In the article about Cris Williamson in Allmusic, William Ruhlmann offers this concise introduction: “Just as baseball historians can only speculate about how players in the old Negro leagues would have fared in the absence of segregation in the major leagues prior to the arrival of Jackie Robinson in 1947, so music historians may ponder what status Cris Williamson might have assumed if she had emerged at a time when admitted homosexuals were not subject to exclusion from major record labels. By the 1990’s, openly gay women artists Melissa Etheridge, Indigo Girls, and k.d. lang were able to maintain major-label contracts and sell records in the millions (although none of them had proclaimed their sexual orientation when they were signed in the 1980’s)." * * * The Changer and the Changed (1975) was Olivia Records’ second album release, and this album by Cris Williamson quickly became the biggest seller in women’s music, eventually selling 500,000 copies. Allmusic gives the record its highest rating (five stars), and Stewart Mason has a rave review on the website: “The simple but rich arrangements set Williamson’s glorious voice and piano against strings, flute, and Jacqueline Robbins’ jazz-inflected fretless bass, giving the album a timeless sound and putting the focus entirely on the songs and Williamson’s elegantly passionate performance of them.”
Behind the scenes, Olivia Records started to put the full weight of its philosophy into place on this album: To the extent possible, their work was to be in women’s hands from start to finish. In all, Allmusic lists 50 people in the credits for The Changer and the Changed, with the vast majority being women.
* * *
Melissa Etheridge’s 2001 album Skin was written after the breakup of her longtime relationship with filmmaker Julie Cypher that included two children fathered by David Crosby via artificial insemination; writing for Allmusic, Kerry L. Smith says of this album: “If ever there was a perfect breakup album, this is it.”
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Janis Ian has continued to release albums; Allmusic lists 21 studio albums. She publicly came out as a lesbian in 1993.
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I believe I was in Indianapolis when I picked up a local tabloid newspaper and first read of a band called Sleater-Kinney – Allmusic says of them that they are the greatest punk rock band of the 1990’s and 2000’s – though I honestly don’t remember much about the article and interview except that they are an all-female rock band.
* * *
Boyskout, this month’s Under-Appreciated Rock Band are pretty open about being a lesbian band – they used the term “rad queer band” in one interview. Though neither their Allmusic write-up nor the Bomp! Records packaging mentions this. the name of the last song on the album, “Girl on Girl Action” gives it away if you hadn’t already figured it out.
(January 2014)
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Fetchin Bones formed in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1983 and released a total of six albums. Writing for Allmusic, Michael Sutton said that the band was “highlighted by [Hope] Nicholls’ powerhouse voice, which recalled Janis Joplin in its dirty intensity”.
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The flamboyant look of Fuzzbox and their savvy meld of new wave and punk a la the Go-Go’s with fuzztone made the British band indie rock darlings for a time. Allmusic gripes that, if anything, they don’t use their fuzzbox enough; but I was always satisfied. We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It includes mostly cool original songs but also a cover of the fuzz classic “Spirit in the Sky”; the song was originally released by Norman Greenbaum in late 1969, reaching #1 on the British charts, and was a #1 hit in the UK by another British band Doctor and the Medics in 1986.
(February 2014)
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From my first exposure to his remarkable body of work back in the late 1970’s, Mick Farren became one of my very favorite rock musicians. He has released solo albums, and he has been in a number of amazing rock bands also: the Social Deviants, the Deviants, the Pink Fairies, and others. Early on, Farren wrote lyrics for another of my long-time favorite bands, Hawkwind. One of Farren’s long-time collaborators, Andy Colquhoun is a past UARA. Mick Farren was also a prolific writer on a host of subjects and published numerous science-fiction novels. The Allmusic entry on him by Chris True begins: “To say that Mick Farren was a ‘jack of all trades’ is putting it mildly.”
* * * Being the man behind the legendary psychedelic rock album by the Deviants, Ptooff! would be enough to put Mick Farren among the giants of rock music; the thing is, he did so much more besides. Allmusic lists 10 albums in the discography of the Deviants alone; Wikipedia has 11.
* * * Allmusic states the musical and historical importance of Ptooff! well in their entry by Dave Thompson: “Talk today about Britain’s psychedelic psyxties, and it’s the light whimsy of Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, the gentle introspection of the Village Green Kinks, Sgt. Pepper, and ‘My White Bicycle’ [by Tomorrow] which hog the headlines. People have forgotten there was an underbelly as well, a seething mass of discontent and rancor which would eventually produce the likes of Hawkwind, the Pink Fairies, and the Edgar Broughton Band. . . .
“But the deranged psilocybic rewrite of ‘Gloria’ which opens the album, ‘I’m Coming Home’, still sets a frightening scene, a world in which Top 40 pop itself is horribly skewed, and the sound of the Deviants grinding out their misshapen R&B classics is the last sound you will hear. Move on to ‘Garbage’, and though the Deviants’ debt to both period [Frank] Zappa and [the] Fugs is unmistakable, still there’s a purity to the paranoia.
“Ptooff! was conceived at a time when there genuinely was a generation gap, and hippies were a legitimate target for any right-wing bully boy with a policeman’s hat and a truncheon. IT and Oz, the two underground magazines which did most to support the Deviants ([Mick] Farren wrote for both), were both publicly busted during the band’s lifespan, and that fear permeates this disc; fear, and vicious defiance.”
* * * I certainly can’t compete with the description of Mona – The Carnivorous Circus provided by Dave Thompson for Allmusic, so I won't even try: “Mick Farren convened a more-or-less all-star band from the same disreputable circles he’d always moved in. Carnivorous Circus was cut, the first essential album of the 1970s, and it’s still one of the most unrepentantly nasty, gratuitously ugly records ever made. Rock history loves to bandy those terms around, then apply them to this week’s most fashionable long-haired gnarly snarlies. And it’s true, the Pretty Things, MC5, the Pink Fairies, the Broughtons [Edgar Broughton Band], any of the myriad ’60s freakbeat bands captured on sundry Nuggets and Pebbles type collections, they’ve all dipped a toe into those malevolently murky waters. Some of them have even swum around a little. Carnivorous Circus goes the whole hog and then some, holding its breath and descending to the seabed. Now it owns a roadhouse and wrestles giant squid for fun.”
* * * I picked up a 2001 CD by Shagrat called Pink Jackets Required, and it is a delight. This music was evidently made by the earliest lineup of the band. In the review of the album for Allmusic, Dean McFarlane gives it four stars and reports: “This album was recorded in 1969 just before Tyrannosaurus Rex embarked on their first U.S. tour and was completed on [Steve Peregrin] Took’s return. Although it is in effect a collection of demos, and some of the tracks will be known to fans of Think Pink – primitive takes of ‘The Coming of the Other One’ and ‘The Sparrow Is a Sign’ will be familiar – in fact, Pink Jackets Required is one of the most astonishing albums either of the pair recorded, and in popular opinion and rock-evidence surpasses the Twink Think Pink album. The name Shagrat was bounced around for an incarnation of one of Twink’s other groups with members of the Pink Fairies, but that unit was entirely different from the genius brilliance of the project with Steven Peregrin Took. Simply, this should be tracked down and given serious attention by those who love A Beard of Stars [by Tyrannosaurus Rex], Deviants, Pretty Things, and early T. Rex.”
* * * Dean McFarlane in his Allmusic review also gives Think Pink four stars and writes: “Think Pink is an incredibly varied album with no two songs resembling each other, but then one assumes an acid masterpiece like ‘Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box’ will stay on high rotation for at least a week on the stereos of most psychedelia fans, so overall album flow may not be such an issue. This is pure psychedelic acid rock of the highest order. If one can imagine a fusion of the Incredible String Band, Deviants, early Pink Floyd, and a fair dose of Twink’s heredity as a member of Tomorrow and the Pretty Things, you get an idea of what he was up to. Not known for doing things in halves, he shows little restraint in the assembly of a group designed to tear the roof off the psychedelic scene.”
* * * Mick Farren stayed around just long enough to help found this amazing band; one Allmusic review that I can’t find now included a passing reference to the Pink Fairies as being the perfect 1970’s British rock band.
