who said Tonio K.’s ‘Life in the Food Chain’ was the best album he had ever heard.

So I bought that Tonio album sight unseen  (or unheard. Remember no samples online in those days, about 1978). And Simels was right, more or less.

Foodchain is a helluva an album. And to this day, I consider Tonio K. to be one of the underappreciated artists of all time.

This Fire Town album? Not so much.  Now this is a very good album, very catchy songs that make you want to hum. But they aren’t plowing new ground here or showing  us  anything we haven’t heard. Very midwestern sounding, country rock or pre-Americana. BoDeans would be a touchstone. They are like the anti-Wilco, with bright cheery tunes and optimistic outlooks. Like John Denver with more electric rock guitar.

The singer’s voice is too generic for me, not bad, but doesn’t quite have that quality of making the listener believe he’s meaning what he’s saying. The songs are actually excellent and  one can see where Simels might of thought he was seeing the NBT, a new Eagles or a new Crosy, Stills & Nash. But  not quite. However this, like Tonio K., is an underappreciated gem.

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Flamin’ Groovies — 487

ALBUMS: Now (1978)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

I was graduating from high school when this came out. Talk about retro.. This group was like something out of 1966. They cover ‘Paint it Black’ on this album like it was a new song.

‘There’s a Place’ cover sounds like the 1960’s prom band checking in on the Beatles.

All this came to me in the early 1980s.

I discovered this Flamin’ Groovies in a strange way. I was at the Birmingham public library doing some research and they had vinyl records that you could check out, like a book, and return later. This would have been mid-1980s.

I picked up a Flamin’ Groovies album called Groovies Greatest Grooves. It had the song ‘Shake Some Action,’which blew me away. It’s the sense of discovery that you live for as a record collector. Again I was looking for tunes not rare artifacts and that song was one good song. Cracker later recorded it and it was featured in a movie, all much later.

I made a cassette tape out of it that I have no idea whether I have or not.

The  thing that made the Groovies groove work was that they played essentially covers or originals that sounded so close to their heroes, early Beatles, Stones, and Who. — with no irony. That’s what makes it great. Just a few guys from San Francisco playing songs they love from another era.

So, it wasn’t surprising to see that this 1978 album, a comeback of sorts, was produced by retro-man Dave Edmunds. “Yeah My Baby” written by Edmunds, and band members Cyril Jordan and Chris Wilson sounds like a long lost classic. Or long lost classic B-side.

The sound seems  like it was coming through a B&W TV set.

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Firefall — 488


ALBUM:  The Best of Firefall (1981)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$

I hate doing this because I kind of did this with the group America. Like America, Firefall writes pretty radio friendly songs that, if put on a loop, would qualify as a torture device. I mean this lovingly Because these songs do have value, they take me back to a place and time..(Please take that schmaltzy saxophone out of ‘Just Remember I Love You.’)

I kind of like ‘Strange Way.’ Their biggest hit ‘You are the Woman’ embodies everything that is good and bad about this group. Good musicianship, catchy melodies with generic love song lyrics. They were so good  that Top 40 radio put them on a loop. And you know what that does to me. Torture.

Funny, the song ‘Cinderella,’ as it opens, seems like it could be their best song, until you pay attention to  the words. As you listen you hear that his girl comes to him ‘heavy with child,,’

I know this is just the narrator of a song, but listen to his reaction:

I said “goddamn girl can’t you see
That I’m breakin’my back
Just tryin’ to keep my head above water
And it’s turnin’ me wild”

He then  says, sings in the song, to take  herself “and the child away.’

For this reason, I’ll take America and their best hits over Firefall, however, ‘Muskrat Love’ must be deleted from America’s list.

Some good inoffensive flute solos in here. And Stephen Stills co-wrote a number of the songs with Rick Roberts, but not the offensive ‘Cinderella.’. Some good guitar in ‘Mexico.’

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54.40 –489

ALBUMS: 54.40 (1986)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

This was the second album by this ‘alternative’ band fromTsawwassen, British Columbia.

They are described as alternative but they, based on this album seem, more straight ahead guitar driven rock. I almost dismissed them as a generic hard rock band, but I let them seep in. The songs have a nice flow. “Baby Ran’ and ‘Take My Hand.’

“I Go Blind’ was covered successfully by Hootie and the Blowfish. Unexpectedly good guitar runs at time. ‘Me Island’ may be where they got the alternative tag, sounding a little like Buzzcocks meet  Sisters of Mercy. Not the best combination, but alternative sounding. And some real freak-out music in ‘Holy Cow.’

‘Alcohol Heart’ is powerful.

Do I still feel all right

Or do I walk on by,

how do I recognize a friend

And when I cover up my eyes I  can feel the whole world, I can feel the whole world

The band has apparently done well, with 14 albums since the 1984. I think they are a bigger name in their home country  where they have charted numerous times. One song I know off their third album got lots of American college radio play: ‘One Gun.’

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Bryan Ferry — 490

ALBUM: Bryan Ferry . ‘These Foolish Things.’ (1973)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

 Bryan Ferry, man. He’s my favorite cover man.

This album of covers is the evidence.

This was a solo effort; I think his best, although I’d have to admit I haven’t kept up with him in recent years.

He was lead singer for Roxy Music. Roxy’s the High Road, a live EP contains another amazing couple of  covers (Neil Young’s ‘Like a Hurricane’ and John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy.’) Roxy Music’s Avalon is another favorite album of mine. I’ll review Roxy Music when I get to the R’s.

For now I get to dust off this one which has been fun listening to.

Standout covers include: the opening track, Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall;’ ‘Tracks of my Tears,’ famously sung by Smokey Robinson; and ‘You Won’t See Me,’ a version which I think I like more than Beatles’ version. I know, heresy.

The Stones’ cover, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ was an ambitious challenge but a failed one in my estimation. It’s one of those where the original artists can’t be beat so why try. I say this, though, I was recently blown away by Pink singing ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ – a song which I felt Janis Joplin’s cover of the Kris Kristofferson song was the definitive take.It still is but Pink slams the song home. Alhough it really is a close impression of Joplin’s version, who would of thunk Pink could channel that tricky song the way she did.

Speaking of Janis, Ferry does an interesting version of ‘Piece of My Heart’ that turns it inside out showing the incredible subtleties in Ferry’s croonful (my word) voice.