Country, folk, bluegrass and blues from talented Texas songsmith
Owen Temple’s last album, Dollars and Dimes, took its concept from the socio-political ideas of Joel Garreau’s The Nine Nations of North America. Temple wrote songs that explored the regional ties of work and cultural belief that often transcend physical geography, zeroing in on the life issues that bind people together. With his newest songs, he’s still thinking about people, but individuals this time, catching them as a sociologist would in situations that frame their identity in snapshots of hope, fear, prejudice, heroism, and the shadows of bad behavior and disaster. As on his previous album, his songs are rooted in actual places – isolated communities that harbor dark secrets and suffocating intimacy, a deserted oil town lamented as a lost lover, a legendary red-light district, and the Texas troubadours in whose footsteps he follows. The album’s lone cover, Leon Russell’s “Prince of Peace,†is offered in tribute to a primary influence.
The genuine artistry of this album is a lot more clear thirty-six years distance from its 1975 release. With the bright lights of Cassidy’s teen idolatry having faded, the album can be viewed on its merits, and is left to stand on its own as a truly terrific pop statement. Still, part of what makes it so interesting is the relief of Cassidy’s earlier work and the infusion of his hard-won artistic freedom. These are the sounds of an artist finally charting his own musical course, rather than a pawn buffeted by the demands of his young fans and the needs of his record company. Freed from his post-Partridge Family contract with Bell, Cassidy moved to RCA where he was paired with Beach Boy Bruce Johnston as producer. Johnston delivered Cassidy first crack at “I Write the Songs,†and though the single was a chart-topper in the UK, it was withheld in the US in favor of Barry Manilow’s subsequent hit.
The failure to market “I Write the Songs†is only one of the label’s misfires, as the album’s superb take on the Beach Boys’ late-60s hit “Darlin’†was also allowed to flounder without a proper push. Cassidy’s originals – he wrote or co-wrote half the album’s songs – are more mature than the things he’d written for his earlier albums, and the demise of his teen idol fame provides introspective grist for the songwriter’s mill. Johnston provides sophisticated, varied and dramatic arrangements that are substantially more soulful than Cassidy had been previously afforded, and the singer rises to the challenge with strong vocals that shed the bubblegum style he’d adopted for the Partridge Family. Among the album’s most startling moments is a take on Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula†that’s surprisingly fresh and original.
In celebration of International Pop Overthrow’s twentieth anniversary, and in memory of the group’s late leader Jim Ellison, Hip-O select has issued this greatly expanded version of Material Issue’s first full length release. By the time the record dropped in 1991, Material Issue had been together nearly six years, had issued an EP and a few singles, and had toured extensively throughout their native Midwest. The album itself was recorded in Zion, Illinois, the home of another great power-pop band, Shoes, and produced by Shoes’ Jeff Murphy. IPO fit well in a year that was dotted with key power-pop albums from Matthew Sweet (Girlfriend), Teenage Fanclub (Bandwagonesque), Velvet Crush (In the Presence of Greatness), Adam Schmitt (World So Bright) and Richard X. Heyman (Hey Man!).
The album sold nationwide, launching a video for “Diane†on MTV’s 120 Minutes and pushing “Valerie Loves Me†into the top ten of Billboard’s modern rock chart. The group completed two more albums and toured heavily, but never recaptured either the bittersweet poignancy of IPO, or its commercial success. Ellison committed suicide in 1996 amid rumors of romantic and artistic disillusion, but he left behind an album that captures the very core of power pop: melodies whose hooks resound with the craft of the Brill Building and lyrics whose heart-on-sleeve emotion drew a map of joy, heartbreak, anticipation, angst, satisfaction and disappointment.
The world of song-poems is one in which an amateur songwriter’s lyric (or “song-poemâ€) is run through a music mill’s assembly line of melody, arrangement, performance and recording. The result is a stack of singles, albums, cassettes or CDs delivered to the aspiring songsmith, and not much else. These are vanity recordings for which the recording company has no marketing plan and no expectation of profit beyond the few hundred dollars “seed money†paid by the lyricist. A deep underground of song-poem collectors have churned out album compilations [1234] and websites like the American Song-Poem Music Archives, that collect the best (and the best of the worst) records and shine some much deserved light on the industry’s more interesting characters.
The genre’s unparalleled superstar is Rodd Keith, an arranger, musician and vocalist whose productions often managed to transcend the banal lyrics with which he had to work. Keith recorded under a number of aliases, including this album’s Rod Rogers. This full-length LP appears to be a vanity recording, but it’s not entirely clear for whom. The bulk of the songs are credited to combinations of Jones, Riley and Vandenburg. Bandleader Travis Jay Jones is also listed as the president of the record label, Planet Earth, itself a division of Travis Jay Jones Enterprises. So one might guess that Jones was the recording mill’s proprietor, and Riley was the funding songwriter; or Jones was the songwriter and Riley or Vandenburg were the arrangers. In a large sense it doesn’t matter, as part of the charm of song-poem records is their everyman anonymity.
Brilliant video additions to Simon & Garfunkel’s studio swan song
Simon and Garfunkel’s fifth and final studio album marked their commercial peak. Though many fans find the previous album, Bookends, to be the apex of the duo’s artistic creativity, it’s hard to think of another pop act that exited with a success comparable to this album and its title track. Despite Garfunkel’s initial reservation, “Bridge Over Troubled Water†made good on Simon’s feeling that it was the best song he’d ever written, topping the Hot 100 for six weeks and winning Grammy awards for song and record of the year. Though the recording is deeply tied to Garfunkel’s brilliant vocal performance, the composition spawned dozens of successful covers, including Aretha Franklin’s Grammy-winning R&B chart-topper and Buck Owens’ Top 10 single. In the 1970s it became a staple in Elvis Presley’s stage show, and cover versions continue to be recorded to this day, with a live version from the 2010 Grammys having charted, and the television show Glee having featured the song the same year.
