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November 2006

Nine Lives - Robert Plant

Nine Lives Robert Plant 3.5 out of 5 stars Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

As Led Zeppelin’s sex symbol, lead wailer, and songwriting visionary, Robert Plant co-wrote a zillion rock anthems we all recognize and play air guitar to. Fortunately, the trademark scream he unleashed in way too many Zep tunes – a glass-cracking, piercing wail that sounded like a farm animal being violated – is missing in his solo work. Rhino, the company that gives artists their props by giving listeners extensive CD sets, has released “Nine Lives,” an all encompassing 9 CD/ 1 DVD tribute to Plant’s considerable solo musings. The set covers the lion-trussed singer’s solo career since Led Zeppelin crashed in 1980 and includes a 60-page book with rare photos, artwork and 20 music videos. The DVD also includes a 60-minute documentary focusing on his solo career with Plant commenting on each of his solo endeavors, interspersed with interviews with Phil Collins, Roger Daltrey, Roy Harper, Lenny Kravitz (huh?), Tori Amos (double huh?) and John McEnroe (which goes beyond double huh into the realm of you’ve got to be kidding). John Paul Jones’ absence is no surprise, since his relationship with Plant has always been prickly, but no Page? Must have been playing with David Coverdale that day.

As part of their promotional onslaught, Rhino has released a 14 track sampler with songs highlighting each of Plant’s solo albums. The sampler includes several unreleased songs that will blow you away and several that will make you realize that unsupervised hippies in a studio can make for very painful listening.

“Burning Down One Side,” the first song on Plant’s first solo work (1982’s “Pictures at Eleven”) is arguably Plant’s best song, despite an unintelligible first verse. (Hey, nobody knows what the first few lines of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” are either.) Dominated by Jezz Woodroffe’s escalating synthesizer and Robbie Blunt’s jagged guitar runs, Plant bumps up the quality quotient by letting Phil Collins dominate the sound with his controlled, explosive drumming. Blunt’s serene soloing infuses “Big Log” with an exotic, Middle Eastern texture. Shades of the orient abound in the mysterious, keyboard dominated “Little by Little” from 1985’s “Shaken N’ Stirred,” while the similarly veined “Ship of Fools” (from 1988’s “Now and Zen”), bobs lazily like a lifeboat on a calm sea. Just when the boat threatens to flounder, the drums kick in, inspiring guitarist Doug Boyle to pluck a lofty sitar-like solo. The lush “29 Palms” is a folky relaxed trip through the desert: “Twenty-nine palms, I feel the heat of your desert heart, leading me down the road that leads back to you.” With that laid back approach to love, you know old lion hair is going to get the girl and live happily ever after, and so will you each time you sit back, close your eyes and follow Plant’s down the highway.

Brian Setzer has since mastered the art of combining rock with big band swing, but in 1984 Plant’s foray into 50s Chicago style jazz, “The Honeydrippers Vol. 1” was a quirky surprise. Plant’s putrid rendition of “Sea of Love” somehow became his best-selling single, proving sometimes it’s the song, not the singer. Fortunately, the sampler includes the livelier “Rockin’ at Midnight” with its finger-shaking big band arrangement. Plant is seriously out of his element here and not at all in touch with his inner hep cat. His delivery is pure karaoke and the arrangement is suited for a belter like Joe Turner – but the band knows how to cover Plant’s awkwardness and still generate enough heat to make the dance floor shake.

The title “The Dye in the Highway” doesn’t make sense until you realize Plant is a hippy at heart and he’s taking about tie dye. Clips from Woodstock, (the ultimate hippy experience) abound, beginning with a very hoarse Chip Monck declaring, “What we have in mind is breakfast for 400,000.” An offbeat, grating performance similar to Zeppelin’s “Friends,” the busy “Highway” has nothing to do with the peace and love generation. Plant’s voice no longer has the range to carry hard-edged material and phasing it doesn’t hide it or help. Throw in a plodding, way too deliberate beat, more bad acid musings from Mr. Monck, and you have an overproduced assault on your nervous system.

While the sampler is representative of much of Plant’s best know solo work, it’s not without its surprises, which come in the form of three B-sides and two previously unreleased cuts. Score it 2 to 1 for the unreleased material. Both “Turnaround” and “Rollercoaster” are funky out of the ordinary gems that should have been part of Plant’s canon long ago. A slimier version of Zep’s “Custard Pie,” “Turn Around” has the type of skillful slide guitar runs one would expect from Fleetwood Mac’s Jeremy Spencer or Wishbone Ash axeman Andy Powell. Strutting, funky and confident, “Turnaround” has a bluesy feel that’s unlike Plant’s more rock based tunes. “Rollercoaster” dips further into the blues/funk along the lines of Sly Stone or Bootsy Collins. Plant’s voice is recessed in the mix so as not to get in the way of head bopping beat and the vaporous synthesizer. Hypnotic yet hard hitting, “Rollercoaster” is one of those cuts that takes on modern technology and is the better for it. On the other hand the three B sides offered up are a trio of diminishing returns, going from passable, to pass it by, to like passing a kidney stone, only this time you’re passing it through your ear. The herky jerky “Far Post” dates back to the 80s and is notable for putting the bass and honky tonk piano upfront, a practice seldom employed by Led Zeppelin. Nearly everything in “Oompa (Watery Blint)” compounds its kitchen sink approach, from the fun house horns to the misplaced swing clarinet, to Plant’s death knell scream. When Plant babbles, “There’s something…something wrong with you…” you’ll undoubtedly say “Yes there is, Robert. It’s the stench coming from my CD player,” and you’ll hit the fast forward button. All the money in the world can’t save the hackneyed “All the money in the World.” (Sometimes these guys make it too easy to give an opinion.) This rip off of “John Henry” is delta blues at its most annoying -- talky, rushed and rambling.

“All the King’s Horses” from 2005’s “Mighty Rearranger” finishes the sampler on a strong note. The tranquil acoustic arrangement offers a rare glimpse into Plant’s spiritual side: “I give myself a brand new start, glad to be following the beauty within. All the king’s horses, all the king’s men, are on the outside looking in.” There’s a personal emotional investment in the song that’s missing in much of Plant’s solo work. He cements the tune’s melancholia with a restrained, heartrending vocal as sincere and affecting as his performances on Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song” and “Tangerine.”

What’s missing from the sampler? The hypnotic “In the Mood;” “Tall Cool One,” with its “Train Kept A Rollin’” beat, and “Heaven Knows,” with one of the all time “say what” rhymes that would make Steve Miller blush: “See the whites of their eyes and shoot, with all the romance of the Tonton Macoutes!”(The chorus is a gem too: “You were pumping iron, while I was pumping irony.”) Both “Heaven Knows” and “Tall Cool One” appeared on “Now and Zen” and could have replaced the pleasant but less memorable “Ship of Fools.” But a sampler is not meant to be all things to all people, and the three songs are bound to turn up somewhere on the 9 CDs.

