Hot Wax: Scrapper Blackwell's Mr. Scrapper's Blues (1961/2025)

A brilliant self-taught guitarist, Francis Hillman “Scrapper” Blackwell was a popular star in the isolated blues world of the late 1920s and early ‘30s. Born in South Carolina, Blackwell moved to Indianapolis as a child, learned to play piano, and made his first guitar from a cigar box and wire. He was already venturing into Chicago to perform as a teenager alongside adult musicians. Known for having a quick temper (his grandmother allegedly gave him the “Scrapper” nickname), Blackwell developed a friendship with blues pianist Leroy Carr, who coaxed him into playing guitar on his 1928 recording of “How Long, How Long Blues,” which became a big hit for Vocalion Records.

Subsequent records by the duo like 1934’s “Mean Mistreater Mama” and “Blues Before Sunrise” were equally popular; Blackwell and Carr toured the country and recorded better than 100 sides together over seven years before their acrimonious break-up in 1935 (over money, naturally…). Blackwell also recorded several solo sides during his association with Vocalion, including the future blues standard “Kokomo Blues” (which was later re-worked by the legendary Robert Johnson as “Sweet Home Chicago”), “Down South Blues,” and “Hard Time Blues,” among a handful of other songs. After Carr’s 1935 death, Blackwell virtually disappeared from music for the next 20 years, until his “rediscovery” during the late 1950s folk-blues revival.

Scrapper Blackwell’s Mr. Scrapper’s Blues

After recording the 1960 album Blues Before Sunrise for the British 77 Records label, Blackwell signed with producer Kenneth Goldstein and the Bluesville Records label stateside. Recording in July 1961 in his hometown of Indianapolis with Goldstein and Arthur Rosenbaum producing, Blackwell laid down the ten songs that would become his enduring masterpiece, Mr. Scrapper’s Blues. Released by Bluesville in 1962, just months before the guitarist’s tragic murder in October of that year, Blackwell sings and plays guitar and piano on the tracks. Reissued on 180-gram vinyl by the recently resurrected Bluesville imprint, Mr. Scrapper’s Blues is an obscure, if important addition to the blues canon.

Although Blackwell isn’t as well-known as contemporaries like Charley Patton and Son House, one hearing of “Goin’ Where the Monon Crosses the Yellow Dog” will convince you that Scrapper, while maybe not in the same league as those legends, is nevertheless playing in the same ball park. With spry finger-pickin’ and his distinctive (though not entirely ‘distinct’) vocals, Blackwell delivers a spirited country-blues performance of the traditionally-based railroad song. His cover of the 1929 Bessie Smith hit “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” differs from Smith’s with a lower-key vocal performance and delicate fretwork in place of the horns, and sacrificing none of the original’s pathos.

Blues Before Sunrise

The instrumental “A Blues” displays Blackwell’s six-string dexterity on a jaunty lil’ fretboard romp, and he takes to the piano for “Little Girl Blues,” a mid-tempo blues tale similar to those he recorded with Carr decades ago. Blackwell’s tinkling keys show an instrumental proficiency that he seldom utilized. “Blues Before Sunrise” was a major 1934 hit for Blackwell and Carr; reimagined here without the pianist’s larger-than-life presence and instrumental prowess, the song remains a blues classic. Here it provides an extended showcase for Blackwell’s imaginative and fluid guitar lines, which offer various textures and patterns to the performance.

The whimsical “Little Boy Blue” is a nursery rhyme retrofitted to the blues, Blackwell’s sly sense of humor shining through his vocals atop his energetic and gymnastic guitarplay. The instrumental “E Blues” carries this lighthearted vibe forward with serpentine guitar licks and an undeniable fatback groove while another song from his longtime friendship with Carr, “Shady Lane,” offers a bit of nostalgia to the album, Blackwell’s earnest vocals supported by a laidback but deliberate guitar strum. Originally recorded in 1927, “Penal Farm Blues” was Blackwell’s first song cut to wax; with reflection better than three decades later, it has lost none of its mournful resignation with high lonesome vocals accompanying emotional fretwork.        

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Scrapper Blackwell is an unheralded talent well worth rediscovering 60+ years past his previous rediscovery. A skilled guitarist and pianist, Blackwell was a songster capable of interpreting a diverse range of material. Mr. Scrapper’s Blues was designed to introduce the guitarist to a new generation of music fans; instead, it became his swansong with his tragic death a few months after its release.

With a scarcity of solo recordings to catch the ears of young blues fans, Blackwell has largely remained in the shadows of obscurity. While we don’t know what he may have achieved in the years after this lone album, recorded better than 25 years after his previous sessions, Mr. Scrapper’s Blues is a fitting testament to Blackwell’s talents and unique blues sound. Grade: B+ (Bluesville Records/Craft Recordings, released May 16th, 2025)

Buy the vinyl from Amazon: Scrapper Blackwell’s Mr. Scrapper’s Blues

Hot Wax: Buddy Guy's This Is Buddy Guy! (1968/2025)

Born in 1936 in Louisiana to a sharecropper family, George “Buddy” Guy worked the fields as a youth, picking cotton alongside his younger brother Phil. Looking for a way out of the backbreaking work of farming, Guy taught himself guitar by using a two-string diddley bow that he’d made. He later acquired an acoustic guitar, allowing him to hone his talents so, that by the mid-1950s, he was playing with various bands in the Baton Rouge area. Guy moved to Chicago in 1957, where he would find support from blues great Muddy Waters. After recording a pair of non-performing singles for Cobra Records (including one with Ike Turner), Guy signed with the legendary Chess Records label.

