CD Odyssey Disc 555: Frank Zappa

After a disappointing Dolphins loss, I suppose a disappointing music review is only fitting.

Disc 555 is…. Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Artist: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention

Year of Release: 1970

What’s up with the Cover?  This cover reminds us that no matter how poor a shave you get with an electric razor, the answer should never be to attach a weasel to it.  I know it is hard to believe, since “attach a weasel to it” does solve so many household challenges, but for shaving I recommend an old fashioned safety razor if your electric is on the fritz.

How I Came To Know It:  I’ve been meaning to get into Frank Zappa for a while, but the combination of his daunting discography and his reputation for inaccessibility kept me from pulling the trigger.  Knowing I was interested in getting some, Sheila bought me this one as a Christmas gift.

How It Stacks Up:  I have two Frank Zappa albums, but “Joe’s Garage” is so new that I haven’t even listened to it.  I am going to go out on a limb and say it is better than “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” putting the latter at number two.

Rating:  1 star

The opening song on “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” is “Didja Get Any Onja.” It is a seven minute song opening and closing with some bizarre and directionless fusion jazz.  In the middle it features someone braying like a donkey, and a man with a German accent telling a story about standing on a street corner as a child. It is every bit as horribly pointless as it sounds, and a perfect summary for what the rest of this album will sound like.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  The next song, “Directly From My Heart to You” is an almost straight up blues number.  It is played deliberately devoid of any blues sensibilities or feeling but through all the acid and disconnect I think it was (mostly) a blues song and (mostly) good.

The other (mostly) good song on the album is “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama” which in places is even better than mostly good, and even downright funky.  “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama” is a genuinely enjoyable song – so much so that I decided after my first three listens to this album that I’d keep it just for that song.  Now that I’ve listened to the record for a fourth (and final) time, I am overturning that decision.  This album has to go.

Being inventive is laudable – expected even from a band called The Mothers of Invention – but that if that invention is music it still has to be listenable at the end of it, and most of “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” feels like a chore to get through.

The song titles are strange and affected throughout, although I will admit knowing the name of one song was “Prelude To the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask” made the song make slightly more sense.  Of course, that was before it went from directionless jazz outtakes and descended into the laughter of lunatics and then later a piano solo played over the sounds of pigs grunting, or possibly the sounds of men mimicking the sound of grunting pigs.

And while people not familiar with this record will think I am exaggerating for dramatic effect, I can assure you this is exactly what these songs feature.  Some albums are so strange there is no need to stretch the truth.

Not content to torture the ears with a variety of patchwork sounds and musical experiments – some of which maddeningly almost work – Zappa feels the need to describe just what he is doing.  In “Toad of the Short Forest” he literally describes it on the track as follows:

“At this very moment on stage we have drummer A playing in 7/8, drummer B playing in 3/4, the bass playing in 3/4, the organ playing in 5/8, the tambourine playing in 3/4 and the alto sax blowing its nose.”

Even if you could do this (and these guys manage it) why in the nine hells would you bother?

By track six, “The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue” I was desperate for more clues to understanding.  I broke down and looked up “Eric Dolphy” on Google, learning that he was a mid-century jazz musician of some repute.

This explained the aimless jazz noodling that is ever-present on the record, and armed with this knowledge and by continuing to pay close attention to song titles like “Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf Nebula” I was able to come close to a semblance of meaning.  However, this didn’t make it any more fun to listen to.

When you’re at a poetry night and the guy on stage feels the need to explain what his poem is about, this is not usually a good sign.  He should be able to let the art speak for itself, but often he’s throwing in explanations because without them the art just doesn’t stand up.  This is how I felt about “Weasels Ripped My Flesh.”  Without a speech on time signatures, or allusions to a jazz musician I might have never known what the hell was going on.  The pig snorting and donkey braying underscores that there isn’t much going on anyway.

Zappa is well-loved by many musically people, but if “Joe’s Garage” isn’t a damn sight better than “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” my genuine attempt to grok him is going to be at a quick end.  I don’t care how clever or talented you are, at the end of the day, listening to music shouldn’t be this unrewarding.

Best tracks:   My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama

CD Odyssey Disc 554: Nick Cave

Despite my self-imposed CD purchase moratorium (as I pay off various large purchases we made over the summer) Friday afternoon found me in a music store again.  Once I’m in there it is hard to walk away.  Instead I bought four albums, Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On”, Frank Zappa’s “Joe’s Garage”, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell’s latest “Old Yellow Moon” and a compilation of Gram Parson’s covers called “The Return of the Grievous Angel.”

And then today I couldn’t resist getting Rush’s “Caress of Steel” on vinyl.  Damn.

As addictions go, music is a pretty harmless one, although my wallet might feel differently.

Disc 554 is…. Tender Prey

Artist: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Year of Release: 1988

What’s up with the Cover?  Nick Cave himself, surrounded by a lot of large red font.  Nick looks so young here and I guess since it was twenty-five years ago, he was young.

How I Came To Know It:  After an abortive effort buying early Nick Cave with 1985’s “The Firstborn is Dead” I have become a bit nervous going too far back in his catalogue.  Nevertheless, a few years ago I risked 1988’s “Tender Prey” when I had a fix for more of his music and couldn’t wait for the next album.

How It Stacks Up:  We have eight Nick Cave albums.  “Tender Prey” is a good record, but competition is fierce and I’m going to have to put it sixth.

Rating:  3 stars, but only the thinnest of hairs from 4 stars

When an album begins with a song about a man going defiantly into the electric chair you know it is going to be a dark album.  Darkness comes easily to Nick Cave, and on “Tender Prey” he mixes in some twisted passion as well; a rough but welcome grab of the wrist between consenting adults.

