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Focus — 470

ALBUM: Moving Waves (1971)

This was an album I purchased on the virtue of one song: Hocus Pocus, a much peculiar song that actually charted high in the early 1970s.

The six-minute ‘album’ version will be sure to get  you a speeding ticket if driving, as the crunchy riffs bang out a head bobbing heavy metal hook. Kind of like ‘Radar Love’ only harder.

And weirder. Almost weird enough to call it a novelty song.

Why? Because sprinkled in between the wall of metal come pit stops in which the instruments quiet down (except drums) and somebody yodels, I mean full out yodeling like Dutch mountain music, if there was such a thing. That yodeling rondo-ing back and  forth with the guitar riff happens a couple of pit stops. Then at the next (third?) pit stop there’s a Jethro Tull-like flute solo followed by scat singing, and finally what I can only describe as helium-laced nonsense vocals and blazing guitars. There you go.

If you don’t think  you know this song, give it a listen, you might have heard it. Since buying it in a bargain bin for the song, I almost never much listened to the entire album.

There is a shorter version radio single of Hocus Pocus, which besides being shorter, opens with a funky riff, turns into the guitar solo and then it’s yodel time again.)(

The rest of the album is sometimes good in a progressive rock sort of way (such as the obligatory 20-minute album side length song.) Kind of like ELP or Genesis. Not my particular cup of tea. But Hocus Pocus is pretty cool on a listen many years later.  That songs takes the ELP and puts a little Grand Funk Railroad and Beat Farmers silliness into it. (The Farmers’ semi-famously had a song, ‘Happy  Boy,’ featuring gargling, kazoos and ‘hubba hubba hubba’ in it.

Some critics liked it, others didn’t.

Benjamin Ray at Daily Vault Reviews  gave it a C- and said: You know how sometimes you hear a hit song and then pick up the album, hoping the rest of it is just as good? This is not one of the times where that happened.

Meanwhile, AllMusic gave ‘The Best of Focus’ four-and-a-half stars and said it could have used a little more “Moving Ways.”

Go figure, one person’s ‘more cowbell’ is another’s ‘less cowbell.’

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Ellen Foley — 474

 

ALBUM: The Spirit of St. Louis (1981)

Talk about an eclectic resume.

Foley went from Night Court to the Clash to Meatloaf.

She was an actor on the  popular American comedy show Night Court and has done other TV and Broadway.. She later became an item with Clash band member Mick Jones and provided vocal back-up on the album Sandinista (Hitsville UK was one)>

Jones wrote ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go.’ about  Ellen.

She put out a couple of her own albums including this one I have on vinyl. It’s an oddball assortment of pleasant sounding songs  with avant garde touches such as those in the Salvador Dali song. All Clash band members play on this but are so unobtrusive you can’t barely  tell. (Maybe they should have intruded more).

Far and away the best song on this albums is ‘The Shuttered Palace.’   which  opens the album flush with innuendo.

To the sons of Europe: won’t you come inside
My shuttered palace and I am the bride
Now I’m a woman, I walk past your café
To the sons of Europe, I call out and say

<Check video below.>

‘Torchlight’ backed  by the Clash was also good.

She later became known for  her duet (with the innuendo stripped off) on Meatloaf’s “Paradise By The Dashboard Light.’

If you can find this one in  a  used or bargain bin setting it’s worth at least $5.

 

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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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Father John Misty — 493

 

ALBUM: Pure Comedy (2017)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$$

Lot of things going on here. Josh Tillman           aka Father John Misty is a smart guy. I think he knows it.

Pure Comedy is a song that is near brilliant.

Tillman’s story in one sentence: The drummer of folk rock group Fleet Foxes took some psilocybin mushrooms a few years ago, became enlightened, started using a pseudonym, and began wearing better clothes.

Couple of anomalies to clear up before I go forward. The usual My Vinyl Countdown records are ones I picked in the 1970’s and 1980’s. I’ve been counting them down, 678 in all, to raise awareness of Lewy body dementia, which I have. I have about 500 records to go .

Pure Comedy breaks the mode a bit in that this is a 2017 vinyl recording that I received from family members who want to extend my life under the theory that the more I have the more time I have to live. And it is true that this disease shortens lifespans but that I have vowed to finish the reviews, which on my current pace will be about 2 or more years from now unless I accelerate.

So, anomaly one, this is contemporary. Not my golden 1980s — stop-making-synth records. I will review and countdown new vinyl, when I get it and have done  so at least two other times with Joseph Arthur and Max DeMarco.

I have some more coming up, including, I believe, the Fleet Foxes which connects to the Misty record here.

And, anomaly two, this double record set came with two of the same records – I got two side 3’s and side 4s. I did not get a side 1 and 2.  What the hell? It’s a factory packaging mistake that in no way makes it more valuable. So, I filled in the rest of this record by going on YouTube to listen to the songs I was missing, especially the title track, a key song here.

