Tag Archives: Rock

Gabriel Kelley: It Don’t Come Easy

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GabrielKelley_ItDontComeEasyCountry, rock and soul

Kelley is a singer-songwriter brought full-circle to his rural roots after stops in Sweden, Nashville and Guatemala. Born in Virginia, his taste was seeded by his parents’ music: Leon Russell, Neil Young, John Prine and others. His songwriting sprouted during two years of vagabonding that eventually led to a staff writing position in Nashville. But Music City’s stock liturgy turned out to be too confining: “Nashville was kinda like cowboy hats and belt buckles, and I was more the long-haired granola kid.” He left publishing, spent more time abroad and returned to a vagabonding life that freed him to pour his experience into songs rather than songwriting appointments. What emerged, funded by a Kickstarter campaign, is a fervent, soulful singer-songwriter.

Kelley sings in his own voice, rather than one designed to capture a market segment. He writes invitations to an emotionally closed mate and anchors himself to faith as he sends out lifelines. Ironically, it’s Kelley himself who could often use the lifelines as he wavers between loneliness and forgiveness, rarely finding resolution in either. He wallows deeply in the details of his misery on the closing “Holding Me Down,” and the album’s one moment of contentment “See Ya Comin'” is more memory and expectation than here-and-now. The latter features passionate, gospel-infused backing vocals from Bekka Bramlett, Marueen Murphy and Gabe Dixon.

Neal Cappelino’s productions of guitar, drums, keyboards, pedal steel and harmonica are often quite grand, but they’re tethered by Kelley’s earthiness. The rolling guitar figures and strong walking beat of “Only Thing to Do” are supplemented by Wurlitzer piano, a string quartet and sitar-like twangs that come from either Jon Graboff’s pedal steel or Reggie Young’s guitar. The latter provides inspiring musical figures throughout, highlighting Kelley’s songs with dollops of soul, just as he did for the Box Tops and numerous others over the years. This is a sophisticated debut from a songwriter with confidence in his lyrical and singing voices, and a backing band that offers up stirring mixes of country, rock and soul. [©2013 Hyperbolium]

Gabriel Kelley’s Home Page

Christie: Christie

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Christie_ChristieUK country-rock from 1970

Christie was a UK band built around singer-songwriter Jeff Christie, and fleshed out with drummer Mike Blakely, and Blakely’s former Acid Gallery bandmate Vic Elmes on guitar. The band’s one brush with fame was their first single, “Yellow River,” which reached #23 in the U.S., supported an album that sold well, and produced three separate videos (see below!). The follow-up single, the country-tinged “San Bernadino,” scraped its way to #100, keeping the band (technically, at least) from being labeled a one-hit wonder. The album stretches out on the pop-inflections the band found in Creedence Clearwater Revival’s roots sound, and though they didn’t manage any more chart singles, neither did they load up on filler. With a lucky break, or better promotion from their U.S. label, the band could easily have been remembered for more than “Yellow River.” If you like early ’70s country-rock from Gallery, the Stampeders, as well as their more famous peers, you should check this out. A 22-track import CD reissue expands upon this straight up digital reissue of the album’s original thirteen tracks. [©2013 hyperbolium dot com]

Jefferson Airplane / Jefferson Starship / Starship: The Essential

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JeffersonAirplaneStarship_EssentialReissued 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 Tiger”) 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.

The group transformed yet again in 1984, into Starship, and found even greater success on the singles chart with three #1s: “We Built This City,” “Sara” and the Albert Hammond & Diane Warren-penned theme to the film Mannequin, “Nothing’s Going to Stop Us Now.” Starship landed two more in the Top 10, the latter of which, 1989’s “It’s Not Enough,” closes this set. Two more minor chart entries and a greatest hits album were released before the band morphed into a touring unit for vocalist Mickey Thomas. The six Starship tracks here cover all three of the band’s original albums, but omit a handful of lesser charting singles. This thirty-three track anthology provides a compelling picture of a San Francisco underground legend’s metamorphosis into a 1980s commercial juggernaut. [©2013 Hyperbolium]

Bill Wilson: Ever Changing Minstrel

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BillWilson_EverChangingMinstrelExtraordinary, 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.

