November 2006
The “Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm Report” was a short-lived review column that ran on our Alt.Culture.Guide™ website for almost a year until we closed the site, not due to lack of readers, but from lack of time and money to continue the project. Still, as these columns show, we reviewed a diverse range of music...
THE JEFF BECK GROUP – Beck-Ola
No longer provided solo billing – they were a “group,” you know – this 1969 follow-up to Truth is no less entertaining if a wee bit less innovative. Beck and crew, which at this point still included charismatic frontman Stewart and sidekick Wood as well as pianist-to-the-stars Nickey Hopkins and bombastic drummer Tony Newman (who would later go on to form May Blitz), turn up the volume and deliver a red-hot slab o’ “heavy music.” “Heavy” as in heavy guitars, percussive rhythms, and explosive vocals, with Stewart shouting out the tunes like his life depended on it. Beck must have had Elvis on the brain at the time, covering not one, but two of the King’s tunes in “All Shook Up” and “Jailhouse Rock,” both slight departures from otherwise heady material like the riff-happy “Spanish Boots” or the chaotic “The Hangman’s Knee.”
The handful of bonus tracks on this sonically-restored reissue include the ultra-bluesy “Sweet Little Angel,” recorded sometime after Truth sessions with drummer Waller and featuring some smokin’ Beck solo work, and the dramatic “Throw Down A Line,” which showcase’s Stewart’s soulful vocals at their best. Beck-Ola is a solid exercise in UK blooze-rock and a fitting bookend to the classic Truth. Beck’s fast track to stardom would be derailed shortly after the release of Beck-Ola, however, an auto accident putting the talented guitarist on the shelf for over a year, during which time Stewart and Wood defected to the Faces. As these two recent reissues illustrate, however, Beck was an innovative and exciting guitarist that deserves a better reputation, his skills equaling Clapton’s, his artistic vision easily surpassing that of his fellow Yardbirds’ alumni. (Sony Legacy)
Never as nihilist as the Sex Pistols, nor social realists like the Clash, the Buzzcocks’ immense reputation was built on the band’s appropriation of the three-minute pop song for the punk milieu. Frontman Pete Shelley’s acute observations on the teenage condition, coupled with an undeniable sense of melody and a biting instrumental tact – courtesy of guitarist Steve Diggle – made the Buzzcocks one of the most influential bands to emerge from the class of ’77. If, after all this time, they’re not exactly a household name in the US, well, dammit, they should be!
After breaking up in 1981, the Buzzcocks reformed a decade later around Shelley, Diggle, bassist Tony Barber, and drummer Philip Barker. This line-up has now been around longer than the original band, and they have released music every bit as memorable as those now-legendary early albums. Flat-pack Philosophy is a perfect example of Buzzcockian rock; Shelley’s matured songwriting underlined by a fast-and-loud delivery and bold, bright instrumental hooks. Although Shelley no longer shares a teenage perspective, his romantic inclinations are no less clumsy, and songs like “Sell You Everything,” “Credit,” and “Between Heaven and Hell” showcase a wider, intellectual worldview. Altogether, Flat-pack Philosophy blows across the current musical horizon like a gale-force wind, proving that punk rock can grow old without losing amperage, fury or attitude. One of the year’s best rock ‘n’ roll albums, Flat-pack Philosophy stands proud alongside works like Love Bites and A Different Kind of Tension. (Cooking Vinyl)
For better than a quarter-century, Aussie shimmer-pop kings the Church have suffered roster changes, label changes and fickle trends in popular music. Throughout it all, though, the creative core of Steve Kilbey, Marty Willson-Piper, and Peter Koppes have found a way to keep making music the way they want make music. That’s no little feat, either, as proven by Uninvited, Like the Clouds. The Church do more than crank out a few tunes…they carefully craft each song out of gossamer and melody, creating an aural soundscape unlike anybody else in the history of rock’s storied “pop music” wing.
Uninvited, Like the Clouds delivers more of the same for fans of the Church. In other words, lots of shiny, ringing guitar tones; thick textured production; Kilbey’s somber vocals caressing his oblique lyrics; and an overall sound that is prettier and more mesmerizing that just about anything else you’ll hear these days. Although the Church is unlikely to win many converts to their sonic signature with a new album at this late date, nobody does it better than these guys, guaranteed. (Cooking Vinyl Records)
Friends, acquaintances, and various industry insiders have passed along word that Kentucky rockers My Morning Jacket are nothing less than freakin’ awesome onstage, a claim only partially proven with the release of Okonokos. A two-CD live set reprising much of the band’s excellent 2005 release Z as well as 2003’s It Still Moves, the static recording medium only partially captures the textured nuances of the band’s performance, methinks. My Morning Jacket’s hybrid of jam-band-styled instrumentation, traditional country, SoCal folk lyricism and larger-than-life, ‘70s-influenced classic rock roots fits them extremely well.
Vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Jim James’ lofty, haunting vocals rise above the heady mix of guitar flash and pounding rhythms, and the band has the chops and the courage to pull off a sound that is at once both seemingly stylistically mismatched and courageously adventuresome. Okonokos showcases some of the band’s best songs – “Off the Record,” “Mahgeetah,” “What A Wonderful Man” – as well as a handful of early fan favorites, the band delivering a stellar performance that shines through the CD’s slick production and total lack of presence. Until the anticipated first wave of bootleg recordings force the band’s label to kick out a more honest representation of MMJ’s live show, Okonokos is an entertaining and lively collection of songs that will both please fans and attract new listeners to this excellent and exciting band. (ATO Records/RCA Records)
Less a thrash band than apocalyptic sonic annihilators with an eye towards raising some hell, Only Living Witness were one of the unheralded icons of the dark days of ‘90s metal. While the rest of the world was enamored of Nirvana and Pearl Jam and all things grunge, Only Living Witness released Prone Mortal Form in ’93. A brewed-in-hell harbinger of Sabbath/Pentagram-styled HEAVY metal and brutal, unyielding, riff-manic tunes, the album plods across your stereo and out of your speakers like a rabid T-Rex with a hard-on for all things good and decent. Undaunted by a mid-decade mainstream music fan that preferred the pop-punk of Green Day and the Offspring, OLW released Innocents in ’96, further pushing the envelope of metal’s potential and laying the groundwork for bands like Mastodon and Meshuggah to plow the fields a decade later.
Innocents carried forth the unrelenting musical bludgeoning of the band’s debut, adding blood red to its artistic palette with expanded, almost spacious instrumental passages fueled by Eric Stevenson’s vastly underrated and imaginative six-string pyrotechnics. Vocalist/lyricist Jonah Jenkins excelled at both, his vox as strong as, say, Chris Cornell’s, but with more soul; his wordplay every bit as poetic in the same eerie, angry, angst-ridden, and oblique way as Cobain’s. The explosive rhythm section of bassist Chris Crowley and drummer Craig Silverman kicks ass in so many ways that I won’t go into them here; suffice it to say that Only Living Witness was a band a good ten years before its time. This inspired reissue pairs the two OLW albums together in a single two-disc package as God and the Devil intended, with another album’s worth of cool bonus tracks tacked onto the end of each disc. If you’re a monster metal fan and you’re not listening to Only Living Witness, what the hell are you waiting for? (Century Media)
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