When it was suggested that the band was a folk-rock band, one of the band’s members said that is wrong. One of the worst things you can do is put a rock beat on a folk song, said John Renbourn. The band preferred a folk-jazz categorization.
I think that’s fair. I’ve often said that a portion of what is called progressive rock isn’t really rock. Emerson Lake and Palmer, for example have gone off on deep forays into what is closer to classical music — unless that term is reserved for time-tested centuries old compositions by Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.
This music is pretty and subtle. It has a sound that is both timeless and dated at the same time. Let me explain. I feel like I’m way back in time when I hear Pentangle but can’t pinpoint a date or era. That’s unlike, for example, the Stray Cats, whose style can be tied directly to 1950s music– at least in that bands original incarnation.
Pentangle could be turn of the century music or 14th century music. I don’t know — just go with me here. They look and sound like a band that would sound great Live at the Stonehenge.
This is one of those straight ahead rock and roll groups that through persistence, solid chops and staying together finally hit the big time.
This album was the precursor to their Top 40 sales of ‘Freeze – Frame’ and ‘Centerfold.’ MVC does’t care for these later ‘MTV’ hits so much. Monkey Island in 1977 was the album where they were straddling both worlds.
This album, Monkey Island, I bought as a cut-out in high school in Athens, Ga. Played it a fair amount actually. Some good old-timey songs like ‘I Do’ and the Louis Armstrong song, ‘I’m not Rough.’
‘So Good’ lives up to its title.
The title track is a little out of character. It’s a multi-part epic of a song with long (good) instrumental intro and oblique lyrics.
The album is a near-miss but the group’s following albums helped give the band — who never thought a harmonica shouldn’t be used — some retirement money. J. Geils, founder and guitarist, died in 2017.
The band caught my attention with an earlier single called ‘Must Have Got Lost’ in which singer Peter Wolf does a rap intro before rap was even a thing. See video below.
That’s not on Monkey Island. But I will include a Monkey Island video too.
ALBUM: Core of Rock, compilation, (Richie Havens, Tim Hardin, et. al. 1970)
MVC Rating: 3.5/$$$
An odd mix of popular and not so popular from the 1960s and 1970s.
I’m looking for some thread to tie them together, but is kind of a hodgepodge , that includes blues folk and a jamming drum and flute solo from Blues Project.
Janis Ian, the brainy teenager who wrote ‘At 17’, goes all Romeo and West Side story with ‘Society’s Child.’
Then there’s Cory Wells, formerly (or later) of hitmeisters Three Dog Night who should have stayed with the pack (or was this before he joined the pack). His two songs, with the band the Enemys, include a needless and poor version of Chuck Berry’s ‘Too Much Monkey Business.’
And then there’s Blues Project, hippie flute instrumentals– meh. And Van Dyke Parks is working his arrangement talents while humming Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
Richie Havens’ take on ‘I Shall be Released’ is good. But my admiration here was focused on Tim Hardin, the fragile-voiced war vet who wrote and performed one of rock/folk’s most straightforward and best song ever in a career cut short by a fatal drug overdose: Reason to Believe.
if I listen long enough to you
I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true.
Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried
Still I’d look to find a reason to believe
I love Hardin’s voice. But Rod Stewart’s version is a forceful classic.
I realize this album was a bargain pickup so I, as I was wont to do, could glean two or three or four songs for a mixtape. I also used to discover new and good music on some of these hit-or-miss compilations. (Wait until i get you to one of my compilation purchases with a cool rave-up of a song that will make your ‘backbone slip.’ (That will be in the M’s), I think.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
ALBUMS: Trap Door (1982); Proof Through The Night (1983); T Bone Burnett (1986); The Talking Animals (1987)
MVC Rating: Trap: 4.0/$$; Proof: 4.0/$$; T Bone 4.5/$$$; Talking 3.5/$$
I think I may be the only one in Alabama to have four T Bone Burnett albums. For one thing, Burnett is much better known as a producer than a singer-songwriter. And he is generally better known among fellow record industry folks, albeit as one of the best in the business.
So there’s not a lot folks around with any T Bone Burnett albums, much less four.
His resume is not short on his work for others: Los Lobos, Elvis Costello, John Mellencamp, Counting Crows, and the BoDeans are just a few who are recipients of Burnett’s excellent production values and arrangements. He’s won Grammy’s for the movie soundtracks of, among others, Cold Mountain, Walk the Line and O Brother Where Art Thou (one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite soundtracks.)
As for his own recordings, they are interesting, literate and sometimes peculiar.
I got interested in T Bone after reading about him leading a back-up band for Bob Dylan, probably in the 70s or 80s. The Rolling Thunder Review it was called.
I bought Trap Door in 1982 and enjoyed the extended play record. This EP had six songs, more than a 45 but less than an LP, long-playing record.
With sharp guitar from David Mansfield, this was good top to bottom. Burnett obliquely channels some songs through his Christianity, but he is not usually identified as a Christian artist. Although he has often played with like-minded musicians.
Re-visiting these albums I am struck by the fact that the least ambitious, I like the best, and the most ambitious I like the least. My favorite, the self-titled 1986 album is country folk at its strumming best.
River of Love by T Bone deserves to be a classic. Little daughter and I Remember are lovely. Oh No Darling makes you want to do some swinging round the room.
The Talking Animals album, is his most complex and least accessible. He enlists great help, Bono, Ruben Blades, Peter Case, and Tonio K. (More on Tonio later in this blog, he’s one of my favorites.)
Is Purple Heart with Bono on background vocals about Prince?
The Tonio collaboration on the song The Strange Case of Frank Cash and the Morning Paper is a talk-sing sort of parable. I believe they may be making a statement on the nature of truth as revealed in the symbolism of story. You know like the Bible, hence the title of the album.
One Amazon reviewer giving the Frank Cash song five stars called it ‘one of the strangest and most imaginative songs of the 20th Century.’
Looking back I see a stream of morality running through his songs, not moralism per se, but morality in such songs as Ridiculous Man, Hefner and Disney, and the tongue in cheek cover of Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.
Robert Christgau, my go-to critic for succinct wisdom, gave Burnett good reviews in the early years but soured on him over time, specifically over the Talking Animals. Christgau acknowledges and recognizes his intelligence and accomplishments, Grammy’s and all, but “why hasn’t he developed any kind of audience?
“Because for both a roots guy and a Christian guy (converted Dylan, some say), he seems like a cold son of a bitch.”
Aw Christgau, didn’t you hear the sweet song, presumably about his daughter, called ‘Little Daughter? You know the one where he brings her clothes of rayon. Rayon?
Don’t want to give short shrift to Trap Door and Proof through the Night. Some great songs in there, After All these Years, When the Night Falls, I Wish You Could Have Seen Her Dance.
For my money his best record is the ‘O Brother’ soundtrack, an album he produced and one of the great records of all time, as it introduced a whole new generation to bluegrass, gospel and folk-blues.
An interview with the man reveals a lot about his knowledge of recording and production and engineering.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