Wilson’s touchstones included Dylan (and perhaps Bobby Darin’s late-60s activist sides), but also Austin songwriter Townes van Zandt, singer-guitarist Tony Joe White, and the open road sound of the Allman Brothers. The quality of the songs and performances would be impressive as a peak moment among an artist’s catalog, but as a one-off it’s truly extraordinary. Wilson is confident and earthy, while the band handles his material as if they’d been playing it on tour for years. The songs, in shades of folk, blues and rock, touch on traditional singer-songwriter themes, and the religiously-themed numbers have a strong hippie vibe. The label lists this as remastered from tape, but there seem to be a few vinyl artifacts that are more patina than distraction. The album’s rediscovery is an incredible feat of crate digging, and its return to circulation is most welcome. [©2013 Hyperbolium]

Various Artists: Surf-Age Nuggets

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Various_SurfAgeNuggetsMonster wave of obscure ‘60s surf gems

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.

The selections are guitar-centric, beat-driven and up-tempo; a formula whose thousands of variations have yet to get old. This is the sound of four guys getting together in a garage, working up covers and a couple of originals, scoring a gig and getting a crack at recording. Being true to the period, what’s here isn’t all strictly surf music; there’s plenty of reverb-drenched Dick Dale-styled staccato picking, but instrumental rock was a bigger lineup into which musicians crowded from every state. California surf bands provided inspiration, but the twang of guitar slingers like Duane Eddy, Link Wray and Lonnie Mack also held sway. Most of these acts had brief careers, but this collection is more than a set of surf songs; it’s a soundtrack to an era in which surf culture captured the national attention, even among those who didn’t surf or listen to surf music. This is a document of a time when radios had only an AM band, and teen culture was on the rise. Paddle, turtle, hangout and catch this tasty wave! [©2012 Hyperbolium]

Dick Dale: At the Drags

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Super-stocked anthology of Dick Dale’s car-related tunes

There are many anthologies, greatest hits collections and album reissues of Dick Dale’s material, but none have done the service of separately collecting his surf and hot-rod oriented tracks into parallel volumes. RockBeat’s issue of King of the Surf Guitar (not to be confused with his 1963 album of the same name) and At the Drags does just that, offering a generous twenty themed tracks each. The dragstrip volume documents Dale’s temporary turn from surf to cars, following in the trend of numerous Southern California acts of the time. The collection is drawn primarily from Dale’s two car-related albums, 1963’s Checkered Flag and 1964’s Mr. Eliminator, and adds the single “Wild Wild Mustang.” Musically this isn’t much different from Dale’s surf catalog, employing his trademark reverb-heavy staccato guitar picking, and backed by members of the Del-Tones, Superstocks and Los Angeles studio hotshots, including Bill Barber, Glen Campbell, Steve Douglas, Plas Johnson, and Hal Blaine. The single “Night Rider” could just as easily be a surf tune in both music and title. A few tracks add sound affects and Dale adds vocals to more than a half-dozen others, adding a Freddy Canon-styled energy to “Hot Rod Racer,” a Jan & Dean treatment of “Big Black Cad,” and rocking a Bo Diddley beat on “50 Miles to Go.” The masters are super-wide stereo, with only tracks 7 and 8 in mono or very narrow stereo. Rock Beat’s tri-fold slip case includes four full panels of liner notes and an eight-page booklet that adds four more pages of song notes (by Alan Taylor and Dave Burke of Pipeline magazine) and a page of musician and production credits. [©2012 Hyperbolium]

Dick Dale’s Home Page

Dick Dale: King of the Surf Guitar

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Super-stoked anthology of Dick Dale’s surf-related tunes

