Tag Archives: Rock

The Mojo Men: Not Too Old To Start Cryin’ – The Lost 1966 Masters

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Superb cache of mid-career garage/pop/folk/psych demos

The San Francisco-based Mojo Men are best remembered for their top-40 hit cover of Stephen Stills’ “Sit Down, I Think I Love You.” By the time that ornate 1967 single was released, the original group had recorded several bravado-filled sides for Tom Donahue’s Autumn label, fallen out with their drummer, picked up former Vejtables drummer/vocalist/songwriter Jan Errico, and recorded these demos before recording for Reprise. To be fair, “demos” is a coarse description given the recordings’ sparkling studio quality and the care lavished on the vocals and overdubs. But even though many of these tracks rival their output on Autumn and Reprise, the sessions were used to work out new material, showcase the band’s songwriting to their new producers, and to suggest outside material that might be suitable. The only aural artifact that really suggests “demo” are hotly mixed vocals that don’t always lay firmly in the instrumental backings.

The addition of Jan Errico had a noticeable impact on the band’s sound, pulling them in more melodic directions and adding a folk-rock vibe to numerous tracks. The macho sentiments of the group’s earlier “She Goes With Me” may not have fit the new lineup (though they did essentially reprise their earlier “Dance With me” on “There Goes My Mind”), but Errico could sing with full-throated force. The vocal attack of “What Kind of Man,” for example, sounds like a midway point between the sharp verbal punctuation of Mary Travers and the snotty garage attitude of Paula Pierce. Errico and bassist/vocalist Jim Alaimo made a solid rhythm section, and their voices blended into winning harmonies. The group could equally well rock a primitive Bo Diddley beat for “’Til I Find You” as they could take it down tempo for the ballad “Don’t Leave Me Crying Like Before.”

The influence of former Autumn labelmates The Beau Brummels is heard on “Is Our Love Gone,” and a cover of Jay and the Americans’ “She Cried” adds fine group harmonies. Several of Alaimo and Errico’s originals were re-recorded for later albums, but many more are only heard here. These mid-career recordings fit perfectly between the garage rock of the Mojo Men’s Autumn sides and their more polished Reprise recordings, and are sure to enthrall fans of either. Big Beat’s “West Coast Promotion Man” Alec Palao offers up top-quality liners and photos from his personal archives to round out a stellar package. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Tommy James and the Shondells: 40 Years–The Complete Singles Collection (1966-2006)

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All the group and solo hits, and more

Tommy James, first with the Shondells and later solo, had a memorable six year run on the singles chart from 1966 through 1971, landing two #1s, sixteen top-40s, and a fistful of top-100s. Disc one encapsulates James’ greatest commercial success, spanning the group’s debut cover of Barry & Greenwich’s “Hanky Panky,” their return to the top of the charts with “Crimson and Clover,” James’ last hit with the Shondells, “She,” and his biggest solo hits, “Draggin’ the Line,” “I’m Comin’ Home.” Filling out the first disc is a wealth of lower-charting singles that includes the galloping pop “Out of the Blue,” the brassy “Somebody Cares,” the funky “Gotta Get Back to You,” the soulful “Come to Me,” the gritty pop-rock “Ball and Chain,” the country-rock “Nothing to Hide,” and the “Horse With No Name” styled “Cat’s Eye in the Window.” James run of hits spanned AM radio’s focus on singles and FM radio’s promotion of longer-form album cuts. The group’s LPs, such as Crimson and Clover, successfully kept a foot in both worlds, selling millions of copies and spinning off multiple hit singles.

What’s most impressive about the variety collected here is that even as James, his writers and his production team took in new influences, they kept a readily identifiable sound and an unwavering bead on the charts. For example, when they added gospel piano, church harmonies and Stax-styled horns to 1970’s “Church Street Soul Revival,” James lead vocal still rings with the youthful quality lent to 1967’s “I Think We’re Alone Now.” James voice fit equally well in the raunchy remake of Goffin & King’s “Hanky Panky” as in the pre-teen bubblegum “It’s Only Love” or flower-power psych of “Crimson and Clover.” The shorthand of a singles anthology might suggest James was a style mercenary or dilettante flitting from trend to trend, but it’s the pull he exerts on his influences that proves otherwise. James wasn’t a chameleon who colored himself with the latest fad; he was a chart artist who adopted new sounds to his own use. It may all be unabashedly commercial, but in retrospect one can hear both craft and art in each and every cut.

In 1970 James split with the Shondells and began writing most of his own material. His solo work found the top-40 again with “Draggin’ the Line” and “I’m Comin’ Home,” as well as more top-100 singles. The latter-third of disc one and the first-half of disc two chronicle James’ most vital period as a solo chart artist. As with his earlier releases, he explored a variety of sounds, including gospel, folk, and soft rock. But unlike his earlier work, the production choices date some of the 1970s sides, intentionally on a heavily processed cover of Gary Glitter’s “I Love You Love me Love,” but more often by absorption of the era’s glistening guitars, echoed drums and artificial keyboards. James reprises his hit song “Tighter and Tighter” (which hit #7 for Alive ‘n Kickin’ in 1970) with a strong ballad vocal outlined in synthesized strings.

James hopped from Roulette to MCA to Fantasy to Millenium where in 1980 he returned to the pop top-40 (after a nine-year absence) with the ballad “Three Times in Love,” topping the adult-contemporary chart in February of that year. Another pair of lower-charting hits followed, “You Got Me” and “You’re So Easy to Love,” and though they’re laced with then-contemporary synthesizers, the melodies are memorable, the guitars have some edge, and James vocals are moving. 1983’s stomping “Say Please” rocks even harder, with a “Louie Louie” guitar riff, a throwback organ solo, and a powerful vocal that ranges from a whisper to a shout. James’ late-80s work is even more influenced by the synthetic sounds of that era than his ‘70s work had been by proto-disco. Where early on he’d used influences to create hits in his own way, he now seemed to be searching for latter-day relevancy, and it didn’t suit him. What finally returned James to radio and the charts were the holiday hit, “I Love Christmas,” and a string of adult contemporary hits sparked by an earthy, gospel cover of his own “Sweet Cherry Wine” and brought to full fruition with the emotional ballad “Love Words.”