(March 2014/1)
* * * This month’s last-minute replacement as the Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month is the Sons of Fred, who are described by Allmusic as an “obscure but intense British beat band”.
* * *
There is some misinfomation out there about the Sons of Fred – such as the caption on the above photograph – and I found a letter from Pete Sears that was reprinted on the Radio London website at:
www.radiolondon.co.uk/rl/scrap60/fabforty/65fabs/jun65/fab130665/fab130665.html . Much of what I am presenting in this post is based on this letter. Contrary to what Allmusic says, the Sons of Fred are not from the coastal town of Great Yarmouth. The band was actually based in Dulwich and Beckenham, where Ray Redway and Alan Bohling were from. Mick Hutchinson and Tim Boyle were from Chislehurst, while Pete Sears grew up in Hayes, near Bromley. However, Sears does not know where the band name the Sons of Fred came from. Also, the Sons of Fred are not at all related to another band called Odyssey, despite what is shown on Allmusic, along with plenty of other Internet sites.
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Many of the songs in the English Freakbeat Series were by musicians that became famous in later bands or in other contexts. The real attraction for the English Freakbeat, Volume 3 CD reissue though are three songs by a band called the Ravens; their bandleader Dave Davies and his younger brother Ray Davies were later in the Kinks, with Ray being the frontman and main songwriter for that stellar British Invasion group. Ray Davies was supposedly not involved in the Ravens at all according to the band’s official history; however, the CD liner notes as well as the review by Allmusic notes that some of these songs bear Ray Davies’ stamp and might have been sung (if not written) by him.
(March 2014/2)
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The article on Small Faces in Allmusic opens: “Small Faces were the best English band never to hit it big in America.”
* * *
Allmusic is not particularly impressed with Homer; their short article on the band includes this comment: “The LP [Grown in U.S.A.] was an uncertain mix of multi-sectioned songs (sometimes with Mellotron) that had similarities to hard rock-based early British progressive rock, with touches of folk-rock and country-rock. Though played and arranged with confidence, it didn’t have material of high-enough quality to make it one of the better rarities of its type.” The original LP received a respectable 3 stars (out of 5), while the overview CD of their complete recordings that I have, Homer is not reviewed.
What Allmusic calls “uncertain” I would praise as multi-layered; the juxtaposition of strong electric guitar and pedal steel guitar alone is almost unheard of. Unlike many progressive rock albums that flow from one song into another, Homer meanders unexpectedly, with several sections in the individual songs.
(April 2014)
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“Smokestack Lightning” was taken from the band’s first (British) album, Five Live Yardbirds, described by Allmusic as “the first important – indeed, essential – live album to come out of the 1960’s British rock & roll boom”.
The muddy sound on many of the Yardbirds songs over the years has been greatly improved as better master tapes have surfaced; Allmusic notes the Repertoire Records releases of the 1990’s as showing significant improvement.
* * *
Writing for Allmusic, Bruce Eder noted that early on, most drummers were famous only because the bands they were in were famous: “Ginger Baker was rock’s first superstar drummer and the most influential percussionist of the 1960s. . . . Baker made his name entirely on his playing, initially as showcased in Cream, but far transcending even that trio’s relatively brief existence. Though he only cut top-selling records for a period of about three years at the end of the 1960s, virtually every drummer of every heavy metal band that has followed since that time has sought to emulate some aspect of Baker’s playing.”
Writing for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine calls Disraeli Gears “a very British album”, and never more so than on the closing track “Mother’s Lament”, showing that Cream was also attracted to traditional songs other than the blues.
* * *
Whereas rock music critique was previously about what was good and what was bad, the Blind Faith album was released (in August 1969) at a time when opinions began to be divided about rock music as a whole, and beyond mere aesthetic considerations – whether the idea of rock as an industry could be a good thing regardless of what the music itself was like. Here is how Bruce Eder opens his article on Blind Faith for Allmusic: “Blind Faith was either one of the great successes of the late ’60s, a culmination of the decade’s efforts by three legendary musicians – or it was a disaster of monumental proportions, and a symbol of everything that had gone wrong with the business of rock at the close of the decade. In actual fact, Blind Faith was probably both.” In any case, Blind Faith didn’t stay together but seven months.
* * *
In the 4½ star review of the first Ginger Baker’s Air Force album in Allmusic, Bruce Eder raves: “For a change, the late 1960s yielded up a supergroup that lived up to its hype and then some. Ginger Baker’s Air Force was recorded live at Royal Albert Hall in January of 1970 – in fact, this may be the best-sounding live album ever to come out of that notoriously difficult venue – at a show that must have been a wonder to watch, as the ten-piece band blazed away in sheets of sound, projected delicate flute parts behind multi-layered African percussion, or built their songs up Bolero-like, out of rhythms from a single instrument into huge jazz-cum-R&B crescendos. Considering that this was only their second gig, the group sounds astonishingly tight, which greatly reduces the level of self-indulgence that one would expect to find on an album where five of the eight tracks run in excess of ten minutes.”
The band’s second album, Ginger Baker’s Air Force 2 came out at the end of 1970 and had a different group of musicians. This album too is well regarded in Allmusic and receives 4 stars.
* * *
The same night as their second single was released (October 15, 1964), the Soul Agents appeared at Soho’s Marquee Club with Long John Baldry and the Hoochie Coochie Men. Allmusic says of the 1964 album by this group: “One of the unsung jewels of the British R&B scene, Long John’s Blues is, astonishingly, the sole surviving document of what was, at one point, among the most exciting live acts on the entire circuit.” Rod Stewart appears on banjo on this album.
(May 2014)
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I once read frequent Jefferson Airplane lead singer Grace Slick described as “the voice that launched a thousand trips”. She was not an original bandmember, however; Slick was previously in another San Francisco band called the Great Society. In the band’s entry in Allmusic, Richie Unterberger notes that the Great Society “were nearly as popular as Jefferson Airplane in the early days of the San Francisco psychedelic scene. Instrumentally, the Great Society were not as disciplined as Airplane. But they were at least their equals in imagination, infusing their probing songwriting with Indian influences, minor key melodic shifts, and groundbreaking, reverb-soaked psychedelic guitar by [Grace] Slick’s brother-in-law, Darby Slick.”
* * *
Manfred Mann was one of the original British Invasion bands, but they deserve more State-side success than they had, so allow me to quote Bruce Eder’s article in Allmusic to give an overview of the band’s history: “An R&B band that only played pop to get on the charts, Manfred Mann ranked among the most adept British Invasion acts in both styles. The fact that their range encompassed jazz as well as rhythm & blues, coupled with some elements of their appearance and presentation – co-founder/keyboardist Manfred Mann’s bearded, bespectacled presence – also made the Manfreds more of a thinking person’s band than a cute, cuddly outfit like the Beatles, or sexual provocateurs in the manner of the Rolling Stones. Yet, their approach to R&B was as valid as that of the Stones, equally compelling and often more sophisticated. They charted an impressive number of singles from 1964 through 1969, and developed a large, loyal international fandom that lingers to this day.”
* * *
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band released their first album, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1972 and has an impressive discography by any standard. Allmusic lists 21 albums by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
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An overview of Joy Division and its importance in rock music by John Bush can be found in Allmusic: “Formed in the wake of the punk explosion in England, Joy Division became the first band in the post-punk movement by later emphasizing not anger and energy but mood and expression, pointing ahead to the rise of melancholy alternative music in the ’80s. Though the group’s raw initial sides fit the bill for any punk band, Joy Division later incorporated synthesizers (taboo in the low-tech world of ’70s punk) and more haunting melodies, emphasized by the isolated, tortured lyrics of its lead vocalist, Ian Curtis. While the British punk movement shocked the world during the late ’70s, Joy Division’s quiet storm of musical restraint and emotive power proved to be just as important to independent music in the 1980s.”
* * *
H. P. Lovecraft is a well regarded psychedelic rock band that was named after one of my very favorite authors, H. P. Lovecraft. Their first album, H. P. Lovecraft came out in 1967 and is rated 4½ stars from Allmusic and (as noted in the article on the album by Richie Unterberger) “included an underground FM radio favorite, ‘White Ship’” (named after a Lovecraft short story, “White Ship”).