There are many anthologies, greatest hits collections and album reissues of Dick Dale’s material, but none have done the service of separately collecting his surf and hot-rod oriented tracks into parallel volumes. RockBeat’s issue of King of the Surf Guitar (not to be confused with his 1963 album of the same name) and At the Drags does just that, offering a generous twenty themed tracks each. The surf volume includes Dale’s signature rendition of the folk song “Miserlou,” alongside popular singles and album tracks such as “Let’s Go Trippin’,” “Surf Beat,” “The Wedge” and the Bo Diddley-styled “Surfin’ Drums.” The latter even features Dale himself playing out the drum break to close the track. Though Dale’s reverb-heavy staccato guitar picking is the collection’s big ticket, there are also a few vocal tracks, including the B-side “Secret Surfin’ Spot,” as featured in the film Beach Party (and covered by Annette Funicello), and the R&B-flavored single “Mr. Peppermint Man.” Backing Dale were both his Del-Tones and a number of Los Angeles studio hotshots, including Barney Kessell, James Burton, Neil Levang, Leon Russell, Steve Douglas, Plas Johnson, Hal Blaine and the Blossoms. The twenty tracks collect sides from Dale’s tenures on both Deltone and Capitol, and offer stereo (2, 5, 7-8, 10-11, 14-15, 19-20) together with AM radio-ready mono. Rock Beat’s tri-fold slip case includes four full panels of liner notes and an eight-page booklet that adds four more pages of song notes (by Alan Taylor and Dave Burke of Pipeline magazine) and a page of musician and production credits. [©2012 Hyperbolium]

Dick Dale’s Home Page

Various Artists: Alive at the Deep Blues Fest

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A selection of live two- and three-man blues

The Deep Blues Festival is a Minnesota celebration of alternative blues music, originally run from 2007 to 2010. After spin-offs in Cleveland and Ortin, WA, festival organizer (and BBQ restaurateur) Chris Johnson brought the original festival back to life at Bayport BBQ for a long weekend of shows leading into 2012’s fourth of July. Threaded through the festival were the seven acts collected here, all of whom record for the Alive label. The majority of these bands hail from the Midwest –Iowa,Indiana,Ohio and Pennsylvania – with fellow travelers Lee Bains arriving from Alabama, and Henry’s Funeral Shoe hopping over the pond from the UK. It’s a testament to Alive’s A&R department that they’ve fostered a stable of bands with similar roots but individual flavors.

At the blunter end of the spectrum are Radio Moscow, with Parker Griggs opening “Hold on Me” with stinging psychedlic wah wah atop a percussion section that takes no prisoners. Henry’s Funeral Shoe has often echoed the British blues-rock giants of the 1970s, but here they are more rough-and-ready, like the Live at Leeds-era Who. Philadelphia’s John the Conqueror is the sort of power trio you’d expect to hear in the run-down ballrooms of Almost Famous, forceful and melodic. Left Lane Cruiser sticks most closely to the classic blues progressions on “24 Hour Blues,” with Freddy J IV’s guitar a ragged, driving machine and Brenn Beck a one-man rhythm section on drums and cymbals. Mark Holder adds his harp to the band’s cover of Robert Johnson’s “Rambling on My Mind.”

More nuanced is Lee Bains III’s mix of sanctified soul and the aggressive electric aesthetic that is Alive’s hallmark. Similarly, Brian Olive’s take has the same core energy, but filled out less abrasively with keyboard, drums and bass lines that glide, roll and rumble in a powerful wall of sound. The Buffalo Killers, who often suggest James Gang-era Joe Walsh, expand on a nine-minute jam of “It’s a Shame” with harmonica player Mark Holder sitting in. It’s great to hear these bands together (even if only through the magic of editing), offering the numerous shades of two- and three-man blues that is their label’s stock-in-trade. [©2012 Hyperbolium]

Alive Records’ Home Page

Creedence Clearwater Revival: Ultimate – Greatest Hits and All-Time Classics

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3-CD overview ofAmerica’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band

As a band whose albums, singles and live performances were equally exciting, it can be argued that Creedence Clearwater Revival remains the greatest group in American rock ‘n’ roll history. Whether stretching out a psychedelic jam of “Suzie Q” or “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” or packing everything they had into the 2:21 of “Bad Moon Rising,” their synthesis of rock, country, blues, and southern soul was riveting. Their hit singles still leave listeners reaching to turn up the volume, and their albums harbor dozens of lesser-known, but no less terrific covers and Fogerty originals. In a six-album stretch from 1968’s eponymous Creedence Clearwater Revival through 1970’s Pendulum, the quartet never faltered – dropping dozens of hit singles and revitalizing well-selected covers with iconic guitar riffs and vocal turns that hook your ear as readily today as they did forty years ago.