Unfortunately, Chess had no freakin’ idea what to do with the fiery, innovative guitarist; label founder Leonard Chess famously called Guy’s performances “noise.” Instead, Chess tried to shape Guy into a solo R&B singer, with a side dish of jazz instrumentals, a straitjacket not suited to Guy’s otherwise immense talents. The guitarist recorded but a single album for Chess – 1967’s I Left My Blues In San Francisco – the label preferring to use him as a session player for recordings by high-profile artists like Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Koko Taylor, and Little Walter. Moonlighting while signed to Chess, Guy started a lifelong friendship with harmonica wizard Junior Wells, contributing guitar to Wells’ classic 1965 Hoodoo Man Blues album under the “Friendly Chap” pseudonym.

This Is Buddy Guy!

Working with a  new manager, Guy signed with Vanguard Records which, thanks to the efforts of producer Sam Charters, was expanding the label’s roster beyond folk music and into the blues. Guy recorded his underrated sophomore effort, A Man & the Blues, for Vanguard in 1968 and followed it up quickly with the live This Is Buddy Guy!, released later that year. Recently reissued on gorgeous 180-gram vinyl by Bluesville Records, This Is Buddy Guy! captures the guitarist’s raucous July 1968 performance at New Orleans House in Berkeley, California. Backed by a horn-heavy outfit that featured saxophonists A.C. Reed and Bobby Fields alongside trumpeters Norman Spiller and George Alexander and including rhythm guitarist Tim Kaihatsu, bassist Jack Meyers, and drummer Glenway McTeer.

The band is red-hot and ready to roll, and Guy takes them on a hell of a ride. This early in his career, Guy wasn’t writing songs as prolifically as he would later, so half of This Is Buddy Guy! is comprised of blues and soul covers, with just a handful of original tunes. The Guy/Willie Dixon co-write “I Got My Eyes On You” is a perfect snapshot of the guitarist at this point in time – Guy shouting lyrics above a loping rhythm punctuated by the occasional blast of horns and embroidered with shards of hot guitar. The song has ‘Chicago blues’ written in its DNA and, if Guy’s jagged leads were unusual in 1968, they’d become standard for many instrumentalists in years to come.

The Things I Used To Do

Much of the live set follows a similar blueprint – a cover of the Guitar Slim classic “The Things I Used To Do” offers Guy’s stab at soul-styled vocals (something which he wouldn’t master until later in his career) accompanied by machine-gun flurries of notes. It’s fascinating to compare Buddy Guy now vs. then: while time has tamed the stormy nature of his early performances, the fire still burns brightly. “(You Give Me) Fever” is provided low-key vocals with the occasional outburst of enthusiasm, but the band smolders in the grooves and Guy’s six-string vamps display a subtlety that Mr. Chess sorely overlooked. Eddie Floyd’s Stax Records hit “Knock On Wood” is delivered in a R&B revue style similar to the original with rowdy, Floyd/Redding/Pickett-styled soul vox with plenty of blazing horns and scraps of guitar.

The second side of This Is Buddy Guy! leaps off the turntable with the roiling intensity of Guy’s original “I Had A Dream Last Night.” Guy sets a somber mood with his emotional fretwork as Jack Meyers’ jazzy walking bass line anchors the song’s rhythm and mournful horns sing the blues in the background. It’s a forceful performance, with extended instrumental passages, and the perfect lead-in to “24 Hours A Day,” an up-tempo R&B stomp with rollicking horns and a swaggering rhythm painted by Guy’s sporadic fretboard runs. The Chicago-styled “You Were Wrong” showcases Guy as bluesman with scorching, inventive leads, and a bad luck tale as old as the blues. The album closes out with “I’m Not the Best,” a juke-joint barn-burner that channels Guy’s energy and wildness into a singular outrageous performance that displays perfectly why Guy became a major influence on generations of rock and blues guitarists to follow.     

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Much like his old friend B.B. King, Buddy Guy is a blues chameleon, a talented guitarist and legendary performer capable of mastering various styles of the genre as witnessed by recordings like 1972’s Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play the Blues (which strays onto blues-rock turf), 1981’s Stone Crazy! (pure blues-rock with guitar pyrotechnics to match), 1994’s Slippin’ In (back to Chicago), and 2001’s Sweet Tea (back to basics), upon which Guy built his Hall of Fame worthy legacy.

This Is Buddy Guy! documents the guitarist in his early years, and while his impressive six-string talents were nearly fully-formed at the time, he was still developing a sound of his own that would carry his career across seven decades. If you’re a Buddy Guy fan, you owe it to yourself to experience a young Buddy tearing up the boards and thrilling the audience a mere handful of years into his career with This Is Buddy Guy! Grade: A (Bluesville Records/Craft Recordings, released May 16th, 2025)

Buy the vinyl from Amazon: Buddy Guy’s This Is Buddy Guy!