Featured among the forty-eight tracks are numerous mono single mixes (1-15, 20, 23-26, 48) and the set closes with James previously unreleased first recording, 1962’s garage rock “Long Pony Tail” by Tom and the Tornadoes. This is an A-sides only collection, so you’ll have to hope for a Bear Family box set if you want all the B’s. Ed Osborne’s liner notes provide background on each stage of James’ career, though it would have been nice to get chart and session info for the individual tracks. The tri-fold digipack features collages of vintage photos from James’ personal collection. Casual fans may prefer a collection that focuses more narrowly on 1966-71 (such as Rhino’s Anthology, or its remastered double-disc replacement The Definitive Pop Collection), but those who want to sample James’ entire arc as a recording artist will appreciate the latter day sides on disc two. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Tommy James’ Home Page

The Hot Toddies: Santa Baby

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Free Song Download!

The Oakland, California four-piece girlpop Hot Toddies are gifting fans with a cover of an Eartha Kitt holiday classic.

MP3 | Santa Baby

For more of the Hot Toddies catalog, check out their first full-length CD, Smell the Mitten, or stream their songs on ReverbNation. Favorite cut: “Motorscooter.”

Hot Toddies’ MySpace Page

Blue Ash: No More, No Less

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Power-pop classic finally on CD after thirty-five years

At the time of its 1973 release, No More, No Less, received glowing reviews from Rolling Stone, Creem and Bomp, and the band was on their way with opening slots for Aerosmith, Bob Seger and Nazareth, and even Dick Clark gave them a spin on American Bandstand. By the following year, however, a lack of sales led to the dissolution of their contract with Mercury. The band managed one more album in 1979, but essentially disappeared without making a lasting popular mark. Further, unlike fellow cult pop heroes such as the Rubinoos, Blue Ash’s unreissued catalog left their legacy in the hands of a small but influential cadre of fans: Chicago columnist Bob Greene mentioned Blue Ash in an end-of-the-70s best-of column, the Records covered “Abracadabra (Have You Seen Her?),” and Scram’s Lost in the Grooves highlighted the No More, No Less as a lost treasure. While the band’s debut continued to languish in the vault, a 2004 two-CD set Around Again served up demos and outtakes that suggested what we were all missing.

Apparently the haggling over rights and the location of master tapes appears to have been settled, because thirty-five years after its initial release, the original dozen tracks are finally on CD. Best of all, this is a rarity that lives up to its hype, delivering on all the promises of early-70s power pop. Blue Ash, like Big Star, The Raspberries, Badfinger and less commercially successful peers such as the Flamin’ Groovies and Hot Dogs, melded the best of mid-60s harmony with the beefier guitar and drum sounds of the early-70s. They then pressed this combination into the compositionally economic mold that commercial FM borrowed from its AM cousins and used to dethrone its free-form older brothers. The results are effervescent three-minute radio gems that pack musical adventure into a tightly scripted form: guitar solos that sting with energy rather than drag with excess showmanship, Keith Moon-inspired full-kit drumming that serves as a motor rather than an gaudy accessory, melodies that lay their barbed hooks in the first verse, and choruses that lend themselves to immediate sing-a-longs.

As much as the band set out to make pop music that reflected the Beatles, Kinks and Beau Brummels, they did so in a new context. The album’s two covers are instructive: Dylan’s then-unreleased acoustic-and-harmonica travelogue “Dusty Old Fairgrounds” was rearranged into a blazing Who-styled drums-and-guitar rocker, and the Beatles’ “Any Time at All” mimics the original’s gentler verses, but lays down heavier rock for the choruses. That stretching between the sweet pop and rock dynamic characterizes much of the album, as the group employed Byrdsian jangle, Left Banke harmonics and even Brewer & Shipley styled country folk-rock, and then turned around to lay on guitar and rhythm section muscle. The opening “Abracadabra (Have You Seen Her?),” the wishful “All I Want” and the closing “Let There Be Rock” offer the glam-guitar energy of Mott the Hoople and Slade, and though “Smash My Guitar” never attains Who-like ferocity, it still manages to play out its angst with a one-take real-life smashup.

The traditional hard-luck broken hearts of power-pop turn up on “Plain to See,” and the nostalgic tone of the Flamin’ Groovies is heard on “I Remember a Time” and “Wasting My Time.” There are country influences on “Just Another Game,” bubblegum on “Here We Go Again” and West Coast folk rock (with wonderful accents of volume-pedal guitar) on “What Can I Do for You.” It’s easy to tag all these influences and fellow-travelers in retrospect, but in 1973 these sounds were simply part of the atmosphere, rather than icons already ripened for imitation. Blue Ash interpreted their ‘60s influences in the context and conventions of their times. What’s surprising is how undated it still sounds, particularly compared to the radio pop of just a few years later. By sticking to the basics of guitar, bass, drums and a hint of piano, by relying on classic pop melody and craft, Blue Ash minted a timeless classic. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Bruce Springsteen: Essential 3.0

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Eco-friendly reissue of effective career overview

Several of Legacy’s two-disc Essential releases have been upgraded with a third-disc and plastic-free eco-friendly packaging. In Bruce Springsteen’s case, the original 2003 Essential set already included a third disc of rarities, and all three discs are reproduced here verbatim. The only difference with this 3.0 reissue appears to be the new quad-fold cardboard case. That said, Springsteen’s Essential — 1.0 or 3.0 — is an effective overview of a career that couldn’t be summarized to everyone’s satisfaction in only three discs. Disc one samples tracks from 1973’s Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. through 1982’s Nebraska, disc two samples from 1984’s chart-topping Born in the U.S.A. through 2002’s The Rising, and disc three provides odds ‘n’ sods from throughout Springsteen’s career, many officially unreleased anywhere else. The collection highlights seminal works with the E Street Band, solo recordings, hit singles, live tracks and soundtrack contributions, providing an overview that’s musically inviting to Springsteen neophytes and debate-inducing to long-time fans. What’s missing easily compares to what’s here, but such is life with a compilation; there’s not enough room to capture everyone’s favorites, and Essential’s producers haven’t tried.

