After 45 years, Billy Gibbons and the Moving Sidewalks reunited to play a set in New York City on March 30, 2013. You can find several audience videos on YouTube, including this one of their best-known tune, “99th Floor”:
Also check out the reissue of their complete catalog!
Phil Ramone, 1941-2013
It’s hard to imagine one person so diverse in his musical talents as to have successfully recorded key sessions with:
And many dozens more.
But such was the music industry giant Phil Ramone, who engineered and produced records – both legendary and obscure – for more than fifty years, and who passed away March 30, 2013 at the age of 72.
The sophomore release from this Queens quartet continues to mine the intersection of angsty guitar pop, twangy Americana and Stonesish rock they debuted in 2009. Vocalist (and songwriter) Mike Montali also continues to charm with a voice that takes in the quivering vulnerability of Robin Wilson, the keening alto of Neil Young and the bluesy tint of Chris Robinson. Four years from their first album, the band has been road-honed into a tight, powerful outfit, but the arrangements have the extemporaneous feel of musicians are reacting to their singer’s story telling. The title track takes listeners on a thematic ride that starts slowly with the push of a hollow bass drum, gains speed with growling electric guitar chords, breaks down in contemplative depression and finally regains its locomotive traction.
Montali’s songs of second chances are accompanied by guitars that are tentative with their force, backing lyrics perched between asking, suggesting and telling. The music turns hopeful with the expectant possibilities of “Faith & Love” and melancholy for the introspective “If It Ain’t Me.” Lead guitarist Jon Bonilla shows off his chops with solos on the workingman’s lament “Doghouse Blues” and the driving blues-rocker “Walk on Water.” Tracks 1, 4, 6 and 8 are drawn from a 2012 EP that added Michael Hesslein’s keyboards, but given that set’s limited circulation, it’s great to have these tunes available again. Hollis Brown seemed fully formed back in 2009, but the extra years of playing out and writing has more deeply assimilated their influences and tightened the resonance between lyrics, vocals and instruments. [©2013 Hyperbolium] 
Hollis Brown’s Home Page
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Extraordinary solo demos for Gene Clark’s White Light
Having passed through the New Christy Minstrels, founded and left the Byrds and dissolved a fruitful partnership with Doug Dillard, Gene Clark escaped the burdens of Los Angeles and relocated to a quiet spot on the Northern California coast. Although he owed A&M a pair of albums, Clark was given time to write new song under relatively little pressure. The label’s co-owner, Jerry Moss, eventually persuaded Clark to return to Los Angeles and record, first these demos, and subsequently his second solo album, White Light. The latter, produced by Jesse Ed Davis (who also produced these demos), remains one of the high-points of Clark’s career, but these guitar-harmonica-and-voice demos, released here for the first time, are equally fulfilling.
However direct listeners found White Light, these spare demos are even more so. Stripped to their essence, Clark’s songs explode with creativity, and recorded live in the studio, Clark plays the songs more as expressive notes to himself than as performances for posterity. There’s a delicacy in his vocals and a pensiveness in his approach that would be overwhelmed by a band, and he displays an eagerness to sing these new songs that could only have been captured once. Half of these titles reappeared on the original version of White Light, and two more appeared on the album’s 2002 CD reissue. “Here Tonight” was recorded in alternate form by the Flying Burrito Brothers, and three titles, “For No One,” “Please Mr. Freud” and “Jimmy Christ” were simply left in the vault.
Clark’s performances return to his earliest folk roots, with a heavy Dylan influence apparent in several of the songs. The tempos are often slower and the presentations more gentle than the later band recordings, suggesting that Clark may have gained confidence in performing these works by the time he waxed the album. But from the start, he shows deep confidence in the songs themselves – perhaps even more evident in such a stripped down form, where the words have nowhere to hide. As fine as was the band assembled for White Light, Clark sounds perfectly comfortable exposed as a solo troubadour sharing his wares. The poetic verses of the album’s title track flow more easily as Clark responds only to his own guitar, and the simplicity of “Where My Love Lies Asleep” adds a starkly personal touch.
