There’s a YouTube video out there which isolates Entwistle playing bass on ‘Won’t get Fooled Again.’ It shows he really can play the hell out of the bass. One of the best of all time other musicians agree.
So, that’s a good way to listen to this album. If the song doesn’t grab you, or more likely, if the lyrics seem bad, — then listen for the bass and marvel at the bass runs. You do have Peter Frampton on this record, playing some nice lead guitar. And there are some good tuneful songs here that must have seemed much more intelligent to my 19-year-old ears then after 40 years of life experience after that.
I remember liking this album a lot more than I do now after three or four listens, For me in my now self, it is good but not at all the undiscovered gem that I thought I remembered. Alternatively, the Dave Davies solo stuff, another band member of a major group, stands up better over time. Such are the surprises when you pick through your past.
Maybe it’s songs like ‘I Feel Better’ and ‘Who Cares’ and which come across as angry break-up songs with not a shred of humor or, maybe, perspective.
From ‘I Feel Better,’ ‘You can’t keep an animal that ain’t been tamed, you didn’t even know the fellow’s name.’
‘Who Cares‘ is one that if you ignore the lyrics, the bass and guitar interplay is pretty amazing as the song does a long fade.
From ‘Thinking it Over’ he sings: “Thinking it over I decided not to worry, I decided to take my own life.’
Dark and funny I appreciate. Dark and not funny is, well dark.
I pulled this out of the collection and couldn’t recall a song on it but had the feeling that I used to like this. Ely, pronounced Eeelee, is a Texas roots rocker who was once good friends with Joe Strummer and played with the Clash.
Great guitar player, good songwriter and club-disciplined live performer.
He defies classification. That said, I wish I had more of his records. Hi-Res is good but has a little bit of that 1980s over production veneer. Songs of notice: ‘What’s Shakin’ Tonight,’Cool Rockin’ Loretta,’ and probably my favorite ‘Letter to Laredo,’ which has some nasty guitar licks, and also some not-so -nasty Duane Eddy-like bass string ‘twang’ reverberation.
According to Wikipedia, which I am careful with, Ely toured with the Clash, ultimately performing together in Ely’s hometown of Lubbock, Texas. The Clash even name checked Ely in their song ‘If Music Could Talk’ off of the Clash’s Sandinista. Ely was preparing to record with Strummer when the Clash front man died.
Here’s from ‘Laredo:’
As I was rolling across the Mississippi, I stopped there and I cried, no use for a man to keep a mighty river all dammed up inside
I jumped bail from Sweetwater County, now I’m on the run, on my head is a five-number bounty, for a crime I never done.
Take this letter to Laredo to the one I love, tell her to stay low, beneath the stars above, her love is my only alibi, it’s for her love I lied
Ah, rock and roll. Smooth unfiltered like good Kentucky bourbon. It’s Berry DIddley and for Everley Buddy Lee Lewis.
(Well that last sentence sort of belies the unfiltered description. Maybe filtered just right like Marlboro Lights? Not so good but I am deviating again.)
I picked up on Dave Edmunds from the group Rockpile’s ‘Seconds of Pleasure,’ which is similar to this best-of (although Rockpile is better). It is just rock and roll with Edmunds, and when Lowe was involved, there were some great lyrics to go with the three or four chords.
Dave is primarily a cover singer. Here he does Crawling from the Wreckage’, a Graham Parker song and John Fogerty’s ‘Almost Saturday Night’ and Elvis Costello’s ‘Girls Talk.’ And he covers his buddy Lowe, or does he expose himself?
Nick and Dave lent a hand in Carlene Carter’ very good album ”Musical Shapes,’ which has an Edmunds-Carter duet that seemed very friendly.
And Nick married Carlene.
And Nick wrote the song “I Knew the Bride (When she used to Rock and Roll).
And Dave Edmunds covered the song, coming up with what most say is the definitive version. Nick recorded several versions to lesser success than the Edmund’s.
Carlene and Nick divorced.
Subject for further research: the timeline that the above happened.
Sample lyrics.