Archive Review: Willie King & the Liberators’ Freedom Creek (2000)

He calls it “struggling blues” and Willie King is one of only a handful of blues artists alive today delving into such meaty subjects as racism, poverty, and social injustice. As such, Freedom Creek is a revelation and an inspiration. Not since Bob Marley’s early political songs have I heard such a lyrical vision of a community in trouble (Jamaica in Marley’s case, the rural south for King). Songs like “Pickens County Payback,” “Twenty Long Years” or “The Sell-Out” are hardcore declarations of faith – strongly held belief in the spirit of man and woman to overcome. As might be gathered from his music, King is social activist, as well, the founder of the Rural Members Association. An organization that preaches self-reliance by teaching African-Americans in rural Mississippi and Alabama  

Musically influenced by Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker, King’s sound is nonetheless unique. Using a second vocalist to enhance and echo his vocals and employing a guitar style that is equal parts Albert King and Willie King. Polished to a sharp edge by playing juke joints and house parties for a quarter century, King’s music is both hypnotic and uplifting. His vocals are drenched in the Delta and schooled by the church, delivered like a preacher at the pulpit with a physical and spiritual force that today’s most passionate rappers and rockers could never equal.

Freedom Creek was recorded live on two-track analog in a Mississippi roadhouse, providing an authentic gospel fervor to the material. When King states “I’m the reverend tonight” you know that he’s telling the truth, every song a sermon, every performance touched by the divine. King’s long-time backing band is as tight as a drum, providing a free-flowing undercurrent to King’s coarse vocals and steady guitar riffs. No less potent than the works of Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, or Muddy Waters, King’s Freedom Creek is a significant collection of contemporary blues that are steeped in tradition even while looking towards the future. (Rooster Blues Music, released October 4th, 2000)  

(Thanks, and a tip of the hat to local Nashville musician Colin Wade Monk for suggesting Freedom Creek to this critic.)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ music zine...

CD Review: Iron City Houserockers’ Blood On the Bricks (1981/2025)

By 1981, Pittsburgh’s favorite sons the Iron City Houserockers were increasingly viewed as old school rockers in a ‘new wave’ world. Pop stars like Olivia Newton-John, Diana Ross, and Kim Carnes ruled the U.S. charts and the AM airwaves while, on the other side of the pond, various flavors of  ‘new wave’ in the form Adam & the Ants, Duran Duran, Soft Cell, Human League, and the Police dominated U.K. charts as they prepared their assault on these shores, a siege made possible by the August launch of the MTV cable channel, which played British rock and pop videos almost exclusively until stateside labels got wise and jumped into the game.

Critically-acclaimed but commercially-challenged, previous IC Houserockers’ albums like 1979’s Love’s So Tough and the following year’s Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive) provided an introduction to singer, songwriter, and guitarist Joe Grushecky, a street-smart ‘Steel City’ ruffian whose working class roots and insightful, poetic lyrics were backed by a tough-as-nails guitar-rock sound that, at the turn of the decade, was both passé and forward-thinking, presaging the ‘Heartland Rock’ of John Mellencamp and Steve Earle as well as the emerging superstardom of Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen.

While the Cleveland International label that had released the band’s first two albums was trying to catch lightning in a bottle for a second time with a follow-up to singer Meat Loaf’s unexpected multi-Platinum™ hit Bat Out of Hell, Grushecky and the gang went straight to the label’s distributor, MCA Records, and finagled a deal that resulted in 1981’s Blood On the Bricks and 1983’s Cracking Under Pressure (for which MCA stupidly dropped the proud ‘Iron City’ from the band’s name). The Houserockers were shipped off to Los Angeles to work with producer and Memphis music legend Steve Cropper, whose work for Stax Records in the 1960s was the stuff of dreams.  

Iron City Houserockers’ Blood On the Bricks

Grushecky states in the reissue’s liner notes that he was writing best about what he knew, and it shows in Blood’s lyrics, which are personal and focused on the microcosm of life in the Steel City. Joe would later develop an insightful songwriting style that would make the personal universal – a sort of blue-collar blues – but you can see hints of this evolution in “Friday Night,” Blood’s opening track. A big, bold rocker with Gil Snyder’s tinkling keys and a boisterous rhythm track, the song borders on pop with an infectious chorus and an undeniable melody, and it’s sung from the perspective of the working-class guy waiting for the weekend so that he can cut loose. It’s a high-octane album-opener, and while Jim Horn’s mid-song sax solo edges up to Clarence Clemons’ turf, the late-closing squonk is a bit dissonant to my ears.

“Saints and Sinners” is one of my favorite Grushecky songs, a fantastic story-song that cuts a fine line between the two extremes of the title. A tragic tale of a Vietnam vet who’s gone off the rails and taken his family hostage, the lyrics are succinct, powerful, and poetic and supported by a solid vocal performance and screaming instrumentation. As Grushecky says in the liner notes, “those days weren’t too removed from the war. People my age all knew guys who went there and came back not quite the same.” The up-tempo soundtrack is unrelenting, the vox following a stark spoken/sung dynamic with plenty of silence and swelling instrumentation clashing for the moment.