Though no substitute for the subsequent studio album, these demos are among the purest statement of Clark’s songwriting. These early recordings provide a second angle on a much-loved collection of songs and the singer-songwriter who brought them forth. They bring to mind Robert Gordon’s liner notes from Big Star Live in which he likens archival musical finds to an old photograph of a lover, taken before you met. The picture dates to a period you’ve heard about but didn’t really know, offering nuances on a familiar visage and revealing new details in something so very familiar. So it is with these demos, which stand on their own as a musical experience, but can’t help commenting on the album that’s so very familiar to Clark’s fans. [©2013 Hyperbolium]
Pondering irreversible consequences
After an album of Blaze Foley covers in 2011, singer-songwriter Gurf Morlix returns to his catalog of forbidding originals. The album’s title provides a clever play on words, suggesting a man catching up to the moment only to find that moment overbearing. The title track focuses on immediate burdens, but Morlix also finds overwhelming baggage in a future lashed inextricably to the consequences of past actions. Morlix’s characters are left stranded at a turning point between decisions and their lifelong consequences. The prisoner of “My Life’s Been Taken” ruminates on his confinement, resigned to a life of wondering what could have been. The song provides a coda to 2009’s “One More Second,” in which a shooter considers the thin line between reaction and action; here the killer is doomed to reconsider that border until his life ends.
The tiny portal of “Small Window” frames an emotional impediment with a physical metaphor, and the imagery of “Series of Closin’ Doors” takes on a nightmarish cast when scored with languid guitar, atmospheric B3 and a hypnotic beat. Morlix often pairs dark lyrics with misleadingly neutral or bright melodies, and his understated vocals leave each song’s message to sneak up on the listener. His critique of American gun culture, “Bang Bang Bang,” begins with happy memories of Roy Rogers before decrying our modern-day barrage of bullets, and even the love song “Gasoline” draws on a fiery metaphor that aligns with the album’s premise of inescapable aftermath. Morlix exhales his lyrics more than he sings them, which fits well to songs that shrug at seemingly immutable futures. [©2013 Hyperbolium]
Tuneful “mime rock†from 1968
The Hello People were a late-60s sextet that performed in white face and mimed skits amid their live musical performances. Their visual imagery and theatrical skills landed the band slots on several television variety shows, but even with national exposure, their records failed to dent the charts. The group’s best known track, “Anthem,†was a pungent reaction to songwriter Sonny Tongue’s incarceration for draft-dodging, but even its socially-charged message couldn’t lift the group beyond regional success. The group’s sound incorporated several then-current trends, including baroque-pop, sunshine harmonies, country-rock, electric folk and and old-timey jazz. You can hear influences of the Left Banke, Grass Roots, Blues Project, Lovin’ Spoonful and others, and though the band was quite accomplished (especially in flautist Michael Sagarese and bassist Greg Geddes), their lack of a singular style and the novelty of their stage act seem to have relegated them to a footnote. The group continued into the mid-70s in various formations, releasing their own records and backing Todd Rundgren on Back to the Bars, but this 1968 album is the most complete expression of their original concept. Real Gone’s first-ever CD reissue includes the album’s original ten tracks and a twelve-page booklet with new liner notes by Gene Scalutti. Separated from their stage visuals, the group’s music still holds up. [©2013 Hyperbolium]
Juke-joint swing, twangy honky-tonk and hot rock ‘n’ roll
Wayne Hancock’s been making great albums since he introduced himself with 1995’s Thunderstorms and Neon Signs. His vocal similarity to Hank Sr. hasn’t abated a bit in the subsequent eighteen years, nor has his fealty to the basic elements of Williams’ brand of twangy honky-tonk and haunted sorrow. But Hancock is more a man out of time than a throwback, and though his music takes on a nostalgic tint amidst Nashville’s contemporary style, he makes the case that the sounds he champions are timeless. He sparks terrific performances from his guitarists (Eddie Biebel, Tjarko Jeen and Bob Stafford), steel player (Eddie Rivers) and bassist (Zack Sapunor), and he sounds happy to be singing,l even when he’s singing the blues.
