Monthly Archives: January 2011

Kate Jacobs: Home Game

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A warm, musical letter from home

The girlishness in Kate Jacobs’ voice has always been perplexing. She sounds relaxed navigating the bossa-nova of “On My Monitor,” gliding along Astrud Gilberto-cool as she recounts the news of a young girl’s abduction; the everydayness of her delivery underlines the bland reaction one develops to the incessant nature of Internet-delivered instant alerts. Only at song’s end, as Jacob recoils from the constant provocation, does she react. But her reaction is to the news assault rather than the human one. Her own children take center stage for “All the Time in the World” and the album’s title track, but though her words of those of a mother, her voice retains its young tone. She continues to sound youthful as she cranks up the Kirsty MacColl-styled pop-rock “Make Him Smile,” and slides into the role of a jazz chanteuse for the ballad “A Sligo Lad.”

Six years since her last album, itself the product of a six-year hiatus during which she married and had children, Jacobs wrestles with the plenty of family life and the absence of solitary time, mutual attraction that doesn’t live up to the storybooks, and the ways in which children make time both stop and race. She’s a keen observer of her own life, dearly missing her years as a touring musician in “Rey Ordonez,” wistfully remembering the contrast of a cramped touring van and the imagination’s space of a baseball game on the radio. She recounts the joys and trials of parenting and marriage, but most deeply savors the rest that finally comes at the end of the day. Her longtime musical partner, Dave Schramm, adds blossoming notes of dobro, and surrounds Jacobs’ with guitars, drums, strings and backing vocals that turn her lyrics into a warm letter from a dear friend. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Rey Ordonez
Kate Jacobs’ Home Page

Soul Clan: Soul Clan

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Legendary soul men cut one strong single as a quintet

Soul Clan – Solomon Burke, Arthur Conley, Don Covay, Ben E. King and Joe Tex – turned out to be more of a concept than a working concern. They waxed only one single as a group, pairing the Southern-styled “Soul Meeting” with the gospel-influenced “That’s How it Feels,” leaving their 1969 album to be filled out with two solo sides apiece. It’s a great set, highlighted by Conley’s transcendent “Sweet Soul Music,” but the two collaborative sides leave you wondering what might have been, if Atco could have coordinated more sessions together. Those with deep collections of the individual performers can now snag the two Soul Clan collaborations as individual digital downloads. Collector’s note: despite the stereo cover art, Rhino’s digital reissue is mono. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Frankie Lymon: Rock ‘n’ Roll

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Teenager steps out for 1958 solo debut

After two successful years fronting the Teenagers, vocalist Frankie Lymon stepped into a surprisingly unsuccessful solo career with this fine 1958 studio album. Having lost his childhood soprano to adolescence, his 16-year-old voice still had plenty of punch, and continued to leap from the grooves. His out-of-breath delivery of “Waitin in School” has an adolescent everything-is-happening-at-once fervor that Ricky Nelson’s cool-cat style didn’t match. It doesn’t hurt to have an ace guitar player – Mickey Baker, perhaps – tearing thing up in the breaks. Producers Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore double the vocals on “Wake Up Little Suzie,” creating a more saucy mood than the Everly’s original, and though covers of the Rays’ “Silhouettes” and the Coasters’ “Searchin’” aren’t particularly inspiring, there’s still plenty here to impress. Lymon’s adolescence adds a note of sweet longing to Nat King Cole’s “Send for Me,” and the R&B “Next Time You See Me” and “Short Fat Fanny” give Lymon a chance to really wail. Most impressive are original approaches to “Jailhouse Rock” and “Diana” that pay each song its due without imitating the hits. Several of these tracks were released as singles, but none had the success of the early Teenagers’ sides; worse, with a heroin habit eating away his abilities, Lymon was dropped by Roulette in 1961. He’d record a few sides for other labels, but this album and a handful of non-LP singles for Roulette (that should have been included here as bonus tracks) represents the end of Lymon’s run as a bright thread in the rock ‘n’ roll tapestry. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

RIP John Barry

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Five-time Oscar-winning composer John Barry has passed away at the age of 77. Barry is best known for his scores for numerous James Bond films, including the contested authorship of the series’ theme. Though a court awarded credit for the iconic theme to Monty Norman, Barry remained associated with the work throughout his life. More impressively, he authored signature music for dozens of films, including Born Free, Midnight Cowboy, The Lion in Winter, Somewhere in Time, Out of Africa, Body Heat, and Chaplin. Starting in the late ’50s he also wrote pop-jazz for his own John Barry Seven, producing singles and albums, such as Stringbeat, and teaming with vocalist Adam Faith for songs in the film Beat Girl. Many of Barry’s film scores are available on CD and for download, and you can find a sampler of his work on The Best of John Barry and the multidisc John Barry: The Collection.

