Tag Archives: Rock

Bill Kirchen: Seeds and Stems

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BillKirchen_SeedsAndStemsAce dieselbilly singer-guitarist revisits highlights from his 45 year career

Bill Kirchen’s latest album provides a studio snapshot of his recent UK tour, highlighting much loved songs from the Commander Cody catalog and Kirchin’s solo years. Waxed quickly with his road band in between live dates, the set feels contemporary rather than anthological, and the performances fit together in a way that the original recordings could never be expected to. Kirchen’s originals have stood both the test of time and reinterpretation: the hard-luck “Semi-Truck,” the Merle Haggard-styled “Mama Hated Diesels” and the futuristic “Truck Stop at the End of the World” still pack their original punch, while the Cajun-flavored dieselbilly burner “Womb to the Tomb” is slowed here into a fetching waltz. Kirchen also makes great use of others’ songs, including an appropriately pitiful rendition of the title tune, a thoughtful reading of Dylan’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, it Takes a Train to Cry,” and a signature performance of Charlie Ryan’s “Hot Rod Lincoln.” Kirchen remains a standard bearer for a seamless blend of rock ‘n’ roll, country, boogie-woogie and western swing, and his catalog grows more burnished with each passing year. [©2013 Hyperbolium]

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Preston Epps & The Bongo Teens: Surfin’ Bongos

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PrestonEppsBongoTeens_SurfinBongosBongo-lined surf music from 1963

Released on the Original Sound label in 1963, the 12 tracks combined a trio of bongo-heavy tunes by Preston Epps, including his one true hit “Bongo Rock,” together with nine tracks recorded by Dave Aerni on guitar and Paul Buff on everything else as the Bongo Teens. Epps’ freak hit (which rivals Sandy Nelson’s “Let There Be Drums” for most famous Billboard top twenty hit with a drum lead) begat a few more singles, including the low-charting “Bongo Bongo Bongo” included here. The Bongo Teens’ tracks lean to guitar, organ and sax-led covers of then-popular surf and non-surf songs, with Epps’ bongo rhythms running underneath and taking a few solos. What make this pair of reissues so interesting are the bonus tracks, and the release of separate mono and stereo versions. Watch out for Essential Media’s 12-track version of this set – the Crossfire reissues have 23 tracks. The bonuses include rare singles by the Rotations and Brian Lord & The Midnighters, along with Bongo Teens sides (with and without Preston Epps) that were only released abroad. Despite its cash-in origins, this is some pretty groovy go-go music, and the remastered sound is excellent. [©2013 Hyperbolium]   (Mono)   (Stereo)

Crossfire Publications Home Page

Lord Sitar: Lord Sitar

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LordSitar_LordSitar1968 sitar-pop cash-in

The discovery and popularization of the Indian sitar in Western music, most famously through the recordings of George Harrison with the Beatles, and bolstered by the introduction of Danelectro’s electric sitar, led to numerous hit singles and album tracks sporting sitars. A small subgenre of sitar pop and jazz sprung up and led to full albums that included Vincent Bell’s Pop Goes the Electric Sitar, the Folkswingers’ Raga Rock, Big Jim Sullivan’s Sitar Beat, Gabor Szabo’s Jazz Raga, and this relatively uninspiring entry for EMI/Capitol. Produced by John Hawkins, and with Sullivan manning the sitar, the arrangements aren’t particularly sympathetic to the resonant drone, sounding instead as if they were lifted from one of the instrumental covers albums that clogged job-racked shelves in the late 60s. Unsurprisingly, Harrison’s “Blue Jay Way” works reasonably well, as does the Beatles’ “I am the Walrus.” A horn-heavy arrangement of the Who’s “I Can See for Miles,” with the sitar singing the lead, is schlocky fun, and the closing cover of Los Bravos’ “Black is Black” manages to really take flight mid-song. There are far greater ‘60s cover albums to be found, but if you’re a devotee of pop sitar, this is something you’ll need to add to your collection. [©2013 Hyperbolium]