Hancock’s spent the past few years touring, riding his Harley and getting divorced. The latter has turned his music into an essential salve, and though he sings “it’s best to be alone than be in love,” he’s more likely to pine than actually swear off romance. The album opens at highway speed as Hancock tries to outrun his heartache with an open road, a full throttle and dueling electric guitar solos. He’s soon again singing the blues, low-down and alone, but the tears in his voice can’t disguise the pleasure he gains from vocalizing his troubles, a pleasure shared with anyone who gives this album a spin. [©2013 Hyperbolium]
The Otis Redding album that could have been
Producer David Gorman has worked a bit of sleight-of-hand in creating this what-might-have-been Stax/Volt release. By cherry-picking from Otis Redding’s catalog, Gorman’s built the most consistent studio album that Redding never released. Rather than balancing heartbreak with hip-shaking soul, Gorman’s playlist gives in only to pleading shades of blue: forlorn, yearning and desolate. Think of this as the soul music equivalent of Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours, Where Are You? and No One Cares, with Redding carrying a torch that just won’t burn out. Like Sinatra, Redding is imprisoned by confusion, sorrow and loneliness, fighting back from emotional destruction, and undercut by somber instrumental backings that only pick up their head to lash out with their horns. Redding’s original albums include many landmarks, but none drink so thoroughly from the well of late-night sorrow as this collection of hit singles, album tracks and a killer alternate version of “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember.†. Packaged in a mini-LP sleeve with ring-worn retro cover art and fictitious DJ liner notes, the package delivers twelve straight shots of Redding’s deepest soul. [©2013 Hyperbolium]
By the time that George Jones left Mercury and signed with United Artists in 1962 for his chart-topping “She Thinks I Still Care,†he’d been steadily minting hits since his 1955 debut, “Why Baby Why.†His two-and-a-half year run on UA produced sixteen singles, which the label managed to stretch over nearly five years of releases. All thirty-two sides – sixteen A’s and their flips – are included here in their original mono. Jones continued to be a steady hit maker (sometimes charting both sides of a single), but he also had his share of misses and obscure B-sides. This set includes favorites like “You Comb Her Hair†and “The Race is On,†but with so many singles over so many years, it’s easy to have lost track of superb A-sides like the rockabilly-tinged “Beacon in the Night,†the murder-suicide “Open Pit Mine,†the up-tempo “Your Heart Turned Left (And I Was on the Right)†and the fiddle-and-twang shuffle “What’s Money.â€
During these years, Jones and his producers tried a lot of things to see what would stick, recording honky-tonk, weepers, Westerns, gospel, Christmas songs and novelties, and they gave each one their all. The set features many fine B-sides, including the too-late realizations and broken hearts of “Big Fool of the Year,†“I Saw Me†and “My Tears are Overdue,†each one filled with Jones’ inimitable vocal style. A handful of the flipsides charted, and in the case of the folk-styled “Where Does a Little Tear Come From,†outperformed its plug-side. In addition to the solo work collected here, Jones also recorded memorable duets with Melba Montgomery. A full accounting of this work can be found on Bear Family’s complete United Artists box set, but these singles get to the catalog’s heart, and the inclusion of lesser-known B-sides is a rare treat. The sixteen-page booklet includes photos, ephemera, chart and studio data, and liner note by Holly George-Warren. [©2013 Hyperbolium]
Second helping of outspoken, deep Southern soul
Swamp Dogg’s newly penned liner notes tell the story of this album’s original sessions (under the title of “Right Onâ€) at Florida’s TK Studios, with a backing band that included Betty Wright, Lonnie Mack, Al Kooper and a label worker (and future disco star) named Harry Wayne “KC†Casey. Apparently the results sounded awesome to the alcohol- and herb-fueled participants, but were not so easy on the ears of anyone else. The resulting tapes were shelved (though a single of the original “Straight From My Heart†was released with a B-side cover of Joe South’s “Don’t Throw Your Love to the Windâ€), and a second run at the album was made at Quinvy Studios in Muscle Shoals. The latter sessions were released on Elektra in 1971 as Rat On! The Quinvy crew featured several legendary musicians, including bassist Robert Lee “Pops†Popwell and guitarist Jesse Willard “Pete†Carr, and Swamp Dogg’s soul sound, much like that on his debut, gave the players solid grooves to explore. His songs continued to mix outspoken views on race, sex, religion, war, relationships and social issues, couched in melodies whose sweetness sometimes obscures the deep twists and turns of his lyrics. Listened to in passing, Rat On! offers top-flight ‘70s southern soul, with deep bass and punchy horns. But listened to more carefully, the album reveals a daring songwriter who wasn’t afraid to tell it as he saw it, challenging society’s icons of freedom with “God Bless America For What?†and landing himself on Nixon’s enemies list. The album features soulful reworkings of the Bee Gees’ “Got to Get a Message to You†and Mickey Newbury’s “She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye,†and though the original tunes aren’t nearly as absurd those on Total Destruction to Your Mind, their messages are just as powerful, and their grooves are just as deep. [©2013 Hyperbolium]