Archive for the ‘ Pop ’ Category

Delaney & Bonnie & Friends “Motel Shot”

| Americana,Country Rock,Folk,Pop,RnB

Maybe the first “Unplugged” album, Motel Shot presents Delaney & Bonnie & Friends live in the studio performing traditional numbers in the styles of gospel, country, and folk, in addition to four Delaney penned tunes (the hit of which was “Never Ending Song Of Love”). Luckily for us, Delaney & Bonnie’s “friends” include Gram Parsons, John Hartford, Leon Russell (long overdue in these pages), Joe Cocker, Clarence White, Dave Mason, and Duane Allman. If this crew had got together in 1971 to record nonsense it would still be worth listening to, but they pour it out instead, dishing soulful performances with rousing gusto.

Motel Shot was recorded in the spirit of a late-night motel jam session, after the show – back to the basics. On top of the traditional numbers are standards from the likes of AP Carter, Bob Wills (“Faded Love” is a standout slow tempo killer) Chuck Willis, and Robert Johnson. The performances invite listeners to become a part of the music with a communal feel. Grab another tambourine or just bob your head. “Come On In My Kitchen” is featured for its remarkable sparsity in such a solid groove.

For more from this type of crew, take a look at Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen DVD, with excellent tour footage and backstage jam sessions offering a glimpse into the spontaneous traditional music paid homage by this record.

“Come On In My Kitchen”

:D CD Reissue | 1997 | Atco | buy from amazon ]
:) Original Vinyl | 1971 | Atco | search ebay ]

Mighty Baby “A Jug Of Love”

| Americana,Classic Rock,Country Rock,Folk,Pop,Psych

After the release of their scorching debut, Mighty Baby drastically switched format and recorded this Dead/Airplane-influenced rural LP. Both are great records, but hardly by the same band.

The self-titled lead off track would get your attention first, it got mine enough to include it on the very first Rising Storm Podcast. This track, and the album overall, is loaded with vicious string bender guitar licks from either Alan King or Martin Stone (can anybody confirm?). Whether it’s a bender or not, Clarence White fans should take note for the onslaught of high-register fancy guitar pickin contained herein.   My only complaint is the length of songs, tending to jam on a bit, however to those looking to soak in these type of sounds this is a dream. Besides, with a touch of class and some minor theatrics they manage to give noodling a good name.

Influences range from The Band on the grooving “Tasting The Life,” CSNY on mellow “Virgin Spring,” and Untitled Byrds all over. “Virgin Springs” is a song so familar it sounds like a cover, I just can’t find any evidence of an original version. In this case, along with “Slipstreams,” the album is responsible for at least two bonafide rural classics.

Jug of Love is what happens to a band after their rock break out leads them to Sufism and a jaded view of the music industry; always makes for an interesting sound! Check out Jason’s post on their s/t debut to compare this to the “sleek, powerful piece of psychedelia” that is Egyptian Tomb (updated link).

“Keep On Jugging”

:D CD Reissue | 2006 | Sunbeam | A Jug of Love ]
:) Original Vinyl | 1971 | Blue Horizon | search ebay ]
8-) Spotify link | listen ]

uReview: The Doors “Soft Parade”

| Art,Pop,uReview

[ratings]

The Doors… overplayed or overlooked? What’s your call on this oft-maligned LP?

“Tell All The People”

:D CD Reissue | 2007 | Rhino | amazon ]
:) Original Vinyl | 1969 | Vogue | search ebay ]
;) MP3 Album |  download at amazon ]
8-) Spotify link | listen ]

The Byrds “Younger Than Yesterday”

| Country Rock,Folk,Pop,Psych

If Mr. Tambourine Man, Notorious Byrd Brothers, and Sweetheart of the Rodeo are acknowledged Byrds’ masterworks, Younger Than Yesterday isn’t far behind.  There’s a few tracks that haven’t held up, Mind Gardens – Crosby’s psychedelic folk-rock opus is a bit unfocused but not as terrible as the critics make it out to be.  C.T.A. 102, a track that must’ve sounded cool when this album was released in 1967, has dated space-age sound effects.  These are interesting experiments by all means but the 9 remaining cuts were prime mid 60s Byrds.  At this point Gene Clark had been out of the group for some time, knowing this Hillman and Crosby pitched in big time with some of their best ever compositions.  Younger Than Yesterday is one of the great American rock classics, very close in sound to the Beau Brummels Triangle, Moby Grape’s self-titled debut, and Buffalo Springfield’s Again. 