“The Mercy Seat” has no such consent in it, as one would expect about someone singing about walking their green mile.  Cave brings life to his villain, who claims to have no fears to meet his fate, but clearly feels otherwise.  It is a good song for setting the mood of the record, but is a bit repetitious and at over seven minutes long it begins to drag near the end.  I prefer the five minute video edit tagged onto the end of the album, and preferring a video or radio edit to an original is never a good sign.

Johnny Cash does a cover of “The Mercy Seat” on his “Solitary Man” album from 2000, and I have to say Johnny does it more justice than Nick Cave.

Ever the good Christian, Johnny Cash can’t go to the places Nick goes with all his music.  This becomes clear on “Tender Prey’s” second track, “Up Jumped the Devil” another rogue’s tale of a man who knows the devil is coming for him since the day he was born, and that he deserves his fate.  The song is packed with Cave’s amazing talent for poetic delivery.  Among many great lines, my favourite is:

“I was the baddest Johnny

In the apple cart

My blood was blacker

Than the chambers of a dead nun’s heart.”

Musically, the album is sparse and strange, featuring piano, creative percussion and lots of space that your mind naturally fills in with dread and desire in equal measures.

The love songs on the album are beautiful and broken and pregnant with violence and broken laws.  “Deanna” is a song about love during a crime spree that does more in under four minutes than Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” could accomplish in two hours.  Of course that is damning with faint praise, Oliver Stone being as bad as he is at making a point.  But much as I enjoy a good round of Oliver Stone bashing, I digress…

We were talking love songs, and the most gorgeous one on the album is “Watching Alice.”  “Watching Alice” is sparsely arranged even for an album that is committed to sparse arrangement overall.  It is mostly a slightly echoed vocal from Nick Cave over top of a sad piano, played in a minor key.  “Watching Alice” has no true relationship, being about a man who is only looking into a woman’s window across the street, each day watching her get out of bed and get dressed.  It is both creepy and sexy, and Cave manages to marry the two concepts as only he can.

After “Watching Alice” I found the album lost me a little bit.  “Mercy” and “City of Refuge” are interesting songs, but they don’t stick with me after I listen to this album the way the earlier songs do.  They are good songs, but I think melodically they don’t quite hit exactly right.

He recovers nicely with “Slowly Goes the Night,” where he captures the end of a relationship, and how it feels like a ghost in the room long after it is over.  The album traces the loss over ‘ten lonely days and ten lonely nights’ but it is the opening stanza, when she’s just left the bed for the first time, which is the most heart-wrenching:

“Lover, lover goodbye

So slowly goes the night

I trace the print of your body with my hand

Like the map of some forbidden land

I trace the ghost of your bones

With my trembling hand

Dark is my night

But darker is my day yeah

I must’ve been blind

Out of my mind

Not to read the warning signs

How goes it?

It goes slowly

Goes slowly.”

The song that should be the final song on the album is “New Morning” and it has the same effect as “Death is Not the End” at the end of Cave’s 1996 album, “Murder Ballads” dispelling all the shadows Cave has woven around your heart through nine songs that mixed love and sin, death and lust.

However, because my album has the radio edit of “The Mercy Seat” tagged onto the end of the record, the effect is weakened, and you’re dragged back down to the album’s opening. The resulting disconnect holds this record just south of four stars by the slightest of margins.

Best tracks:   The Mercy Seat (Video Mix), Up Jumped The Devil, Deanna, Watching Alice

CD Odyssey Disc 553: KMFDM

This next album comes with an insert where you can mail away for more albums, as well as an invitation to write for a free catalogue of band merchandise by sending a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope (this used to be called a SASE) to them.  How quaint.

However, the band also included a website and an email, which was pretty forward thinking for 1995.

Disc 553 is…. Nihil

Artist: KMFDM

Year of Release: 1995

What’s up with the Cover?  This is a rare KMFDM departure from their usual artist, Aidan “Brute” Hughes.  This cover is instead by Francesca Sundsten, and depicts a frumpy looking woman, with a fly over her head.  She looks like some kind of farm matron who has just caught you tipping her cows.

How I Came To Know It:  As I noted when I reviewed my other KMFDM album (“Angst” back at Disc 539), my friend Patrick put me on to these guys recently, and Sheila bought both records for me for my birthday in June.

How It Stacks Up:  I only have two KMFDM albums.  I prefer “Angst” to this one, so “Nihil” slips to second.

Rating:  2 stars, but almost 3

For the second time in only fourteen albums, the Odyssey decides I should listen to more industrial ‘club’ metal from the mid-nineties.  KMFDM are the masters of this sound, and “Nihil” is another example of how well they know their genre.

This is the music that would have made a rave in the mid-nineties worth attending.  Attention modern rave holders; it is more fun to stay up all night if the music is danceable.  Please stop dub-stepping.

As with “Angst” the message on the album isn’t terribly complicated, speaking vaguely of rebellion and sex.  When read outside of the music the lyrics seem a bit juvenile.  Consider this from “Beast”:

“My youth is wasted – I’m evasive and vague

I’m a headless beast – I’m a subtle plague

I’m a cheatin’ liar – I am naked terror

I hurt – I wound – I’m a fatal error.”

Not terribly inspiring, but fortunately themes of rebellion and sex are foundations of rock and roll and so it totally works in the context of the song.

“Nihil” is music where you can get the revolution out of your system without actually having one (there is even a song called “Revolution” although I’m not sure exactly why based on the vague lyrics).  Even the album title is a word that seems pregnant with purpose, but actually fundamentally represents negation.

