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...
J.J CALE – The Definitive J.J. Cale
J.J. Cale’s vocal delivery is so damn laid-back, so perfectly matched to his dustbowl-flavored country-rock soundtrack that one often loses sight of the fact that Cale is a superb songwriter. Of course, Eric Clapton knew that all along, scoring hits with Cale’s “After Midnight” and “Cocaine,” and Lynyrd Skynyrd did alright with “Call Me The Breeze.” Compounding his relative obscurity, Cale has chosen to languish in the shadows of pop music, releasing only 14 studio albums in some 35 years. The Definitive J.J. Cale is unlikely to win many converts among his smallish albeit loyal coterie of hardcore fans, but for those of us on the fence, it’s the perfect collection to add to the shelf.
The disc offers 20 vintage Cale tunes, including hits, near-hits, and a few misses – “Call Me The Breeze,” “Crazy Mama,” “Magnolia,” “After Midnight,” and “Cocaine” – culled from Cale’s eight Mercury label albums, circa 1971-1983. This fertile creative period, spanning stays in Nashville, Hollywood, and Oklahoma, showcases Cale’s skills as a wordsmith and his languid subtlety as an instrumentalist. The album is a one-stop collection for the curious and the uninitiated and a fine look back at one of rock’s unique personalities. Oddly enough, this disc duplicates the previously released (and evidently still in print) The Very Best Of J.J. Cale disc from 1998 right down to the cover art. Either way you choose to go, you can’t go wrong with J.J. Cale! (Mercury/Universal)
One-part Marc Bolan starstruck shimmy-shake and one part Hanoi Rocks street-rat gutter trash, Canada’s Crash Kelly walk the ‘70s cock-rock glam-strut better than anybody (save for maybe the glorious excess of Mardo’s first album) and talk the new millennium, not-quite-metal retro-zeitgeist talk with the best of the suburban flash tonnage. Before you think that these boy-o’s are all play and no work, tho’, consider the care that went into creating the magnificent Crash Kelly sound.
It ain’t easy being sleazy, and tunes as romping as “She Put the Shock (In My Rock N Roll)” or the anti-wussy screed “Rock and Roll Disasters (On the Radio)” (the best nostalgic affirmation since “Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio”) are a sly assimilation of forty years of backseat blowjobs and Marshall overdrive. Forget about the Darkness, the Killers, and all those other committee-designed simians, the spirit of Mick Ronson walks eerily through these songs; Crash Kelly being the stone-cold real-deal. Produced by ex-Gunner Gilby Clarke, who knows a thing or two about fast living and hard rocking. Ignore at your own peril. (Liquor & Poker Music)
At this point in their storied career, the lads in Def Leppard have banked a fat pantload of cash on two decades of best-selling platters and sold-out world tours. However, truth is, they most likely won’t be topping the charts again any time soon, not so long as pop-simps like Justin Timberfake rule the commercial roost. As such, Def Leppard literally has nothing left to lose. Now the Reverend typically eyes most cover songs as a blushing attempt at a blatant cash grab; an entire disc o’ said interpretative art, however, is a brilliant homage to a band’s influences. Yeah! is kinda like Bowie’s classic Pin-Ups album, a high-voltage comp of other people’s songs, reinvented and/or revisited by one of the finest pop-metal outfits to ever come down the pike.