A mid-tempo love song with some quirky instrumentation and vocal dynamics, “This Time the Night (Won’t Save Us)” is a Springsteen-esque romantic operetta  with moments of light instrumentation that didn’t land far from what the Cars had been playing (with some success), but with an undeniable, recognizable Houserockers feel. Cropper’s arrangement placed the song firmly in radio-ready territory, with a Southern-fried guitar solo from the Colonel to add gravitas, but it’s Grushecky’s sometimes distraught, sometimes regretful, but ultimately reluctantly accepting vocals that push the song over the line.

A Fool’s Advice      

The ballad “Be My Friend” was penned, jokes Joe in the liner notes, “to get some girls to come see us.” It’s a solid effort, Grushecky’s ragged, romance-weary vocals wrapping warmly around a plaintive yet earnest plea. The song could be considered a precursor to some of Grushecky’s later solo songs, a “proof of concept” that tough guys could be tender in the spirit of Otis Redding. A snappy drumbeat opens “No Easy Way Out,” a buoyant mid-tempo rocker with pop aspirations. Snyder’s underlying keyboards edge the performance close to a ‘new wave’ sound again – a conscious effort by Cropper to make the band more AM-friendly? – and while it’s an engaging enough song with grim, real-life lyrics, it’s inevitably just mid-album filler.

Much better is the following “No More Loneliness,” whose jaunty opening git licks and sparse harmonica swing like Graham Parker’s “Heat Treatment,” the song hewing closely to a R&B drenched, British pub-rock sound that is both energetic and refreshing. Grushecky’s vocals are light and effective, with greater range than most of the songs here, while the song’s fretwork flies high above a crackerjack rhythmic backdrop. A few well-placed horns embellish the performance while keyboards provide an instrumental undercurrent. The band gets back to basics with the gritty, forceful “Watch Out,” a street-smart slice of grimacing, dark-hued mid-tempo rock that rolls effortlessly into the album’s bruising title track.

“Blood On the Bricks” is another standout, a “ripped from the headlines” rocker with a raw, sparse soundtrack and strong lyrics that display Grushecky’s bluesy vocal style. The dynamic run-up to the song’s chorus, paired with Reisman’s mournful harmonica riffs, is simply exquisite while the backing instrumentation is restrained, not submissive. “A Fool’s Advice” closed the original LP, Snyder’s piano intro brushed away by a flurry of fierce guitar notes and Grushecky’s growled vox. A romantic ballad with muscle, the added horns are largely superfluous – Reisman’s devastating harmonica licks are all the texture the song needed. An unreleased bonus track, “Let the Boy Rock,” could have replaced “No Easy Way Out” in my opinion, the album outtake a rollicking honky-tonk rave-up with blazing horns, Jerry Lee-styled piano-pounding, and rockabilly-tinged guitar licks…a winner all around!         

“Bonus Bricks”

The bonus disc included with the album provides a real treat for Houserockers fanatics. Disc two kicks off with four live tracks from a 1981 performance at Inn-Square Men’s Bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Every one of ‘em is a banger, all from the Blood On the Bricks LP – “Watch Out,” “Saints and Sinners,” “Be My Friend,” and the album’s title track – and the performances in front of an enthusiastic crowd are so hot that one wishes they’d included the entire concert. The lengthy spoken intro to “Saints and Sinners” lulls you into a thoughtful complacency so you don’t realize that the backing instrumentation is gradually building to an electrifying crescendo when the guitars kick into overdrive and smack you upside the head.  

The live version of “Blood On the Bricks” is all muscle and sinew, Grushecky’s growled vox and edgy lyricism matched in ferocity by Eddie Britt’s flamethrower guitar and the deep resonant rhythm section of bassist Art Nardini and drummer Ned E. Rankin, while harmonica player Mark Reisman adds a bluesy vibe to the performance. The rest of disc two is comprised of demo tracks from the Blood sessions, with tentative early versions of album tracks like “This Time the Night (Won’t Save Us)” and “A Fool’s Advice” showcasing Grushecky’s evolving songwriting process. More interesting, though, are proto-versions of the poppy “Angels,” which wouldn’t appear on record until 1983’s Cracking Under Pressure, and “Jukebox Nights,” which evolved into “Blood On the Bricks.”      

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

I feel that there was a ton of opportunity lost with Blood On the Bricks when it was released. Cropper wasn’t a great choice to produce the Houserockers, and although he’s credited with helping the band firm up its song arrangements, some of his production choices are found lacking and contrary to the Houserockers’ bar-band-on-steroids aesthetic. Far too often, Cropper’s production is lacking in depth when a full Spector-esque approach (like Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run) would have better suited the performances.  

MCA Records could have spiffed up “Angels” and released it as a single from the album; even in demo form, it’s a killer song that needed just a little more to make it radio-ready. Snyder’s keyboards would have fit right in with the sound of the early ‘80s and if the song wasn’t representative of the Houserockers’ ‘modus operandi’, well, neither was Blue Öyster Cult’s Top 40 hit “Burnin’ For You.” The album-opening “Friday Night” was the only single released from Blood On the Bricks (b/w “No Easy Way Out”), and while the song’s sparse, poppy arrangement isn’t miles away from “Angels,” it lacks the demo’s presence; “Angels” could have made for a dynamite, MTV-friendly promotional video.