For all that negation, “Nihil” has lots of energy, even if it isn’t going anywhere.  The driving guitar riffs and accompanying electronic back beat appeal to the subconscious mind. If you are frustrated and need a release but you’re not sure exactly what is bothering you, this music is a perfect salve.  Get out on the dance floor and sweat it out and let the words help draw the frustration out of you in the process.

Overall, I found “Angst” to be a better collection of KMFDM’s work than this one, but “Nihil” did have its moments.  “Juke Joint Jezebel” has a fallen church choir feel to it and would be great to dance to.  It sounds familiar enough that I think I probably did back in the day.  I also liked “Disobedience,” which had some elements of Faith No More in it, a sort of staccato rap over top of powerful riffs

However, while it is overall pretty good, it didn’t have enough going for it to be anything more.  In fact, after two complete listens today I took a break and walked to work listening to a Flying Burrito Brothers album instead, which I preferred overall.

Yet when I went to the gym later, I put “Nihil” back on.  I listened as I ran furiously on the treadmill.  Of course I got nowhere, but it felt good afterward – kind of like this record.

Best tracks:  Juke Joint Jezebel, Disobedience, Brute

CD Odyssey Disc 552: Loreena McKennitt

Yesterday I wrote my first complete rap song (after many partial efforts).  It is called “I Carry the Load” and it is a pretty fine freshman effort, if I do say so myself.  Now I just need a DJ to give me some fresh beats to rap over.  Maybe I’ll call up Eric B. and see what he is doing, or see what Terminator X is up to.  Or maybe I’ll just keep my day job.  Probably the latter.

This next review is as far from rap music as you can get, but it is variety that makes the music world turn, my friends.

Disc 552 is…. The Book of Secrets

Artist: Loreena McKennitt

Year of Release: 1997

What’s up with the Cover?  Loreena herself, looking resplendent despite facing sinister (if you know your heraldry, that will make sense).  The yellowish sepia tone makes it look very old, like the cover of a book of secrets maybe.

How I Came To Know It:  I was a fan of Loreena McKennitt since I first heard her album “The Visit” back in 1991.  I bought “Book of Secrets” when it came out.

How It Stacks Up:  We have six Loreena McKennitt albums.  “Book of Secrets” is good, but not great.  I’d put if fifth out of the six.

Rating:  3 stars

Sometimes as an artist becomes more and more successful, they can fall deeper and deeper into their own sound.  This can be both good and bad.  Part of Loreena McKennitt’s sound is that she is one of the great masters of establishing a mood in music. 

Establishing a mood can take a while, and on “Book of Secrets” there are only eight songs, but a full 53 minutes of music.  I found myself alternating between soaking in the journey and wishing she’d just get on with it.

In the liner notes, McKennitt is keenly aware of her own inclinations, offering up a Lao Tzu quote that goes, “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”  Good stuff, although I personally prefer Canadian Earle Birney’s expression of the same sentiment: “do you want to climb this mountain, or just get to the top?”  Whatever your preferred quote, this is a good way to approach this record if you want to enjoy it

All of the usual excellence in McKennitt’s earlier records is evident on “Book of Secrets” as well.  McKennitt’s operatic voice soars over a rogue’s gallery of instruments from around the world, including the bodhran, the hurdy gurdy, the shawm and mandocello (seriously, I’m not making these things up – go ahead and google them).  Many of the instruments are ancient medieval and renaissance affairs, and they give the recording a timeless quality.

Her subject matter is similar to previous records, as she explores the roots of the ever-travelling Celts across Eurasia.  “Skellig” is a nice track in this vein, telling the tale of a monastery located on the Skellig Islands near Ireland. You can practically feel the dark and dank stone walls, and the lone candle burning in a tower as some ancient dark ages monk scribbled away, writing scripture and history for future generations to discover.  Of course, it is slightly less spellbinding when you think about some of the classical texts and history monks in this era scraped off their pages so they’d have something to write on.  But I digress…

The true classic on this record is “The Highwayman.”  Like she did with Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” on an earlier record, McKennitt has taken the epic Alfred Noyes poem, “The Highwayman” and brilliantly set it to music.

My degree is in English Literature, and I’ll always have a soft spot for a great poem.  For me, McKennitt’s treatment of “The Highwayman” is a five star affair that never fails to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

“The Highwayman” tells the tale of a robber who has taken a shine to an innkeeper’s daughter, and visits here between heists.  The English redcoats set a trap for him there, but not before drinking the innkeeper’s ale without paying and tying up the daughter in the window so she can watch her lover die.  They tie a musket under her chin and (spoiler alert) she twists her hands in her bonds until she is able to get her finger on the musket’s trigger, and tragically warn him of the trap by killing herself.

When the Highwayman hears, he flees the trap, only to learn later what has happened and decide to return back into the trap to avenge her death:

“Back, he spurred like a madman shrieking his curse to the sky

With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!

Blood-red were the spurs i’the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat

When they shot him down on the highway

Down like a dog on the highway

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.”

So, no, he didn’t quite avenge his lover, but full points for bravery.  Also, the story shows that long before “Breaking Bad” gave us Walter White good writing was already making us root for what are essentially bad people.