If you can’t have Led Zeppelin – and as long as John Bonham remains dead you won’t – then give Robert Plant’s “Nine Lives” a chance. Get ready for the pun… Plant’s music will grow on you…

Posted November 28, 2006 Permalink

Love, the Beatles

L O V E CD + Audio DVD (special edition) 3 out of 5 stars Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

In 2003 Paul McCartney culminated his quest to rewrite Beatle history by putting his considerable weight behind the release of “Let it Be… Naked.” By removing John’s irreverent comic asides, pretending as if “Dig It” and “Maggie May” never existed, and stripping “The Long and Winding Road” of its pastoral strings, McCartney engineered an immaculate but hollow product. It was a brave, controversial mistake that sold well because there were enough starved Beatle fans who’d buy any project blessed by the surviving members of the Fan Four. Fans listened to the sanitized “Let it Be…Naked” once, satiated their empty Beatle souls, and then went back to listening to the original version.

Sir George Martin and his son Giles have gone even further out on the limb of credibility with “Love,” the soundtrack to the successful Cirque du Soleil stage production in Las Vegas. The idea of touching, let alone “mashing” the Beatles compositions in order to create soundscapes is as close to sacrilege as it gets in music, so the perpetrator mucking about with perfection had better know what he’s doing. Producer George Martin, (the real fifth Beatle) seems like the ideal man for the job. He was instrumental in making the Beatles the most successful recording group of all time. He nurtured their sound, encouraged them to experiment, and served as their studio referee. Martin’s genuine love for the Beatles and his respect for their music gives “Love” a fighting chance. By remixing Beatle anthems, using unheard material and interjecting cuts from other songs, the Martin’s have created a Beatle’s album for the 21st century – experimental, hip, and innovative. It doesn’t always work, but it’s interesting.

A four song preview was sent out in advance of the album. John, Paul, George and Ringo all get a turn at the mike on the sampler, which is astute marketing. Sending out only four songs as a preview however, even if it is the Beatles, isn’t smart marketing. You’re forced to use your intuition as to whether the other 16 cuts on “Love” will work. Will Harrison’s exquisite ballad “Here Comes the Sun” still maintain its identity when it’s coupled with the transcendental imagery emanating from “The Inner Light?” Could be enlightening. Will the psychedelic mysticism of “Within You, Without You” blend with the mind-blowing “Tomorrow Never Knows?” Sounds like a pleasant tune to help you relax and float downstream. How about the unsurpassed beauty of Harrison’s “Something,” teamed with the foggy “Blue Jay Way?” Can you say, “No way?” And picture Lennon’s rebellious “Come Together” with the touching “Dear Prudence” whomped together with the Elizabethan imagery of “Cry Baby Cry.” That’ll make your mother sigh. Pushing the boundaries is one thing, pushing the boundaries of good taste is another. The Martins “Love” is somewhere on the cusp, a sacrilege on paper that has the potential to work out better in practice than even staunch Beatle purists (like your truly) might think. Based on what was available in advance, the production is superb, while the performances look to be hit or miss.

The Martin’s turn the beginning of “Strawberry Fields Forever” into unadorned folk by removing the mellotron, and utilizing a demo with a Shaman-like vocal by John Lennon. When the Beatles were recording “Revolver” in 1966 Lennon asked George Martin to make his vocal for “Tomorrow Never Knows” sound like he was the Dali Lama preaching from a mountain top Sir George succeeded then and is triumphant again here, echoing the head Beatle’s vocal until he sounds very cosmic indeed. The field gets a little crowded midway through when the Martin’s begin splicing in shards of other songs against the marching band cadence of Ringo’s drumming…In comes the guitar from “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the coronet solo from “Penny Lane,” the keyboard from “In My Life,” the harpsichord solo from “Piggies” the “hey la-hey-hello” sing-along from “Hello, Goodbye.” All of the songs blend in with Strawberry Field’s bed of music as if they were meant to be together, a tribute to the Martin’s skills, but it makes for a very cluttered ending to a legendary performance, and you’ll find yourself guessing which famous Beatle snippet is being pressed into service rather than listening to the actual song. If the Board of Education tested kids hearing in school with the last minute of this mash up, there’d be a lot of schizophrenic deaf kids around who didn’t like the Beatles. Overall, the “mash up” effect backfires, turning an anthem into a novelty song.

The full orchestra employed for Ringo’s “Goodnight” is grafted onto the beginning of “Octopuses Garden,” negating much of the song’s playfulness. After a somber, slow motion beginning, the song shifts back to it’s original arrangement, but there’s enough additional tinkering here to let you know you’re listening to a new version – such as the backward muttering during the chorus and a new exit – and instead of Harrison’s perky guitar coda you get part of “The Sun King.” The big improvement is the crispness of the production. Ringo’s drum rolls are so brisk they sound as if they were recorded yesterday. Even in the infancy of the CD revolution, Beatle CDs were always among the best in sound quality, but the sound on “Octopuses Garden” and the other tracks will make you hope that the long-rumored remastering of the Fab Four’s catalogue comes to fruition.

Paul’s spotlight performance, “Lady Madonna,” gets the full slice and dice treatment. Instead of Paul’s instantly recognizable pounding on the piano as the opener, the smash up (sorry, mash up), begins with a slapping percussion loop lifted from “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road,” which then slides seamlessly into “Lady Madonna”’s vaudevillian “Ra ba ba ba” background vocals. The sax solo, transplanted from the middle of the song to the beginning honks in, and “Hey Bulldog” lifts its leg for a few bars. On the plus side, the horns in “Lady Madonna” are so clear you can practically see the spittle flying, and with Ringo’s drumming pulled forward in the mix, you’ll get to hear why his fellow musicians revere his subtle technique. Still, the original rules. The new version is like a zirconium ring. It’s a beautiful imitation, but it’s still an imitation.

The song that gives the project validity is George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Constructed around a Harrison’s hushed acoustic demo, the new version is bathed in swelling strings. Another bonus: the orchestrated version of “Guitar” adds in the verse that Donovan reportedly helped Harrison write that was exorcised from the final product: “I look from the wings, at the play you are staging, still my guitar gently weeps. As I’m sitting here, doing nothing but aging, still my guitar gently weeps.” (Okay it’s not his best lyric, but it adds a welcome new twist.) It helps that Harrison gives an emotional reading, which works well against the orchestra, completely altering the song. This is what the Martin’s should have done throughout “Love.” If you’re going to mess with the integrity of a classic song, don’t just throw in a parlor few tricks (even if they are clever), go the extra mile and create something new.