By sampling in chronological order from Springsteen’s releases, the first two discs compact twenty years into two hours, flashing through two decades of artistic development. The set opens with Springsteen’s love of wordplay in full bloom, stuffing immense wads of vocabulary into the rhymes of “Blinded by the Light,” “For You” and “Spirit in the Night.” His poetry turns to romantic imagery on “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” and the E Street band’s epochal sound finally comes to the fore on “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” “Thunder Road,” “Born to Run,” and “Badlands,” with Clarence Clemons’ husky sax swelling alongside the band’s propulsive rhythms. Springsteen’s urban landscapes of last-chance lovers and desperate adolescents are cinematic in form and epic in length stretching well past the two-minutes-thirty of AM radio hits. Starting with 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town the selections develop a sense of Springsteen’s introspection and social conscious, including the class distinctions of “Badlands” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” the restless wandering and despair of “The Promised Land,” and the hard-scrabble fatalism of “The River.” Even The River’s hit single, “Hungry Heart,” with the Turtles’ Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan providing sunny harmony vocals, is based on themes of dissatisfaction and leaving. The darkness turned absolutely bleak on Nebraska’s 4-track demos, with the title track’s first-person rendering of spree killer Charles Starkweather, and the fatalistic crime and corruption of the grim, pre-makeover “Atlantic City.”

Disc two opens with the similarly dark title track to Born in the U.S.A., but pumped up with a pounding, radio-ready rock arrangement. Like many of Springsteen’s upbeat works, the lyrics are at odds with the music’s anthemic qualities. Max Weinberg’s drumming pounds out oversized studio beats for the nostalgic “Glory Days” and the synthesizer riffed “Dancing in the Dark.” Three years passed between the massive success of Born in the U.S.A. and its follow-up, Tunnel of Love. The latter album is a more personal effort, with Springsteen choreographing members of the E Street Band, rather than gathering them together for planned sessions. The album’s title track comments on the unexpected complexities of married life, and the Brill Building baion-beat “Brilliant Disguise” expresses painful uncertainty and ambivalence.

Another five years passed before Springsteen issued the 1992 album pair Human Touch and Lucky Town, and neither advanced his legend. As a songwriter, he still had something to say, but musically he drew from generic rock production. Of the two, Lucky Town is more engaged, and the two songs here, the title track and “Living Proof,” resound with poetic word craft and emphatic vocals. The following year’s soundtrack contribution, “Streets of Philadelphia,” stripped Springsteen’s sound to a drum beat and synthesizer wash. Its stark arrangement and subdued vocal reflect the emaciation of the film’s protagonist, but also echo Springsteen’s earlier themes of desolation, desperation and loss. Two years later he’d return to the Americana-themed works of Nebraska with the modern day dust bowl folk songs of The Ghost of Tom Joad. The confusion and dislocation Springsteen had expressed on Born in the U.S.A. turned to anger and bitterness, as a decade further along the problems of the underclass had been swept further under the rug rather than improved.

Springsteen toured Tom Joad as a solo acoustic show in 1995 and 1996, and then went silent until a 2000 live reunion with the E Street Band. The reunion in New York City is documented here with the social documentary “American Skin (41 Shots)” and the optimistic and inclusive declarations of “Land of Hope and Dreams” that provide a contrarian’s response to Woody Guthrie’s “This Train is Bound for Glory.” The question of whether Springsteen and E Street would reunite for studio sessions was answered with 2002’s The Rising, the full band’s first album since 1984’s Born in the U.S.A. The title song is a classic Springsteen anthem, with a sing-along revivalist chorus that belies the lyric’s dire story of a firefighter’s tragic climb of the bombed World Trade Center tower. The celebratory soul of “Mary’s Place” recalls the band’s early work, but without the dark undercurrents of “Lonesome Day.”

While the first two discs survey Springsteen’s albums, disc three provides the collector’s bait of rarities, alternate takes and live versions unavailable on other official releases. The disc opens with a 1979 studio take of “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come),” a tune Springsteen gave to Dave Edmunds and released in his own voice only on this set. It’s followed by the Nebraska-era solo rockabilly “The Big Payback,” a raucous New Years live take of “Held Up Without a Gun” and a 1984 live cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped.” The Born in the U.S.A. outtake “None But the Brave” offers a classic E Street memory of Asbury Park’s 1970s rock ‘n’ roll bars. The mid-90s drum-loop lined “Missing” found Springsteen experimenting, as did his falsetto vocal for “Lift Me Up,” the latter from the soundtrack to John Sayles’ film Limbo. There’s a by-the-numbers cover of “Viva Las Vegas,” a live version of the otherwise unreleased rocker “Code of Silence,” an off-the-cuff solo country-blues rendition of The Rising’s “Countin’ on a Miracle,” and Springsteen’s stark title track for the film “Dead Man Walking.” The disc’s greatest surprise is the otherwise unreleased post-Nebraska “County Fair,” an unusually sentimental ode that drifts away in an unresolved musical tag.