Drummer Michael Tegza was the only original bandmember left when he reinvented the band H. P. Lovecraft.under the name Lovecraft and released an album called Valley of the Moon in 1970. Joe Viglione, writing for Allmusic says of this album: “For this 1970 Reprise release, they are dubbed Lovecraft and have abandoned the psychedelic Jefferson Airplane sound for a progressive Crosby, Stills & Nash-meets-Uriah Heep flavor. In 1975, drummer [Michael] Tegza re-formed the band again and separated the two words; their Love Craft album, We Love You Whoever You Are, took things into an almost Santana-goes-soul direction.”
I have the Love Craft album, and the addition of soulful vocals by LaLomie Washburn atop a dreamy pop-psychedelic sheen makes this a fascinating listen, though it has little similarity to the original H. P. Lovecraft. This record gets some grudging admiration by Joe Viglione in Allmusic: “The record sounds better than it looks, for they look like a glorified Holiday Inn band; but the creative spark is still there, with Michael Tegza producing this with LaLomie Washburn, and the band dipping into progressive jams, expertly played, but with little chance of obtaining Top 40 success.”
* * *
The new direction for Fleetwood Mac was not limited to personnel changes or new musical experimentation; this has been common in bands long before rock and roll came along. Fleetwood Mac relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-1970’s; also, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were Americans. Thus, it is difficult to know even how to define the band. In Allmusic, their article starts off: “While most bands undergo a number of changes over the course of their careers, few groups experienced such radical stylistic changes as Fleetwood Mac. Initially conceived as a hard-edged British blues combo in the late ’60s, the band gradually evolved into a polished pop/rock act over the course of a decade. Throughout all of their incarnations, the only consistent members of Fleetwood Mac were drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie – the rhythm section that provided the band with its name.”
* * *
Wikipedia has a brief mention of the Richmond Sluts in the article on their drummer Brad Artley, who also performed from 1995 to 1996 with a fairly prominent neo-psychedelic outfit called the Brian Jonestown Massacre. BJM has 14 albums listed in Allmusic, though Artley did not perform on any of them.
* * *
Allmusic gives The Richmond Sluts 4 stars and says of the Richmond Sluts that “they explored the glam-slam-thank-you-ma’am side of punk”. Jo-Ann Greene comments about their inventiveness on the album in ways that are a little beyond my capacity to figure out: “Since categorization is a necessity in this age of overspecification, punk rock will do nicely, but doesn’t begin to encompass just how cleverly the group churns other genres through its blender. The Sluts connect the dots between ’60s garage punk and old school ’70s style, then toss just a dash of new school into the mix. Variations on this recipe reverberate across the album, and answer a slew of niggling questions along the way. Ever wonder what the [New York] Dolls would sound like covered by a psychedelic band? Kept up at night trying to imagine a cross between the Cramps and the Velvet Underground? Curious what the result would be if a time warp sent Richard Hell circa 1978 a decade into the past? And what if Eddie & the Hotrods were really the Ramones with English accents? The Richmond Sluts answer all these brain teasers and more you’ve yet to even imagine, and they do it without an ounce of pretentiousness or braggadocio.”
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Big Midnight also has released only one album, Everything for the First Time, which came out on Alive Records in 2003. Allmusic immediately notes in their review by Brian O'Neill, “Actually, there is nothing here that you will be hearing for the first time”, and continues: “Everything for the First Time could have as easily came out in 1973 as it did in 2003. Call ’em ‘the Rolling Stooges’ and the band will have to plead guilty, as Big Midnight combines the nihilism of Iggy Pop (‘Love for Sin’ could have been a [David] Bowie or [Lou] Reed side written specifically with Ig in mind) with the bloozey, boozy swagger of Keith Richards’ crew.”
(June 2014)
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I have Terri Gibbs’ first album, Somebody’s Knockin’ – rated 4 stars by Allmusic – and every song is rendered well in her understated but expressive voice. Her follow-up single “Rich Man” made the Country Top 20, as did two later singles. Her 1987 album, Turn Around was also nominated for a Grammy and generated three hit singles on the CCM charts.
* * *
Mikki was born Mikki Farrow in Detroit. She met and married a legendary saxophone player named Andrew “Mike” Terry in the mid-1960’s. In his Allmusic entry, Jason Ankeny writes: “The baritone saxophone of Andrew ‘Mike’ Terry remains an indelible component of the famed Motown sound. . . . Terry’s résumé reads like a roll call of soul’s greatest hits – his Motown track record alone spans chart smashes including the Four Tops’ ‘I Can’t Help Myself’, the Isley Brothers’ ‘This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)’, Kim Weston’s ‘Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)’, and Marvin Gaye’s ‘Baby Don’t You Do It’; and as a freelancer, he played on monsters like Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’, the Fascinations’ ‘Girls Are out to Get You’, and the Capitols’ ‘Cool Jerk’.”
* * *
Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff founded Philadelphia International Records in 1971 and (as Allmusic put it) “ruled the mid-’70s R&B world with the same sound”. Major artists that were signed to the label include the O’Jays, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Lou Rawls, the Three Degrees, and Billy Paul. Blue Notes lead singer Teddy Pendergrass later signed a solo deal.
* * *
The Ice Man Cometh by Jerry Butler proved highly influential; John Bush noted in Allmusic that the album “marks an excellent collaboration, the first time R&B production techniques reached a level of maturity and elegance capable of fully complementing one of the smoothest vocalists in soul history.”
* * *
In 2007, Kent Records put together a CD called The Right Tracks, covering 29 of the recordings that Billy Butler made at Okeh Records. Writing for Allmusic, Richie Unterberger gives the CD 4½ stars and says: “First and foremost, [Billy] Butler, though far less celebrated than his older brother Jerry Butler, was a fine singer and songwriter in his own right, producing consistently good pop-soul discs that were rather reminiscent of the Impressions (and, at times, Major Lance, another Chicago soul artist with strong connections to Curtis Mayfield). In addition, if you are a fan of Mayfield’s mid-’60s work with the Impressions and as a songwriter/producer, this has some of his best overlooked work in the latter capacity.”
(July 2014)
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There was a noticeable dip in the ratings given by rock critics of Bob Dylan’s Christian recordings. That was not true so much for Slow Train Coming – Robert Christgau of the Village Voice gave the album a B+ and wrote: “The lyrics are indifferently crafted. Nevertheless, this is his best album since Blood on the Tracks. The singing is passionate and detailed.” Allmusic and Rolling Stone both rated the album ***.
For Saved, the Rolling Stone rating stood, but Allmusic gave the album only **, and Christgau scored it as C+. Entertainment Weekly showed a C–. Shot of Love had ** from both Rolling Stone and Allmusic; Christgau and Entertainment Weekly showed B–.
With Infidels though, all was forgiven: Rolling Stone and Allmusic were both at ****.
* * *
To put these ratings in context, Self Portrait (1970) is the only Bob Dylan album to get just ** before Saved, other than some live albums (Allmusic shows low ratings for most of the Rolling Stones live albums also).
* * *
There is a Bob Dylan album that scores even lower in Allmusic than his Christian albums, and here I need to put on my “Under Appreciated” hat – the 1973 release Dylan yields just *. Allmusic mentions that this LP is “[c]ommonly regarded as the worst album in Bob Dylan’s catalog”. The album is described in both Rolling Stone Record Guide and Allmusic as a collection of outtakes from Self Portrait – i.e., songs that didn’t make the cut for that head-scratcher – and that just sent chills up my spine.
Dylan is a recent rescue from Katrina, however, and I found it surprisingly easy to listen to. The album is entirely cover songs, many of them quite familiar; and if Dylan’s performance of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” leaves no impression at all, that is not true of the lesser known songs.
The opening track, a traditional folk song called “Lily of the West” is beautifully performed; and the album is well worth owning for that song alone. Personally I am at least as big a fan of Bob Dylan as a folksinger as I am of Bob Dylan as a rocker, and this song was a welcome return to the performances that I remember so well from his early albums.