Take a look at the bridegroom smilin’ pleased as pie Shakin’ hands all around with a glassy look in his eye He got a real good job and his shirt and tie is nice But I remember a time when she would never even look him twice
So there’s the yellow bird flying free having babies and I have the yellow vinyl.
It’s a yellow record called ELO OLE, an early greatest hits album from the multimillion selling supergroup the Electric Light Orchestra. The yellow disc and ELO’s ‘Out of the Blue’ album are my NP (Now Playing) portion of my column.) I will follow this NP with five records culled from deeper in my blog. Overall, since last September I have reviewed 169 records on the way to 678. It’s all to bring awareness to Lewy body dementia, which I have. On with the Yellow Vinyl.
I recollect that it was approximately 1978 in Athens, Ga., when the local AM radio station, WRFC I believe, asked for caller number something would get this record. I called and I got it. I’ve opened it and have played it just a few times, left the shrink wrap on because thought it was special.
It was a promotional DJ copy and it is a little rare. Worth about $60 in this great condition, according to my perusal of the Internet. It’s good music too (as a bonus).
Jeff Lynne and ELO wanted to make music that combined grand symphonic features and flourishes. They fancied themselves taking up where the Beatles left off in such pieces as ‘A Day in the Life’ or ‘Magical Mystery Tour.’
And they did well. This yellow disc compilation of early ‘hits’ is a fascinating look at how the group was blending orchestral instruments with rock and roll. You can almost hear them testing the waters with OLE. On ‘10538 Overture’ and ‘Kuiama’, they are very much in ‘prog’ rock territory. Cellos and violins and synthesizers sweep around on various floors of this musical building. As the album progresses you can guess where this group is headed: Hitsville baby.
I got proof of that in my other ELO album, ‘Out of the Blue,’ which was a two-record worldwide hit that seemed to spawn endless amounts of Top 40 hits.
Now there’s no question these guys were good at what they did – but they couldn’t ever really get the respect? Was it an Eagles thing I’ve addressed before? Or like Dire Straits, they just got so big they weren’t ‘cool’ any more? Again. I say it’s an undeserved lack of respect. They sell multimillions of records by being bad? Like Yogi Berra said, nobody goes there anymore it’s too crowded. That said, they started going for the pop life about the same time I was moving away from it. So songs like ‘Strange Magic,’ though catchy, is not something I’d choose on a jukebox. ‘’Boy Blue,’ maybe.
Addressing this lack of respect issue I can’t help but remember this unfortunate moment about ELO. At the George Harrison tribute concert, a band of superstars commenced playing ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps.’ Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and their respective band members, and Harrison’s son, Dhani Harrison. Anyway, the ELO guitarist is just jamming away, soloing, picking, doing a pretty good job.
Then Prince emerges from the other side of the stage. Prince had reportedly left the rehearsal of the song in a huff, fired his sound guy, so there was a lot of uncertainty what if anything Prince’s performance would be.
Here’s description from a New York Times story:
The Petty rehearsal was later that night. And at the time I’d asked him to come back, there was Prince; he’d shown up on the side of the stage with his guitar. He says hello to Tom and Jeff and the band. When we get to the middle solo, where Prince is supposed to do it, Jeff Lynne’s guitar player just starts playing the solo. Note for note, like Clapton. And Prince just stops and lets him do it and plays the rhythm, strums along. And we get to the big end solo, and Prince again steps forward to go into the solo, and this guy starts playing that solo too! Prince doesn’t say anything, just starts strumming, plays a few leads here and there, but for the most part, nothing memorable.
So when the real thing went down, some didn’t even know Prince was playing.
More NYT: The group featured Tom Petty and two other members of the Heartbreakers, as well as Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood, Dhani Harrison (George’s son) and Prince, himself an inductee that year. Marc Mann, a guitarist with Mr. Lynne’s band, played Eric Clapton’s memorable solo from the album version of the song. But Prince, who essentially stood in the dark for most of the performance, burned the stage to the ground at the song’s end.
The ELO guy didn’t know what hit him. Probably still doesn’t. Petty’s mouth hung open. Harrison’s son shook his head with a huge smile.
This Lindsey Buckingham-produced album is a perfect cutout. High expectations for this. It had one ‘hit.’ A couple of good songs. The rest, fodder.