If this were anyone but the Beatles, I might not complain that the process of “mashing up” the songs of rock gods is like painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa or putting Warren G. Harding’s gigolo profile on Mt. Rushmore. Since it is the Beatles, the quality of the material and the clarity of the remixes warrant three stars. I guess the most important question that needs to be asked is “Is Love really necessary?” No, of course not. This is the Beatles you’re playing with, not Daddy Dewdrop or the Bay City Rollers. You can’t improve it. At best, if you don’t ruin the Beatles’ material then you’ve won a minor victory, and that’s what the Martin’s have done. (Sorry, still ranting). Nevertheless, the Martin’s studio magic is worthy of the best tricks pulled by Houdini or Kreskin. I’ll probably buy “Love,” listen to it once, marvel at the production, then consign it a spot in the seldom heard section of my CD collection...right next to “Let it Be…Naked”.

P.S. One million Beatle fans can’t be wrong. The week it was released, “Love” became the #1 selling CD in the nation.

Posted November 28, 2006 Permalink

At San Quentin

Johnny Cash At San Quentin 4.5 out of 5 stars Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

“Hello…I’m Johnny Cash…”
With those few guttural words, Johnny Cash went from being a maverick country singer to a crossover legend. What people may not realize is that he had a lot of help, including his newlywed wife June Carter Cash, her mother and sisters, helmet-haired hot-shot guitarist Carl Perkins, the Tennessee Three, and the stately Statler Brothers – not to mention one of the toughest audiences ever assembled – the hardened inmates at San Quentin Penitentiary.

Columbia has expanded the original 1969 live recording by turning it into a three disc historical document, adding 13 previously unreleased performances, including three by the show-stopping Carl Perkins and four by Cash, as well as a gripping one hour documentary.

Forgotten by the passage of time is that Carl Perkins went on first. This move is akin to Abraham sacrificing his only son or Custer sending out a scouting party…Let’s send out ol’ Carl and if he comes back alive, then I know it’s safe. Okay, perhaps not. But Cash knew he had a secret weapon in Perkins, who had enough energy to run the electric chair all by himself. From the moment Perkins lights into “Blue Suede Shoes” the thick tension in the hall begins to dissolve. Possessed of one the most obvious hairpieces of all time (think dead muskrat or two-story frozen pompadour), Perkins’ playing is anything but fake. This cat can play. He even sails through the last verse unfettered when his mike gives out.

The Statler Brothers follow with their big hit “Flowers on the Wall.” They sound a bit nervous at first and the all important bass singer (the guy who puts the KANG in the Captain Kangaroo line) is a little too far from the mike, but Cash’s back up band, The Tennessee Three (drummer W.S. Holland, bassist Marshall Grant, and newly minted guitarist Bob Wootton), give the beat a little giddy up that seems to loosen up both the Brothers and the crowd.

The first real test comes when the Carter family -- Mother Maybelle and her daughters June, Helen and Anita -- take the stage. Either producer Bob Johnson deserves some credit for some fine editing, or the boys at San Quentin were told to hold the wolf whistling down to a minimum, or June Carter has a heck of a lot more stage presence than she was ever given credit for or all of the above. The sassiest Carter (and Cash’s newlywed wife) immediately diffuses the awkward silence by saying “If you set back and relax and get your hands out of each other’s pockets we’ll entertain you.” She launches into some self-effacing humor, mocking her frilly getup. “I’ve got an announcement – This is as sexy as I’m gonna get! This is the top part, this is the bottom part, and that’s about it.” When Carter finishes her warm up with an amusing, short-of- risqué poem about a farmer and his cow, the crowd is already in her corner. Good thing, because the Carter Sisters’ two bluegrass numbers, ”The Last Thing on My Mind” and “Wildwood Flower” are boograss, the weakest racks on either of the 2 CDs. Mother Maybelle is waaaay out of tune on “Wildwood Flowers,” but her daughters cover well and she can sure pick a mean acoustic guitar.

When Cash steps on stage, he wastes no time capitalizing on the good will laid down by the previous acts. “Big River” is only 1:43, but is chock full of the ingredients that made him famous, including the freight train rhythm guitar, and his quavering, serious as a heart attack bass-baritone. He slows the pace with “I Still Miss Someone,” a short ballad, before revving up the beat again with “Wreck of the Old ’97,” in which Holland churns his high hat like a farm boy churning butter. Cash shows no let up, issuing a letter-perfect take on “I Walk the Line.” He scores points with the inmates when he makes a nearby camera man filming the concert the butt end of his joke: “You better not bend over with that camera like that!”

Two of Cash’s other signature tunes, “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Orange Blossom Special,” draw well-deserved hoots and hollers from the crowd. When Cash hits the line “I killed a man in Reno, just to watch him die” in “Folsom Prison Blues” he strikes a chord that undoubtedly made the guards clutch their rifles a little tighter. Cash may not have the harmonica chops of Paul Butterfield or Sonny Terry, but his full throttle blowing – while trading two harmonicas at once – fuels the “Orange Blossom Special”’s express train pace.

The Carter Family returns to the stage with June and Johnny piecing together a sloppy, but utterly charming “Jackson.” Proving they’re more than country singers, Johnny and June adapt John Sebastian’s “Darlin’ Companion,” with June continuing to display her sassy personality (check out her cutie pie dance moves in the documentary). The Carter Family rebounds from their initial failed gut-check with “Break My Mind,’ a song popularized by the George Hamilton IV (no relation to the bronzed actor) and the Boxtops, who turned the song into a circus-romp. The Carter’s sound much more relaxed and their harmonies mix like, well, a family. The first CD ends with “Starkville City Jail,” which Cash previews by relating a tale of being arrested (for the seventh time) for picking daisies, an act that cost him $36 and a night in jail. If Cash hadn’t already earned his jailbird wings, his profane swagger and the stark reality of the lyrics certainly scored points.

The second CD starts off a song written for the occasion, the somber “San Quentin,” which rubber stamps Cash’s rapport with the inmates. When he intones, “San Quentin what good do you think you do? Do you think I’ll be any different when you’re through? San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell, may your walls fall and may I live to tell,” the room rocks, prisoners scale the tables, and the guards fear the worst. Cash is so convincing, so dead-on, had this musical Sampson said the magic word – RIOT – the walls of San Quentin would have indeed been pulled down faster than the walls of Jericho. Cash does the song start to finish a second time and the inmates are so entranced by his performance he gets an equally enthusiastic round of applause. Now that’s crowd control.