(August 2014)
* * *
Richie Unterberger writing for Allmusic notes: “Without a doubt, [George] Harrison’s first [post-Beatles] solo recording [All Things Must Pass], originally issued as a triple album, is his best. Drawing on his backlog of unused compositions from the late Beatles era, George crafted material that managed the rare feat of conveying spiritual mysticism without sacrificing his gifts for melody and grand, sweeping arrangements.” * * * While not giving the album a glowing review, Richie Unterberger says in Allmusic of the Search Party’s Montgomery Chapel album (the original release, that is): “There were many psychedelic albums like this issued in small press runs in the late ’60s: folky, bittersweet melodies that tilted toward the downright sad and melancholy; high strident female vocals sharing duties with less memorable, more normal-sounding male singing; a studied over-seriousness to the vocal delivery; a naïve, questing-for-the-meaning-of-life tone to the compositions; and organ residing in a halfway house between the LSD trip and the mortuary. Even if you take it as a given that most of these albums have a dated pretentiousness that many would poke fun at, however, this is certainly one of the better such efforts in this mini-genre, and possessed of some real musical appeal in spite of its considerable flaws. Most of the arrangements have an understated, effective (if somewhat creepy) eeriness. Songs like ‘Speak to Me’, ‘Renee Child’, ‘Poem By George Hall’, and ‘The Decidedly Short Epic of Mr. Alvira’ are good time-capsule mood pieces in their evocative otherworldliness, at times sounding a little like a psychedelic seance.” (September 2014)
* * * William Ruhlmann, writing for Allmusic contrasts the two best known Christian musicals: “Though Godspell could be thought of as copying Jesus Christ Superstar, there was a crucial difference in viewpoint between the two works – Superstar was a skeptical, secular look at Jesus, while Godspell was devout, merely updating and musicalizing Christ’s story.”
* * *
A recording of the full Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat musical was released on MCA Records in 1974, featuring Gary Bond, Peter Reeves, and Gordon Waller who had appeared in the 1971 production in Edinburgh. The review of the album by Sarah Erlewine in Allmusic notes that “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has the distinction of being the only musical that starred Michael Damian, Donny Osmond and Andy Gibb.” (Osmond later appeared on a DVD of the musical).
(October 2014)
* * *
Nick Cave is described by Allmusic as “one of the finest songwriters of the post-punk era, whose hybrid of blues, gospel, and rock complemented his dark, literary style and baritone vocals”. After fronting a band called the Birthday Party in about 1980, Nick Cave assembled a band as a sort of post-punk super-group; and this band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds has released 15 albums in the 30 years since.
* * *
Ned Raggett in Allmusic has unending praise for this song: “The album boldly starts out with an undisputed [Nick] Cave masterpiece – ‘The Mercy Seat’, a chilling self-portrait of a prisoner about to be executed that compares the electric chair with the throne of God. Queasy strings from a Gini Ball-led trio and Mick Harvey’s spectral piano snake through a rising roar of electric sound – a common musical approach from many earlier [Bad] Seeds songs, but never so gut-wrenching as here. Cave’s own performance is the perfect icing on the cake, commanding and powerful, excellently capturing the blend of crazed fear and righteousness in the lyrics.”
* * *
In 2010, Nina Hagen released an album called Personal Jesus that is described by James Christopher Monger in Allmusic as: “German punk icon Nina Hagen’s first collection of new music in nearly four years features 13 faith-based tracks that dutifully blend rock, blues, soul, and gospel into a sound that’s distinctly hers.” The album includes covers of the Depeche Mode title song, “Personal Jesus”, several traditional gospel songs, a Larry Gatlin number called “Help Me”, and a Woody Guthrie song called “All You Fascists Bound to Lose”.
* * *
While they never quite reached those heights again, their later albums explored Gordon Gano’s upbringing as the son of a Baptist minister. James Christopher Monger writes in Allmusic of their second album (released in 1984): “After the surprise success of their landmark debut, Violent Femmes could have just released another collection of teen-rage punk songs disguised as folk, and coasted into the modern rock spotlight alongside contemporaries like the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads. Instead they made Hallowed Ground, a hellfire-and-brimstone–beaten exorcism that both enraged and enthralled critics and fans alike. Like Roger Waters purging himself of the memories of his father’s death through [the Pink Floyd albums] The Wall and The Final Cut, bandleader Gordon Gano uses the record to expel his love/hate relationship with religion, and the results are alternately breathtaking and terrifying. . . .
“The album’s centerpiece, a searing indictment of loyalties broken and the snitches that break them, ‘Never Tell’ is the perfect balm for the bloody righteousness of youth; and when [Gordon] Gano screams, ‘I’ll stand right up in the heart of Hell / I never tell’, it’s hard not to stand right beside him. Christian imagery aside, Hallowed Ground is not as polarizing as some make it out to be. The band explores gothic Appalachian folk and child murder on the banjo-fueled ‘Country Death Song’, bawdy and bluesy Lou Reed-inflected infatuation on ‘Sweet Misery Blues’, and nuclear holocaust on the brooding title track [‘Hallowed Ground’], leaving little doubt that this is the same band that penned underground classics like ‘Gone Daddy Gone’ and ‘Add it Up’. Even the decidedly politically uncorrect ‘Black Girls’, with its free jazz mid-section that includes everything from jaw harp to the screaming alto sax of John Zorn and the Horns of Dilemma, is full of the same smirk and swagger that made ‘Blister in the Sun’ the soundtrack to so many people’s halcyon days.”
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Writing for Allmusic, Roch Parisien says of this Joan Osborne song: “Key track ‘One of Us’ sets the disc’s optimistic tone. It’s a simple, direct statement of faith, honest and unadorned, one framed in a near-perfect chorus and delectable Neil Young-ish guitar riff. This isn’t one of those sugary, superficial, goody-two-shoes Amy Grant kind of deals.”
The album name Relish sums up Joan Osborne’s views on life in general; here is Roch Parisien’s take on the album as a whole: “Grounded in blues, soul and gospel, the Kentucky native wields her gritty voice with personality and forceful presence, kind of Melissa Etheridge meets Sophie B. Hawkins with a splash of Jann Arden. Osborne’s passion for life oozes from the grooves. There’s an uplifting fervor to her material and delivery, as if every second, every note was being individually savored.”
(November 2014)
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The Allmusic piece on Dick Dale by Steve Huey begins: “Dick Dale wasn’t nicknamed ‘King of the Surf Guitar’ for nothing: He pretty much invented the style single-handedly; and no matter who copied or expanded upon his blueprint, he remained the fieriest, most technically gifted musician the genre ever produced. Dale’s pioneering use of Middle Eastern and Eastern European melodies (learned organically through his familial heritage) was among the first in any genre of American popular music, and predated the teaching of such ‘exotic’ scales in guitar-shredder academies by two decades. The breakneck speed of his single-note staccato picking technique was unrivalled until it entered the repertoires of metal virtuosos like Eddie Van Halen, and his wild showmanship made an enormous impression on the young Jimi Hendrix.”
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John Bush in Allmusic notes: “The Ventures put their indelible stamp on each style of ’60s music they covered, and they covered many – twist, country, pop, spy music, psychedelic, swamp, garage, TV themes.”
The Ventures hit again in 1969 with the well-known theme “Hawaii Five-O” for the television show Hawaii Five-O. Allmusic lists an astounding 39 Ventures albums that were released between their albums Walk, Don’t Run and Hawaii Five-O.
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Allmusic lists a total of 29 albums by Davie Allan and the Arrows, many being soundtrack albums. I have three of them myself, all on the Bomp!-affiliated Total Energy Records label: Fuzz Fest (1998), The Arrow Dynamic [Aerodynamic] Sounds of Davie Allan & the Arrows (1999), and a live album called Live Run (2000). The live album includes their hit “Blues’ Theme” as well as “Apache”.
Fuzz Fest is a reissue of a 1996 album by Davie Allan and the Arrows that added two other singles, “Open Throttle” and “Chopper” (plus alternative versions of both songs). Cub Koda writing for Allmusic says of this album: “Davie Allan’s playing has scarcely changed over the intervening decades, his work in various low-rent biker film soundtracks showing how he understands the form possibly better than anyone else. . . . If you’re looking for fuzz and lots of it, you came to the right place.”