But the title song is far from the album’s only jewel. With Garfunkel away for the better part of 1969 filming Catch 22, Simon was left to work alone, and apparently consider a post-Garfunkel career. “The Only Living Boy in New York City†and “Why Don’t You Write Me†are easily heard to be contemplations of Simon’s isolation, while “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright†includes the telling lyric “so long Frank Lloyd Wright, all of the nights we harmonized ‘til dawn,†an allusion seemingly tied to Garfunkel’s study of architecture at Columbia. The seeds of Simon’s multicultural solo career can be heard in the Peruvian flute of “El Condor Pasa (If I Could),†broad rhythm instrumentation of “Cecilia,†and reggae styling of “Why Don’t You Write Me.†The album topped the chart, won Grammys for engineering, arranging and Album of Year, and spun off four hit singles.
This CD/DVD set marks the 40th anniversary of the album’s January 1970 release, and combines the original eleven tracks with two hours of video material. The DVD includes the duo’s rare 1969 CBS television special, Songs of America, and a new documentary, The Harmony Game: The Making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. The special, aired only once on November 30, 1969, has been bootlegged many times, but never before officially reissued. At the time of its airing its social and political viewpoints – particularly its explicit anti-Vietnam war messages – caused sponsor Bell Atlantic to pull out. But with backing from CBS (the same network that had fired the Smothers Brothers earlier in the year), the program found a new sponsor (Alberto Culver, the makers of Alberto VO5) and was aired uncut.
Both video features are extraordinary documents. The 1969 special, originally shot on film and pieced together from two different sources, is a post-Woodstock look at America in which Simon and Garfunkel seem to be trying to explain the younger generation to adult viewers. They surface the questions and doubts on the minds of many young people in 1969, starting with the incalculable loss of the decade’s heroes – JFK, MLK and RFK – and reflections on the brutality of poverty and the activism of the farm workers, UAW and Poor People’s March. First-time director (and future famous actor) Charles Grodin skillfully mixed compelling newsreel imagery with voiceovers and interviews, and interwove performance footage and behind-the-scenes shots of the duo at work. Simon and Garfunkel are spied working out arrangements of new songs, rehearsing their stage band and recording in the studio.
The making-of documentary repeats some moments from the ’69 special, but adds context with discussions of the program’s creation and controversies. There’s additional concert footage and contemporary interviews with Simon, Garfunkel, their manager, Mort Lewis, their engineer/producer, Roy Halee, and two of the studio players (drummer Hal Blaine and bassist Joe Osborn) featured on the album.. The conversation with Halee is particularly illuminating, as he describes how the duo’s studio sound was produced, and provides specifics of the album’s tracks. The song-by-song discussion reveals numerous details on personnel (Fred Carter Jr., for example, played guitar on “The Boxer,†Joe Osborn played an 8-string bass on “Only Living Boy in New York City,†and Larry Knechtel developed the gospel piano on “Bridge Over Troubled Waterâ€), recording locations, production techniques, and brightly highlights the creativity everyone concerned poured into the album.
Fresh transfer and remaster of Darlene Love’s best
With the Philles catalog now in the licensing hands of Sony Legacy and EMI, the fiftieth anniversary of the label’s 1961 founding is being celebrated with a new round of reissues. First out of the gate are remastered best-of collections for the Ronettes, Crystals, Darlene Love and Phil Spector. This 17-track Darlene Love collection proves that while Ronnie Spector (nee Veronica Bennett) may have been Spector’s greatest heartthrob, Darlene Love was his vocal MVP. As the lead vocalist on key singles by Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, the Blossoms (both under their own name, and as the West Coast version of the Crystals), and solo singles, not to mention her work with the Blossoms as go-to backing vocalists, Love’s voice was as important an element of the Wall of Sound as the Wrecking Crew’s drums, guitars, pianos and basses.
Fresh mono transfer and remaster of the Crystals’ best
The Crystals formed in 1961 with Barbara Alston as their lead singer. Quickly signed by Phil Spector for his brand new Philles label, they were the subject of the label’s very first single, first hit and first Top 20, “(There’s No Other) Like My Baby.†They struck gold again the following year with the Mann & Weil’s brilliant “Uptown†and reached #1 with Gene Pitney’s “He’s a Rebel.†Oddly, the latter single, the group’s only chart topper, was recorded by a completely different set of Crystals – Darlene Love and the Blossoms – than the one who’d first broken on the charts. The story has the original Crystals touring the East Coast at the moment the demanding Spector was ready to record in Los Angeles, and Love’s group was on hand.
The Love/Blossoms Crystals hit one more time, in 1963 with “He’s Sure the Boy I Love,†before the original group regained their name with “Da Doo Ron Ron,†“Then He Kissed Me,†and “I Wonder.†Well, sort of. “Da Doo Ron Ron†had been recorded by Darlene Love and the Blossoms, but Spector replaced her lead vocal with one by Lala Brooks, to whom Alston had ceded the lead vocal role in the Crystals’ stage show. The latter two singles also feature Brooks with Love and the Blossoms providing the backing vocals. The East Coast group split with Spector and Philles shortly thereafter, and amid additional personnel changes recorded a few more non-charting singles that failed to capture the thrills and grandeur of their hits.
Country, folk, bluegrass and blues from talented Texas songsmith