Overall, Blood On the Bricks offers songs the equal of its preceding LPs, but the album’s lackluster production robbed the band of its streetwise gravitas. Grushecky and crew weren’t yet at the end of their rope, so the material still rocks with reckless abandon, and the live tracks display their strength in an unforgiving onstage environment. Grushecky’s songwriting skills were still growing and evolving into the master wordsmith he would become as a solo artist, and the band performed to the full extent of its considerable talents. Blood On the Bricks isn’t as impactful as Have A Good Time or Love’s So Tough, but it’s still a solid and entertaining album from a band that was always better on stage than in the studio, and still far above what almost anybody else was doing in rock music at the time. Grade: B+ (Omnivore Recordings, released March 28th, 2025)

Buy the CD from Amazon: Iron City Houserockers’ Blood On the Bricks

Archive Review: Joe Louis Walker’s Witness To the Blues (2008)

A phenomenal guitarist, a singer with a warm, soulful voice, a solid songwriter, and a dynamic showman – despite these assets, bluesman Joe Louis Walker still seems to fly under the mainstream music fan’s radar. ‘Tis a shame, too, ‘cause Walker possesses credentials that would satisfy and pacify any non-believer that might question his pedigree (or his sincerity), and he has the musical chops to backstop any argument.

Walker has performed for paupers and presidents; held his ground on stages around the world alongside larger-than-life talents like Jimi Hendrix, John Lee Hooker, Michael Bloomfield, and B.B. King; and he has a vast musical experience that runs the gamut from psychedelic rock and gospel to soul and the blues. He’s been chosen by folks like Bonnie Raitt, Ike Turner, Taj Mahal, and Branford Marsalis to back their play in the studio. In other words, you can’t deny that this is one artist that walks the walk...

Joe Louis Walker’s Witness To the Blues

Witness To the Blues is Walker’s latest, a stunning collection of rambling soul, bluesy guitar, big band blues, and rambunctious R&B. Produced with a deft hand by six-string wizard Duke Robillard – who knows his own way around a fretboard – the collaboration between two accomplished musicians results in near-flawless performances on half-a-dozen Walker originals and a handful of choice covers. Walker’s studio band includes top-notch musicians from the blues and jazz worlds, talents like keyboardist Bruce Katz, saxman Doug James, and drummer Mark Teixeira; Robillard even drops his axe in the groove on a number of songs.

Witness To the Blues is bursting at the seams with great songs and enthusiastic performances. For instance, “Midnight Train” is a jumpin’, jivin’ party on the rails, the band laying down a locomotive beat while Walker adds coal to the fire with his imaginative guitarplay, which flays back-and-forth between Texas electric-blues and Scotty Moore-styled roots-rockabilly. A duet with the incredible Shemekia Copeland, “Lover’s Holiday,” is a soulful romp reminiscent of the best early ‘70s R&B, with keyboardist Katz playing on the Booker T edge while Walker and Copeland’s soaring voices wrap around your eardrums like sugar-n-spice.

The traditional blues-blast “Rollin’ & Tumblin’” is a swinging, echo-laden rocker with haunting, swampadelic guitar and New Orleans-style piano-pounding. “Keep On Believin’” is a perfect example of old-school Stax soul, delivered with gospel fervor and graced with butterfly-fretwork, magnificent B3 organ fills, and pleading vocal harmonies. Another trad cut, “Sugar Mama,” is lifted by Katz’s barrelhouse piano runs, with Robillard’s elegant, jazzy rhythm guitar laying in the cut behind Walker’s raw, ragged solos and Sonny Boy-styled blasts of mouth harp.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

This isn’t music to change the world, but rather tones to sooth your soul. Witness To the Blues revels in the sheer joy that Joe Louis Walker and his kindred spirits achieve by playing the music they love. It’s contagious, and just one spin of Witness To the Blues will have you hooked as well. (Stony Plain Records, released 2008)

Review originally published by Blurt magazine...

CD Review: Various Artists - Motor City Is Burning (2025)

A hell of a lot of great music has come out of Detroit, Michigan and surrounding areas, from blues and soul artists like John Lee Hooker and Aretha Franklin to the Motown machine of the 1960s, which featured talents like the Temptations, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes, among many others. The Motor City has also made a name for itself in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, beginning with Mitch Ryder’s Detroit Wheels in the early 1960s and Russ Gibbs’ mid-decade Grande Ballroom Scene, which made stars of the Stooges and MC5, with the thread running through 1980s-era bands like Destroy All Monsters, the Mutants, and the Romantics to ‘90s trailblazers like the Gories, the Detroit Cobras, and the White Stripes.

For those of us that grew up listening to – and loving – Detroit rock, however, the most exiting era of the city’s rock scene was roughly between 1967 and 1977, a ten-year period that saw the emergence and ascendance of the scene to a commercial pinnacle in the form of artists like Bob Seger and Ted Nugent. This is, more or less, the period chronicled by Cherry Red Records’ new historical compilation, Motor City Is Burning: A Michigan Anthology 1965-1972. Comprised of 66 songs spread across three discs and packaged in a study cardboard clamshell with an accompanying booklet, Motor City Is Burning offers up tracks by some of the usual suspects (Ryder, Stooges, MC5) along with some lesser-known but beloved bands (SRC, Brownsville Station, Frijid Pink, The Frost) and more than a few welcome surprises and rarities.