The guys obviously had a blast in the studio with this stuff, caressing greasy old vinyl records and choosing songs not for their commercial prospects, but rather for their maximum fun potential! A lot of the usual suspects are rounded up, bounders like Marc Bolan and David Bowie, Phil Lynott, and Mott The Hoople which, for a graying old fart like me, is like dicey cheese to a hungry rat. But there are classy choices, too, like the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” and Blondie’s “Hanging On the Telephone” and stuff from Free and the Sweet and Roxy Music. Def Leppard rock the hell out of these covers, playing every song just like it felt when they just heard it for the very first time. They recreate vintage LP covers, too, in the enclosed CD booklet, with the band members standing in for the original artists. Too cool. (Island/Universal)
Australia’s Radio Birdman is possibly the first punk band to earn mythical status not on the strength of their music, but rather on their obscurity. The exposure of the average American rocker to Radio Birdman’s blistering late ‘70s punk has come solely through a single compilation, The Essential Radio Birdman: 1974-1978. The band’s influence on a generation of Australian artists following in their footsteps cannot be understated, however, with every Oz band of note over the past 20 years – Celibate Rifles, the Screaming Tribesmen, Hoodoo Gurus, and others – tapping into the Birdman spirit in one form or another. While the prospects of a Radio Birdman reunion at this late date seemed a bit spotty, Zeno Beach, the album resulting from the reassembled band, is much better than it has any right to be.
Recruiting original Birdman shouter Rob Younger – an ingredient essential to any successful reinvention of the band – and calling up mates Chris Masuak and Pip Hoyle, Tek managed to assemble two-thirds of the original Birdman lineup, adding a couple of new friends to the mix. The chemistry of the newfound band is incredible, adding a fresh layer of grime and grunge to the band’s classic high-flying punk roots. Detroit-born Tek’s fascinations with the Stooges and the MC5 can still be heard in the songs, but they don’t dominate the proceedings as they once did. Younger’s amazing vocal range – he sounds like Robert Smith of the Cure one moment, like Iggy after a three-day binge the next – is supported by the dueling guitars of Tek and Masuak and a solid rhythm section. The result is a classic, timeless rock ‘n’ roll album, bristling with energy and attitude and driven by screaming guitars that channel four decades of garage-bred roots into 45 minutes of near-perfect Marshall flash. (Yep Roc Records)
Although at first Satyricon sounds a lot like your garden-variety, dark-hued black-metal hot rod, underneath the hood you’ll find that the engine that drives this turbo-charged monster consists entirely of Sabbath-inspired doom-n-gloom machinery. Behind the tortured vocals & occult-laced wordage, Iommi-fueled riffing plods along, the lyrical call for divine (i.e. Luciferian) intervention supported by martial rhythms and manic guitar squonk.
Singer, guitarist, and all-around-madman Satyr takes his Scandinavian metal heritage seriously, creating a swirling maelstrom of unrelenting instrumentation and vox that sound like slaves under the whip; percussionist Frost pounds the hell out of everything in sight with the casual subtlety of Thor’s massive warhammer. Now, Diabolical offers up the contemporary innovation of bands like Mastodon and Meshuggah mixed with the Jurassic rock of Sabbath and Pentagram, the resulting bombast rising above the typical black metal fray to explore a myriad of other possibilities. (Century Media)
Every five years or so the Brits think that they’ve hit upon the “next big thing” in rockola. Back in the early ‘90s when the Reverend was cruising Londontown, the Manic Street Preachers were the new saviors of rock, the ‘Second Coming’ of the Clash. A half-decade later, Oasis and/or Pulp and/or Blur were touted as the Nazz, the ‘Second Coming’ of the Beatles (er, maybe). A few short years ago, Radiohead was crowned king, the ‘Second Coming’ of Pink Floyd or something, and then it was the Libertines’ turn. This year’s model is Towers of London, and after a few spins around town with Blood, Sweat & Towers, I have to say that the new flavor is tasty, if suspiciously familiar.
For their stateside debut, Towers of London have tacked together a wonderfully ramshackle vehicle. The album is part Hollywood Boulevard sleeze-n-Aqua-Net – obviously Guns ‘N’ Roses influenced (check out the Slash-n-burn intro to “On A Noose”) – and part Zep-influenced hard rock debauchery of the sort that created bands like the London Quireboys and Dogs D’Amour. Nevertheless, octane-drenched tunes like “How Rude She Was,” “Air Guitar,” and the wickedly delicious “Kill the Pop Scene” provide the kind of stoopid cheap thrills that one usually only finds in American-bred garage rock these days. There’s nothing new under the sun, but sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll never sounded better than on Blood, Sweat & Towers. (TVT Records
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