Opening line is one strong couplet, foreshadowing and outlining the album’s life-is-so-bad-it’s-funny themes. The  comedy of it all. The divine comedy of it all. Star.

The comedy of man starts like this; our brains are way too big for our mother’s hips.

But the album itself cannot stay at that high level and sinks slowly back into the primordial pool. To make this totally work, you would have to love the words so much to hang with this singer who is not working much in traditional pop structures. Dylan could be like that – so could early Billy Joel who went 180 degrees the other way later toward more formulaic derivative pop.

Would it be fair to say Tillman is somewhere between Billy Joel and Bob Dylan? Probably not. More like a day-glo Randy Newman.

But Tillman started something, by starting the album  in this way. He caused me  to be on alert for a real honest-to-God trailblazing singer-songwriter. The rest of the album didn’t tip me over though. So he is still on my ‘watch’ list. Update: I just watched/saw Misty’s ‘God’s Favorite Customer’ on  YouTube.  Excellent. Beautiful. I’m starting to tip. Then I watched ‘Mr.  Tillman video. Wow. Now I have to get this on vinyl  and put the new one on my countdown.

Back to Pure Comedy, here’s the opening that says it all and forecasts more:

The comedy of man starts like this; our brains are way too big for our mother’s hips.

And so nature, she divines this alternative:
We emerge half-formed and hope whoever greets us on the other end

Is kind enough to fill us in

And babies, that’s pretty much how it’s been ever since

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Steve Earle — 509

MVC Rating:  4.0/$$$

ALBUM: Guitar Town (1986)

I feel like this is one of those records I discovered. Before anybody else was hip to Steve Earle, I had this, his first album. ( A lot of people jumped in at Copperhead Road).

Of course I am being facetious. Earle’s star was growing with this first album. I have several other digital albums and Earle songs but I  certainly have a fondness for this vinyl LP.

But here’s a question that lingers with Earle: Was he authentic? Dumb question? But I get the sense sometimes that his songs and singing style were, let’s just say showing a lot of influences.

So that nags at me a little but truth his he plays good music. He  picks good songs to cover.. He sings well. And he writes well. Check out the title song from this album (below).

Gotta keep rocking while  I still can/ gotta 2-pack habit and a motel tan.

From Someday: There ain’t a lot that you can do in this town 
You drive down to the lake and then you turn back around 
You go to school and you learn to read and write 
So you can walk into the county bank and sign away your life 

Yep, small town southern living pretty much encapsulated.

And to argue with myself, aren’t we all a product of our influences?

As an artist you just don’t want to wear influences in such a way as to be a cover band or Elvis impersonator. It’s all in how  you synthesize the influences. Earle went on to record 15 albums after this one so he’s done well. And I don’t know if his addictions and jail time made him more authentic in his music but it certainly seems like it put the blues and the outlaw into his country-folk- rock sound.

. And I discovered him.

By the way if you are reading this and wondering where the numbers went on last couple of countdown posts, hang on. I’m trying to recalculate a couple of outliers and will have it up and counting soon.

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Dixie Dregs — 527

ALBUM: ‘What If.’ (1978)

MVC Rating:

4.0/$$

I have a story about the Dixie Dregs. Must have been around 1978 and I was hanging out with Catherine (my future bride), Rose and Carol in downtown Athens, Ga.

We were all high school buddies and happened to be walking past the Georgia Theatre when some folks were loading equipment from a truck into the theater. It was late afternoon.

We sidled, or at least the young women in the group sidled, over  and asked what’s up. They told us they were the Dixie Dregs and were playing that night.

The Dregs members and crew seemed quite chatty, though not to me. Anyway, with me way in the background, they invited ‘us’ to enjoy the show from the front row. (I think at this point they were holding the door open for Catherine, Rose and Carol and I had to practically dive through before it closed in my face.) Anyway free front row show and it was good. An all-instrumental funky band playing music that was hard to pigeon hole.

Ironically, earler that year I had won an award for best high school critical review with a write-up about Sea Level, an all instrumental offshoot of the Allman Brothers, playing the same venue. The award was from the University of Georgia Journalism Department.

Sea Level was playing at the grand opening of the Georgia Theatre as a concert venue. It used to be a movie theater. (It burned down in 2009, but I can attest  it has been re-built and is very much a go-to Athens, Ga. music venue, with the likes of Randall Bramblett and Chuck Leavell frequently playing.}

As for the Dregs’ music, it was musicianship at a high level. A little bit of Mahavishnu Orchestra, a little southern-fried rock, and some Pat Metheny, or Steve Howe-like jazzy guitar-based tunes.  As a guitarist, Steve Morse is about as respected by musicians as you can get.  Since 1994, he’s been lead guitarist for Deep Purple.  