Cash’s take on Bob Dylan’s “Wanted Man” is next, and although Cash is reading the lyrics off of the music stand you’d never know it (the stand and lyrics are also present for “A Boy Named Sue” and “San Quentin” and certainly don’t encumber their performances either). Although Wootton’s guitar melody resembles the chirpy “Limbo Rock,” “Wanted Man” is as grave as “San Quentin,” the flip side of his “I’ve Been Everywhere,” the happy travelogue currently used to promote hotels. This is a travelogue of despair with the hellhounds nipping at the narrator’s trail. Cash lets his lascivious side peek out during the supercharged “Blisters,” growling, “She done tore my soul apart, she put blisters on my heart.” Perkins is right by his side, burning up the strings on his guitar.

Following the release of the album, Shel Silberstein’s sarcastic “A Boy Named Sue,” became the crossover song that catapulted Johnny Cash into superstardom, cracking the play lists of many FM rock stations. Judging by the applause, the tongue in cheek saga of a man determined to kill his father for giving him a woman’s name gives the inmates a few minutes to live vicariously through the song’s character. Perkins, the show’s MVP, manages to fit in snappy bursts of guitar throughout the performance.

Perkins whips the musicians and the crowd into a full boil with his raunchy rockabilly workout “Restless.” He later follows it up with “Outside Looking In,” a manic surf meets country instrumental. As a songwriter, the two story-toupeed guitar-picker provided Cash with another of his most memorable numbers, the sanctified spiritual “Daddy Sang Bass.” Perkins, the Carters, the Statler Brothers, and Cash all join together on stage and you can almost see the preacher man’s tent and his minions passing the hat. “Bass” is part of a four song full Holy Roller revival that includes “Ring of Fire,” “He Turned the Water Into Wine,” and “The Old Account Was Settled Long Ago.” These four songs alone are worth the price of the CDs (and look how much more you get!). Cash and his revue don’t preach per se – they know the concept of getting saved is a hard sell on rapists, robbers and killers. That doesn’t deter them from taking potentially heavy-handed material and making it doggone entertaining. Cash shares the vocal for “The Old Account Was Settled Long Ago,” with the still rockin’ Perkins and buoyant June Carter Cash, with Perkins’ vocal passage transforming it into foot stomping rockabilly. “He Turned the Water Into Wine,” a new tune, is more personal, written by Cash after a religious epiphany in Israel.

It’s hard to top off a near-perfect show, but Cash and his country cohorts end on a high note, blasting through a medley of a revamped “Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” “Ring of Fire,” and “The Rebel, Johnny Yuma.” Each act gets a moment to shine: June Carter Cash tackles a verse of “Folsom Prison Blues,” the Carter Family warble triumphantly through a verse of “I Walk the Line,” The Tennessee Three kick out an instrumental interlude, with drummer Holland administering a beat down on his drum kit, and the Statler Brothers yippy yi oh cay ay through “Ring of Fire,” before Perkins takes a verse of “Folsom Prison” and Cash finishes with “Johnny Yuma” and another round of “Folsom.”

Cash and his revue are actually not the focal point of the documentary. Cash, sweating in earnest, is more glib and animated than usual; June Carter Cash is the comic cutup and eye candy, but her mother and sisters look so petrified bullet proof riot gear wouldn’t help. Carl Perkins is reduced to a few cameos and some wicked solos, and the Statler Brothers are disembodied voices. The real “stars” are the San Quentin inmates and a watch-weary prison guard, who’s spent 20 years on the job and seems to know the prisoners better than they know themselves.

There are many compelling moments, such as the shots of visitors being patted down at the gate and candid shots of the inmates at the concert, who seem skeptical of Cash at first, but warm to his tale of spending the night in jail for picking flowers. The inmates who are interviewed seem handpicked. All are well spoken, yet appropriately hardened – such as the former boxer who has realized his anger controls him and his fate, or the innocent young man who looks like he stepped off of the set of “Happy Days,” who details the surreal, almost detached way he feels when his wife visits. The interviews with two other juxtaposed inmates are chilling for different reasons. One, balding, seemingly well-manned prisoner is on death row for strangling a woman and her 12 year-old son after the boy walked in on their tryst. He’s repentant, willing to die for his moment of temporary insanity. “I blew it,’ he says quietly. “I don’t know why I done it.” The second inmate, a baby-faced charmer with a ready grin, brags bout being a segregationalist, displaying the type of jailhouse swagger you’d expect from a punk. The scary part is this cretin may have gotten paroled and could be living next door.

“Johnny Cash at San Quentin: The Legacy Edition” is a magnum opus, a nearly flawless performance by the Johnny Cash revue, with the man in black at his rollicking best, aided by flamboyant axe magician Carl Perkins. The first-rate performances, the DVD documentary and the accompanying 38-page booklet with essays by Sylvie Simmons, Marty Stuart, June Carter Cash and then inmate Merle Haggard, make it a must for Cash fans. As the guys at San Quentin might say – nice package. It’ll leave you blistered.

Posted November 20, 2006 Permalink

Cool and Collected

Miles Davis Cool and Collected Reviewed for Coffeerooms by G.Mazz

This aptly titled new collection of some of Miles Davis’ most recognizable songs attempts the impossible task of squishing a career full of stylistic change and artistic breadth down to one cd. Undeniably “cool”, but as a fan, one has to wonder what the point really is here. Miles was hardly a singles artist, and due to the sheer length of his career, not to mention the diverse range of styles he covered(or, for that matter, invented) one can’t expect to get an accurate sense of his style by simply compiling his “best” tracks from a specific phase.

If you are a fan, you probably know most or all of the material here already. That said, you would also know that every single song is an outstanding example of Miles in top form, and is required listening for any kind of music lover. The music here is primarily drawn from Miles’ late 50’s output with various versions of his quintet, perhaps most notably on album opener “So What” featuring the classic lineup of John Coltrane on tenor sax, Bill Evans on piano, Cannonball Adderly on alto sax, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Johnny Cobb. It’s hard to put into words how awesome it is to hear Davis, Coltrane, and Adderly bouncing solos off of eachother on tracks like “Milestones” and “Round Midnight”, sounding so cool, so smooth, yet so effortlessly energetic and focused. Meanwhile, later tracks such as “E.S.P.” and “Seven Steps to Heaven” (featuring a young Herbie Hancock) give a necessary example of the jazz-rock-funk fusion direction that Miles pioneered in the 70’s.

The music as a whole is remarkably versatile, equally suited to intense listening as it is to subtle background music for… pretty much anything. Patient listeners will be rewarded with new melodies and ideas on each spin. That goes for pretty much all of Davis’ catalogue though. I would recommend this compilation mostly for those thinking they might want to dip their toes into the vast world of Miles Davis, though be warned, it is merely a dip at best, and one would be just as well or better off just jumping in with an unquestionable classic like “Kind of Blue”, or “Bitches Brew”. Or “In a Silent Way”. Or “Sketches of Spain”, “On the Corner”, “’Round About Midnight”. Or… well, you get it. This is an admirably great collection of music, if somewhat incomplete by its very nature.