Springsteen’s short liner notes acknowledge that this set couldn’t possibly please fans weaned on the original albums. There’s simply too many emotional connections between times and places and people and songs to capture in forty-two tracks. Instead, the first two discs provide a convincing view of Springsteen’s greatness, and a quick tour through many of the endless highlights of his catalog, while disc three offers up rarities that demonstrate what he leaves in the can is often more compelling than other artists’ best work. All three discs provide a map to the additional treasures awaiting listeners who take on Springsteen’s full catalog, and Bob Ludwig’s remastering is particularly sweet on the earlier albums’ selections. The set’s 44-page booklet includes extensive production and musical credits, photos, and full lyrics for each song. If you’re not ready to snap up Springteen’s first eight albums plus The Rising, this is a great place to get a sample. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

The Rescues: Crazy Ever After

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Exhilarating three-part harmony pop-rock

Surprisingly, the advent of music coordinators for network television shows (and movies and commercials, of course) has proved a boon not only to the shows and viewers, but to indie artists who finesse their song onto the soundtrack of a hit show. Such is the case for the Los Angeles trio The Rescues, who’s “Crazy Ever After” wrapped up the doctors’ story lines on the season debut of Grey’s Anatomy. The song starts with a bass-and-drums intro and trades solo vocals as instruments step into the mix, climaxing with exhilarating, full-throated three-part harmony. Even more dramatic is the sparse acoustic version posted on the group’s MySpace page, which simplifies the backing to piano and acoustic guitar and uses Kyler England and Adrianne’s backing harmonies to frame Gabriel Mann’s pained, beseeching verses.

The Rescues take full advantage of their three singers by interweaving solos, duos and trios, shifting with each song’s need from male leads to female, and from female harmonies to male-female. There are echoes of Fleetwood Mac’s hook-filled pop-craft, but the intertwining of voices is more akin to the alchemy of CS&N and the power harmonies of Wilson-Phillips. The Rescues roots can be heard in the members’ solo albums [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11], but the group vocals and instrumental support of Adam Marcello (drums), Carson Cohen (bass) and Steve Mazur (guitar) amplify their performances beyond the songwriters’ introspective individual styles. As singers they’re emboldened by each other’s presence, stoking the urgency of emotional embers that burn amid the ashes of strained, detoured and dissolved relationships.

That same vocal energy turns into escape on “Break Me Out” and “Sweetspot,” with England and Adrianne’s vocals coiled into springs that launch them free of daily confines and into the arms of the ones they love. Mann’s previous solo version of “Shadows of Tall Buildings” is reworked here with counterpoint singing and an a cappella coda, and his autumnal “California Rain” is refined with a slower tempo, contemplative arrangement and strained falsetto. The instrumentation builds in sympathy with the vocals, from lone guitars and pianos to thick electric band arrangements. The vocals likewise build from one to three and back, dropping in a breath from a fire hose of harmony to a moment of solo reverie. The Rescues deft combination of lyrics, production and vocals came together with such quickness that one must assume their artistic enmeshment wasn’t so much made as uncovered. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Listen to “Crazy Ever After”
The Rescues’ MySpace Page

Donovan, Tammy Wynette, The Bangles: Playlist

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Legacy’s latest version of the single-disc artist overview has a few novel twists. Rather than a strict chronological recitation of an artist’s chart hits, the song selections are meant to gather those tracks a fan might compile for themselves. The 14-track playlists are still hit focused, but don’t always provide a full accounting of an artist’s chart success. Mono singles, longer album versions, out-of-print and non-hit tracks are sequenced to optimize song-to-song segues and draw out an impression of the artist’s overall catalog. The results are intended to deliver a listening experience rather than a hits archive. As a physical disc, Legacy’s marketing these as CD-quality alternatives to MP3s, improving on the package’s ecological aspects with a plastic-free digipack made of 100% recycled paperboard, and including additional materials (pictures, liner notes, credits, wallpapers) on the disc itself, rather than in a printed booklet.

Donovan

Donovan’s Playlist opens with his 1966 flower-power anthems, “Sunshine Superman” and “Mellow Yellow,” the former in the longer stereo album version, the latter in the mono single mix. The Scottish Woody Guthrie’s acoustic folk is heard in the mono singles “Catch the Wind” and “Colours,” the latter featuring a harmonica bridge left off the album version. The body of the compilation runs through most of Donovan’s US hits (including specific single versions of “There is a Mountain” and “Epistle to Dippy”), omitting “Jennifer Juniper,” “Lalena” and “To Susan on the West Coast Waiting.” In place of the three missing hits are the album tracks “Season of the Witch” from 1966’s Sunshine Superman, “Young Girl Blues” from 1966’s Mellow Yellow, “Isle of Islay” from 1967’s A Gift From a Flower to a Garden, and “Happiness Runs” from 1969’s Barabajagal.

Those looking for a straightforward accounting of Donovan’s US chart hits should seek out the Greatest jifiHits or Essential CDs. Those looking for flavor beyond the hits will find the stark, piercing portrait of loneliness, “Young Girl Blues,” particularly affecting, and the positivity of “Happiness Runs” a sweet folk round. What the album tracks show is that Donovan can’t easily be captured in only fourteen tracks. Key protest titles (“The War Drags On,” “Universal Soldier”), winning B-sides (“Sunny South Kensington”), and writerly album works (“Writer in the Sun,” “Sand and Foam”) await you on original album reissues, longer single-disc offerings like Best Of-Sunshine Superman, or longer-form collections like Troubadour: The Definitive Collection or Try for the Sun: The Journey of Donovan. As a short overview, though, this is a good place to start your journey into the world of Donovan.

