Has anyone heard the new Bryan Ferry album yet? I know it’s got members of Roxy Music (including Eno), Jonny Greenwood, and probably some other cool cats, but I’ve not yet mustered the energy to even seek out and sample a YouTube clip. Should I, or will it be one more super-smooth attempt at recapturing the “magic” of Boys & Girls? Come to think of it, has Ferry been getting a Lennon Pass all these years? If so, believe me, I’ve been as guilty of issuing the pass as anyone. But why?
The EP, or extended play, had run its course in America by the 1960s, but it was an established part of the UK rock ‘n roll scene, offering artists a chance to leak out a little more than a single to tease fans for the release of a new album or, perhaps, to get a musical tangent out of their system without the pressure of constructing an entire album around a possible lark. As you probably know, The Magical Mystery Tour album that Americans grew up with and that was released in German True Stereo by our friends in Germany was initially released in the UK as a double EP. The EP format was revived to some effect in both markets in the punk (often as 7″ EPs) and disco (think 12″ singles) scenes, but the coolest format ever, in my opinion, the classic vinyl, 10-inch EP that Epic tried to revive with a series that included The Clash‘s Black Market Clash and a decent Cheap Trick platter, did not take off. Too bad! One of my unfulfilled musical dreams is the release of a 10-inch EP that somehow pays homage to Captain Beefheart‘s Music in Sea Minor.
In the digital age the EP release may make more sense than ever. Think about how long it takes artists to release a new album. Think about how few songs from that album ever get played on the radio. Think about the short attention spans of iPod-equipped listeners who may have only loaded the initially catchiest handful of songs, that is, if they even bothered to download an entire album. Why shouldn’t artists release a handful of songs at a time as an EP, cut down on the wait between releases, and possibly generate more reviews and opportunities for lead tracks to get played on air? I don’t know if two artists, relative newcomer Jump Back Jake and Friend of the Hall Martin Newell had any of this in mind when putting together their latest EPs, but we’ll take ’em – and review ’em…after the jump.
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The first thing that strikes me about the Classic Albums series’ making-of documentary of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers‘ Damn the Torpedoes is the British Invasion-era guitar porn that was on display in the early days of the band. There are all varieties of Rickenbackers, including the relatively cheapo one that Tom holds on the album cover and that John Lennon played in early Beatles’ shots. I came real close to buying one of those in high school, but I didn’t like the way it played. There are the classic Ricks, both 6- and 12-string variety. There’s Tom playing a Flying V and a Firebird. Mike Campbell plays some cool guitars, too, mostly along the classic Fender and Gibson lines, but nothing beats a shot of Tom playing a 12-string Vox! Now, that’s cool!
Early on Petty and his mates speak of the band’s mix of British Invasion and southern rock and soul. As Petty, Campbell, and producer Jimmy Iovine, the latter looking like a modern-day James Caan character in the best-preserved Members’ Only jacket on the planet, sit at the mixing board and breakdown the smash hits from this album it all seems so simple – too simple. You might find yourself thinking, “Gee, Petty’s whole bag is so simple why don’t more people make records this solid? Shoot, why didn’t I make this album?” It’s part of the magic of Tom Petty and his band that such a straightforward, traditional sound backing such straightforward, down-to-earth lyrics can work so well, especially on Damn the Torpedoes, which for me has always been the one Petty album (Greatest Hits excluded) worth spinning more or less from start to finish.
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How deep should first musical impressions cut? Is there more in a track that may have first caught my ear? Do I clutch too tightly to the romantic notion that no record should ever sound different than how I first heard it, or more accurately the collective power of the record’s first 100 spins? It’s not like I listen to my childhood vinyl on the same record player I had as a kid, but I run up against such questions any time I pick up a reissue of a beloved album that’s been remastered or released in its original mono form, a German true stereo mix, or what have you. Like my friend who can’t get past any digital remastering of “Satisfaction” in which you can hear the acoustic guitar and piano, which were buried in the rhythm section on the vinyl versions of the song we grew up with, I tend to get a little attached to how records sounded when I first heard them.
I recently downloaded a rare mono mix of The Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed, my favorite post-Brian Jones Stones album and, from my years of spinning it on vinyl, the best-sounding Rolling Stones album. I’ve never been that much of a purist about mono vs stereo mixes; in fact, any purism I hold in this regard is centered around my personal experience. If I first heard an album in mono, then mono is the “correct” format, and vice versa. The mono mix of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, which was included with stereo version on some CD reissue from a few years back, does not impress me. I continue to hold true to the magic of the flimsy, $2.99 Spanish vinyl pressing I fell in love with after bringing home from the Temple U. bookstore in the early 1980s.