Motor City Is Burning

The first CD is loaded with mostly 1960s-era goodies, taking on a distinct, Nuggets-styled garage-rock vibe, especially since it opens with the classic “96 Tears” from ? & the Mysterians. Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels are represented by the irrepressible “Jenny Take A Ride” and the disc offers up other essential rock goodies like Dick Wagner & the Frost (“Mystery Man”), former Grand Funk RR Svengali Terry Knight’s early band the Pack (a psych-drenched cover of the Stones’ “Satisfaction”) and, hailing from Niles MI, Tommy James & the Shondells’ deep cut “I’m Alive” (a psych-rock delicacy). Scot Richard Case (SRC) and the Rationals are two of my all-time fave Detroit outfits, and they offer a devastating one-two punch with the former’s scorching take on the Skip James’ blues classic “I’m So Glad” and the latter with an electrifying cover of the Kinks’ B-side “I Need You.”

There are some fine obscurities here, too, like the Ted Lucas-fronted Spike Drivers’ 1966 folk-rock single “Baby Won’t You Let Me Tell You How I Lost My Mind”; the Shaggs’ (no, not that one) 1969 flapjack “She Makes Me Happy,” with its cool Byrdsian twang; the Troyes’ raging 1967 single “Help Me Find Myself”; or the Apostles’ 1967 melding of the Cadets and the Kinks on “Stranded In the Jungle.” The disc includes a couple of intriguing, never-before-released tracks in Dearborn City Limits’ “Come See About Me,” a poppy, keyboard-driven rocker believed to have been waxed in 1966 that could have been a radio hit, and the enigmatic Felix’s 1968 “Outside Woman Blues,” a blues-rocker in a Cream vein that is exceedingly rare. Throw in groovy tracks by long-gone rockers like Tidal Waves, the Solitary Confinement, the Innsmen, the Thyme, and the King’s Court and you have an inspired compilation already.

Scot Richard Case (SRC)

Disc two catches the scene as it transitions from the garage to the revered Grande Ballroom and then onto festival stages in both Michigan and, in some instances, nationwide. Focusing largely on hard rock, this is where heavy hitters like the Stooges (their timeless “1969” still packs a wallop, like a crowbar to yer eardrums), MC5 (the buoyant, complex “Teenage Lust”), Grand Funk Railroad (from Flint, but close enough for their cover of Eric Burdon’s “Inside Looking Out” to wrench your cerebellum), and Alice Cooper (who remade their image in the Motor City and came up with the eerie “Halo of Flies”). The disc includes a couple of beloved “also-rans” in SRC (the former Scot Richard Case), whose “Up All Night” channels the Pretty Things with jolt of Motor City madness and Savage Grace, whose ethereal 1970 cover of Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” gives Jimi a run for his money.

Detroit Rock, Soul & Funk   

Cub Koda & Brownsville Station

 

The second disc also includes a handful of worthy bands that should have been a hell of a lot bigger, starting with Cub Koda’s almighty Brownsville Station. Although the band released seven albums of blues-tinted rock circa 1970-1978, they remain best-known for their 1973 novelty hit “Smokin’ In the Boys Room.” As shown by their rowdy 1970 cover of Bo Diddley’s “Road Runner,” which features Koda’s fiery guitarplay and a swinging rhythm track, they were a hell of a lot more than that humorous, if ultimately misbegotten single. Frijid Pink were another “coulda, shoulda” outfit, remembered for their hit cover of “House of the Rising Sun.” But “Pain In My Heart,” from their 1970 sophomore effort, displays a harder-rock facet of the band’s talents. There are also some relatively unknown gems here, too, like the previously-unreleased livewire 1972 track “Wake Up People,” a skronky guitar ‘n’ keyboards rave-up from Kopperfield. Power trio Head Over Heels is another shoulda-been band, and their “Right Away” is a deliciously bluesy rocker while rare singles by bands like the Glass Sun, Resolution, and Sunshine round out the disc.  

The third CD of Motor City Is Burning is probably the most pleasantly surprising of the three, largely comprised of soul and funk jams from Michigan artists like the Temptations, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Chairmen of the Board, and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. The disc isn’t all just Motown hits, although the Temps’ 1970 single “Ball of Confusion” is a prime slab o’ psychedelic soul. Often times, producer/curator David Wells went with the lesser-known choices. The Supremes’ “Reflections” – a classic Holland-Dozier-Holland single – offers a severely underappreciated and wistful performance by Ms. Ross while the Miracles’ “Flower Girl” is pop-soul at its very best. Chanteuse Freda Payne’s 1971 anti-war single “Bring the Boys Home” is a gorgeous example of the power of song and Chairmen of the Board’s “Hanging On To A Memory” is a boiling pot of funk with frontman General Johnson belting out the vox with the incredible Funkadelic laying down the backing groove.      