Tammy Wynette

How well each Playlist volumes live up to the marketing promise differs artist by artist. With over forty hit singles to her name, Wynette’s Playlist couldn’t possibly capture them all; instead, the selections cherry-pick hits that stretch from 1966’s “Apartment #9” through 1976’s chart topping “’Til I Can Make it on My Own.” All fourteen tracks are notated as identical recordings on 45 and LP, so there’s no collector’s aspect, and given that the same titles were released in 2004 as The Essential Tammy Wynette, this volume is more of a repackage rather than a fresh appraisal. That said, this is a solid single-disc introduction to one of country music’s greatest vocalists. It’s not a deep survey or career retrospective, for that you’ll need to seek the out-of-print Tears of Fire: The 25th Anniversary Collection.

The Bangles

The Bangles edition of Playlist partly reneges on the premise by reeling off their eight U.S. chart hits in order, starting with the 1986 Prince-authored breakthrough “Manic Monday” and concluding with 1989’s “Be With You.” Unlike other artists in this series with more extensive hit catalogs, The Bangles chart run fits snugly into half a disc. Also included is the group’s AOR hit “Hero Takes a Fall” from 1984’s All Over the Place, and five album tracks from All Over the Place, Different Light, and Everything. The non-hits favor covers, including Katrina and the Waves’ “Going Down to Liverpool,” The Merry-Go-Round’s “Live,” and Big Star’s “September Gurls.” This is the same track sequence offered on 2006’s We Are the ‘80s.

While these fourteen selections provide a fair representation of the Bangles’ commercially successful years, they could have better captured the fan’s view. Missing are tracks from the group’s pre-Columbia EP on Faulty/IRS, their paisley-underground compilation appearances, 12” remixes that accompanied their hits, and material from their various reunions. Perhaps those are too arcane for a 14-track once-over, but without them this set offers only one compilation producer’s selection of album tracks over another’s. Many will find the album tracks included here (particularly the covers and the original “Dover Beach”) an improvement over the selections on Greatest Hits, but your mileage may vary. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Creedence Clearwater Revival: The First Six Albums Reissued

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With Concord Music Group having purchased the Fantasy catalog, the fortieth anniversary of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s debut LP provides a suitable opportunity for a fresh round of reissues. All six of the original foursome’s albums (from 1968’s Creedence Clearwater Revival through 1970’s Pendulum) have been struck from new digital masters and augmented by previously unreleased tracks. Those who purchased the 2001 box set can pick up most of the bonus tracks separately as digital downloads (the two longest bonuses are CD-only). Those who didn’t buy the box, and think they’ll buy all six reissues may want to consider the box set for its inclusion of pre-Creedence work from the Blue Velvets and Golliwogs, the seventh CCR album Mardi Gras, the 1970-71 live recordings and several box-only bonuses. But for those just wanting to pick up a few favorite albums, these reissues are the ticket. Each is presented in a digipack with original front and back cover album art and a 16-page booklet with photos, credits and new liner notes.

Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Great American Band’s Debut

Creedence’s self-titled debut finds the band making the transition from blues and psychedelia to the bayou flavor that made them the greatest American rock band ever. The disc opens with a resurrection of Screaming Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You.” Fogerty’s vocal hasn’t the insane menace of Hawkins’ original, but his manhandling guitar solo shows how broad his vision of American music was going to be. The same is true for the group’s cover of Dale Hawkins’ “Suzie Q,” extending the rockabilly classic into an eight-minute epic. Doug Clifford’s fade-in backbeat gives way to Fogerty’s insinuating guitar riff, and a run through of the lyrics leads to an intense guitar jam whose feedback-lined climax dissolves back into the smoke of a fading backbeat. The album’s third cover is “Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won’t Do),” offered as a harder blues than the original’s Stax groove, and with a more ferocious vocal than Wilson Pickett’s original.

The originals, all written by John Fogerty, aren’t the swamp-rock icons of later albums, ranging from the straight blues “The Working Man” and “Get Down Woman” to the soul-psych “Gloomy” and jamming “Walking on Water.” The tune that points forward is “Porterville,” where you can hear the seeds of CCR’s swampy rock and an aggressive individualism in Fogerty’s lyrics. The 2008 CD’s bonus tracks include the throwback harmony rocker B-side of the group’s first single (originally issued as the Golliwogs) “Call it Pretending” and a 1968 album outtake of Bo Diddley’s “Before You Accuse Me” that’s less refined than the version they’d record for Cosmo’s Factory two years later. Two superbly present live tracks from a 1969 Fillmore show repeat “Ninety Nine and a Half (Won’t Do)” and “Suzie Q,” the former close to the studio original, the latter a set-closing showpiece demonstrating Fogerty’s hypnotizing guitar mastery stretching out to nearly twelve minutes.

Bayou Country
The Great American Band Finds Their Mojo

By the time Creedence recorded their second album, Bayou Country, John Fogerty had fully merged his broad range of Americana music influences into a wholly new sound. The El Cerrito, California bred songwriter re-imagined himself as a bayou musician whose guitar rock crawled from the swamp laden with backwoods blues and country twang. Fogerty debuts his persona on the album’s opener, with reverbed guitar bending over, around and through the group’s brilliant rhythm section. It’s a perfect bookend to the album’s closer, “Keep on Chooglin’,” whose title and rhythm define the underpinnings of the band’s musical vocabulary. In between Fogerty crafted the lasting myth of “Proud Mary,” fusing the group’s newly born shuffle, the soul of Stax and fictionalized images of Mississippi riverboats.

The band plays spare, late-night blues on “Graveyard Train,” but the images of lonely rural highways, railroads and undertakers all return to the album’s bayou hoodoo. The lone cover is a version of Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly” that finds Fogerty tearing up his overdriven lead guitar. The 2008 CD’s bonus tracks open with an alternate take of the shuffling “Bootleg” that’s stretched to double the original three minutes with a scat vocal section added to the middle. There’s also a trio of live tracks from the three-piece version of the group (sans Tom Fogerty) that toured Europe in 1971. “Born on the Bayou” is more rock ‘n’ roll fierce than the album track, “Proud Mary” is a by-the-numbers rendition of a band’s Big Hit (and seems most to miss Tom Fogerty), and “Crazy Otto” is a nine-minute blues jam recorded at the Fillmore in 1969.