He had big shoes to fill in Deep Purple where the guitar was once wielded by Ritchie Blackmore. Apparently, he has been well received in the group. This from Deep Purple’s website:

Morse brought a funkiness, a depth as guitarist and writer, an unparalleled fluidity as a soloist, a startling aptitude as foil to Lord, and an arsenal of influences – country, folk, jazz, what they’ve sadly labeled “fusion,” and an inherent understanding of blues-based riffs – that meshed effortlessly with the immaculate Glover-Paice sense of swing and Gillan’s seeming capacity to go anywhere at any time, full-throated and eyes ablaze.

On the Dregs’ 1978 album ‘What If,’ which I have, the instrumentals are easy to listen to and sound as if they could be soundtrack miniatures in a way. ‘Take it off the Top,’ the opening song,, sounds so familiar, kind of like a TV soundtrack (in the vein of Rockford Files).

I hate to call it fusion, as well, but the music certainly fuses jazz, blues, rock and some classical conceits into a very listenable sound synthesis. There’s a violin, organ, bass and drums all driven by Morse’s extraordinary guitar.

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.

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Donovan — 535, 534, 533

ALBUMS: The Real Donovan (1965  ); Hurdy Gurdy Man (1968); Barabajagal (1969).

MVC Ratings: Hurdy 4.5.$$$; The Real Donovan 3.5/$$$; Barabajal 4.0/$$$$

I am skipping ahead here only slightly in my alphabetical placement. I should be doing my Dire Straits and Bo Diddley and db’s before Donovan.

But in the previous post I compared up-and-comer Mac DeMarco to Donovan and since I brought him up, I figured  let’s review my three Donovan records before I get back to my not-so-strict alphabetization. At least we’re keeping it in the D’s.

If Donovan sounds interesting to you, I’d probably start with one of his several greatest hits albums. The three records I have cover most of his hits: Sunshine Superman, Hurdy Gurdy Man, Atlantis, Catch the Wind, Mellow Yellow and Colours to name the bigger hits.

The first song of the 1965 album is called Turquoise and it was what first made me  connect DeMarco’s style to Donovan. And from DeMarco, Salad Days, the title song, sounds like a whimsical Donovan song.

As for other comparisons, the Donovan song Atlantis with its repetitive singalong chorus could just as well have been an Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ song, had Donovan not done it 40-something years ago.

Donovan was born in Glasgow, Scotland and was a high school dropout and sort of wandering beach bum, according to his bio. His early work seemed heavily influenced by folk music and Bob Dylan. Although Donovan has said some of his songs that people say sound like Dylan were composed and recorded before Donovan even knew who Dylan was.

Donovan comparisons go only so far. Donovan isn’t or wasn’t as ‘chill’ as DeMarco, at least from what I hear on Salad Days. Donovan had some pretty heavy electric guitars in Sunshine Superman, Hurdy Gurdy Man, and Barabajagal to name some.

While DeMarco’s ‘lo-fi’ sound has just a tincture of psych, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck played on some of Donovan’s songs and  Donovan dove head-long into that 60s psych-o-melodics. (My word, just going to try it out for a while.)

And then there’s Mellow Yellow and the ‘electrical banana’ — yes he wrote that.

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Mac DeMarco –536

ALBUM: Salad Days (2014)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$$

Of course, I have to stifle a laugh when I hear an earnest young singer of 23 open the album with: ‘As I’m getting older, chip upon my shoulder.’

Mac DeMarco, who is now 27, says his ‘salad days are over.’

Well at 58 my lettuce wilted long ago.

Act your age, he says on the record. Not going to do it.

One thing, this Canadian is as mellow (maybe even yellow) as an old folkster.

I like him.

He’s got an updated Donovan style with a  little frost on it. That’s Donovan Leitch of Hurdy Gurdy man and Sunshine Superman fame. (See now I’m pulling my old man references — back to the 1960s, how about that! Donovan was charting 50 years ago). Also that’s Donovan of Mellow Yellow fame if you missed the reference above.

Donovan was kind of dismissed as a hopelessly helpless hippie at points in his career, a Dylan clone at other parts.  But he put out some great music.

Like Donovan, Mac does some spacey slow note-bending  guitar work. His words, despite my funning with them, are good. Production is immaculate. It’s that ethereal feel that reminds me of Donovan mixed with a little sleepy time jazz as you hear on Johnny’s Odyssey.

This is a new album, 2014.  My sister and her family gave me this one along with some others still yet to be reviewed. The idea being that if I keep my vow of counting down all my vinyl before I die of brain disease, she (and others) are extending my life by adding to my collection. I can’t argue with that, although I do have a lot of albums before I get to the Z’s!

Thanks for this one, nice gentle sound. DeMarco is a young person  with a wise heart. Just like my younger sister.