The two hits that anchored the lp were pretty great.  So You Wanna Be A Rock N Roll Star blasted out of radio speakers in 1967 sounding unlike anything else with a strong latin feel, great lyrics, and a killer groove.  The other major hit off the album was a cover of Bob Dylan’s My Back Pages.  This was one of their best Dylan covers yet and had a trademark, classic McGuinn twelve-string guitar solo.  Crosby offered up one of his best songs, Everybody’s Been Burned, a masterpiece of psychedelic folk-rock highlighted by his exquisite, crooning hippie vocals and drowsy acid guitar work.  Renaissance Fair was another Crosby psychedelic folk-rocker with strong acid imagery and shifting time signatures plus some more fine 12-string from McGuinn.  McGuinn and Crosby contributed great material to Younger Than Yesterday but for me it was Hillman’s contributions that have stood the sands of time best.  Hillman’s Have You Seen Her Face, Time Between, Thoughts and Words, and The Girl With No Name were all superb songs.  Have You Seen Her Face saw the Byrds in garage mode while Thoughts and Words was one of their best straight-up psych numbers.  Prior to Younger Than Yesterday the Byrds had flirted with a kind of proto country-rock sound on Mr. Spaceman and Satisfied Mind.  With Time Between and The Girl With No Name, that flirtation came to fruition.  Hillman had played in bluegrass bands prior to the Byrds, so the said experiments were just an extension of his roots – no gimmicks, completely genuine stuff here.  Both tracks rock pretty nicely and feature some fine guitar work by Byrd-in-waiting Clarence White.  Time Between and GIrl With No Name do not have a heavy Nashville sound but so what, this was the Byrds version of country music and probably a purer fusion than anything else they have done ever since.  Just as the Byrds had broken new ground with psychedelia a year earlier, their move into country represented an advancement of musical frontiers.  The album ended with McGuinn’s Why, a great rocker with a riveting space guitar solo.   This track had been released much earlier as the B-side to Eight Miles High in 1966. 

In the mid 90s Columbia rehauled the entire Byrds catalog, reissuing all their classic albums with plenty of extras.  The Younger Than Yesterday reissue includes two lost Crosby gems, It Happens Each Day, which is an outtake, and Lady Friend, one of their best mid 60s non-lp tracks.  Younger Than Yesterday is an important part of the Byrds evolution.  It’s a classic album that saw the group at the forefront of pop music – The Byrds were always three steps ahead of the game. 

“The Girl With No Name”

:) Vinyl Reissue | Mono | Sundazed | buy from sundazed ]
;) MP3 Album | download at amazon ]

The Cowsills “II x II”

| Classic Rock,Pop,Sunshine

I never thought I’d be recommending a Cowsills album here on the Storm but I guess stranger things have happened. II x II is considered the group’s finest album along with 1968’s We Can Fly. This lp was a concious attempt to get away from the Cowsills pop image and create something a bit more original and experimental. I think they succeeded marvelously as II x II is a great folk-rock album that saw the band writing more mature, reflective material.

Unlike a lot of sunshine pop groups, the Cowsills could actually play their own instruments. They did this well, along with writing most of the album’s material. Bill and Bob Cowsill wrote a lion’s share of this material, much of it in a gentle, lilting folk-rock style. Father best exemplifies this new approach being a beautiful folk-rocker with a lite psych mellotron touch – this track floats in the air like the best sun pop gems should. Some of the tracks like Signs and Anything Changes even rock hard in spots, much closer to power-pop in spirit but successful any way you slice it. Highlights are really hard to point out on such a consistent and varied album. Don’t Look Back, an early morning country-rocker with a strong CSNY influence is a real gem in the Cowsills catalog while The Prophecy Of Daniel And John The Divine is more abstract and easily their most advanced album cut – a mini masterpiece of lite psychedelia.