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The Silencers are from Michigan, with the members being Dave Leeds (bass), Rob Felenchak (drums), and Eric Toth (guitar). Richie Unterberger in Allmusic notes that the Silencers have “a darker approach than the average contemporary surf act”.
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The debut album by the Silencers, The Silencers came out on Total Energy Records at about the same time as several albums by their label-mates Davie Allan and the Arrows. For the most part, the songs are originals, with the one exception being “Journey to the Stars” that has five songwriters listed on Allmusic: Bob Bogle, Don Wilson, Nokie Edwards, and Mel Taylor of the Ventures, plus Sun Ra.
The back cover of The Silencers by the Silencers shows a flame-encircled dragster with the quote: “Link Wray & the Ventures rolled into one big ball and heaved through Dick Dale’s living room window!!!” Referring to that quote, Richie Unterberger in Allmusic says: “It’s not as mind-bending as that description would have you believe, but it’s a very respectable 1990’s surf revival effort, with excellent chops and a good sense of menace. Of their three cited influences, Dick Dale is definitely the biggest, as Eric Toth’s banzai guitar leads amply demonstrate.”
Richie Unterberger in Allmusic says that the Silencers are trying too hard to set the mood on their second album, Cyclerific Sounds. While the music doesn’t feel that way to me, it certainly is true of many of the song titles on this record, which include “Devil’s Angel’s Theme”, “Sonny’s Theme”, and “The Man from F.U.Z.Z.”.
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Suzy Shaw has advised me that the Invisible Eyes is actually not the last band signed to Bomp! Records by Greg Shaw before his death, as Allmusic says of this band. As she remembers it, the band with that distinction is the Coffin Lids, another future UARB.
(December 2014)
The Changer and the Changed (1975) was Olivia Records’ second album release, and this album by Cris Williamson quickly became the biggest seller in women’s music, eventually selling 500,000 copies. Allmusic gives the record its highest rating (five stars), and Stewart Mason has a rave review on the website: “The simple but rich arrangements set Williamson’s glorious voice and piano against strings, flute, and Jacqueline Robbins’ jazz-inflected fretless bass, giving the album a timeless sound and putting the focus entirely on the songs and Williamson’s elegantly passionate performance of them.”
Behind the scenes, Olivia Records started to put the full weight of its philosophy into place on this album: To the extent possible, their work was to be in women’s hands from start to finish. In all, Allmusic lists 50 people in the credits for The Changer and the Changed, with the vast majority being women.
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Melissa Etheridge’s 2001 album Skin was written after the breakup of her longtime relationship with filmmaker Julie Cypher that included two children fathered by David Crosby via artificial insemination; writing for Allmusic, Kerry L. Smith says of this album: “If ever there was a perfect breakup album, this is it.”
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Janis Ian has continued to release albums; Allmusic lists 21 studio albums. She publicly came out as a lesbian in 1993.
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I believe I was in Indianapolis when I picked up a local tabloid newspaper and first read of a band called Sleater-Kinney – Allmusic says of them that they are the greatest punk rock band of the 1990’s and 2000’s – though I honestly don’t remember much about the article and interview except that they are an all-female rock band.
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Boyskout, this month’s Under-Appreciated Rock Band are pretty open about being a lesbian band – they used the term “rad queer band” in one interview. Though neither their Allmusic write-up nor the Bomp! Records packaging mentions this. the name of the last song on the album, “Girl on Girl Action” gives it away if you hadn’t already figured it out.
(January 2014)
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Fetchin Bones formed in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1983 and released a total of six albums. Writing for Allmusic, Michael Sutton said that the band was “highlighted by [Hope] Nicholls’ powerhouse voice, which recalled Janis Joplin in its dirty intensity”.
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The flamboyant look of Fuzzbox and their savvy meld of new wave and punk a la the Go-Go’s with fuzztone made the British band indie rock darlings for a time. Allmusic gripes that, if anything, they don’t use their fuzzbox enough; but I was always satisfied. We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It includes mostly cool original songs but also a cover of the fuzz classic “Spirit in the Sky”; the song was originally released by Norman Greenbaum in late 1969, reaching #1 on the British charts, and was a #1 hit in the UK by another British band Doctor and the Medics in 1986.
(February 2014)
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From my first exposure to his remarkable body of work back in the late 1970’s, Mick Farren became one of my very favorite rock musicians. He has released solo albums, and he has been in a number of amazing rock bands also: the Social Deviants, the Deviants, the Pink Fairies, and others. Early on, Farren wrote lyrics for another of my long-time favorite bands, Hawkwind. One of Farren’s long-time collaborators, Andy Colquhoun is a past UARA. Mick Farren was also a prolific writer on a host of subjects and published numerous science-fiction novels. The Allmusic entry on him by Chris True begins: “To say that Mick Farren was a ‘jack of all trades’ is putting it mildly.”
Being the man behind the legendary psychedelic rock album by the Deviants, Ptooff! would be enough to put Mick Farren among the giants of rock music; the thing is, he did so much more besides. Allmusic lists 10 albums in the discography of the Deviants alone; Wikipedia has 11.
Allmusic states the musical and historical importance of Ptooff! well in their entry by Dave Thompson: “Talk today about Britain’s psychedelic psyxties, and it’s the light whimsy of Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, the gentle introspection of the Village Green Kinks, Sgt. Pepper, and ‘My White Bicycle’ [by Tomorrow] which hog the headlines. People have forgotten there was an underbelly as well, a seething mass of discontent and rancor which would eventually produce the likes of Hawkwind, the Pink Fairies, and the Edgar Broughton Band. . . .
“But the deranged psilocybic rewrite of ‘Gloria’ which opens the album, ‘I’m Coming Home’, still sets a frightening scene, a world in which Top 40 pop itself is horribly skewed, and the sound of the Deviants grinding out their misshapen R&B classics is the last sound you will hear. Move on to ‘Garbage’, and though the Deviants’ debt to both period [Frank] Zappa and [the] Fugs is unmistakable, still there’s a purity to the paranoia.
“Ptooff! was conceived at a time when there genuinely was a generation gap, and hippies were a legitimate target for any right-wing bully boy with a policeman’s hat and a truncheon. IT and Oz, the two underground magazines which did most to support the Deviants ([Mick] Farren wrote for both), were both publicly busted during the band’s lifespan, and that fear permeates this disc; fear, and vicious defiance.”
I certainly can’t compete with the description of Mona – The Carnivorous Circus provided by Dave Thompson for Allmusic, so I won't even try: “Mick Farren convened a more-or-less all-star band from the same disreputable circles he’d always moved in. Carnivorous Circus was cut, the first essential album of the 1970s, and it’s still one of the most unrepentantly nasty, gratuitously ugly records ever made. Rock history loves to bandy those terms around, then apply them to this week’s most fashionable long-haired gnarly snarlies. And it’s true, the Pretty Things, MC5, the Pink Fairies, the Broughtons [Edgar Broughton Band], any of the myriad ’60s freakbeat bands captured on sundry Nuggets and Pebbles type collections, they’ve all dipped a toe into those malevolently murky waters. Some of them have even swum around a little. Carnivorous Circus goes the whole hog and then some, holding its breath and descending to the seabed. Now it owns a roadhouse and wrestles giant squid for fun.”
I picked up a 2001 CD by Shagrat called Pink Jackets Required, and it is a delight. This music was evidently made by the earliest lineup of the band. In the review of the album for Allmusic, Dean McFarlane gives it four stars and reports: “This album was recorded in 1969 just before Tyrannosaurus Rex embarked on their first U.S. tour and was completed on [Steve Peregrin] Took’s return. Although it is in effect a collection of demos, and some of the tracks will be known to fans of Think Pink – primitive takes of ‘The Coming of the Other One’ and ‘The Sparrow Is a Sign’ will be familiar – in fact, Pink Jackets Required is one of the most astonishing albums either of the pair recorded, and in popular opinion and rock-evidence surpasses the Twink Think Pink album. The name Shagrat was bounced around for an incarnation of one of Twink’s other groups with members of the Pink Fairies, but that unit was entirely different from the genius brilliance of the project with Steven Peregrin Took. Simply, this should be tracked down and given serious attention by those who love A Beard of Stars [by Tyrannosaurus Rex], Deviants, Pretty Things, and early T. Rex.”