Noyes’ writing flows naturally anyway, and with both McKennitt’s voice and the music perfectly punctuating the ebb and flow of the poem’s emotion, it makes it better than any simple reading could ever accomplish. The final stanza tells of how the Highwayman’s ghost still haunts the inn looking for vengeance, even as the music shifts to a disquieting whisper of percussion and almost whispered words:

“Still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees

When the moon is a ghostly galleon, tossed upon the cloudy seas,

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor

The highwayman comes riding

Riding, riding

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

There are other good songs on “Book of Secrets”, including the complex rhythms on “Night Right Across the Caucusus” and the piano-driven devotional “Dante’s Prayer.”  “Night Ride…” uses a multitude of instruments to create the feeling of a journey, while “Dante’s Prayer” is sparse, using mostly the aforementioned piano, accentuated with timely violin bits and some Gregorian Chants.  I was again reminded what a fine production ear McKennitt has (she not only wrote, but produced the record).

“Book of Secrets album does drag a bit in places (“Marco Polo” made me feel like I was listening to background music from the Civilization videogame), but overall the album is a solid effort.

Best tracks:  The Highwayman, Night Ride Across the Caucusus, Dante’s Prayer

CD Odyssey Disc 551: David Bowie

Ladies and gentlemen, you are reading the blog of a World Record Holder.

This weekend I went on my annual guy’s trip to Seattle to see the 49ers battle the Seahawks on Sunday Night Football.  The crowd at the game registered as the loudest stadium ever at 136.6 decibels, and there was an official from the Guinness Book of World Records to record the event.

Three days later, I’m still a little hoarse due to all the yelling to help get the record, but it was worth it, since the 49er players couldn’t hear themselves think and the Seahawks beat them convincingly 29-3.

Also, the Dolphins won and we’re now 2-0 for the season.  Yeehaw!  OK, enough football – on to music.

Disc 551 is…. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

Artist: David Bowie

Year of Release: 1972

What’s up with the Cover?  Ziggy Stardust steps out of his flat and into the deepening gloom of the city streets, armed only with his guitar, ready to do deliver his dread message to the doomed people of the earth, or maybe just soak in their adoration.

How I Came To Know It:  When I was about thirteen or fourteen my Aunt Karen bought me this album on vinyl.  I was horrified.  Not only was it not in my preferred format at the time (cassette), it was by David Bowie.  Having no interest in anything but heavy metal, I decided to give it to a punk girl named Nancy who rode my bus.  She was thrilled and decided she had to pay me for it, continually slipping money into my locker.  Each time I’d find a clever way to return the money claiming (honestly) the record had no value to me. 

In point of fact, I never even listened to it, nor did I ever do the logical thing and ask Nancy out (despite her being a year older and six inches taller).  Truth be told, with her spiked hair and multiple ear piercings Nancy intimidated me, despite my riding the bus with her every day and knowing that she was both sweet and personable.

So chalk two mistakes up to youthful indiscretion.  Years later, Sheila introduced me to the album (and this time I listened) and I loved it.  This time I fully embraced both Bowie and the girl who loved him, and it has all worked out for the best.

How It Stacks Up:  We have three albums by David Bowie (all Sheila’s).  This one is far and away his best, so number one.

Rating:  5 stars

Delayed satisfaction is satisfaction all the same, and “Ziggy Stardust” satisfies me like few records can.  If I foolishly ignored it for a few decades, then I am happy to be making up for lost time now.

The record captures David Bowie at his weirdest, which is saying something.  Bowie is a man who sometimes seemed more intent on the weirdness than the music; wanting to be famous more than he wanted a reason to be famous.  So when he decided to do a concept album about an alien who comes down to earth to become a rock star it had all the potential of a massive, overwrought disaster.

Instead, the musical excellence of “Ziggy Stardust” matches the grandiosity of its themes note for note. If there is a self-absorption to the music, it is only because there would be no other way to do the concept justice.

The music is classic early seventies rock, a mix of rock guitar licks, otherworldly organ and horn touches and the tattered remnants of sixties hippy music that has been twisted, folded, and folded again until it will hold an edge.

The whole record reminded me a bit of the Rocky Horror Picture Show with its combination of camp and rock and roll majesty, except perfectly delivered and musically far more rewarding.

The “Ziggy Stardust” story had me thinking a lot of Robert A. Heinlein’ “Stranger in a Strange Land” which has a similar theme about an alien coming to earth and becoming a messiah to the planet.  Maybe it is because Sheila introduced me to the book as well, which I also loved.  Certainly great art will often make you think of other great art.

I don’t love Bowie’s voice, which is a bit thin in places, but he sings these songs with great phrasing, and the right measures of emotion, disconnect and sexual ambiguity that the material calls for.  He may not be Freddie Mercury in terms of range, but he knows how to work what’s he got, and it is perfectly suited to the material.

Every song is great on this album, and it’s hard to single any out for specific mention.  Obviously the title track has one of the most iconic guitar riffs in rock music, so I’d be remiss not to comment on how many times it made me look foolish for air-guitaring along with it at a street light walking to work this week.  I regret nothing, however; not playing that riff on air guitar would be an affront to whichever muse filled Bowie’s head with it.

Beyond that, I’ll just say every song is great, and appears in an order where you can’t imagine it any other way.  Similarly, I won’t quote any lyrics.  In isolation they are gloriously over the top, but even so they’d lose something for being pulled from their place in the full “Ziggy Stardust” experience.

Instead, I encourage you to listen to this album from front to back as I’ve just done (twice) and grok it in its fullness the way it deserves.

Best tracks:  all tracks

CD Odyssey Disc 550: The Cars

Today is Logan’s Day Off!  Sounds like a delightful sixties theatre production, doesn’t it?  Like “Fop About Town!” or something.