This lp should have proven to the world that there was much more to the Cowsills than great singles like The Rain, The Park & Other Things. The sound is very homespun and where the earlier albums relied heavily on studio technology this one doesn’t. When II x II was released the group was suffering a major commercial downfall. The album should have remedied this and repaired their critical standing amongst the rock world. Sunshine pop fans should not miss this near classic album. II x II has been reissued on cd in its entirety along with earlier album tracks under the title Painting The Day.

“Don’t Look Back”

:D CD Reissue | 2006 | El Records | Painting the Day: The Angelic Psychedelia of the Cowsills ]
:) Original Vinyl | 1970 | MGM | search ebay ]

uReview: The Rolling Stones “Their Satanic Majesties Request”

| Pop,Psych,uReview

[ratings]

A Stones gem or derivative nonsense? What’s your call on this controversial LP?

“In Another Land”

:D CD Reissue | 2002 | Abkco | buy from amazon ]
:) Original Vinyl | 1967 | Decca | search ebay ]

The Gants “Gants Again”

| Folk,Garage,Pop

The Gants were a mid 60s garage/folk-rock band from Mississippi whose biggest commercial success was a billboard charting cover of Bo Diddley’s Road Runner. This minor hit was enough to secure them the release of 3 LPs on Liberty, Gants Again being the third. Lack of original material and a sound that’s often far too derivative of their British heroes (especially the Beatles) keeps it from being a great album by any stretch. But there are many fine moments here.

Wonderful tracks like I Wonder and the moody, near suicidal Somebody Please prove that they certainly had tons of potential. And it really is unfortunate because an album’s worth of originals on par with these tracks may have ranked up there with the Nightcrawlers LP or the Beau Brummels vol. 2. Not that all the cover tunes are boring. Some (Rain and You Better Run) are actually very well done and breathe new life into the songs. But it still leaves the listener longing to hear what the Gants and other groups of this ilk would have sounded like if they were given more creative license instead of having managers and labels pad up their records with mediocre filler.

Unless you stumble across this in a bargain bin (or for less than ten bucks), you’re better off grabbing the Bam Caruso collection I Wonder which compiles the best material from all three albums, including some cool unreleased forays into baroque pop.

Gants Again

“I Wonder”

:D CD Compilation | 2000 | RPM Records | buy from amazon ]
:) Original Vinyl | 1966 | Liberty | search ebay ]

The Who “Magic Bus”

| Classic Rock,Pop

My Take:

The Who’s Magic Bus album was released in 1968 with the misleading “On Tour” title. Magic Bus is not a live album by any means and was released to keep Who fans satisfied while they anxiously awaited 69s Tommy. But it also made Decca a few dollars and is similar in concept to the Stones’ Flowers and the Small Faces’ excellent From The Beginning lp.

Magic Bus was made up of prior singles, b-sides, ep tracks and the like – all dating from around 66-67. Run Run Run, I Can’t Reach You and Our Love Was, Is had all made appearances on prior lps and are good pop tracks. Run Run Run is a thundering mod rocker with great guitar leads from Townshend and stunning bass work from Entwistle. Other tracks like Pictures of Lily, Disguises and Doctor, Doctor represent some of the Who’s better early work, then known as pop-art. Most of these songs are great catchy power pop tunes (a term Townshend coined back in 66) that show Townshend’s mastery of feedback and guitar noise. Other notable tracks are Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (an Entwistle original of course), perhaps the strangest Who recording of all, whilst Call Me Lightning is solid mod pop.

My feeling is that they could have nicked off two shitty tunes (the Keith Moon sung Bucket T. sucks) and lifted Run Run Run, I Can’t Reach You and Our Love Was, Is and added recent singles/b-sides like Dogs, I’m A Boy, Substitute, Anytime At All and Circles to come up with a really good lp. From 1964 to 1974 the Who were one of the great bands, Townshend and co were always trying different ideas out in the studio and stretching rock’s boundaries as far as possible. Nowhere near as good an album as My Generation, Sell Out, or Tommy, Magic Bus still has moments of brilliance.

Your Take?