Dean McFarlane in his Allmusic review also gives Think Pink four stars and writes: “Think Pink is an incredibly varied album with no two songs resembling each other, but then one assumes an acid masterpiece like ‘Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box’ will stay on high rotation for at least a week on the stereos of most psychedelia fans, so overall album flow may not be such an issue. This is pure psychedelic acid rock of the highest order. If one can imagine a fusion of the Incredible String Band, Deviants, early Pink Floyd, and a fair dose of Twink’s heredity as a member of Tomorrow and the Pretty Things, you get an idea of what he was up to. Not known for doing things in halves, he shows little restraint in the assembly of a group designed to tear the roof off the psychedelic scene.”
Mick Farren stayed around just long enough to help found this amazing band; one Allmusic review that I can’t find now included a passing reference to the Pink Fairies as being the perfect 1970’s British rock band.
This month’s last-minute replacement as the Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month is the Sons of Fred, who are described by Allmusic as an “obscure but intense British beat band”.
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There is some misinfomation out there about the Sons of Fred – such as the caption on the above photograph – and I found a letter from Pete Sears that was reprinted on the Radio London website at:
www.radiolondon.co.uk/rl/scrap60/fabforty/65fabs/jun65/fab130665/fab130665.html . Much of what I am presenting in this post is based on this letter. Contrary to what Allmusic says, the Sons of Fred are not from the coastal town of Great Yarmouth. The band was actually based in Dulwich and Beckenham, where Ray Redway and Alan Bohling were from. Mick Hutchinson and Tim Boyle were from Chislehurst, while Pete Sears grew up in Hayes, near Bromley. However, Sears does not know where the band name the Sons of Fred came from. Also, the Sons of Fred are not at all related to another band called Odyssey, despite what is shown on Allmusic, along with plenty of other Internet sites.
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Many of the songs in the English Freakbeat Series were by musicians that became famous in later bands or in other contexts. The real attraction for the English Freakbeat, Volume 3 CD reissue though are three songs by a band called the Ravens; their bandleader Dave Davies and his younger brother Ray Davies were later in the Kinks, with Ray being the frontman and main songwriter for that stellar British Invasion group. Ray Davies was supposedly not involved in the Ravens at all according to the band’s official history; however, the CD liner notes as well as the review by Allmusic notes that some of these songs bear Ray Davies’ stamp and might have been sung (if not written) by him.
(March 2014/2)
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The article on Small Faces in Allmusic opens: “Small Faces were the best English band never to hit it big in America.”
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Allmusic is not particularly impressed with Homer; their short article on the band includes this comment: “The LP [Grown in U.S.A.] was an uncertain mix of multi-sectioned songs (sometimes with Mellotron) that had similarities to hard rock-based early British progressive rock, with touches of folk-rock and country-rock. Though played and arranged with confidence, it didn’t have material of high-enough quality to make it one of the better rarities of its type.” The original LP received a respectable 3 stars (out of 5), while the overview CD of their complete recordings that I have, Homer is not reviewed.
What Allmusic calls “uncertain” I would praise as multi-layered; the juxtaposition of strong electric guitar and pedal steel guitar alone is almost unheard of. Unlike many progressive rock albums that flow from one song into another, Homer meanders unexpectedly, with several sections in the individual songs.
(April 2014)
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“Smokestack Lightning” was taken from the band’s first (British) album, Five Live Yardbirds, described by Allmusic as “the first important – indeed, essential – live album to come out of the 1960’s British rock & roll boom”.
The muddy sound on many of the Yardbirds songs over the years has been greatly improved as better master tapes have surfaced; Allmusic notes the Repertoire Records releases of the 1990’s as showing significant improvement.
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Writing for Allmusic, Bruce Eder noted that early on, most drummers were famous only because the bands they were in were famous: “Ginger Baker was rock’s first superstar drummer and the most influential percussionist of the 1960s. . . . Baker made his name entirely on his playing, initially as showcased in Cream, but far transcending even that trio’s relatively brief existence. Though he only cut top-selling records for a period of about three years at the end of the 1960s, virtually every drummer of every heavy metal band that has followed since that time has sought to emulate some aspect of Baker’s playing.”
Writing for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine calls Disraeli Gears “a very British album”, and never more so than on the closing track “Mother’s Lament”, showing that Cream was also attracted to traditional songs other than the blues.
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Whereas rock music critique was previously about what was good and what was bad, the Blind Faith album was released (in August 1969) at a time when opinions began to be divided about rock music as a whole, and beyond mere aesthetic considerations – whether the idea of rock as an industry could be a good thing regardless of what the music itself was like. Here is how Bruce Eder opens his article on Blind Faith for Allmusic: “Blind Faith was either one of the great successes of the late ’60s, a culmination of the decade’s efforts by three legendary musicians – or it was a disaster of monumental proportions, and a symbol of everything that had gone wrong with the business of rock at the close of the decade. In actual fact, Blind Faith was probably both.” In any case, Blind Faith didn’t stay together but seven months.
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In the 4½ star review of the first Ginger Baker’s Air Force album in Allmusic, Bruce Eder raves: “For a change, the late 1960s yielded up a supergroup that lived up to its hype and then some. Ginger Baker’s Air Force was recorded live at Royal Albert Hall in January of 1970 – in fact, this may be the best-sounding live album ever to come out of that notoriously difficult venue – at a show that must have been a wonder to watch, as the ten-piece band blazed away in sheets of sound, projected delicate flute parts behind multi-layered African percussion, or built their songs up Bolero-like, out of rhythms from a single instrument into huge jazz-cum-R&B crescendos. Considering that this was only their second gig, the group sounds astonishingly tight, which greatly reduces the level of self-indulgence that one would expect to find on an album where five of the eight tracks run in excess of ten minutes.”
The band’s second album, Ginger Baker’s Air Force 2 came out at the end of 1970 and had a different group of musicians. This album too is well regarded in Allmusic and receives 4 stars.
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The same night as their second single was released (October 15, 1964), the Soul Agents appeared at Soho’s Marquee Club with Long John Baldry and the Hoochie Coochie Men. Allmusic says of the 1964 album by this group: “One of the unsung jewels of the British R&B scene, Long John’s Blues is, astonishingly, the sole surviving document of what was, at one point, among the most exciting live acts on the entire circuit.” Rod Stewart appears on banjo on this album.
(May 2014)
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Manfred Mann was one of the original British Invasion bands, but they deserve more State-side success than they had, so allow me to quote Bruce Eder’s article in Allmusic to give an overview of the band’s history: “An R&B band that only played pop to get on the charts, Manfred Mann ranked among the most adept British Invasion acts in both styles. The fact that their range encompassed jazz as well as rhythm & blues, coupled with some elements of their appearance and presentation – co-founder/keyboardist Manfred Mann’s bearded, bespectacled presence – also made the Manfreds more of a thinking person’s band than a cute, cuddly outfit like the Beatles, or sexual provocateurs in the manner of the Rolling Stones. Yet, their approach to R&B was as valid as that of the Stones, equally compelling and often more sophisticated. They charted an impressive number of singles from 1964 through 1969, and developed a large, loyal international fandom that lingers to this day.”
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Manfred Mann’s Earth Band released their first album, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1972 and has an impressive discography by any standard. Allmusic lists 21 albums by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
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An overview of Joy Division and its importance in rock music by John Bush can be found in Allmusic: “Formed in the wake of the punk explosion in England, Joy Division became the first band in the post-punk movement by later emphasizing not anger and energy but mood and expression, pointing ahead to the rise of melancholy alternative music in the ’80s. Though the group’s raw initial sides fit the bill for any punk band, Joy Division later incorporated synthesizers (taboo in the low-tech world of ’70s punk) and more haunting melodies, emphasized by the isolated, tortured lyrics of its lead vocalist, Ian Curtis. While the British punk movement shocked the world during the late ’70s, Joy Division’s quiet storm of musical restraint and emotive power proved to be just as important to independent music in the 1980s.”