Sonny Bono: Inner Views

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SonnyBono_InnerViewsSonny freaks without Cher

Sonny Bono’s one and only solo album was released in 1967, just as Sonny & Cher’s hits and Cher’s solo success were entering a three-year drought. The obvious touchstone for this 5-track, 33-minute experimental outing is the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which Sonny quotes in the album’s title track. But the acid-tinged lyrics (including quotes from both “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “A Day in the Life”) and pseudo-psych musical freakouts have neither the expanded consciousness nor musical inventiveness of the Beatles. The anti-drug Bono might have heard Sgt. Pepper’s, but he didn’t really seem to understand it. The drums, likely played by Wrecking Crew ace Hal Blaine, sound as if they were lifted from a Phil Spector session, and the sitar noodling and tuneless harmonica blasts are indulgent and irritating, especially at the jam-session length (12’45) of the opening track.

The social commentary of “I Told My Girl to Go Away” might have drawn more attention had Bono been a more commercially compelling vocalist, or perhaps if Janis Ian’s scathing “Society’s Child” hadn’t exploded earlier in the year. The 32-year-old Bono sang with an air of defeat that couldn’t compare to Ian’s searing defiance. “I Would Marry You Today” might have made a nice light-pop folk-rock production for Sonny & Cher, and would have greatly benefitted from the latter’s ability to carry a tune. A few years earlier, and with a gender switch and some editing, “My Best Friend’s Girl is Out of Sight,” might have made a good tune for one of the New York girl groups, but sung as light-pop and stretched to over four minutes, it hasn’t the focus of Bono’s hits. The closing “Pammie’s on a Bummer” is more successful with its instrumental experimentation, though its message (prostitution leads to pot leads to LSD) isn’t particularly knowing.

The initial reissue of this album was produced by Rhino Handmade in 1999. That limited edition CD added eleven bonus tracks, including all of Bono’s singles for Atco: his 1965 releases “Laugh at Me” (in three versions) and “The Revolution Kind” along with their instrumental B-sides, and single edits of Inner Views album tracks that still couldn’t make these productions consumable by radio. A subsequent CD edition by Collectors’ Choice dropped the bonuses, and Rhino’s digital reissue restored everything but the shortened album tracks and session backing for “Laugh at Me.” This is by no means a masterpiece; Bono wrote much better songs for Sonny & Cher, and produced more compelling records when he stuck to the classic techniques he’d learned at the feet of Phil Spector. His vocals were never his strong card, and without a catchy angle, his record falls flat. [©2013 Hyperbolium]

Blue Cheer: Rocks Europe

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BlueCheer_RocksEurope1960s hard rock innovators rock hard live in 2008

Few knew what to make of Blue Cheer when they released Vincebus Eruptum in 1968 and their outrageously electric cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” climbed into the Top 20. Amidst a music scene that had grown louder and harder in the aftermath of the Summer of Love, Blue Cheer was harder and louder than anything around them. They took rock music to 12, pasting together the hardest, loudest bits you might have heard from The Who or Jimi Hendrix into a sustained scrum of growling, feedback-heavy guitar, thumping bass, pounding drums and howling vocals. Many listeners simply didn’t know what to make of this new sound, but by album’s end, which included a weighty cover of Mose Allison’s “Parchman Farm,” it was clear that this power trio was launching something completely new.

The group waxed and waned for the next forty years, sustaining innumerable lineup changes, but mostly retaining its thunderous rhythm section of founding bassist-vocalist Dickie Peterson and early drummer Paul Whaley. Peterson provided the group’s foundation through thick and thin, dropping out only very briefly in 1975, and it was Peterson and Whaley, along with guitarist Andrew “Duck” Peterson, who recorded this 2008 live set for the German television show Rockpalast. This lineup had been together off and on since MacDonald joined the band in 1988, and had been playing together steadily since 1999. Peterson passed away the year after this set was recorded, but as this recording shows, the band retained their pummeling sound to the end, and the rasp in Peterson’s voice added patina to their heavy psych-blues.