“Disguises”

:D CD Reissue | 1999 | MCA | mini LP sleeve | buy @ amazon ]
:) Original Vinyl | 1968 | Decca | search ebay ]

Del Shannon “Sings Hank Williams”

| Americana,Country Rock,Pop

Sings Hank Williams began a string of excellent albums by Del Shannon that culminated with The Further Adventures of Charles Westover from 1968. Not only is this a great country album but many consider this one of the best records from the time. This disc was released in 1964 and predated the country-rock boom by a good 4 or 5 years. That alone makes it a significant release and a must listen for fans of early country-rock. But it’s Del’s performances and the group’s backing that make this a special show.

Throughout Shannon’s career he had reinvented himself many times over. In the early 60s he was a teen idol with the unforgettable hit “Runaway.”   “Total Commitment” and “This Is My Bag,” both mid 60s records, saw Del turn in two fine roots rock efforts. From 1967 to 1968 Shannon did the unthinkable: he went psychedelic, with two great, unsung records, 67’s And The Music Plays On and 68’s Charles Westover. During this time he proved that an early 60s rocker could survive into the late 60s’ experimental environment and still make great albums with artistic value. An amazing career no doubt, but who would have ever expected Shannon to release a hard core country album?

Every track on this LP is worth listening to. Shannon and his group give “Kaw-Liga” an updated, swinging rock n roll feel.  “That Lonesome Whistle,” possibly my favorite cut on the album, is a superb down and out country track with fantastic vocals – a real young man’s blues. The arrangements are very basic, with steel guitar leading the way – just listen to the great version of “Your Cheatin’ Heart” which opens the disc. “Ramblin’ Man,” another gem, is given Del’s soaring, minor key vocal treatment. There was a reason for the sparse, simple arrangements: Del was trying to capture the mood of Hank Williams’ original band, The Drifting Cowboys. Even more interesting is Del Shannon’s group, many of whom, such as Dennis Coffey, were well known Motown session players.

Del sang his ass off on this recording, giving us performances full of faith and honesty. So in this respect it was a shame that nobody was listening. Neither the rock n roll community or C&W crowd took a liking to this album. It was probably lost amongst albums by the Beatles and Rolling Stones during the first wave of the British Invasion. Sings Hank Williams is stripped down, raw and genuine. There are none of the hokey strings or sappy arrangments that plagued so many country records from this period. This is a great record that shows the true artistry of Del Shannon.

“Kaw Liga”

;) MP3 Album | download at amazon ]
:) Original Vinyl

Help Yourself “Help Yourself”

| Americana,Classic Rock,Country Rock,Folk,Pop

Unable to get over my Ernie Graham addiction, I set out in search of more from the ilk of rootsy pre pub rock and stumbled across this gem from 1971. Help Yourself formed in the wake of Brinsley Schwarz but with a strong ear to The Band, forging a raw and honest Americana sound on their first LP. Not nearly as dippy as the cover art suggests, this is a fine sample of straight California rock that’s really from the UK.

Recorded at The Grange in Headley, previously used by Led Zeppelin to record the Four Symbols album, the Helps were trying to let the rural environment to influence their music. If this is the case, the landscape in Headley must be no different than the piece of earth Neil Young was treading around the same time. The Help Yourself album is eerily similar to Young’s sound in almost every regard; they even have a song called Old Man, which is a really fine but totally different song.

The record opens with a feel good gospel track, I Must See Jesus For Myself, that I can’t help but think was meant to be ironic. This is sure to throw off listeners, but maybe attract those who don’t mind a little Jesus in their tunes. In any case, you might want to start this record from the 2nd groove. From there on the record showcases great melodies, great double guitar noodling (to great effect with acoustic and electric on separate channels), great songcraft, great CSNY influenced harmonies, and great overall sound. There you have it: six greats for this easily overlooked LP that could and should sneak its way into the playlist of any Neil Young fan.

The second album, attached in the BGO 2fer, adds a clean, phased sound to the recording that gets a little cheezier. Not to say this is a discountable record, just that it maybe draws too near the Ducks Deluxe pub rock approach for my tastes.

Help Yourself. Don’t mind if I do.

“Your Eyes Are Looking Down”

:D CD Reissue | 2002 | Beat Goes On | buy from amazon ]
:) Original Vinyl | 1971 | UA | search ebay ]