Track list:
1. So What
2. Summertime
3. Generique
4. Stella By Starlight
5. Fran-Dance
6. Milestone
7. 'Round Midnight
8. Bye Bye Blackbird
9. Seven Step To Heaven
10. Time After Time
11. E.S.P.
12. Human Nature
13. It's About That

Posted November 16, 2006 Permalink

Your Father's Bee Gees (and that's a Good Thing)

The Bee Gees Selections From the Studio Albums 1967-1968 6 Discs 4 ½ out of 5 stars Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

In the mid 60s, a period when singer-songwriters rose to prominence, the Bee Gees, brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb, were on par with rock luminaries such as The Moody Blues, Traffic, the Kinks, and dare I suggest it – the Beatles. This 16 song sampler, released in advance of a 6 CD set highlighting the Bee Gees first three albums, “Bee Gee’s 1st,” “Horizontal,” and “Idea,” captures the Bee Gees at that height of creative powers. For those of us under 40 who may be unfamiliar with these titles, the three albums embrace the hybrid folk/rock/ballad style the Bee Gees popularized a decade before the lucrative disco days of Stayin’ Alive” and “Night Fever,” -- before Barry started to sing like a mutilated Mickey Mouse in a falsetto so high the vein in the middle of his forehead popped out like a middle finger. These songs come from a period in music when artists were allowed to experiment in the studio, often with brilliant results.

“New York Mining Disaster 1941,” the song that broke the Bee Gees worldwide, is the perfect starting point for this 16 song retrospective. An unlikely title for a single even in the try anything 60s, “New York Mining Disaster 1941” was based on an actual historical incident -- the landslide in Aberfan, South Wales in 1966 that killed 144 people (mostly children who were at school). Barely out of their teens, the Brothers Gibb wrote a chilling tale of two trapped miners who feared that no one was coming to rescue them. The sparse arrangement – a few strumming guitars and an occasional foreboding cello – gives the Bee Gees a chance to display their tight harmonies and talent for fashioning lyrics that put the listener in that same dark pit with the miners: “I keep straining my ears to hear a sound, maybe someone is digging underground. Or have they given up and all gone home to bed, thinking those that one existed must be dead?”

“I Can’t See Nobody” features the unique quivering falsetto of Robin Gibb (It’s the deeper, more accessible voice of Barry that you hear on most of their hits). Robin’s almost vaudevillian delivery might be a challenge to anyone hearing it for the first time – imagine someone being shaken while they’re singing – but at least in the early songs, such as “I Can’t See Nobody,” the fragile melancholy in his voice adds to the song’s dramatic impact. Remixed with powerful clarity, Bill Shepard’s lush string arrangement is intoxicating, but never intrusive.

“To Love Somebody” is an early Bee Gees masterpiece, and one of their most requested and recorded songs. (Janis Joplin once murdered it with her full tilt adenoidal vocal attack.) Originally written for Otis Redding, it plays off of one of Barry’s more soulful and heartfelt performances. When nearly shouts “I’m a man, can’t you see what I am! I live and I breathe for you!” you know he’s pouring his unspoken pain into the microphone.

“Holiday,” another showcase for Robin, displays the group’s uncanny ability to conjure up romantic images of the past. Opening with a church organ playing chords akin to a Catholic mass, it slips gracefully into a Victorian setting. You immediately get the feeling Robin’s singing about a proper olde English “holiday,” complete with parasols, curtseying, and finger sandwiches. “Turn of the Century,” with its Adams Family harpsichord opening, will send your imagination spinning back to the early 1900s, when newfangled inventions like the telephone offered the promise of a better life. Conversely, “Gilbert Green” is cut from a similar Model T era mold, but has a much more tragic storyline along the lines of the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.”

Other Bee Gees classics on the sampler that are scheduled to appear on the 6 CD reissue include “World,” featuring Maurice manning a ghostly mellotron and standout guitar work from Vince Melouney. “Massachusetts,” a flower-power pop tune written in fifteen minutes, nearly became the state’s anthem (until someone informed the Governor that the writers were Australian.) “Gotta Get a Message to You” depicts a doomed man about to die, a subject the brothers would revisit throughout their career. Robin and Barry trade vocals, taking turns stepping into the doomed man’s shoes. “I Started a Joke” is arguably Robin’s shining moment as a vocalist. He’s Pagliacci, scorned and heartbroken, singing with a tear in his eye, and you cry right along with him, because man, you’ve been there and you know how much it hurts.

The 16 cut sampler contains a few unreleased demos guaranteed to peak interest for the 6 CD set, because the Bee Gees were such perfectionists that even their demos were finished songs. ”Words,” a hugely successful single from the period when the group recorded “Horizontal,” has only appeared on “Best of the Bee Gees.” It’s essentially a solo performance by Barry, who’s backed by a full orchestra of shimmering strings straight out of a tear-jerking MGM movie soundtrack. One of his most affecting performances (you can hear him take a deep breath as if to steady himself before launching into the chorus), “Words” demonstrates how the Bee Gees could turn heartache into hits. Other songs collected for the forthcoming 6 CD set include the effectively poppy “Ring My Bell;” “Chocolate Symphony,” a glimpse of life in small town through a young boy’s eyes, and “The Singer Sang His Song,” with Robin in full quiver on lead vocal. “Out of Line,” another unreleased cut, shamelessly borrows the bass line from the Beatles “Rain” as well as parts of the melody from “Think For Yourself,” which might explain why it remained unreleased so long. Begged, borrowed or stolen, “Out of Line” is another successful stab by the brothers at conveying fairy tale pop.

Some of What’s In Store for Listeners
On the Bee Gees Studio Albums 1967-1968 6 CD Set

All three albums have been expanded to 2 CDs to accommodate the wealth of unissued material. In addition to remastered versions of the entire first album, including “To Love Somebody,” “I Can’t See Nobody,’ and “Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You,” (one of the strangest compositions the brothers ever penned, which wraps together an eerie mellotron, Gregorian chanting, and biographical lyrics about stiff upper lip English soldiers going off to die in war), Bee Gees 1st, features demo versions of “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” “Cucumber Castle,” and “Turn of the Century.” “Horizontal”’s second disc is embellished with the previously unissued “Swan Son,” “Ring My Bell,” and “Deeply, Deeply Me,” among others. “Idea”’s second disc focuses on alternate mixes of songs on the album, but also includes “Jumbo,” “Chocolate Symphony,” and “Gena’s Theme.”

