Reissued two-disc anthology of San Francisco legends
Legacy’s two-disc Essential collection is actually a re-branded reissue of the 1998 Hits release, reiterating the same 35-track lineup and including Ben Fong-Torres original liner notes. If you pop these discs in your computer’s CD drive, you’re even likely to have the cover image of Hits pulled up by your media player. The set remains a good overview of “the band that transformed with the times,†from Jefferson Airplane’s scene-leading San Francisco Sound recordings of the mid-to-late ‘60s, through Jefferson Starship’s inheritance and evolution, and the Kantner-less Starship’s full-face turn to radio-friendly pop. The musical, social and commercial distance traveled from the Airplane’s earthy psychedelic jams to the Starship’s synth-laden ballads is itself a monument to adaptability.
The seventeen Airplane selections cover all seven of the band’s first run albums (nothing from their 1989 self-titled reunion is included), along with the single-only “Have You Seen the Saucers.†A few of their lower charting singles are absent, but other than “Somebody to Love†and “White Rabbit,†the Airplane was never a Top 40 success, and so the additional album tracks are more telling. Missing are tracks with early Airplane vocalist Signe Anderson singing lead, and even more noticeable is the lack of live material. Performance was an essential element of the San Francisco scene, and no telling of the Airplane’s story is truly complete without the stage interplay of vocalists and instrumentalists. Follow-on purchases of 30 Seconds Over Winterland, Bless Its Pointed Little Head or the more recent 6-CD anthology of vintage tapes can fill that gap.
Though the Jefferson Starship name was employed for Kantner’s 1970 sci-fi concept album, Blows Against the Empire, a steady band wasn’t formed until four years later for 1974’s Dragon Fly. This set skips the former album and picks up with two songs (“Caroline†and “Ride the Tigerâ€) from the latter. Though Dragon Fly went gold (and hit #11 on the album chart), it was the group’s next release, Red Octopus, that marked their real commercial breakthrough. Topping the album chart, the album spun off the Top 5 single “Miracles†and introduced a band who would have a ten year run in the Top 40. Most of Jefferson Starship’s biggest hits are included here, missing only their Top 20 “Winds of Change.†All eight of the group’s first run studio albums are sampled here; their two reunion releases (1998’s Windows of Heaven and 2008’s Jefferson’s Tree of Liberty) are skipped.
Extraordinary, yet virtually unknown singer-songwriter Americana from 1973
A label as big as Columbia in the early ‘70s was bound to miss a few opportunities, even ones they’d signed, recorded and released. Such was the case for this 1973 rarity, the product of an Indiana singer-songwriter, the famous producer he engaged and the all-star studio band wrangled for the occasion. The singer-songwriter is the otherwise unknown Bill Wilson, the producer, who’d already helmed key albums for Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen, was Bob Johnston, and the band was a collection of Nashville legends that featured Charlie McCoy, Pete Drake and Jerry Reed. Wilson had made Johnston’s acquaintance by knocking on his door and naively asking to make a record; Johnston agreed to listen to one song, and by that evening, was in the studio with his unknown artist and hastily assembled band.
The record features a dozen original songs, and though released by Columbia, it was quickly lost in the wake of Clive Davis’ departure from the label (and reportedly a pot bust). The few copies that circulated disappeared before the album could even make an impression as a sought-after, long-lost treasure. It just vanished. It wasn’t until former Sony staffer Josh Rosenthal found a copy in a record store bargain bin that the title dug its way out of obscurity to this reissue. Johnston and Wilson never saw one another after their recording session, but Johnston was able to sketch out the album’s background. Wilson had landed in Austin after a stint in the Air Force, and found that Johnston had set up base there after leaving his position as a staff producer at Columbia. Wilson had some prior musical experience, singing and playing dobro in local bands, but it was as a singer-songwriter with a Southern edge, that he was compelled to make music.
Nineteen years as a country hit maker, minus a handful of hits
Martina McBride’s first two-disc collection (complementing earlier single-disc anthologies, Greatest Hits, Playlist and Hits and More) covers a lot of ground: nineteen years of recording, nine studio albums, twenty-nine Top 40 country hits (including five chart-toppers), nineteen crossover Top-100 pop hits, and numerous duets and tribute appearances. But even with such impressive statistics, there’s essential material missing, including ten charting sides, six of which were Top 40s and one (“There You Are†from 2000’s Emotion) was Top 10. Her climb to stardom is abbreviated by the omission of singles from her early albums, particularly three sides from Wild Angels (“Phones Are Ringin’ All Over Town,†“Swingin’ Doors†and “Cry on the Shoulder of the Roadâ€) that propelled McBride and Nashville into a much wider circle of fans. That said, what’s here paints a fair picture of how easily her music straddled tradition, modernity and pop.
Like others of her mid-90s class (which also included Trisha Yearwood, Faith Hill and Patty Loveless), McBride benefited from both a canny producer (Paul Worley, in her case) and a renaissance of quality Nashville songwriting. Early on she sang hits penned by Kostas (“Life #9â€), Gretchen Peters (“My Baby Loves Meâ€), Matraca Berg (“Wild Angels†and “Still Holding Onâ€), Paul Kennerley (“Heart Troubleâ€) and Pat Bunch (“Safe in the Arms of Loveâ€), threading a theme of empowerment through hits and album tracks like “Independence Day,†“A Broken Wing†and “This One’s for the Girls.†As Nashville crossed into the mainstream, so did some of McBride’s material and chart success; in addition to solo hits she found resonance with Jim Brickman (“Valentineâ€), Bob Seger (“Chances Areâ€) and Alan Jackson (“Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Manâ€). McBride’s stage singing (heard here in “Over the Rainbow,†drawn from 2003’s Martina) shows that her power, accuracy and emotion aren’t tied to the studio.