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H. P. Lovecraft is a well regarded psychedelic rock band that was named after one of my very favorite authors, H. P. Lovecraft. Their first album, H. P. Lovecraft came out in 1967 and is rated 4½ stars from Allmusic and (as noted in the article on the album by Richie Unterberger) “included an underground FM radio favorite, ‘White Ship’” (named after a Lovecraft short story, “White Ship”).
I have the Love Craft album, and the addition of soulful vocals by LaLomie Washburn atop a dreamy pop-psychedelic sheen makes this a fascinating listen, though it has little similarity to the original H. P. Lovecraft. This record gets some grudging admiration by Joe Viglione in Allmusic: “The record sounds better than it looks, for they look like a glorified Holiday Inn band; but the creative spark is still there, with Michael Tegza producing this with LaLomie Washburn, and the band dipping into progressive jams, expertly played, but with little chance of obtaining Top 40 success.”
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The new direction for Fleetwood Mac was not limited to personnel changes or new musical experimentation; this has been common in bands long before rock and roll came along. Fleetwood Mac relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-1970’s; also, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were Americans. Thus, it is difficult to know even how to define the band. In Allmusic, their article starts off: “While most bands undergo a number of changes over the course of their careers, few groups experienced such radical stylistic changes as Fleetwood Mac. Initially conceived as a hard-edged British blues combo in the late ’60s, the band gradually evolved into a polished pop/rock act over the course of a decade. Throughout all of their incarnations, the only consistent members of Fleetwood Mac were drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie – the rhythm section that provided the band with its name.”
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Wikipedia has a brief mention of the Richmond Sluts in the article on their drummer Brad Artley, who also performed from 1995 to 1996 with a fairly prominent neo-psychedelic outfit called the Brian Jonestown Massacre. BJM has 14 albums listed in Allmusic, though Artley did not perform on any of them.
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Allmusic gives The Richmond Sluts 4 stars and says of the Richmond Sluts that “they explored the glam-slam-thank-you-ma’am side of punk”. Jo-Ann Greene comments about their inventiveness on the album in ways that are a little beyond my capacity to figure out: “Since categorization is a necessity in this age of overspecification, punk rock will do nicely, but doesn’t begin to encompass just how cleverly the group churns other genres through its blender. The Sluts connect the dots between ’60s garage punk and old school ’70s style, then toss just a dash of new school into the mix. Variations on this recipe reverberate across the album, and answer a slew of niggling questions along the way. Ever wonder what the [New York] Dolls would sound like covered by a psychedelic band? Kept up at night trying to imagine a cross between the Cramps and the Velvet Underground? Curious what the result would be if a time warp sent Richard Hell circa 1978 a decade into the past? And what if Eddie & the Hotrods were really the Ramones with English accents? The Richmond Sluts answer all these brain teasers and more you’ve yet to even imagine, and they do it without an ounce of pretentiousness or braggadocio.”
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Big Midnight also has released only one album, Everything for the First Time, which came out on Alive Records in 2003. Allmusic immediately notes in their review by Brian O'Neill, “Actually, there is nothing here that you will be hearing for the first time”, and continues: “Everything for the First Time could have as easily came out in 1973 as it did in 2003. Call ’em ‘the Rolling Stooges’ and the band will have to plead guilty, as Big Midnight combines the nihilism of Iggy Pop (‘Love for Sin’ could have been a [David] Bowie or [Lou] Reed side written specifically with Ig in mind) with the bloozey, boozy swagger of Keith Richards’ crew.”
(June 2014)
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I have Terri Gibbs’ first album, Somebody’s Knockin’ – rated 4 stars by Allmusic – and every song is rendered well in her understated but expressive voice. Her follow-up single “Rich Man” made the Country Top 20, as did two later singles. Her 1987 album, Turn Around was also nominated for a Grammy and generated three hit singles on the CCM charts.
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Mikki was born Mikki Farrow in Detroit. She met and married a legendary saxophone player named Andrew “Mike” Terry in the mid-1960’s. In his Allmusic entry, Jason Ankeny writes: “The baritone saxophone of Andrew ‘Mike’ Terry remains an indelible component of the famed Motown sound. . . . Terry’s résumé reads like a roll call of soul’s greatest hits – his Motown track record alone spans chart smashes including the Four Tops’ ‘I Can’t Help Myself’, the Isley Brothers’ ‘This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)’, Kim Weston’s ‘Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)’, and Marvin Gaye’s ‘Baby Don’t You Do It’; and as a freelancer, he played on monsters like Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’, the Fascinations’ ‘Girls Are out to Get You’, and the Capitols’ ‘Cool Jerk’.”
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Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff founded Philadelphia International Records in 1971 and (as Allmusic put it) “ruled the mid-’70s R&B world with the same sound”. Major artists that were signed to the label include the O’Jays, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Lou Rawls, the Three Degrees, and Billy Paul. Blue Notes lead singer Teddy Pendergrass later signed a solo deal.
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The Ice Man Cometh by Jerry Butler proved highly influential; John Bush noted in Allmusic that the album “marks an excellent collaboration, the first time R&B production techniques reached a level of maturity and elegance capable of fully complementing one of the smoothest vocalists in soul history.”
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In 2007, Kent Records put together a CD called The Right Tracks, covering 29 of the recordings that Billy Butler made at Okeh Records. Writing for Allmusic, Richie Unterberger gives the CD 4½ stars and says: “First and foremost, [Billy] Butler, though far less celebrated than his older brother Jerry Butler, was a fine singer and songwriter in his own right, producing consistently good pop-soul discs that were rather reminiscent of the Impressions (and, at times, Major Lance, another Chicago soul artist with strong connections to Curtis Mayfield). In addition, if you are a fan of Mayfield’s mid-’60s work with the Impressions and as a songwriter/producer, this has some of his best overlooked work in the latter capacity.”
(July 2014)
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There was a noticeable dip in the ratings given by rock critics of Bob Dylan’s Christian recordings. That was not true so much for Slow Train Coming – Robert Christgau of the Village Voice gave the album a B+ and wrote: “The lyrics are indifferently crafted. Nevertheless, this is his best album since Blood on the Tracks. The singing is passionate and detailed.” Allmusic and Rolling Stone both rated the album ***.
For Saved, the Rolling Stone rating stood, but Allmusic gave the album only **, and Christgau scored it as C+. Entertainment Weekly showed a C–. Shot of Love had ** from both Rolling Stone and Allmusic; Christgau and Entertainment Weekly showed B–.
With Infidels though, all was forgiven: Rolling Stone and Allmusic were both at ****.
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To put these ratings in context, Self Portrait (1970) is the only Bob Dylan album to get just ** before Saved, other than some live albums (Allmusic shows low ratings for most of the Rolling Stones live albums also).
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There is a Bob Dylan album that scores even lower in Allmusic than his Christian albums, and here I need to put on my “Under Appreciated” hat – the 1973 release Dylan yields just *. Allmusic mentions that this LP is “[c]ommonly regarded as the worst album in Bob Dylan’s catalog”. The album is described in both Rolling Stone Record Guide and Allmusic as a collection of outtakes from Self Portrait – i.e., songs that didn’t make the cut for that head-scratcher – and that just sent chills up my spine.
Dylan is a recent rescue from Katrina, however, and I found it surprisingly easy to listen to. The album is entirely cover songs, many of them quite familiar; and if Dylan’s performance of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” leaves no impression at all, that is not true of the lesser known songs.
The opening track, a traditional folk song called “Lily of the West” is beautifully performed; and the album is well worth owning for that song alone. Personally I am at least as big a fan of Bob Dylan as a folksinger as I am of Bob Dylan as a rocker, and this song was a welcome return to the performances that I remember so well from his early albums.
(August 2014)
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William Ruhlmann, writing for Allmusic contrasts the two best known Christian musicals: “Though Godspell could be thought of as copying Jesus Christ Superstar, there was a crucial difference in viewpoint between the two works – Superstar was a skeptical, secular look at Jesus, while Godspell was devout, merely updating and musicalizing Christ’s story.”