The eighty-three minute concert features many of Blue Cheer’s touchstones, including “Summertime Blues,” its flipside “Out of Focus,” Allison’s “Parchman Farm,” and a rendition of “Doctor Please” that stretches the eight-minute original into a twenty-five minute odyssey. The set list also includes three titles (“Babylon,” “Just a Little Bit” and a cover of Albert King’s “The Hunter”) from the band’s second album, Outsideinside, and two (“Rollin’ Dem Bones” and “I’m Gonna Get to You”) from the trio’s 2007 release, What Doesn’t Kill You. Rainman’s 2013 CD issue of this concert replicates the soundtrack of the 2009 DVD, and includes the DVD’s bonus studio track “Alligator Boots” along with the previously unreleased “She’s Something Else.” [©2013 Hyperbolium]

Various Artists: Music is Love – A Singer-Songwriter’s Tribute to the Music of CSN&Y

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Various_MusicIsLoveWide-ranging set of CSN&Y covers

This double-album tribute to the music of CSN&Y was released in 2012 as a fundraiser for the Equestrian Therapy Co-Op in Simi Valley, CA. The twenty-seven artists range from high-profile names (Judy Collins, Elliott Murphy) to cult favorites (Steve Wynn, The Coal Porters, Willie Nile, Cindy Lee Berryhill) and a number of newer and less globally-famous acts, including Stephen Stills’ daughter, Jennifer. Each takes a personal approach to a song from the various catalogs associated with CSN&Y, together, solo, and in earlier group incarnations, such as Sugarcane Jane’s banjo-centered revamp of Buffalo Springfield’s “Bluebird.” The interpretations range widely, including blues, country, alt-rock, folk, bluegrass, soul and more. A few, such as Sonny Mone’s cover of Neil Young’s “Down by the River” actually incarnate the vocal mix of CSN&Y, and Venice’s lush harmonies on “After the Gold Rush” are quite fetching. As well-known as are CSN&Y’s recordings, their songs have held up to reinterpretation over the years, and provide a deep well from which these artists draw. [©2013 Hyperbolium]

Music is Love Home Page

Small Faces: There Are But Four

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SmallFaces_ThereAreButFourSmall Faces first U.S. release transitions from R&B to Freakbeat

This 1967 album was Small Faces’ U.S. debut, combining tracks from their self-titled third album (and first for the Immediate label) with three hit singles and two B-sides. Though the group had already established themselves in the UK, topping the British chart in 1966 with “All or Nothing,” it was the single that is this album’s first track, “ItchycooPark,” that broke them in the U.S., charting at #16. This was also to be their biggest stateside hit, as the follow-on single, “Tin Soldier,” fell short of the Top 40. The third single collected here, “Here Come the Nice,” was the group’s first for Immediate, and though it charted in the UK and Germany, it wasn’t released as a single in the U.S.

The band’s earlier releases on Decca were the epitome of mod R&B, but with their move to Immediate their music helped usher psychedelic influences into what’s retroactively been labeled Freakbeat. The lyrics are more impressionistic and fantastic than their earlier material, and production touches include flanging on “ItchycooPark,” a false fadeout on “I Feel Much Better,” and a variable tape-speed descent to end “Here Come the Nice.” The latter also slipped an overt drug reference by the day’s censors, complementing the suspected (but denied) reference to getting high in “ItchycooPark.” The band’s more straightforward R&B sound can still be heard on several tracks, including the romantically frustrated “Talk to You” and the hopeful “Get Yourself Together.”

Small Faces proved themselves just as adept at flowing psych as they’d been at beat rock, with Ian McLagan’s keyboard providing multiple textures. McLagan and Ronnie Lane each provided a lead vocal, but it was Steve Marriott who showed himself to be the truly riveting front man. The album peaked just shy of the UK Top 10, and though the following year’s psychedelic concept album, Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, is more often cited as the group’s creative high point, this self-titled release (not to be confused with their like-titled 1965 Decca debut) was the more musically influential – both at the time, and on subsequent generation of British musicians. Varese’s reissue includes the original 12-track U.S. lineup in stereo; completists should check out the mono-stereo-UK-US 2-disc edition. 