There’s a popular saying often used in commercials – “This isn’t your father’s (fill in the subject)…” Well, this is your father’s Bee Gees, the way they sounded a generation ago before disco and high pitched chipmunk vocals, and we should all be thankful for that. Listen closely and you’ll hear classic material when the Bee Gees made songs -- and not just money.

Posted November 13, 2006 Permalink

Depche Mode

Depche Mode - A Broken Frame CD plus DVD extras CD alone 2 ½ out of 5 stars CD plus DVD extras 3 ½ out of 5 Overall 3 Stars Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

“A Broken Frame” could have easily been called “A Broken Band,” because after the success of their debut album “Speak and Spell,” Vince Clarke, Depeche Mode’s primary songwriter and driving force, left the band in the lurch. (Disillusioned with band being tagged as teen idols and exhausted from touring, Clarke formed Yazoo with iron-lunged singer Alison Moyet, only to find himself back in the spot light when Yazoo scored with “Situation.”)

Fazed, but not broken by Clarke’s departure, the remaining members -- neophyte keyboardists Andrew Fletcher and Martin Gore and lead singer David Gahan closed ranks, turning duty of principal song writer over to Gore. The result, 1982’s “A Broken Frame,” captures a band in transition from teen idols to lords of techno rock.

The stark, industrial sound of the albums opener, “Leave in Silence,” is permeated by banks of synthesizers, terse vocals and programmed drums. For the duration of “Silence” and the two cuts that follow, the poppy, teenybopper sound of the first album is supplanted by a darker persona akin to electronic monk music. “My Secret Garden” has a hypnotic atmosphere, with robotic keyboard solos and the pensive, dirge-like vocals that became de rigueur for the techno rock genre. “Monument” delves even further into the band’s futuristic sound with distant, shadowy vocals, creepy synths and unremitting percussion that resembles water dripping in a sink. A precursor to Nine Inch Nails? Perhaps.

With a hint of the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” as its foundation, the dynamic instrumental “Nothing to Fear” could have easily been part of the soundtrack to a German sci-fi movie. Its lasting affect is impaired by the dull hollow thumping of the drums, which sound like plastic drum heads. Plastic drum heads were a curse of 80s music – dulling the sound rather than projecting it, and drum machines, were no better, impersonal, with all the resonance of empty tubs of lard. Both are integral and overworked components of Depeche Mode’s standard operating procedure.

The giddy insignificance of the hit single “See You” quickly deflates the progress of the first four cuts. With its sugary chorus of “All I wanna do is see you, dontcha know that it’s true,” “See You” is techno Archies music, catchy but empty. Beeping like Sputnik on low battery power, the synths in “Satellite” reinstate the album’s baleful tone. The three cuts that follow, “The Meaning of Love,” “Further Excerpts from My Secret Garden” and “A Photograph of You” shove the band back into the type of pseudo pop idol mush they’d sworn to escape. “The Meaning of Love” is wrecked by incongruous barbershop quartet vocals and programmed percussion that trips and stumbles, never establishing a steady beat.

“Shouldn’t Have Done That” is an interesting pastiche of styles and sound effects. Ushered in by the sound effect of an artic wind, “Shouldn’t Have Done That” mixes barbershop quartet vocals and off kilter hand claps. As the song progresses, the already disturbing vocal patterns take on a decidedly peculiar turn, transforming into a Gregorian techno chant, while the clapping mutates into the apocalyptic sound of marching boots. Although the change in mood is not without it’s rhythmic bumps, it still has the chilling effect of Alice in Wonderland getting lost in the looking glass and winding up in Dante’s inferno. The closer, “The Sun and the Rainfall” continues to successfully mine the band’s new more progressive sound with liberal does of pulsating synchs and reverberating vocals.

The remastered version of “A Broken Frame” includes a remastered version of the original album, a DVD with high-resolution audio mixes, bonus tracks and the twenty-seven minute documentary “Depeche Mode: 1982, The Beginning of Their So-Called Dark Phase.” The expanded “Frames” includes the B-sides "Now This Is Fun," "Oberkorn (It's a Small Town)" (originally only released in Germany) and "Excerpt From My Secret Garden," plus six tracks from an Oct. 1982 performance at London's Hammersmith Odeon. Even devotees already familiar with the Depeche Mode story will enjoy the interviews with Clarke, who still seems apologetic and embarrassed about his departure, and hired gun Alan Wilder, who tries to hide his bewilderment at being enlisted as a full-time member but paid like a session man. Fletcher and Gore grimace as they recall an early concert in America when their keyboards malfunctioned and singer Gahan, still recovering from having a tattoo removed, nearly went into septic shock on stage. Live footage of the band shows they were still in the process of developing their stage personalities. Fletcher and Gore look petrified behind their keyboards, barely acknowledging the crowd. Front man Gahan attempts to swirl around the stage during instrumental breaks, but quickly comes to grips with his own lack of rhythm and sticks to the microphone. The real star of the show is newcomer Wilder, who was hired for the tour because Fletcher and Gore knew they couldn’t handle soloing. Wilder appears to be at ease on stage, relishing that the success or failure of the group’s performance is on his shoulders.

Although “A Broken Frame” isn’t one of the group’s stronger efforts – even Gore and producer Daniel Miller say it’s their weakest album -- it’s worth checking out from a historical standpoint. The members of Depeche Mode were young, curious, and heading in a new musical direction they rightfully felt would give the band longevity. “Frame” documents Depeche Mode’s shift toward darker, more mature material. With the addition of concert footage, interviews with band members past and present and journalists who either touted or panned the group explaining why, more of what flows through your speakers begins to make sense.

Posted November 13, 2006 Permalink

Duncan Sheik

Duncan Sheik Brighter/Later: A Duncan Sheik Anthology Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Todd Page

I would certainly recommend the CD to my friends, its very easy to listen to, a CD that doesn't require a great deal of concentration to enjoy, but that, when focused on and listened to intently, isn't frustratingly simple or redundant. The lyrics are, for the most part, well written, a lot of times creatively thought out (I especially liked his reference to artists such as Bob Dylan and Jimmy Page among others in That Says it all). It's acoustically focused, which gives it a very "chillax" feel, something I like to call "Sunday Morning Drive" music. Unlike most best-of CDs, it doesn't just scramble a bunch of random hit songs on to one CD, instead it divides them for you in a consistent flowing manner between, as the title describes, his brighter, more pop-ish songs, and his later, more contemplative work. Comparing it to other artists, I'd say he reminds me a bit of Jack Johnson, with less of the surf styling, and occasionally more heavy themes. His acoustic style is very similar however. All in all, a very enjoyable CD which I have, and will continue to enjoy.