The Litter: Live at Mirage 1990

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Legendary ‘60s garage rockers reunite for a 1990 live date

Twenty years after these ‘60s garage-punk legends packed it in, they got back together to play a one-off live gig at a club in their native Minneapolis. Reaching back past their hard- and psych-rock evolution to their punk-rock roots, the group, with original lead vocalist Denny Waite in fine voice, launches their reunion with the signature “Action Woman,” and then reels off a string of well-picked period covers, including British Invasion titles from the Who, Small Faces, Yardbirds, Zombies and Spencer Davis Group, and blues tunes from Otis Rush and Mose Alison. The band plays tight, hard and loud, just as you might imagine they did in 1967 when their first album, Distortions, was released. This sounds more like a talented, stylish and well-rehearsed cover band than aging garage-rockers reliving their glory years. It’s no “Substitute” for the band’s original albums, particularly the debut, but it’s a nice coda to their career. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

See The Litter perform “Action Woman”

The Flamin’ Groovies: Slow Death

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The Flamin’ Groovies’ wilderness years (1971-73)

These ten tracks help fill in the five year gap between Roy Loney’s departure from the Flamin’ Groovies in 1971 (following the release of Teenage Head) and the band’s re-emergence in a Cyril Jordan-led configuration with the Dave Edmunds-produced Shake Some Action in 1976. In between the band took on singer/guitarist Chris Wilson and released the song “Slow Death” in 1972. It turns out that they recorded several more demos, including several Jordan-Wilson originals and a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash,” as heard on this collection’s first six tracks. Everyone turned up their instruments to eleven and thrashed, the bass was moved forward, the drums pushed the tempos, and the guitars and cymbals created an ear-piercing wall of sound that Chris Wilson still managed to break through with his high pitched wailing. A cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” is drawn from a 1972 live television appearance, and another pair of demos include an early version of the group’s iconic “Shake Some Action” that features layered acoustic guitar and more Byrd-like harmony vocals than the better-known album track. The disc closes with a loud and loose cover of Freddie Cannon’s “Tallahassee Lassie,” recorded at the same Rockfield Studio in which the band would later record their mid-70s classics. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Bobby Wayne: Big Guitar

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Twangin’ early-60s boogie-woogie from the Northwest

Bobby Wayne remains a rather obscure country and rockabilly guitarist, despite his prolific release schedule in the early ‘60s. Originally from Spokane, Wayne spent time as a youth in California and Atlanta, and it was during this latter stay, as a teenager in 1955, that he picked up the rockabilly style. Returned once again to Spokane, he played the clubs of the Northwest and eventually hooked up with Jerry Dennon and his Jerden record label. Beginning in 1963, Wayne released a string of singles, including a number of instrumentals anthologized on this 1964 LP. He was a talented picker whose twangy tone showed his original grounding in country music, but whose energy and rhythms were heavily indebted to boogie-woogie, as heard on his “Bobby’s Boogie #1.” If you like the twang of Duane Eddy, Carl Perkins or Chet Atkins, you might like to check out Bobby Wayne; for his rockabilly sides (such as “Sally Ann,” featured below), check the Sundazed EP ’55 Spokane Rockabilly. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Bobby Wayne at the Rockabilly Hall of Fame

Jack Nitzsche: The Lonely Surfer

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Solo debut of legendary pop arranger