Marshall Crenshaw: Stranger and Stranger

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MarshallCrenshaw_StrangerAndStrangerSecond in a six-EP series features a new song, a remake and a cover

After a less-than-satisfying engagement with his last record label, Marshall Crenshaw’s taking his music straight to the people. Funded through a Kickstarter campaign, Crenshaw’s developed a subscription project that will turn out a series of six three-song 10” vinyl EPs, each featuring a new song, a cover and a remake from the singer-songwriter’s rich catalog. The EPs also include a code with which the analog-deprived can download digital versions of the recordings. The first EP was delivered earlier this year, and this second entry features a new A-side, “Stranger and Stranger,” filled with lyric uncertainty and underlined by Bryan Carrott’s  vibraphone. The B-sides include a superb acoustic remake of Crenshaw’s “Mary Anne,” that was originally recorded for the 2008 film God is Dead, and a fully orchestrated cover of the Carpenters’ “(They Long to Be) Close to You.” The latter is played straight, with smooth choral backing vocals and a trumpet solo by Steven Bernstein. The EP with digital download, as well as a one-year three-EP subscription, is available through Crenshaw’s on-line store. [©2013 Hyperbolium]

Marshall Crenshaw’s Home Page
Marshall Crenshaw’s Radio Show on WFUV-FM

Desert Noises: I Won’t See You

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DesertNoises_IWon'tSeeYouModern-rock with roots in the ’70s

This Provo, UT quartet has a modern rock sound that usually suggests the The Shins, but the A-side, “I Won’t See You,” of their new EP is sweetly rooted in the 1970s soft-rock hits of Fleetwood Mac, Andrew Gold and others. The song’s melody and harmonies are warm and comforting, and it’s not until the song transitions into a more angsty chorus that you realize you’re not listening to a period piece. Even then, a short guitar solo once again captures the mood of ’70s radio and leads back to another gorgeous verse. The EP’s second track edges more towards Gin Blossoms territory, but the rhythm guitars could still bring you back to 1976. The closing “Birds” returns more to the modern-rock sounds of the Shins or Morning Benders, though the harmony vocals and blues-heavy undertow still tug at you from decades past. [©2013 Hyperbolium]

Desert Noises Home Page

Escondido: The Ghost of Escondido

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Escondido_TheGhostOfEscondidoNancy & Lee meet Hope & Ennio

What if, after cutting his musical teeth in Phoenix, Lee Hazlewood had turned East to Nashville, rather than West to Los Angeles? And what if he’d met Nancy Sinatra in MusicCity rather than the City of Angels? The answer might sound like a twist on the Western-tinged landscapes of “Summer Wine” and “Some Velvet Morning,” and it might have sounded something like the opening track of this Nashville band’s debut. Vocalist Jessica Maros’ sings a bit more ethereally than Nancy, but with the same confident sass that was catnip to Sinatra’s fans. Maros’ cohort Tyler James fills Hazlewood’s role as vocal straight man, but with a grittier rock ‘n’ roll kick and a haunting trumpet sound that evokes the sun-baked deserts of Sergio Leone and forlorn mood of Bobby Hackett.

Despite those tips of the sombrero, Escondido isn’t a hipster rehash of Nancy, Lee or Ennio, as they also gear down to a dreamier sound that brings to mind Mazzy Star. At times, such as on “Willow Tree,” Maros conjures both Nancy Sinatra and Hope Sandoval, and James, along with bassist Adam Keafer, drummer Evan Hutchings and guitarist Scotty Murray paint the backgrounds in spare, atmospheric strums and echoing notes. Recorded in a single day-long session, the album is populated with ruinous femme fatales, lonely sirens and upbeat farewells. The band’s hard twanging “Don’t Love Me Too Much” was recently featured on ABC’s Nashville, which is a larger coup for network television than for a band whose original combination of influences should attract ears from both the mainstream and the outside lands. [©2013 Hyperbolium]

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