Actually, it is just me taking an extra day off before a busy weekend.  So far I’ve cleaned the bathroom, tidied up some paperwork, did my banking and practiced the guitar.  Hardly delightful theatre production material, but that’s life.

I also have a bit of headache from not drinking coffee this morning.  I usually only have one cup, but miss that cup and the caffeine makes sure you know it isn’t happy.  I am ignoring its scorn to show just who’s boss.

Disc 550 is…. The Cars (Self-Titled)

Artist: The Cars

Year of Release: 1978

What’s up with the Cover?  A pretty girl has put on her brightest red lipstick and gone for a drive.  When I was a kid, the clear steering wheel in the picture used to fascinate me.  Now, I’m admittedly more interested in the girl

How I Came To Know It:  I’ve known this record since it came out.  My brother bought it that year on vinyl and it’s been in my life ever since.

How It Stacks Up:  We have three albums by The Cars.  This one is far and away their best, so #1.

Rating:  4 stars but very nearly 5

My first encounter with this album was at age eight, when my brother Virgil (then 15) calling me into his room and had me sit equidistant between his two speakers.  He then played “Moving in Stereo” to show how the sound went from one speaker to the other.  For a while “Moving In Stereo” and Prism’s “Spaceship Superstar” were two of my favourite songs partly because of how they used this effect.  I don’t know how people survived music in mono; I assume it made them listless and without energy, a lot like the disease of the same name.

While “Moving in Stereo” demonstrates the depth of this record’s lineup, the first three songs on this record are a tour de force in rock and roll brilliance.

“Good Times Roll” starts the album off, demonstrating that even the simplest guitar riff can be awesome when played with some brilliance.  The same goes for “My Best Friend’s Girl” at number two and “Just What I Needed” at three.

Together these songs define the Cars early sound, showing a New Wave edge couched within a foundation of hard rock.  So many bands around this time struggled to incorporate synthesizers into their rock and roll.  The Cars not only include it, they make it so good you can’t imagine the song without them.

The songs on this album are great for driving, they are great for parties and they are great for just singing along or playing air guitar as the mood moves you. I’ve heard this album at least a hundred times and I never get tired of it.

They are hard to pin down.  Clearly rock and roll, they also have early punk influences, and their chord progressions remind me of early country music.  On “Best Friend’s Girl” the guitar sounds a lot like Buddy Holly.  On “I’m In Touch With Your World” the combination of strange sounds (whistles, gears and what I think is someone trying to mimic a ray gun) I was reminded of mid-eighties Tom Waits.  “I’m in Touch With Your World” is a bit too New Wave for my tastes but coming in the middle of the album it is a nice change of pace.

“You’re All I’ve Got Tonight” is a brilliant piece of rock decadence, opening with:

“I don’t care if you hurt me some more

I don’t care if you even the score

Well, you can knock me and I don’t care

You can mock me, I don’t care

You can rock me just about anywhere

Because you’re all I’ve got tonight.”

The song is driven along by a dirty guitar lick that takes the free love of the sixties and inserts a healthy dose of seventies cynicism.  As booty calls go, this one is about as painfully honest as they get.

Although I’m not giving this album five stars, it comes pretty damned close.  As seventies rock and roll goes, this is almost as good as it gets.  I was shocked when I looked the album up on Wikipedia (which is never wrong) and found that it peaked at #18 in the U.S. (below lesser albums like “Candy-O” and “Heartbeat City”) with no top ten hits.  Yet more proof that radio doesn’t know that the hell it is doing.

History has been kinder, thankfully, and tracks like “My Best Friend’s Girl” are still instantly recognizable thirty-five years later.  I’m glad that thanks to having a music loving older brother, I’ve got to be a part of the journey from the beginning.  However, if this album is still unknown to you, that’s OK too.  Go get it tomorrow; it’ll be just as good on the first listen.

Best tracks:  Good Times Roll, My Best Friend’s Girl, Just What I Needed, You’re All I’ve Got Tonight, Bye Bye Love, Moving in Stereo

CD Odyssey Disc 549: The Barra MacNeils

This is my third album in a row from the nineties, which continues to outpace all the other decades in the CD Odyssey. The nineties weren’t a better decade for music than any other, but I guess I bought a lot of music during those years, so it is slightly over-represented.

This next album has been in my collection since it came out.

Disc 549 is…. Closer to Paradise

Artist: The Barra MacNeils

Year of Release: 1993

What’s up with the Cover?  The band, with an artsy fade out around the edges to make everything look a bit antique, just like us folk fans like it.

How I Came To Know It:  I think I saw a video for “Darling Be Home” on CMT or something, loved it and decided to give them a chance on limited knowledge.

How It Stacks Up:  I have only this one Barra MacNeils album, so it can’t really stack up.  I used to also have 1995’s “The Question” but it never really found a place in my heart, and I sold it years ago with no regrets.

Rating:  4 stars

It has been years since this album was part of my heavy listening rotation, but when I first bought it I played the hell out of it.  Even now, it sounds so familiar it was hard to concentrate hard enough to have anything to say.  The songs are so well known to my ear they want to just blend into the general environment of wherever I am, but I made a conscious effort to give it my active ear over the last couple of days.  And my efforts were well rewarded too, because “Closer to Paradise” is a brilliant folk album.

Like so many great Canadian folk acts, the Barra MacNeils hail from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, which seems to export musicians like France exports wine.  They are a family act, like the Rankins; less famous but with that same easy and free music that makes you hear the sea in the background and sets your heart at ease.