As for the non-Motown tracks on the disc, there’s a wealth of great material to be explored, beginning with the early (1970) Parliament song “I Call My Baby Pussycat,” which pairs a rockin’ intro to a high-voltage soundtrack with funky flow and chaotic instrumentation and vox. Blues legend John Lee Hooker is represented by the anthology’s title track, “The Motor City Is Burning” a stone-cold boogie-rock tune with scrappy guitar and a heart full of napalm. The L.A. based Sussex Records label wasn’t around for long (1969-1975) but they released several cool records by Detroit artists like Dennis Coffey & the Detroit Guitar Band (the Top 10 instrumental hit “Scorpio”) and Sixto Rodriguez (discovered and produced by Coffey, it would take audiences 40+ years to discover his sublime, Dylanesque “Inner City Blues”). Rare Earth was Motown’s “rock” imprint, but they were also a band whose 1968 “Sidewalk Café” offers up a pulse-quickening joyful noise mixing rock and soul. Another band on the label was the hard-rockin’ Sunday Funnies, whose 1971 single “Walk Down the Path of Freedom” reminds one of a bluesier Bob Seger with loudly-spinning guitars and keyboards. Another underrated Detroit rocker, Ruth Copeland’s cover of the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” is pure fire & brimstone with fatback git licks courtesy of Funkadelic’s Eddie Hazel and Ray Monette, from Dennis Coffey’s band.  

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

To be honest, Cherry Red had me hooked with the initial premise, and I have to say that producer Wells did a yeoman’s job in collecting some tasty treats from the deepest, funkiest vaults of Motor City rock ‘n’ soul for this anthology. Sure, there are plenty of “marquee” attractions here, artists of a high degree of familiarity to attract the punters. It’s the obscurities and rarities found in the other grooves, however, that make Motor City Is Burning both an entertaining and historical collection of performances from one of the grandest, and grittiest music scenes to ever take root in the continental U.S., a scene that continues to burn out of control to this day. Grade: A+ (Grapefruit Records/Cherry Red, released March 17th, 2025)

Buy the CD from Amazon: Motor City Is Burning

Book Review: Richie Unterberger's Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll (1999)

Subtitled “Psychedelic Unknowns, Mad Geniuses, Punk Pioneers, Lo-Fi Mavericks & More,” Richie Unterberger sets the bar pretty high for himself with Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Luckily for we readers, Unterberger delivers the goods, providing an exhaustive, if not comprehensive history of the obscure and eccentric in rock ‘n’ roll. Delving into the netherworld of true cult artists, Unterberger offers informative profiles of over 60 singer/songwriters, touching upon dozens more in brief comments and sidebars.

Unterberger breaks Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll up into thirteen distinct sections, ranging from “Psychedelic Unknowns” and “Punk Pioneers” to “Out of the Garage” and “Mad Geniuses & Eccentric Recluses.” Some of the artists Unterberger profiles will be familiar to any hardcore music fan – talents like Roky Erickson, Arthur Lee of Love, Syd Barrett, or Can – although relatively unknown to the great unwashed mainstream are nonetheless frequent touchstones in any serious discussion of rock music. Others artists profiled here, such as Joe Meek, Lee Hazelwood, Ronnie Dawson, or the Avengers have experienced recent surges in popularity due to CD reissues and rediscovery via zines or the Internet.

It’s with the completely obscure performers that Unterberger really shines, his journalistic prowess allowing him to research these one-shot wonders and come up with a cohesive history of long-gone artists like the Deviants, the Monks, or the United States of America. In every section, Unterberger reveals some long-lost gem of a story, but the fattest sections – those on ‘60s-era garage bands, European artists, and “mad geniuses” – seem to be those most closely looked at and covered in detail. Inside many of the sections Unterberger includes a chapter or sidebar, touching upon other artists, legendary indie record labels and trends like cassette culture. Unterberger isn’t stingy with his sources, either, recommending records/CDs for every artist as well as providing a bibliography of books and magazines. Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll also comes with a twelve-track CD to whet your tastes with tracks by the Deviants, Penelope Houston of the Avengers, the Music Machine and Savage Rose, among others.

For any music fan who is fed up with today’s sales-oriented major label signing philosophy and cookie-cutter, carbon-copy, made-for-MTV rockers, Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll will feel like a fresh breath of air. Discover the future of rock music by delving into its past – the artists Unterberger reveals here may not have sold a lot of records and, to be honest, some of them really had little or no talent. The styles showcased by these artists run the gamut from rockabilly, psychedelica, and pop/rock to punk, folk, and electronic experimentation. The one thing that they all had in common, however, was a singular vision, a passion for what they were creating and a sincere need to follow their muse, commercial considerations be damned. For this alone they deserve to be remembered, rediscovered and cherished for the true artists that they were. (Miller Freeman Books, published 1999)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ music zine...

Also on That Devil Music: Richie Unterberger's Urban Spacemen And Wayfaring Strangers book review

Buy the book from Amazon: Richie Unterberger's Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll

Book Review: Al Kooper’s Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards (1999)

Musician, songwriter, label executive, producer – Al Kooper has made a living out of being the “Forrest Gump” of rock music. For better than thirty years, whenever something momentous was about to occur in rock ‘n’ roll, Kooper was certain to be involved in it. From his haphazard entry as a keyboardist on Dylan’s classic “Like A Rolling Stone” and playing with Dylan onstage in Newport to producing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s first three albums, Al Kooper has a resume that’s every bit as long and impressive as anybody’s in rock music. With this revised and expanded edition of Kooper’s earlier memoir, Backstage Passes, Al brings the tales of his storied career full circle.