Green River
The Great American Band’s First Completely Original Effort

Creedence’s third album (their second for 1969), Green River, is their first completely original effort as a band. Gone are the lengthy San Francisco jams, replaced by concisely written and arranged songs that concentrate Fogerty’s evocations of an idealized South. The album opens with the title track’s sumptuous memory of a mythical childhood, a song so deeply soaked in Southern swamps that it’s hard to imagine it being written in the urban hills of California’s Bay Area. The Fogerty brothers intertwine their twangy electric guitars with familial telepathy. The sound first explored on Bayou Country is now heard on every cut, mellowing the blue “Tombstone Shadow” and providing an introspective stage for Fogerty’s ballads. Even the frantic “Commotion” is given a Cajun base for its lyrics of a country boy demolished by the city’s hyperactivity. Fogerty’s social conscience stretches biblical allusions to then present day situations on “Wrote a Song for Everyone,” and with “Bad Moon Rising” the visions turn catastrophic. There’s a great deal more darkness here than on any other Creedence LP.

Fogerty’s guitar could be sinewy or ring with the influences of Chet Atkins, as does his solo on “Cross-Tie Walker.” Country music also makes an impact on the sorrowful, highly personal lyric of “Lodi.” The album closes with its sole cover, a slow rockabilly take on Ray Charles’ blue-soul “The Night Time is the Right Time.” The 2008 CD’s bonus tracks include a pair of pre-LP backing tracks that were never completed, the country-shuffle “Broken Spoke Shuffle” and the twangy “Glory Be.” Also here is a trio of live tracks from the group’s 1971 European tour. “Bad Moon Rising” is rushed (as are so many songs played live), a medley of “Green River” and “Suzie Q” is condensed to four-and-a-half-minutes, pointing out the two songs’ similarities more than giving the latter its full due, and “Lodi” is a fittingly weary lyric for a band reduced to three of its original four members.

Willy and the Poor Boys
The Great American Band Notches Their Second Classic

Creedence’s fourth album, their third full album for 1969, Willy & The Poor Boys, was even more of a classic than the preceding Green River. The band sounds even more at home with their sound and Fogerty’s creativity was stoked by the blistering pace at which he was creating new material. One could be forgiving of a few album tracks that didn’t measure up, but there weren’t any. Fogerty’s pen was overflowing with quality tunes and the band’s covers of “Cotton Fields” and “The Midnight Special” are so thoroughly inscribed with the Creedence sound as to be their own. Even the instrumental confection “Poorboy Shuffle,” with its wheezing harmonica and washboard skiffle, fits tightly into the album’s sequence, providing a light introduction and crossfade to the Ike Turner styled “Feelin’ Blue.”

The darkness of Green River is mostly dispelled here, as “Down on the Corner” opens the album with a joyous shuffle that coasts on Creedence’s potent rhythm section, and the paranoia of “It Came Out of the Sky” is played for rural laughs. Fogerty’s not without his calluses though, and “Fortunate Son” opens with a low, throbbing bass and memorable guitar riff to accompany the blistering attack on masters of war and privileged souls who get others to fight their wars. The 2008 CD’s bonus tracks include live versions of “Fortunate Son” and “It Came Out of the Sky” recorded by the three-piece Creedence on their 1971 European tour. The former is sung at a breakneck tempo that doesn’t seethe as fully as the studio original, the latter, recorded in Berlin, features the same hot guitar mix as other tracks from this show. Closing the CD is a version of “Down on the Corner” recorded with Booker T. and the MGs. The mono audio of this last bonus is less than sparkling, but where else are you going to hear John Fogerty and Steve Cropper swapping guitar licks?

Cosmo’s Factory
The Great American Band Hits Their Peak

Creedence’s fifth studio album, Cosmo’s Factory, expands upon the gains of their previous two releases even as it returns to the jamming, psychedelic roots and enthusiastic cover songs of the band’s 1968 debut. The result sums up the band’s evolution with socially-charged guitar jams (“Ramble Tamble”), concise, iconic hit singles (“Travelin’ Band,” “Up Around the Bend” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”), memorable B-sides (“Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “Run Through the Jungle” and “Long As I Can See the Light”), heartfelt throwbacks (“Before You Accuse Me,” “Ooby Dooby” and “My Baby Left Me”), and a tour de force eleven minute reworking of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty would stick around for the next LP (Pendulum), but this one’s actually the more fitting summation of the original foursome’s 2-1/2 year run. John Fogerty might well have sensed this was the high point as he sings “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” weary but satisfied, and “Long As I Can See the Light” as an elegy.

Given that all three B-sides should have marked their own time on the charts, one can easily imagine this album spinning off six hits, with the lengthy album tracks tucked away on the late night radio waves of underground FM. Legacy’s 2008 CD reissue adds three bonus tracks, including a post-LP studio take of “Travelin’ Band” recorded without horns, a previously unreleased live version of “Up Around the Bend” from the group’s final European tour and a 1970 studio jam of “Born on the Bayou” featuring Booker T. on organ. If you’re only going to buy one Creedence LP, this is as good as it gets. Of course, that could equally well be said about Green River or Willy and the Poor Boys, and perhaps even Bayou Country. Best bet: get them all.