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A recording of the full Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat musical was released on MCA Records in 1974, featuring Gary Bond, Peter Reeves, and Gordon Waller who had appeared in the 1971 production in Edinburgh. The review of the album by Sarah Erlewine in Allmusic notes that “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has the distinction of being the only musical that starred Michael Damian, Donny Osmond and Andy Gibb.” (Osmond later appeared on a DVD of the musical).
(October 2014)
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Nick Cave is described by Allmusic as “one of the finest songwriters of the post-punk era, whose hybrid of blues, gospel, and rock complemented his dark, literary style and baritone vocals”. After fronting a band called the Birthday Party in about 1980, Nick Cave assembled a band as a sort of post-punk super-group; and this band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds has released 15 albums in the 30 years since.
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Ned Raggett in Allmusic has unending praise for this song: “The album boldly starts out with an undisputed [Nick] Cave masterpiece – ‘The Mercy Seat’, a chilling self-portrait of a prisoner about to be executed that compares the electric chair with the throne of God. Queasy strings from a Gini Ball-led trio and Mick Harvey’s spectral piano snake through a rising roar of electric sound – a common musical approach from many earlier [Bad] Seeds songs, but never so gut-wrenching as here. Cave’s own performance is the perfect icing on the cake, commanding and powerful, excellently capturing the blend of crazed fear and righteousness in the lyrics.”
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In 2010, Nina Hagen released an album called Personal Jesus that is described by James Christopher Monger in Allmusic as: “German punk icon Nina Hagen’s first collection of new music in nearly four years features 13 faith-based tracks that dutifully blend rock, blues, soul, and gospel into a sound that’s distinctly hers.” The album includes covers of the Depeche Mode title song, “Personal Jesus”, several traditional gospel songs, a Larry Gatlin number called “Help Me”, and a Woody Guthrie song called “All You Fascists Bound to Lose”.
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While they never quite reached those heights again, their later albums explored Gordon Gano’s upbringing as the son of a Baptist minister. James Christopher Monger writes in Allmusic of their second album (released in 1984): “After the surprise success of their landmark debut, Violent Femmes could have just released another collection of teen-rage punk songs disguised as folk, and coasted into the modern rock spotlight alongside contemporaries like the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads. Instead they made Hallowed Ground, a hellfire-and-brimstone–beaten exorcism that both enraged and enthralled critics and fans alike. Like Roger Waters purging himself of the memories of his father’s death through [the Pink Floyd albums] The Wall and The Final Cut, bandleader Gordon Gano uses the record to expel his love/hate relationship with religion, and the results are alternately breathtaking and terrifying. . . .
“The album’s centerpiece, a searing indictment of loyalties broken and the snitches that break them, ‘Never Tell’ is the perfect balm for the bloody righteousness of youth; and when [Gordon] Gano screams, ‘I’ll stand right up in the heart of Hell / I never tell’, it’s hard not to stand right beside him. Christian imagery aside, Hallowed Ground is not as polarizing as some make it out to be. The band explores gothic Appalachian folk and child murder on the banjo-fueled ‘Country Death Song’, bawdy and bluesy Lou Reed-inflected infatuation on ‘Sweet Misery Blues’, and nuclear holocaust on the brooding title track [‘Hallowed Ground’], leaving little doubt that this is the same band that penned underground classics like ‘Gone Daddy Gone’ and ‘Add it Up’. Even the decidedly politically uncorrect ‘Black Girls’, with its free jazz mid-section that includes everything from jaw harp to the screaming alto sax of John Zorn and the Horns of Dilemma, is full of the same smirk and swagger that made ‘Blister in the Sun’ the soundtrack to so many people’s halcyon days.”
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Writing for Allmusic, Roch Parisien says of this Joan Osborne song: “Key track ‘One of Us’ sets the disc’s optimistic tone. It’s a simple, direct statement of faith, honest and unadorned, one framed in a near-perfect chorus and delectable Neil Young-ish guitar riff. This isn’t one of those sugary, superficial, goody-two-shoes Amy Grant kind of deals.”
The album name Relish sums up Joan Osborne’s views on life in general; here is Roch Parisien’s take on the album as a whole: “Grounded in blues, soul and gospel, the Kentucky native wields her gritty voice with personality and forceful presence, kind of Melissa Etheridge meets Sophie B. Hawkins with a splash of Jann Arden. Osborne’s passion for life oozes from the grooves. There’s an uplifting fervor to her material and delivery, as if every second, every note was being individually savored.”
(November 2014)
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The Allmusic piece on Dick Dale by Steve Huey begins: “Dick Dale wasn’t nicknamed ‘King of the Surf Guitar’ for nothing: He pretty much invented the style single-handedly; and no matter who copied or expanded upon his blueprint, he remained the fieriest, most technically gifted musician the genre ever produced. Dale’s pioneering use of Middle Eastern and Eastern European melodies (learned organically through his familial heritage) was among the first in any genre of American popular music, and predated the teaching of such ‘exotic’ scales in guitar-shredder academies by two decades. The breakneck speed of his single-note staccato picking technique was unrivalled until it entered the repertoires of metal virtuosos like Eddie Van Halen, and his wild showmanship made an enormous impression on the young Jimi Hendrix.”
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John Bush in Allmusic notes: “The Ventures put their indelible stamp on each style of ’60s music they covered, and they covered many – twist, country, pop, spy music, psychedelic, swamp, garage, TV themes.”
The Ventures hit again in 1969 with the well-known theme “Hawaii Five-O” for the television show Hawaii Five-O. Allmusic lists an astounding 39 Ventures albums that were released between their albums Walk, Don’t Run and Hawaii Five-O.
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Allmusic lists a total of 29 albums by Davie Allan and the Arrows, many being soundtrack albums. I have three of them myself, all on the Bomp!-affiliated Total Energy Records label: Fuzz Fest (1998), The Arrow Dynamic [Aerodynamic] Sounds of Davie Allan & the Arrows (1999), and a live album called Live Run (2000). The live album includes their hit “Blues’ Theme” as well as “Apache”.
Fuzz Fest is a reissue of a 1996 album by Davie Allan and the Arrows that added two other singles, “Open Throttle” and “Chopper” (plus alternative versions of both songs). Cub Koda writing for Allmusic says of this album: “Davie Allan’s playing has scarcely changed over the intervening decades, his work in various low-rent biker film soundtracks showing how he understands the form possibly better than anyone else. . . . If you’re looking for fuzz and lots of it, you came to the right place.”
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The Silencers are from Michigan, with the members being Dave Leeds (bass), Rob Felenchak (drums), and Eric Toth (guitar). Richie Unterberger in Allmusic notes that the Silencers have “a darker approach than the average contemporary surf act”.
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The debut album by the Silencers, The Silencers came out on Total Energy Records at about the same time as several albums by their label-mates Davie Allan and the Arrows. For the most part, the songs are originals, with the one exception being “Journey to the Stars” that has five songwriters listed on Allmusic: Bob Bogle, Don Wilson, Nokie Edwards, and Mel Taylor of the Ventures, plus Sun Ra.
The back cover of The Silencers by the Silencers shows a flame-encircled dragster with the quote: “Link Wray & the Ventures rolled into one big ball and heaved through Dick Dale’s living room window!!!” Referring to that quote, Richie Unterberger in Allmusic says: “It’s not as mind-bending as that description would have you believe, but it’s a very respectable 1990’s surf revival effort, with excellent chops and a good sense of menace. Of their three cited influences, Dick Dale is definitely the biggest, as Eric Toth’s banzai guitar leads amply demonstrate.”
Richie Unterberger in Allmusic says that the Silencers are trying too hard to set the mood on their second album, Cyclerific Sounds. While the music doesn’t feel that way to me, it certainly is true of many of the song titles on this record, which include “Devil’s Angel’s Theme”, “Sonny’s Theme”, and “The Man from F.U.Z.Z.”.
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Suzy Shaw has advised me that the Invisible Eyes is actually not the last band signed to Bomp! Records by Greg Shaw before his death, as Allmusic says of this band. As she remembers it, the band with that distinction is the Coffin Lids, another future UARB.
(December 2014)