Plus it had a big portrait of the artist’s face on the cover, similar to the cover of a Buckingham solo project I reviewed here.
The hit was ‘Magnet and Steel’ which sounded nice — the whole album had high production values but the analogy?
‘You are the magnet and I am the steel.’
Two albums, two different people. but you think Lindsey Buckingham (L) who produced Walter Egan’s album, and Egan went to the same photographer for cover shoot>
Really? I’m trying to quit the use of ‘Really? But really? Go away simplistic and utterly useless metaphor. It conjures up scenes from a car junkyard with that big old magnet thing coming down from crane: Whomp, I am the magnet, you are the crumpled up steel that used to be a car. How about you are the honey I am the bee, or, bear, or, you are the pile, I am the fly. OK being gross. But didn’t any one of his Fleetwood Mac buddies say anything?
I was a senior in HS. I remember going what? Sounded like a TV show. Tonight’s episode of “Magnet and Steel’ will see our crack detectives solve another crime and then come together like, well, “Magnet and Steel.”
If this is a sexual reference as I saw one commenter suggest, then this critique may be a little harsh, in other words, at least it has a two-level meaning for ‘steel.’
Now there are a couple of songs I do like. ‘Make it Alone’ is good stuff. Hard riff, break-up song, guitar driven. ‘Hot Summer Nights‘ was on the radio momentarily. My favorite though is ‘Just the Wanting,’ a torrid little piece of a love song with one-bended guitar string all the way through. (see video below)
Neuroscience says this one song reduces anxiety by 65 percent
Given the venom I’ve seen spewed toward the Eagles, I’d guess it’s not ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling.’
I don’t know the science behind it but I do know music has helped me tremendously in my fight against Lewy body dementia, a degenerative brain disease (cousin of Parkinson’s).
I can think of lots of records/songs that help me relax, like George Winston or the soundtrack to Local Hero or some Miles Davis. Catherine, my spouse, has CDs specifically designed to help her meditate and relax
So what about this one song Hack Spirit is telling us about?
The website writes: A team of UK neuroscientists conducted a study on sound therapy. Participants had to attempt to solve puzzles, which induced stress, while wearing sensors attached to their bodies. They then had to listen to different songs while researchers measured brain activity and recorded their heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, reports Inc.com and Ideapod.
According to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, which conducted the research, the top track to produce a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date was “Weightless” by Marconi Union.
Well, I listened to the song and it sounded like the quieter parts of a Pink Floyd album. You know where they just drift off into a low rhythm space. It’s just like that — though at any moment I expect to hear David Gilmore’s guitar phase in. Tangerine Dream might be another reference point for you aging Baby Boomer rockers.
I did feel relaxed and almost felt like a nap after listening to ‘Weightless’
Kind of cool. If you’re feeling extra stressed Hacker Spirit has found nine more sleep inducing tunes and have posted them on their site hackspirit.com, including one by Adele and one by Coldplay.
I remember exactly why I got this record but not where.
Earl Slick played guitars on one of my all time favorite albums, Tonio K’s ‘Life in the Foodchain.’ The wall of guitar sound on songs like the title song are amazing. Of course that album also had legendary surf rock guitar player Dick Dale, and country guitar great Albert Lee, among others, so that was a good picking group.
The Slick album is fairly generic hard rock. Kind of like Bad Company without the great hooks, or UFO without the in-your-face blasts of metal guitar.
But Slick can play.
Some of his solos mid-song really made me sit up and listen. As a guitar fan,I will keep this record out and play it some more.
I could definitely hear that distinct wailing guitar sound he contributed to Foodchain. (Dale I believe contributed the clucking chicken guitar noise to Foodchain’s ‘Funky Western CIvilization.’)
Slick played on several tours with David Bowie and also worked with John Lennon post-Beatles.
The unusual thing about the Slick’s record, ‘Razor Sharp,’ and probably one of the things that pushed me to buy it is it’s odd cover.
It has a three dimensional depiction of a razor blade with what is obviously supposed to be blood dripping and a slit, an actual slit, in the front cover as if the razor had made it. (See the pictures).