Posted November 8, 2006 Permalink

The Pretenders

The Pretenders Original Recording Remastered Disc 1 – Original album, 3 ½ stars Disc 2 – The extras, 2 ½ stars Overall – 3 stars (out of 5) Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

The 80s was a wasteland for music. One hit disco bands and punk outfits with more attitude than talent were the rule rather than the exception. One of the poster boys for the era was Sid Vicious, who somehow became a rock icon for not being able to play the bass and murdering his girlfriend. You might be able to name a handful of bands good or bad from the 80s -- and I’m willing to bet the Pretenders are one of them. The quartet was comprised three Englishmen: bassist Pete Farndon, drummer Martin Chambers and guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, and a former waitress and boutique salesgirl from Ohio, Chrissie Hynde. Farndon, a punk poser who was more like Gene Vincent than Gene Simmons, could keep the beat sultry or sweaty amidst the group’s most chaotic compositions. Occasionally overly ambitious live, Chambers was steady and disciplined in the studio. Honeyman-Scott was the group’s marquee player, a six-stringed chameleon who absorbed the signature sounds of his heroes – Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend and Billy Bremmer – and gave them a punk/rock spin. Hynde was the Mae West of rock and roll. Disguised behind a cosmetic counter’s worth of black eyeliner, Hynde purred her compositions in a come hither tone. Confident and tough, she made music on her own terms with no apologies, and the Pretenders self-titled first album was a reflection of her I’ll spit in your eye and you’ll like it writing style.

There’s a brief countdown by Chambers before the band slams into “Precious,” a frantic, mosh pit worthy piece with plenty of Clash-like defiance. As if to prove how tough she is, Hynde lets loose with an F-bomb or two. Take that, Debbie Harry. Hynde’s the real deal, even if she does rhyme “ethereal” with “imperial.”

“The Phone Call” is more speed-freak punk, but it’s a bad connection, pushed too fast and too hard, although Honeyman-Scott’s fretwork is righteously mean. “Up the Neck” finds Hynde breathy, chock full of innuendo and on the prowl. After two hard charging cuts, “Up the Neck”'s subtlety is a welcome change and demonstrates that the flashy Honeyman-Scott could occasionally squeeze out a harmonic riff. “Tattooed Love Boys” puts the emphasis on percussion, with an inventive guitar solo from Honeyman-Scott that sounds like static electricity, and a healthy slice of sardonic wit from Hynde: “I shot my mouth off and he showed me what that hole was for,” she growls.

Other instant classics abound, including “Mystery Achievement” with the rhythm section playing as tight as a closed fist, and the acerbic, assertive “Brass in Pocket.” “Kid” is a straight ahead mid-tempo coming of age song, and although “The Wait” finds Hynde unintelligibly hiccupping the lyrics as if she’s singing in Esperanto, it’s still got plenty of in your face attitude. “Lover of Today,” is as close to a ballad as the group would get. It’s characterized by the same suicidal angst that Aimee Mann would later tap into. “Private Life” is sinister Ska, topped off with a threatening vocal by Hynde and Honeyman-Scott’s Hendrixy solo. Only “Stop Your Sobbing” a sub-par Kinks tune, and “Space Invader,” an unnecessary instrumental, fail to ignite.

Disc #2 is a grab bag of cuts that should have made the album, demos, incendiary live performances and cuts you’ll never want to hear again. “Cuban Slide,” with its shake yer hips Bo Diddley beat, ended up on a five song EP the band recorded on tour in 1981 to placate the public’s demand for new material. It could very well be the Pretender’s best song. Fardon does Larry Graham proud, shaking the floor with thick, thumping bass lines, while Honeyman-Scott’s precision slide work cuts through the arrangement like a slicer through pepperoni. Conversely, it’s hard to figure out why “Porcelain” was unleashed on a public salivating for quality material. Sporting a long intro that brings to mind the opening chords to Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man,” the song becomes a disjointed, noisy example of pissed off punk. The two demos that follow, “The Phone Call” and “The Wait,” are indeed works in progress that sounded better when they were reworked. Both have Farndon mixed to the point of invisibility, and “The Wait” sports a goose-step vocal that makes Hynde sound like 80s Teutonic icon Lene Lovich, which works for the eccentric Lovich, but not her. The demo for “Brass in Pocket” is radically different from the final version. Saddled with a snail paced beat, the song’s ire is deflated when Hynde sings “You’re special, so special,” instead of focusing the lyrics on herself. If the group had released this version, I can guarantee Hynde would still be a waitress. The demo for “Stop Your Sobbing” is more twinkley than tough, further demonstrating that plucking it from obscurity was a mistake from the start. A short band jam, “Swinging London,” invokes visions of mini-skirted birds dancing in cages, but falls short of paying homage to 60s bands that were actually there, such as the Yardbirds, Tremeloes or Dave Clark Five. (It may have sounded better had the band continued to work on it.) You’ll be glad there’s an advance button on your CD player when you hear “Tequila,” -- not the instantly recognizable instrumental by the Champs, but a grievously misguided attempt at country that once again proves English rockers should stay clear of the genre. “Sabre Dance” is also D.O.A. from its opening notes. Honeyman-Scott tries to entertain, but seems to have forgotten how the melody goes. The band’s sloppy rendition turns into a bad acid trip when Hynde attempts to sing the lyrics to “Stop Your Sobbing” (what, again!) over a completely different melody. We know you like the song, Chris, but there’s a time and a place for everything -- and this ain’t it.

Despite the aforementioned cuts, the second CD is by no means a total washout, In addition to “Cuban Slide,” “I Need Somebody” with producer Chris Thomas on piano, is an unreleased live cut with hints of James Brown funk. Honeyman-Scott zeros in on a nasty groove and the arrangement and the rest of the group obediently rides his creative wave. A live “Tattooed Love Boys” finds Chambers in hyper drive and Honeyman-Scott leveling a solo so frantic it’ll raise the hair in your arms.

James McNair’s liner notes and the plethora of candid photos make the entire package informative, fun and worth checking out while you’re listening. Sloppy or not, fans will appreciate the second disk. If you’re ambivalent, or like your music a little more orderly, stick with side one, which is special…so special.

Posted November 6, 2006 Permalink

The Pretenders II

The Pretenders II Original Recording Remastered Disc 1 – Original album, 2 ½ stars Disc 2 – The extras, 1 star Overall – 2 stars (out of 5) Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

By 1981, barely a year after forming, the Pretenders first self-titled album was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Touring incessantly, Chrissie Hynde was hard-pressed to come up with enough material for a second album. In the interim, the Pretenders released the EP “Extended Play” in the U.S. in July 1981. The five song holding pattern contained three new studio tracks done in the same take no prisoners tradition established by the first album: “Cuban Slide,” “Message of Love” and “Talk of the Town.” The high quality of the three cuts convinced fans that “Pretenders II” would be as groundbreaking as the group’s first effort. The band still had two aces at the top of their game – guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, a musical chameleon who lit up the stage with his blistering riffs, and Pete Farndon, the punk fashion plate whose thumping bass grounded Hynde’s punk vitriol.