Pendulum
The Great American Band’s Last LP as a Foursome

Creedence’s sixth studio album in 2-1/2 years, Pendulum, marked their finale as a four-piece; two months after its December 1970 release, rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty would quit the group for good. Unlike the summary of their musical inventions heard on 1969’s Cosmo’s Factory, their latest LP found John Fogerty pushing the group in new directions, including more blatant nods to New Orleans funk, Stax soul, and experimental studio productions. The album’s press – both at the time and with this reissue – suggested the new focus was partly motivated by the dismissive attitudes of the band’s peers. With a string of top-5 singles and a lack of trendy sounds on their albums, Creedence wasn’t always given their due as innovators. Fogerty may have felt stung, but instead of capitulating with nods to current trends, he sought to lead the band in new directions. Fogerty may well have felt restless after stringing together Bayou Country, Green River, Willy and the Poorboys, and Cosmo’s Factory in just 18 months. Fogerty wrote all of the album’s songs for the first time, employed sax solos and a vocal backing chorus and, most conspicuously, added generous helpings of Hammond B-3.

Given all those changes, the album opens with a characteristic heavy rock jam that would have fit the group’s debut. The organ lining the album’s single, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” portends the larger changes to be found within the album, and those innovations first kick in with the organ, saxophone and chorus backing of “Sailor’s Lament.” Fogerty’s keyboard provides a spooky introduction to “(Wish I Could) Hideaway,” offering melodramatics that harken back to the group’s earlier cover of “I Put a Spell on You.” Fogerty’s fascination with Stax turns blatant on the funky “Chameleon,” and the structure and riff of “Born to Move” provide a solid nod to Rufus Thomas’ “Walking the Dog.”

As a producer Fogerty gives his rhythm section its due on “It’s Just a Thought,” moving the bass and drums forward and rewarding listeners with some of Stu Cook and Doug Clifford’s terrifically melodic playing. The album closes with the Little Richard styled rocker, “Molina,” and the six-minute prog-rock experiment “Rude Awakening, No. 2.” The latter provides a “heavy” bookend to the album’s opener, but aside from the acoustic guitar intro, it’s rather tortuous. Closing track pretentions aside, this is a solid album whose new directions may not measure up to the group’s peak, but might have proved fruitful had the group not dissolved with 1972’s Mardi Gras. Bonus tracks on the 2008 CD reissue include the promotional single “45 Revolutions Per Minute (Part 1 and 2),” which finds the band experimenting in the studio with a “Revolution #9” like montage of production tricks, backwards tape, sound effects, musical bridges, comedy bits, and San Francisco DJ Tom Campbell. Wrapping up the disc is a live take of “Hey Tonight” recorded by the three-piece Creedence in Hamburg on their last tour of Europe. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

John Phillips: Pussycat

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Papa John’s third LP w/Jagger, Richards, Wood & Taylor

After the demise of the Mamas & Papas in 1968, and the recording of their contractual obligation album People Like Us in 1971, Papa John Phillips embarked on a commercially ill-fated solo career. His debut, 1969’s John, The Wolf King of L.A., found Phillips forgoing the careful orchestrations and perfectly arranged harmonies of his former group, replacing naïve summer-of-love visions with more jaundiced visions. Critically lauded, the album stirred little commercial interest. Unable to find a starring role as a solo artist, Phillips turned to film, penning soundtracks for Brewster McCloud and Myra Breckinridge. He returned to solo sessions in the early 1970s, augmenting his Wrecking Crew regulars with members of the Crusaders, Traffic, and Mothers of Invention, turning his sound urban and funky. The results, shelved at the time, were released in 2007 as Varese’s Jack of Diamonds.

Phillips wrote music for a Broadway show, but in-fighting with the producers sunk the artistic vision and bad reviews closed the play after a short run. With his drug issues intensifying, Phillips’ musical productivity dropped, taking only the occasional project, such as the soundtrack for The Man Who Fell to Earth. While in London working on the film, Phillips made the acquaintance of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and with both Mick Taylor and Ron Wood helping out, cut six tracks for a prospective solo album. When drug use and Richards’ Canadian bust caused the London sessions to languish, Phillips returned to New York where the project resumed the following year. The music bounced from Stonesy rock and country to more highly produced pop, and with Phillips’ voice in good shape throughout, he showed more confidence in his singing than on either of his earlier solo projects.

Unfortunately, label disinterest and other Stones obligations once again sapped the project’s momentum. The results of both the London and New York sessions were left unissued at the time, and the original mid-70s master tape mixes went missing for three decades. Phillips revisited the project nearly fifteen years later, adding new overdubs, remixing the multitracks and changing the album’s running order. Issued shortly after his 2001 passing under the title Pay, Pack and Follow, the album received critical interest, but like his 1969 solo debut, found no commercial fortune. Two years later the original mid-70s mixes were found, and together with three session tracks and a pair of outtakes from The Man Who Fell to Earth are issued here for the first time. Producer Jeffrey Greenberg’s original mixes are more of their time than Phillips’ later re-workings, and the London tracks, in particular, fit well with the sound of the Stones’ work of the era.

The album opens with the slick production of “Wilderness of Love,” framing Phillips’ thin voice in liquid guitar, female backing vocals and a catchy, upbeat melody. There’s a similar slickness to “2001,” though its backing is more like the Stones’ Some Girls, with gentle country-blue guitars in the corners. The chipper backing vocals contrast to Phillips’ indifferent contemplation of a future in which everything may be different and humanity may have survived; it’s as if Prince’s century-ending party was stocked with ‘ludes. Phillips’ reserve is more wistful on the country-folk memory of home, “Oh Virginia,” but he sings from the gut with Jagger on backing vocals for the yowling blues-rock expose of his wild-child Mackenzie, “She’s Just 14.” Phillips imagines (or perhaps just enunciates) the inner thoughts of a strip bar patron in the showtune blues “Pussycat” and fantasizes being rescued from the dissipation of his Bel Air rock star mansion on “Sunset Boulevard.” He profiles a financier friend on “Mr. Blue,” and provides an early consideration of South African apartheid in “Zulu Warrior.” Both feature strong percussion from Traffic’s Reebop Kwaku Baah, the latter lanced with superb rhythm and solo guitar. The original album closes with a pair of songs that speak intimately about the discontent in his relationship and the craving to find something new.