Every Saturday I post a round-up of this blog for readers of AL.com
Here’s this week’s top of the story. Click on link at bottom to read full piece.
It’s Saturday and time for my vinyl countdown AL.com update.
I have five artists here taken from my collection of 678 records, which I am trying to count down (review and list) before my degenerative brain disease makes it impossible. I have so far reviewed more than 150 records on myvinylcountdown.com blog. I encourage you to explore that blog for the countdown plus essays on life, journalism, basketball and whatever might be on my mind.
But every Saturday I do a catch-up, reaching back into the archives, for those who may not be following my blog regularly, and offering up condensed versions of those on my blog. Today I have five widely divergent records (remember I collected these in the ‘1970s and 1980s when I was in my teens and 20s.) As regular readers know I also do a NP (Now Playing) to show the latest reviewed piece.
In the Kurtis Blow review I recall an incident that inspired my headline: Lesson in racial profiling.
The numbers represent where the albums are in the alphabetical, descending countdown format. In other words 678 would be the first record I reviewed (King Sunny Ade, whose A-name put him first in line).
ALBUM: The Easybeats ‘Friday on My Mind’ (1985, compilation)
MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$
I can’t quite figure out the Easybeats, the 60’s-era band from Australia. This could be framed as a tale of two videos by the Aussie band, one bad beyond redemption, one amazing beyond compare. But more on that later.
Billed as Australia’s answer to the Beatles, they had two truly great songs: ‘Friday on My Mind” and ‘Good Times’ are rock songs that rank among the best, dare I say, or at least in the better category in our historical referencing language. ‘Friday’ is No. 726 on Dave Marsh’s list of the top 1001 songs of all time. Looking at that list, which I have in the form of an actual 1989 book, I’d move ‘Friday” up and put ‘Good Times,’ which isn’t even on the list, higher than Friday or at least on par.
‘Good Times’ probably loses points for inane lyrics, but the old film footage of the band doing this song has rock screamer lead vocalist Stevie Wright doing a flying knee drop at the right time. Not to be missed although the singing doesn’t always match the lips, if you know what I mean.
In the pantheon of rock songs, these two songs are hanging out at Itchycoo Park. (Damn that’s bad writing). But that Small Face pantheon, er, or park is not a bad place to be. OK let me just say it. Good Times wins by sheer force of it balls-out music and singing. Friday wins by capturing in words and music the powerful promises of an upcoming weekend.
But still it’s hard, as I said earlier, to understand this band, which is later linked to AC/DC through band members George Vanda and Harry Young. Young was the older brother of Angus and Malcolm of AC/DC and were connected to that group through songwriting and production work. I’ll have more about V&Y when I review Flash and the Pan, a bizarre Vanda and Young project that generated several albums.
Back to the Easybeats. My main issue is that as good as those two songs are, I expected more hidden gems on this greatest hits albums. Instead I wander through what sounds like early Kinks outtakes or Dave Clark Five b-sides. Sounds like the band came unglued, torn between a hard-rocking psychedelic-tinged sound (Heaven and Hell) and hitsmakers a la early era Beatles thing (She’s So Fine.)
Their version of the much covered ‘River Deep/Mountain High’ is decent enough. I don’t know what to think of ‘Heaven and Hell’ whose title and lyrics got it banned in some places. It’s riveting in a rendition done on French TV but riveting in that your frozen in place if this could be heaven or this could be hell.
‘Come and See Her,’ which is not on the album fortunately but is captured on YouTube is inexplicably bad. What are they doing? I can barely watch it. Is this the band that has a live performance of ‘Good Times’ which I think is one of the best rock songs of that era. (INXS covered it years later, but the song never got the notice it deserved). Maybe it was all too easy. Easy fever.
Here’s their most popular song:
So two videos. One hideous and one brilliant. Either way, enjoy them here:
Worst video.
Did you catch the young woman dancing in the background at the end? She appeared to have pulled her arms out of the socket or something. Anyway, here’s what I think is their best rock song (performance). CLICK HERE.
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.
ight Orchestra. The yellow disc and ELO’s ‘Out of the Blue’ album are my NP (Now Playing) portion of my column.) I will follow this NP with five records culled from deeper in