They have two vocalists, one male and one female and I like both equally.  Lucy MacNeil has a pure and honest voice, which lacks much edge but suits the band’s style perfectly.  The other vocalist is one of the group’s three brothers, but I’ll be damned if I know who it is.  Whoever he is, his voice is a nice tenor with a slight vibrato in it, again, relaxed but powerful.

The music is uncomplicated but well played, the way traditional folk music should sound.  It also has a professional production quality to it that I appreciate.  Like punk rock, a lot of folk musicians think that in order to have believability the music has to sound like it was hammered out inside a tin drum on a single take.  To my mind, there’s nothing wrong with taking some time in the studio to make the recording as good as it can be.  No auto-tune or excessive meddling, mind you, just a quality recording environment to let the music shine.

As noted earlier, I fell for this album because of “Darling Be Home,” a song with a female lead, pining for her man to return to her from a trip away.  Hearing this song makes me miss my own wife (right now she’s out at a meeting, but it wouldn’t matter if she were down the hall or in Guam, the song makes me miss her).  It is a pretty and simple song, and I’ve heard it a thousand times, but I did manage to notice something new this time around.

It was the odd lyrics.  They strike the appropriate pining tone, but on this listen I realized how much they reminded me of Ronnie James Dio lyrics; sort of ridiculous and yet somehow strangely meaningful:

“Go and beat your crazy head against the sky

Try and see beyond the houses in your eyes

It’s OK to shoot the moon

But darling be home soon.”

I think I was with them up to “shoot the moon.”  I assume it means ‘pursue your dream’ but it had me thinking of riding tigers and seeing rainbows in the dark.  As far as I’m concerned, they’re all worthwhile activities, except maybe beating your crazy head against the sky.  That doesn’t seem like it would be terribly rewarding.

The album has a good mix of new and traditional songs, and I’m happy to say the Barra MacNeil’s original stuff is as good or better as any of the traditional fare.  I’ve said it on previous reviews, and I’ll say it again; the hallmark of a great folk song is that it sounds timeless, leaving you unsure whether it was written last year or last century.

Case in point is “Caledonia” a cover of a Dougie MacLean song that is neither young nor old in the folk lexicon (it was written in 1977).  The song is about missing the old country (Caledonia being another name for Scotland).  I just listened for the first time to the original and it is pretty enough, but it really sores with Lucy MacNeil’s voice.  The song turns the pining for human relationships expressed in “Darling Be Home” into a love of homeland.  I was in Scotland in 1996, and hearing “Caledonia” always makes me want to go back. 

Not everything on “Closer to Paradise” is wan and wistful, though.  The song selection ranges all over, from the history of east coast rum runners in “Chase the Man” to songs about the simple love of music like “Dancing We Would Go.”

As a very novice guitar player, “Dancing We Would Go” appeals to me.  I particularly like this section:

“If all I had was money

Jewels were all I owned

Spend it in a hurry

Sell the shiny stones

Buy myself a fiddle

Fiddle with a bow

Call up all the neighbours

Dancing we would go.”

No matter how much money I had – it would still be music I’d want to be doing, and that’s the great thing about music.  Rich or poor, it’s there for you.

And over the years, this album has been there for me as well, just like an old guitar it is always waiting for me to pick it up, and enjoy it all over again.

Best tracks:  Darling Be Home, Chase the Man, Dancing We Would Go, Caledonia, Jigs:  The Dusty Windowsill and The O’Keeffe’s of Dublin

CD Odyssey Disc 548: Dixie Chicks

I am writing this review while football is on.  What madness is this, you ask?  Never fear, dear reader, my other passion remains unabated.  However the other game a) doesn’t feature the Miami Dolphins and b) is being recorded so I can watch it when I’m done.  Ah, technology. 

Disc 548 is…. Fly

Artist: Dixie Chicks

Year of Release: 1999

What’s up with the Cover?  I had no idea initially.  I assumed it was some lame art project.  Then Sheila pointed out that these are photos of select portions of butterfly wings that seem to display letters.  Nature is the greatest artist there has ever been but I appreciate it more when the camera pans out a bit.

Also, in the CD booklet there is a series of pictures of the Dixie Chicks themselves, in various ‘fly’ themed photo shoots.  We have them riding a rocket, posing as fairies, bursting out of a zipper, stuck to fly paper, on the wing of a plane and riding a swing.  Any of these would have been better than the butterfly wing close ups (as fairies they are particularly fetching) but I think my favourite is this one:

See downloader types?  You are missing out.

How I Came To Know It:  For a long time I only had the two Dixie Chicks albums I previously reviewed (“Wide Open Spaces” at Disc 407 and “Home” at Disc 140) but eventually I decided to give this one a shot a few years ago.

How It Stacks Up:  I have four Dixie Chicks albums (all those featuring Natalie Maines as the lead singer, so the last four).  I like “Fly” but I’d put it third out of four.

Rating:  3 stars

My first experience with this album was seeing the video for “Ready to Run” which essentially featured the Dixie Chicks in wedding dresses, riding bikes through town in what I think was supposed to be a comic chase scene. Their whole approach just seemed a bit…goofy.

Once I did get “Fly” my suspicions were confirmed, because it is definitely goofy in places.  It’s also clear that the Dixie Chicks had a lot of wacky fun putting the record together.  At times it seems like they are trying too hard to demonstrate how much fun they were having which has them straying too far into the new country genre. I abhor new country, and all the vacuous pop starlets it spews out, and I was afraid the Dixie Chicks, with such a promising beginning, were going to be ruined.

Luckily, this did not happen.  The album is fun and upbeat, but the strength of the band’s musical talent shines through it all.  As I’ve mentioned on previous albums, sisters Emily and Martie are brilliant musicians on banjo and fiddle. Natalie has a powerful voice that would be at home not only in country music, but pop or hard rock as well.