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It’s not only a box of 2009 Robert Pollard record releases that I’m behind on reviewing but more, much more once-new (in some cases) material that’s been submitted by independent musicians who are probably more professional in their musical pursuits than I am in any of my own pursuits as a rock journalist. In rapid-fire format, let’s see if I can’t catch up and give these artists their hard-earned and overdue due!
Gemini Wolf, Synchronized Eyes
Let’s kick this off with maybe the most egregious of my backlogged submissions for review. This CD was sent to Mr. Moderator about a year ago. He promptly turned it over to me, at which point I quickly delighted in spinning it and then more quickly lost the CD under a pile of empty pizza boxes and old sports pages. As my 9-year-old nephew said to me recently, “It’s good to lose things in your own house, isn’t it?” Yes, it is. Stay in one place long enough and you’re bound to find all that you’ve lost.
This same nephew, then 8 years old, was visiting when I first began listening to this CD. “It sounds like Irish music from outer space,” he said. Ah, from the mouths of babes! Continue reading »
The continuing task of catching up on the big-ass batch of Robert Pollard-led releases Kpdexter sent me marches on with an early 2010 solo album, We All Got Out of the Army. In my overdue review of Boston Spaceships’ Brown Submarine I lamented that the musicians on that album rarely “dug in” and “created their own shot,” that is, pushed the arrangements to unexpected places. That’s not the case on this solo release, done with producer/frequent partner-in-crime Todd Tobias. Across 17 concise, mostly energetic songs, the arrangements are not afraid to take it to the hoop with the surgical focus of the Cobra Verde-influenced Guided By Voices albums. I dig!
Robert Pollard, “We All Got Out of the Army”
Robert Pollard, “I’ll Take the Cure”
Songs like “Post-Hydrate Update” and the title track don’t pussyfoot around. The strong opening rhythmic gestures and discordant touches work well to support Pollard’s UK psych/prog phrasing. Even songs with a lighter touch, like “I’ll Take the Cure,” have a whiff of the Canterbury scene. This is not to say that Pollard’s finally gone prog, but on this album, with the arrangements clanging around him, he once more fulfills his post-punk, art-rock side, sounding like 154-era Wire if those guys could have removed the 4″ x 4″ from their collective ass.
They had to go and make it longer, didn’t they? The Rolling Stones couldn’t leave the legacy of the sprawling Exile on Main Street alone. In this newly remastered, expanded edition rock’s most notorious tax exiles add 10 previously unreleased/unfinished tracks. Shotgun-worthy Don Was helped shepherd these outtakes into the 21st century, with Mick Jagger writing new lyrics and adding new vocal parts, in some cases. Considering that the Stones have been reviving leftover jams as new material for more than half their career (eg, “Start Me Up” had been sitting around for 6 years before being revised and released as the band’s modern-day theme song), why didn’t they just release these tracks as a new Stones album and do the necessary work of trimming Exile on Main Street down from a flabby double album to killer EP it essentially is? Lord knows this collection of 10 revived tracks, kicking off with the funky “Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren)” and the pleading “Plundered My Soul,” would have been the band’s “best album since Exile.”
OK, the newest “best Stones album since Exile” wouldn’t have been that easy to concoct – some of these outtakes are early versions of eventual songs from the album. I especially dig “Good Time Woman,” an early sketch of what would become the sublime “Tumbling Dice,” a song I could bring to my lab and never cease to find fascinating in the way each part contains the code for the whole of the song. Surely there would be dozens of sketches left on the floor of Compass Point Studios for them to fill out side two. Then the Stones could have really shaken up the rock world by taking a washcloth to the abundance of blackface greasepaint smeared across the two LPs of the original release.
Considering how much slack I’ve cut lesser bands over the years, it may be unfair to find fault the Stones for dragging down what could have been the greatest EP in the history of rock with a bunch of overblown gospel-blues jams and fun rave-ups, but we really need to spend any more time stoned and nodding along to Bobby Keys’ sax solo on “Casino Boogie?” Does making it through “Sweet Virginia” earn us a hole-punch on our Educated, White, Middle-Class Dude Who Really Digs American Traditional Music card? How many times does that card need to be punched before we’re awarded an actual album of American traditional music?
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