Tracks 11-13 are session outtakes almost too vibrant to fit the original album. “Time Machine” starts as a country-tinged ballad before picking up a Who-like rhythm, and “Feather Your Nest” is a hook-filled Stones-styled jam with a bubblegum melody. Tracks 14 and 15 provide remnants from Phillips’ soundtrack to The Man Who Fell to Earth. “Liar, Liar” is a reggae tune on which Phillips subtle vocal is surrounded by horns, organ and drums, and “Hello Mary Lou” is a rootsy piano-and-guitar led instrumental. Phillips’ dalliance with the Stones was a two-way collaboration, with the guitars of Richards and Taylor providing grit to Phillips’ pop-oriented dreams, and the confidence of Richards and Jagger inciting lead vocals that really lead. This is another truly pleasant surprise from Phillips’ post-Mama & Papas musical life. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Listen to “Oh Virginia”

Carole King: Tapestry (Legacy Edition)

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Seminal singer-songwriter LP augmented with live tracks

At the time of this album’s 1971 release, Carole King had long since proven herself one of America’s greatest pop songwriters, but she had yet to be fully recognized as a performer. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. Early in her career she’d released a few singles from her perch at the legendary Brill Building, including the minor hit “It Might As Well Rain Until September.” She’d also produced a smattering of titles for the Dimension and Tomorrow labels in the mid-60s, an album with the group The City in 1969, and her solo debut, Writer, in 1970. The latter held many charms, but found King singing her way past rock ‘n’ roll backings or fitting herself into country rock. Writer‘s variety is broader than the piano-centered productions of Tapestry, but neither the upbeat numbers nor the placid ballads of King’s debut proved the expressive jazz-tinged singer-songwriter vehicles of this sophomore breakthrough.

Presciently, Writer’s closing cover of “Up on the Roof” did point the way to Tapestry, taking what had been a signature 1962 performance by The Drifters and rearranging its Latin beat and swirling strings into an introspective piano ballad. It’s the same magic King performed in transforming the searching adolescence of the Shirelles’ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” into the thoughtful worry-wonder of a woman on the brink of thirty. The feats are all the more impressive for the lyrics having been written when King was barely twenty-years-old herself, writing for commercial acceptance on AM radio rather than pure self expression. Here, as throughout Tapestry, King’s piano is the instrumental focus, allowing her to emote through her voice and fingers in parallel.

The funky opener, “I Feel the Earth Move,” finds King’s vocals equally at home up-tempo. Her emancipated expression is breathtaking, and a bluesy piano solo enhances the euphoric freedom. Such openly emotional writing would be cloying in less talented hands, but King was not only an expert wordsmith, but a definitive interpreter of her own material. Her gospel-tinged version of “You’ve Got a Friend” is heavier than James Taylor’s contemporaneous single, amplifying both the pain and relief of the song’s lyrics, and the closing take of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” is stripped of Aretha Franklin’s arrangement and supported instead by King’s piano playing and an overdubbed backing vocal. The spare instrumentation brings this closer to a songwriter’s demo, but King’s performance finds a dedication to the lyrics that reclaims her stake in the song.

In addition to re-imagined versions of earlier songs, King composed intimate new works of relationships being strained (“So Far Way”) and broken (“It’s Too Late”), loneliness (“Home Again”), salvation (“Way Over Yonder”) and faithfulness (“Where You Lead”). It’s only with “Smackwater Jack” and the album’s title track that King took to more fictional abandon. The sum total of Tapestry swept the 1971 Grammys, netting King awards for Album of the and Pop Vocal Performance, as well as Record of the Year ( “It’s Too Late”) and Song of the Year (“You’ve Got a Friend”). The album launched “It’s Too Late” to the top of the charts, and followed with “So Far Away” as a top twenty. Both singles’ B-sides, “I Feel the Earth Move” and “Smackwater Jack,” got their share of airplay, with the album peaking at #1 at the start of a six-year stay on the charts.

Legacy’s two-CD reissue features the original album on disc one, and a second disc of live takes recorded at various locations in 1973 and 1976. The eleven tracks of disc two repeat the Tapestry song list, save “Where You Lead,” whose lyrics King had deemed servile, and left off her set list. Over the years, this material was performed in a variety of musical settings, but Legacy has selected arrangements featuring only voice and piano. There’s not much distance between Lou Adler’s lean arrangements for the original album and these solo takes, but removing the intermediation of studio recording pushes King even closer to her songs. She adds an occasional inflection to her melodies, but what really sets these performances apart is the communication with her audience. The songs are transformed from interior expressions of a songwriter to vehicles for sharing emotions and responses.

King really digs into her songs on stage, bringing the sleeper “Beautiful” fully to life and adding extra passion to “Way Over Yonder.” As on the original album her “covers” of songs made into hits by others reveal new emotional layers. “You’ve Got a Friend” spurs King to vocal exclamation, and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” is sung with a declarative force that’s in startling contrast to its intimate lyric. Even more so than on the studio versions you get a hear King’s singing and playing as natural expressions. Running the live tracks in the same order as the album suggests just how carefully the album was sequenced; but what isn’t shown here is how these songs fit into King’s larger live set. It’s also interesting to note that none of these tracks were selected from tours that promoted Tapestry itself; they’re all from subsequent album tours.

Those who purchased earlier versions of Tapestry will enjoy the new light shed by the live tracks; they can be purchased individually from on-line download services. Those picking up their first Tapestry CD may also want to reach back to the 1999 reissue for the bonus track “Out in the Cold,” likewise available as a download. This latter track is reputed to be a Tapestry outtake, though its provenance remains disputed. Legacy’s deluxe gatefold digipack includes new liner notes by Harvey Kubernick, period photos from the recording sessions, and song-by-song lyrics and instrumental credits. This is a superb reintroduction of one of the 1970s most endearing and enduring albums. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

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