The CCR catalog has seen its fair share of reissues, with a box set in 2001, individual album remasters in 2008, and in 2009 a mono singles collection, vintage live concert and a covers collection. And then there are numerous tributes and an endless array of karaoke discs. Fantasy’s latest reiteration of the core catalog is a three-disc set that goes beyond the hit singles, but not as far as the box set. It’s a better introduction than a single disc, and with the inclusion of album and live tracks, a broader look than the two volume Chronicle set. The set is delivered in a tri-fold cardboard sleeve with extensive liner notes by Bay Area music historian, Alec Palao. Among his insights is the astonishing fact that CCR never scored a chart-topping U.S. single; Green River and Cosmo’s Factory each topped the album chart, but their peak singles, “Proud Mary,” “Green River” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” topped out at #2.

Perhaps it’s fitting that the longevity of the group’s legacy is broader than hit singles. The set’s first two discs sample from the group’s seven original studio albums, including four Fogerty-piloted tracks from the swansong, Mardi Gras. Disc three collects live performances from 1970-71, recorded in the Bay Area and across Europe; all were previously issued on either The Concert or as bonus tracks to the 2008 album reissues. The live mixes are necessarily rawer than the studio recordings, but they’re full and punchy, show off the band’s tight ensemble playing and demonstrate how well CCR’s material translated to the stage. This is a great set for listeners who haven’t upgraded their Chronicle LPs to CDs, those not ready for the box or album reissues, or younger listeners that need to have the waxy buildup of contemporary pop removed from their ears. [©2012 Hyperbolium]

The Moving Sidewalks: The Complete Collection

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Deluxe reissue of infamous 1960s Texas psych-blues

The Moving Sidewalks first came to wide attention outside of Texas with the inclusion of their incendiary 1967 single “99th Floor” on the second volume of the garage rock anthology, Pebbles. Tantalized by a liner note reference to “Bill” Gibbons and ZZ Top, fans tracked down the group’s album, Flash, and found – no doubt disappointingly to some – that the bulk of the band’s oeuvre favored heavy psychedelic blues-rock, rather than the organ, guitar and harmonica punk of “99th Floor.” Though part of the Texas scene, the Sidewalks leaned more to the electric blues of Jimi Hendrix (to which “Pluto – Sept 31st” clearly tips its cap) and Savoy Brown, than to the punk rock or Mouse and the Traps or the psychedelia of the 13th Floor Elevators.

The album’s been reissued before [1 2], including a few of the bonus tracks heard on this set’s second disc. What sets this reissue apart, aside from the crisp audio (mono on 1, 3 and 5 of Flash) and the involvement of Billy Gibbons, are non-LP singles, demos and alternate takes that provide the bridge from “99th Floor” to Flash. The three singles include “99th Floor” (also heard twice more in earlier form by the Moving Sidewalks’ predecessor, The Coachmen) and its B-side “What Are You Going To Do.” The band continued to flirt with garage even as it turned more heavily to the blues with the guitar-and-organ instrumental “Headin’ Out,” and their single for Wand (the bluesy “Need Me”) features the punkier “Every Night a New Surprise” on the flip. Their last single, a cover of the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” is either magnificent or Spinal Tapian, depending on your perspective.

The earlier tracks from the Coachmen (featuring future Moving Sidewalks Gibbons, drummer Dan Mitchell and organist Kelly Parker) include two earlier takes of “99th Floor” and three (including one instrumental backing) of the otherwise unrecorded “Stay Away.” The strummed guitar of the early “99th Floor” take gives it a hint of folk-revival, though the harmonica solo still has the sting of the garage. “Stay Away” is a tidy rocker with a surf influence, particularly in Gibbons’ tasty guitar breaks. The set’s packaging is top-notch, with mini-LP sleeves, disc graphics that reproduce the Tantara and Wand labels, and a thick 52-page booklet that’s stuffed with photos ephemera and liner notes. It’s all housed in a heavy cardboard box fronted by a period photo, wrapping a colorful bow around a real gift to fans of the Moving Sidewalks and Billy Gibbons. [©2012 Hyperbolium]