“Fly” takes a more pop turn for sure, but the bluegrass roots of Emily and Martie keep it grounded enough that it doesn’t get away from itself and head to far into (shudder) the new Nashville sound.  Also, I liked the tension of Natalie’s very pop vocals against the more traditional harmonies of the sisters and their subtle playing.  Any more strain and the sound would break unpleasantly but for the most part it is the strain that keeps you interested.

This tension is most noticeable on the first track, “Ready to Run” which (bad video aside) is essentially a pop song that has been “bluegrass-i-fied” with some brilliant violin and banjo licks and even a little Celtic penny whistle.  The violin lick sounds painfully similar to another song I’ve heard, but since I can’t place what it is, I’ll give them a pass.  Besides, it is a good lick.

The album was massively commercially successful, going multi-platinum in Canada, as well as a bunch of other English-speaking countries and spawning seven top ten hits in the U.S.  Considering the album only has fourteen tracks, that is amazing.

Over exposure at the time annoyed me, and had me overlooking much of the album’s good points when it was first released. “Cowboy Take Me Away” comes to mind, which I got tired of seeing constantly on CMT.  Now, free of the bombardment, I love this honest, simple love song composed as many of the band members were finding love of their own.  At least one of the Dixie Chicks wrote about half the songs on this album, and that this is one of them (Martie Seidel co-wrote it) makes me like it more.

They didn’t write “Goodbye, Earl” mind you (that was the prolific country songwriter Dennis Linde who has a whole separate wiki page just dedicated to his writing credits). 

They may not have written it, but damn, do the Dixie Chicks own it.  “Goodbye Earl” is the perfect signature song for “Fly” because it incorporates all of the Chicks best elements.  The song features Natalie’s high spirited, sassy powerhouse voice, Martie and Emily’s harmonies and virtuoso playing, and it isn’t afraid to skirt controversy.

“Goodbye Earl” is about the harsh but important topic of spousal abuse, and it took a little heat for doing so in a light-hearted tone (underscored by a comic video featuring well-known TV stars Jane Krakowski and Dennis Franz).  Well, the song is light-hearted in its approach, but the fact that a woman and her best friend conspire to murder the despicable Earl (by poisoning his black-eyed peas at dinner) is black comedy at its finest. 

“Goobye Earl” is a brave and brilliant song.  That it shattered some of the Nashville establishment’s pre-conceived notions on what three pretty women should or shouldn’t sing about was just a bonus.  It wouldn’t be the last time the Dixie Chicks would deliciously do just whatever the hell they wanted artistically, but I’ll save that for another review.

Best tracks:  Ready to Run, Cowboy Take Me Away, Cold Day in July, Goodbye Earl

CD Odyssey Disc 547: Dire Straits

After a crazy day at work I am about to be rewarded with the start of the NFL season!  Yeehaw – football, the greatest sport ever invented.  As thoughtful as a championship chess match, but where each move ends in a violent collision.

Before I do though, I’m taking advantage of my PVR to delay the game an hour and write this review. 

Disc 547 is…. On Every Street

Artist: Dire Straits

Year of Release: 1991

What’s up with the Cover?  It looks like the eighties puked on a nineties graphics program.  This is a pair of shoes on a desk and a guitar in the background, done a second time as an inset because a) you could have missed it the first time and b) that is the kind of lame effect nineties graphics programs are capable of.

How I Came To Know It:  As an avowed Dire Straits fan, this was just me drilling through their collection.

How It Stacks Up:  We have six studio albums by Dire Straits, which I believe is all of them.  Something had to be last, and regrettably “On Every Street” is it.

Rating:  2 stars

No matter how great the band, it is rare that their last album is their best.  Most rock acts die with a whimper.  “On Every Street” is Dire Straits’ death knell, and it is by far their weakest effort, but it does show the glimpses of what would become an amazing solo career for Mark Knopfler that continues to this day.  As average as “On Every Street” is, it still has some bright spots; you just can’t keep a great band like Dire Straits down.

The first and most famous song on the album is “Calling Elvis” is sadly not one of the album’s best.  It is a gimmick song, determined to fill itself with as many strained Elvis references as it can.  It is supposed to be a moody blues rock piece but it just sounds like the band is desperate for a runaway pop hit (it was more of a walkaway pop single).

“Calling Elvis” (and many other songs on the album) suffer from long boring fadeouts.  In previous albums, this part of the song would be filled with some classic Knopfler guitar solos, but on “On Every Street” it just feels like they don’t know how to end the songs and so they settle for repeating the riff as they turn the volume down to zero.

Also, there is far too much saxophone and piano action on parts of the song where on earlier albums Knopfler would play some guitar licks.  Is it apparent yet that this album doesn’t have enough of Knopfler’s guitar?  When you have the world’s greatest rock guitarist, let him wail!

All this saxophone and piano too often morphs into what I would call “gumshoe blues.”  These are songs that sound like they’d be at home as background music for a TV show like “Moonlighting” or in that Kathleen Turner flop, “V.I. Warshawski” (also released in 1991).  “Fade to Black” and “You and Your Friend” are the two worst offenders for this effect, but others are guilty to lesser degrees.

The title track, “On Every Street” starts off with a bit of this eighties gumshoe sound, but it is such a good song it recovers itself into respectability, if not actual excellence.

In many ways this album reminded me of “Love Over Gold” with its obvious love of detective imagery, but without that album’s level of songwriting.