Producer, arranger, soundtrack composer and songwriter Jack Nitzsche had only brief chart fame under his own name, with the title track of this album having reached #39 on the singles chart in 1963. But it was under the names of the Crystals, Ronettes, Ike & Tina Turner, the Rolling Stones and dozens of others that his memorable arrangements, orchestrations, and in the case of the Seachers’ “Needles and Pins,” songs, had their most significant impact on the pop market. For his full album follow-up to the fluke hit single, Nitzsche penned a handful of original tunes and charted new orchestrations for pop standards and movie themes, including a swinging run at Elmer Bernstein’s theme from “The Magnificent Seven” and a dramatic rendering of “More,” the theme from Mondo Cane. He borrows his own hook from “Needles and Pins” for the Mexicali-tinged “Puerto Vallarta,” and the string line of “Theme for a Broken Heart” seems to be drawn from Jagger & Richards’ “Blue Turns to Grey.” There’s plenty of low twanging baritone guitar and tympani throughout, demonstrating Nitzsche’s mastery of weaving together pop and orchestral elements. Apart from the title track, a cover of Lee Hazlewood’s “Baja” (which was a contemporaneous hit for the Astronauts), and the bass-twanging “Beyond the Surf,” there’s nothing here that really even feints towards surf music. The album closes with a morose arrangement of “Da Doo Ron Ron” so deeply at odds with the joy of the Crystals’ hit single as to be virtually unrecognizable. This is a pleasant album of orchestral pop, but other than the title track, not nearly as memorable as Nitzsche’s arrangements for Spector and others. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Jack Nitzsche Tribute Page

Various Artists: Today’s Top Girl Groups, Vol. 1

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1998 sampler of international lo-fi, punk and girlgroup sounds

After several Rock Don’t Run volumes [1 2 3] of mostly male bands, Spinout collected sixteen girl groups for this 1998 release. But other than Sit ‘n’ Spin’s note-perfect homage to the sixties, this is more punk rock than girl group. There’s primitive Merseybeat from Japan’s Pebbles and 5,6,7,8s, buzzing post-punk from San Francisco’s Poontwang, Ramones-like intensity from The Neanderdolls and Bobbyteens, and garage rock from Holly Golightly and Greece’s Meanie Geanies. The Neptunas give a swinging instrumental surf spin to Max Frost & the Trooper’s “Shapes of Things to Come,” the Friggs’ drum-and-guitar heavy “Juiced Up” brings to mind the late, lamented Pandoras, and the Maybellines’ Bo Diddley beat was studied at the feet of the Strangeloves. Best of all, though, is the drums-bass-and-grunting of the Godzillas’ “Pass the Hatchet.” If the Litter had made soundtrack music for the softcore porn scene of an AIP cheapie film, it would have, if we were lucky, sounded like this track. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Wanda Jackson: The Party Ain’t Over

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Jack White overwhelms a still-fiery Wanda Jackson

It’s a mark of Wanda Jackson’s enduring vocal fire that the uniqueness of her voice can be heard through the bombast with which producer Jack White has surrounded her. As on her earliest recordings, Jackson’s voice hangs half-way between girlish and womanly, the giggle of the former adding to the experience of the latter. But track after track, Jackson’s dwarfed by White’s production, overwhelming her substantial charms with cacophonous outbursts and circus-band theatrics that shrink, rather than magnify the vocalist’s stature. The horns sound like a drunk commandeering the microphone at a wedding, hailing themselves rather than punctuating the emotion of Jackson’s vocals. The voice processing sounds cold and artificial and White’s guitar, particularly on covers of “Shakin’ All Over” and “Nervous Breakdown,” sounds more like a Woodstock freakout than something to complement the queen of rockabilly. White finally gives in on the closing cover of Jimmie Rodgers “Blue Yodel #6,” dismissing the band, pulling out his acoustic, and giving both his guitar playing and Jackson’s impassioned vocal some room to roam. Jack White’s fans may very well love this album, as it seems to be more about him than about his vocalist. With any luck this will lead new listeners to Jackson’s magnificent catalog (check out Ace’s Queen of Rockabilly for an overview of her rockin’ side); those who joined the bandwagon decades ago may find the basic four-piece on her previous album, I Remember Elvis, the all-star salute of Heart Trouble, or Jackson’s earlier reintroduction on Rosie Flores’ Rockabilly Filly, more to their liking. The rock ‘n’ roll combos of these earlier albums generate more excitement – by shining their light on Jackson – than White does with more players and higher volume. Wanda Jackson’s still got it, but Jack White doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Wanda Jackson’s Home Page