It’s no accident that this deluxe 4-CD set uses the word “Nuggets†in its title; this is an apt reference to Lenny Kaye’s landmark 1972 compilation of psychedelic and garage rock. An even better touchstone, however, is Bomp’s follow-on series of Pebbles releases, which dug deeper into the world of one-off local and indie releases. In that sense, Surf-Age Nuggets is the Pebbles (with a touch of Las Vegas Grind) to earlier anthologies of major label releases, hit singles and nationally-known acts. Producer James Austin (who previously helmed Rhino’s Cowabunga! The Surf Box), focuses here on the impossibly rare and ephemeral: obscure singles that barely managed local distribution, with just a hint of rarities from a couple of well-known names. The result is a magnificent musical essay on the scene that flourished in the wake of surf music’s brief rise to commercial popularity.
Dozens of earlier collections have explored this DIY wave, but never in the luxuriousness of this set. Not only are the discs stuffed with 104 tracks (including a sprinkle of period radio spots and a 16-minute bonus montage hidden at the end of disc four), but the collection is housed in a wide 11 x 6 hardcover with a 60-page book of liner, song and band notes, full-color photographs and reproductions of picture sleeves, posters, period ads, comics and other ephemera. Although the material was sourced primarily from early ‘60s vinyl, unlike the first-state (that is, pops-and-clicks intact) condition of many collections of vintage singles, mastering engineer Jerry Peterson worked some very special voodoo in cleaning up the digital transcriptions. The complete lack of surface noise is a bit eerie, but the results remain largely true to the powerhouse mono vibe of a vintage 45.
Period performances of Jack Kerouac with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims
Although Jack Kerouac was the “voice of his (beat) generation,†it was his his writing – rather than his speaking – voice that’s well-known. His three albums of spoken word poetry and prose, two from 1959 and one from 1960, received little circulation or critical notice upon their initial issue, and have only been spottily reissued ever since. Rhino’s 1990 box set The Jack Kerouac Collection included all three albums, as does the recent The Complete Collection, and individual album reissues have been available as imports. Rock Beat now adds domestic reissues of Kerouac’s first two albums (originally released on the indie Hanover-Signature label), Poetry for the Beat Generation and Blues and Haikus.
Where Poetry for the Beat Generation was an impromptu session with Steve Allen tinkling piano melodies behind Kerouac’s recitations, Blues and Haikus is more of a conversation between Kerouac and his accompanists, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. Rather than reciting across background music, Kerouac trades riffs with Cohn and Sims, each responding to the tone, rhythm and content of the other. Even Cohn’s piano sounds more responsive to Kerouac than did Allen’s improvised backings. Kerouac sounds more comfortable in this environment; as Gilbert Millstein’s original liner note suggest, this second effort is less tentative and more authoritative than Kerouac’s previous recorded outing. Kerouac even feels free enough to warble part of “Hard Hearted Old Farmer,†and his expressiveness transcends his limitations as a singer.
Period performances of Jack Kerouac reciting poems to the piano of Steve Allen
Although Jack Kerouac was the “voice of his (beat) generation,†it was his writing – rather than his speaking – voice that became well-known. His three albums of spoken word poetry and prose, two from 1959 and one from 1960, received little circulation or critical notice upon their initial issue, and have only been spottily reissued ever since. Rhino’s 1990 box set The Jack Kerouac Collection included all three albums, as does the recent The Complete Collection, and individual album reissues have been available off and on as imports. Rock Beat now adds domestic reissues of Kerouac’s first two albums (originally released on the indie Hanover-Signature label), Poetry for the Beat Generation and Blues and Haikus.
Poetry for the Beat Generation teams Kerouac with jazz pianist (and television personality) Steve Allen for fourteen poems, several of which were unpublished at the time. The album was inspired by an impromptu pairing of Kerouac and Allen atNew York’s Village Vanguard, and the subsequent single-take studio session lasted only an hour. Allen’s improvised backings are lyrical and nearly sentimental in their melodiousness, more background late-night tinkling than challenging bop. Kerouac’s recitations roam more freely, powered by the strength of his rhythmically riffed words. His poems are percussive stories that break through any regulation of punctuation, paragraph or stanza, and his New England-accented voice is animated and rye.
1985 spin-off album from the classic nighttime TV soap
The nighttime soap opera Dallas dates to an era before music coordinators ruled television soundtracks and used the network exposure to turn obscure indie bands into well-known music stars. Instead, a program’s soundtrack was the province of a composer (in the case of Dallas, it was Jerrold Immel) and spin-off albums were novelty byproducts of the show’s fame, often populated by the show’s cast (Donny Most, anyone?). The latter is the ticket on this 1985 release, featuring music purpose-written to the show’s themes, and starring cast members (Steve Kanaly, Howard Keel and Jenilee Harrison) alongside then-contemporary country stars Karen Brooks, Crystal Gayle, Gary Morris and Johnny Lee. With the show starting its slide down the ratings ladder, this could have been a quickie knock-off, but the productions are solid, and the songwriting is good.
The opening track offers a disco march arrangement of the show’s famous theme, and the cast tunes include Lorne Greene-like spoken efforts from Kanaly and Keel, and an unsteadily warbled double-tracked melody fromHarrison. Much better are the country stars, recorded inNashvilleby Scott Hendricks, produced by Jim Ed Norman and Barry Beckett, and featuring A-list studio players Eddie Bayers, John Hobbs, Paul Worley, Billy Joe Walker and others. Though the songs are linked to the show with subtitles like “Jock and Miss Ellie’s Song,†the lyrics aren’t specific, and play as smooth country. It’s a tribute to these vocalists that their vocals warm the chilly, synth-and-glycerin-guitar mid-80s production sound.
Short but well-picked introduction to Evans’ most fertile period