The success of “Extended Play,” bode well for “Pretenders II.” Unfortunately, the two songs picked for the L.P., “Message of Love” and “Talk of the Town,” proved to be two of a small handful of highlights. Hynde managed to recapture the Pretenders rebellious spirit, but was nearly bereft of listenable ideas. Inexplicably, the exemplary Bo Diddley workout “Cuban Slide” was left off of the album. Strike one. (That faux pas was finally rectified by the two CD reissue of the first album.) There are some good, occasionally great, and mostly mystifyingly lame tunes on “Pretenders II”. The extra fluff on the two CD issue of “Pretenders II” compounds a glaring problem. On stage the band could whip an audience into a slam dancing frenzy. In the studio, the lack of radio-friendly material meant they were the ones who were going to be whipped.

“Pretenders II” follows the pattern laid down by the first album. It begins with two disturbing tunes bound to please the band’s S & M crowd, “The Adulteress” and “Big Boys Get Spanked.” Hynde’s throaty, half-spoken vocal on “The Adulteress” makes her sound as if she was in the recording studio in skin-tight leather, keeping time on with a riding crop. It’s slimy and steamy, a perfectly dark compliment to Hynde’s bad girl persona. “Big Boys Get Spanked” is more like “Big Boys Get Beaten.” Only Farndon’s rubber band bass even remotely resembles music. Hynde screams like a banshee stuck in purgatory, and Chambers lays down an overly active beat that even the most drugged amongst us would have problems following. Chambers, an effective time keeper on the first album, is way off his game throughout, especially on the live cuts on the second CD, where he sounds as of he’s playing at a different concert. He does shine on “Message of Love,” manufacturing a choppy, high-karate beat to match Farndon’s hulking bass. The previously released “Talk of the Town” finds Hynde getting in touch with the breathy sensual vocal style that attracted both sexes. She owns up to her Mae West roots imitating the actress’s purr on “Pack it Up.” The lyrics, unusually playful for the Pretenders, emulate Tim Curry’s best tongue-in-cheek parodies and reflect the band’s freewheeling life style: “Oh whoa, whoa, whoa, this is no place for me, burning down the inner belt from Jacuzzi to Jacuzzi. It’s all right for you man, getting smashed, getting suntanned. But I know my place, where’s my suitcase?” “Jealous Dogs” a commentary on the evil deeds of the bad guys in the world, drips with sarcasm. Just try to ignore Hynde barking “Bow wow wow, here come the dogs,’ and “Get down off the couch.” With “Cuban Slide” absent and “Talk of the Town and “Message of Love” already familiar to listeners, there’s only one tune worthy of classic status and that’s “The English Roses,” with its infectious, relentless, multi-layered guitar work. Hynde’s guitar rings with the urgency and clarity of Quasimodo chiming the bells of Notre Dame, while Honeyman-Scott juxtaposes her sound with dirty, fuzzy bursts. (A near-perfect anthem, although with the 1,001 overdubbed guitars it is a little hard to tell what Hynde’s singing about.)

There were very few songs on the first album that failed, and when they did, they fell on their swords with a degree of creativity. On “Pretenders II,” the songs deserving the eject button are stodgy, still born. “Day After Day” provides its own commentary, ending with the sound effect of a plane crashing, and “I Go to Sleep,” yet another cover of a minor Kinks tune, proves once and for all that Hynde should have been happy seducing Ray Davies and kept her modulating voice far away from his songbook. The slick 60’s horn arrangement would be boffo for a James Bond film, but this is the Pretenders! Dusty Springfield had the style and yes, class, that could provide “I Go To Sleep” with the smokey, provocative atmosphere the arrangement demands. Hynde tries, but she’s no torch singer; there’s still has too much venom in her voice. “Louie Louie” utilizes the title of the Kingman’s iconic hit. Unfortunately, that’s all it borrows. “Louie, Louie” is a headache-inducing, pile-driving wreck (with horns!). It’s so egregious; someone should have turned off the tape, torn it into bite size pieces and fed it to one of the “jealous dogs.”

The eighteen cuts on the second disc capture much of “Pretenders II” in concert, with Honeyman-Scott in particularly good form. Too bad the rest of the band didn’t bother to show up. Honeyman-Scott plays with crystalline clarity on “Up the Neck,” duplicates Ritchie Blackmore’s fluid style on “The Wait,” and matches Jeff Beck’s precision on the otherwise inconceivably bad demo for “I Go to Sleep.” The group would have needed another half dozen guitarists on stage to recreate the sheer power found in the studio version of “The English Roses.” Live, it’s more like the english rose, solitary and weak. Hynde sounds lost on the lukewarm “Birds of Paradise” -- the rest of the band just sounds bored. Chambers, an effective metronome on the first album is all over the place during the live set. His drumming is muffled and tentative on “Message of Love.” He turns “Brass in the Pocket’s” strutting beat into foot race that nobody wins, and tries to do too much on “Private Life,” a song that cries out for continuity. Hynde’s performance also seems to have peaked in the dressing room. “Louie, Louie,” obnoxious enough in its original form, is a shriek-fest in concert; Hynde misses her cue on “The English Roses,” singing while Honeyman-Scott is still soloing and she’s off-key at the start of “Day After Day.” “Stop Your Sobbing” is resurrected for the umpteenth time and remains the musical Moby Dick Hynde will never capture, but the CD’s biggest you’ve got to be kidding me moment comes from the band’s take on Jackie Wilson’s peerless “Higher and Higher.” A vocal/brass group called “The Bureau” joins the Pretenders on stage for a fly-by-the-seat-of –your- pants version that’s bound to test you gag reflex. The sax player sounds like he’s playing the hose of an Electrolux, Chambers can’t find a groove, and everyone starts singing a different line near the end of the song. “The Bureau” could have brought along the rest of the bedroom set and it wouldn’t have helped. Vocally, they don’t have a leg to stand on.

The performances on both discs capture Farndon and Honeyman-Scott as the seamy side of rock stardom was beginning to catch up to them. Fardon died of a drug overdose in June 1982 and Honeyman-Scott aquiesed in April 1983. Hynde soldiered on with mixed results, notching hits like “Back on the Chain Gang” and “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” but never again scaled the heights of the group’s first two albums.

The material on “Pretenders II” may not match the quality of the first L.P., but there is still enough worthwhile material to warrant a listen or two. With eighteen cuts, the second disc is a holy grail for rabid fans. The rest of us need to remember this simple equation: rabid = crazy. Disc one will satisfy, but disc two will leave you foaming at the mouth and begging to be put down.

Posted November 6, 2006 Permalink