When I first listened to this album, the songs that appealed to me were the driving rock of “Heavy Fuel” and the laid-back humour of “My Parties” but after repeat listens both of these started to have the same novelty feel of “Calling Elvis.”

“The Bug” is a passable song, but in a strange twist of fate I learned the Mary Chapin Carpenter version first and found on comparison, I liked it better.  Sorry, Mark!

Despite all this criticism, there is some good stuff.  Even though the songs are simple, the musicianship is excellent, and good playing will elevate any song.  Also, there are legitimately good songs.

The two best hint at the direction Knopfler’s solo album is going to go, starting with “Iron Hand.” “Iron Hand” is a Coles Notes version of the epic “Brothers in Arms” off of their earlier album of the same name.  “Iron Hand” is Knopfler exploring his passion in military history, and the lessons it teaches us.

I don’t know what historical event “Iron Hand” is referencing (we're told early on that the soldiers wear blue, but that doesn’t help much) but the lyrics are evocative:

“Oh the iron will and the iron hand

In England’s green and pleasant land

No music for the shameful scene

That night they said it had even shocked the queen”

Followed by the reminder that we’re no better as a species now:

“Well alas we’ve seen it all before

Knights in armour, days of yore

The same old fears, and the same old crimes

We haven’t changed since ancient times.”

Knopfler sings it in a wistful and haunting tone, and lets his guitar punctuate here and there to add emotional resonance without overpowering the basic tune.

Also memorable is “How Long,” a Blue Rodeo-esque track (who have a totally different song also called “How Long”).  Knopfler’s shows his burgeoning love for western music and guitar styles that continue to enrich his playing today.  In “How Long” these western constructions are forged into a song where a man gently chides the woman of his desire to give him a little attention before he loses interest and moves on.  The description sounds a bit petulant but the tune makes it emotionally light and even a little playful.

Hearing both “Iron Hand” and “How Long” put a smile on my face after other tracks had left me with a grimace.  Even if they were few and far between, hearing these songs provides the bridge to classic Knopfler solo efforts like “Golden Heart” and “Sailing to Philadelphia” and shows that a band can still spawn something beautiful, even in its last moments.

Best tracks:  On Every Street, Iron Hand, How Long

CD Odyssey Disc 546: The Vulgar Boatmen

I’ve had a lovely long weekend playing sports, then board games, hanging out with friends and just generally relaxing.  After I write this review I’ll do a little research for my fantasy football draft and then drift into the living room and watch some U.S. Open tennis. 

Yes, life is good.

Disc 546 is…. You and Your Sister

Artist: Vulgar Boatmen

Year of Release: 1989

What’s up with the Cover?  Here we have a cover where someone could not make up their mind.  Should we go with a studio action shot of the band or a picture of someone’s hot sister in front of an old car?  They decided to try both, and it doesn’t work.  I would have gone with the hot sister picture.

How I Came To Know It:  In an unusual way for me.  I was reading an AV Club article about bands that should have made it big but never did.  There were a dozen or so listed by various contributors, usually with a youtube video to check them out.  I tried out every clip.  Two or three led me to look up some more songs but only the Vulgar Boatmen blew me away.  I looked for an album in local stores for a while and then gave up and bought this album on Amazon.

How It Stacks Up:  I only have this one Vulgar Boatmen album so it can’t really stack up.  They are a hard band to find on CD – I want to get 1992’s “Please Panic” as well but it is over $100 on Amazon.  Yeesh!

Rating:  4 stars

This Vulgar Boatmen album just make me happy.  The music isn’t complicated, and the lyrics aren’t particularly insightful but “You and Your Sister” just has a vibe that is undeniable.

This is music that is made for the summer, sitting on a deck sipping on a wheat beer or a glass of sangria.  This is the theme music you should hear playing as you drive to the beach in a convertible with three or four other people, having one of those ‘friends forever’ montages you get in coming of age movies.

The album could best be described as “university rock.”  The themes are mostly about being a young adult and making your way in the world, although the free and easy guitar strumming that dominates their sound makes the problems of being twenty years old seem way easier than I remember them.

The singing of Carey Crane is high and light, and never forced.  In another band might be drowned out, but because of the inherently quiet way the band plays, it fits in perfectly.  It makes this music perfect not only for driving (a lot of the songs are about driving) but for walking as well.  In fact, I delayed my review of this album a couple of days simply because walking to work listening to it made me feel so positive about my day.

The record is subtle, and requires some attention from the listener.  The Vulgar Boatmen don’t go in for screeching guitar solos, or vocal gymnastics.  The songs are two or three chords played in sprung rhythm with exceptional precision.  When the guitar does pick out a melody it is like Crane’s voice, light and breezy, adding a few points of emphasis here and there without ever being overwrought or self-absorbed.

The lyrics are pretty, but the CD liner doesn’t print them and I can’t remember them much beyond the choruses.  Suffice it to say they are about driving, meeting up with girls and occasionally wondering what you are going to do with your life.  So, you know, rock and roll.

Because “You and Your Sister” didn’t change me somehow (see sidebar), I couldn’t give this record five stars, but there aren’t a lot of bad things to say, and nor do I want to.  Criticizing music this upbeat and sunny would just be a buzz kill.

The Vulgar Boatmen have been mostly forgotten in the mists of time, which is a common fate to university rockers. They deserved better.  Their songs have melodies that sound timeless after you hear them, and are played without ego or artifice.  They don’t make you feel like the world could be a better place; they make you feel like it already is.

Best tracks:  Mary Jane, You and Your Sister, Margaret Says, Katie, Drive Somewhere, Fallen Down, Hold Me Tight, The Street Where You Live