Al Kooper’s Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards

A lively writer with an easily read, conversational style and more than a few stories under his belt, Kooper documents with Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards a career that has seen its shares of ups and downs. Beginning with the earliest stirrings of his interest in music, playing in teen bands and sharpening his skills, Kooper takes the reader on a romp through his rock ‘n’ roll universe. High points of the book include Kooper’s early days as a musical hustler, a samurai of songs writing tunes on spec for producers in need of material. Here Al provides the reader with a lesson in the economics of songwriting and the real history of the Brill Building.

Kooper’s major league breakthrough as a session player begins with his hilarious story of the session for Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” and its aftermath. It’s as a session player that Kooper is best known, sitting in on recordings with notable artists like Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Mike Bloomfield, and far too many others to list here. Although Kooper speaks of his own solo career in Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards, he tends to give it short shrift in light of his stories of superstar session work. He goes into some detail on the formation and careers of Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears, both projects in which he was an integral part until egos got in the way and Kooper would move onto the next challenge. His discovery of Lynyrd Skynyrd is, perhaps, the real feather in his cap; Kooper producing and playing on that band’s first three albums, arguably among the most important Southern Rock records ever made.

By the end of Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards, circa 1998, Kooper has pretty much given up on the music biz, going into teaching at the noted Berklee School of Music in Boston. Some reviewers of this book have made much ado over Kooper’s distinctively sour grapes attitude during the book’s last few chapters, Kooper viewing with some bitterness the current atmosphere in the music industry. Given my own fringe involvement with the industry as a critic and journalist, I can’t say that I disagree with him. The industry turns its back on older artists who aren’t still cranking out hits (and, therefore, profits).

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

As an artist, musician and producer Kooper comes from a time when, perhaps, the music mattered more than the marketing and labels weren’t quite the greedy conglomerate bastards that they’ve become today. As such, Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards is a captivating document, the honest, heartfelt memoir of, as Kooper terms himself, “a rock ‘n’ roll survivor.” Anybody who loves music should have a copy of this book on his or her shelf, right beside their latest CD purchases. Kooper’s Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards will entertain you, inform you, and keep you honest. (Billboard Books, published 1999)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ music zine...

Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm Report: Collage, The Exploding Hearts, Los Straitjackets, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Paul Stanley (December 2006)

December 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...

COLLAGE – Changes
Further proof that progressive rock is a worldwide phenomenon, Poland’s Collage is one of the most innovative and interesting bands in the genre. Formed in 1985 by students of the Frederic Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, the band released its first album, Basnie, in 1990. It was with the release of their 1993 sophomore effort, Nine Songs of John Lennon, which features Collage re-imagining classic Beatles and Lennon solo songs as exotic prog-rock compositions, that the band really caught on with audiences from Europe to Asia. They followed up that album with the melodic, pop-oriented Moonshine in 1994.
    Originally released in 1995, Changes revisits Collage material circa 1985 through 1992 with new vocalist Robert Amirian (who sung on Moonshine), including re-recorded songs from Basnie and previously unreleased songs. Even with lyrics sung in Polish, there is no denying the power of the music. Guitarist Mirek Gil is an inventive and skilled six-string maestro, while the rest of the band weaves a dense, multi-textured tapestry of sound behind Amirian’s lofty and passionate vocals. More than merely prog, Collage produce art-rock of the highest degree, dreamy and mesmerizing music that demands that the listener pay attention. Highly recommended for fans of the Flower Kings or Spock’s Beard, Collage is guaranteed to provide the same thrill of musical adventure as those legendary bands. (Metal Minds/MVD Audio)

THE EXPLODING HEARTS – Shattered
One of the most exciting and promising young bands to hit the scene in a generation, the Exploding Hearts literally came and went in a flash. The band released its excellent debut album, Guitar Romantic, in early 2003, the disc showcasing a brilliant mix of ‘60s-styled garage rock and vintage ‘70s power-pop, influenced by ‘80s-era punk and UK rock. Guitar Romantic was well-received by both critics and the ever-critical punk community, and the Exploding Hearts became a big draw on the west coast club circuit. In July 2003, however, fate struck in the form of tragic accident that took the lives of band members Adam Cox, Matt Fitzgerald, and Jeremy Gage.
    In a fitting tribute to the band, Dirtnap Records has assembled the appropriately named Shattered from the odds and ends of the band’s too damn brief career. Shattered collects the band’s early (hard-to-find) singles, various demos, unreleased songs, and alternative mixes from Guitar Romantic under one roof. The album offers a glimpse at a band that had the potential to become really big, one that drew its influences from a myriad of impressive sources, forging a distinctive and electric sound that was entirely its own. Shattered stands well on its own merits as a highly entertaining rock ‘n’ roll collection; coupled with the essential Guitar Romantic, it bookends the legacy of this fine band. Discover them now, boys and girls, ‘cause you’ll be paying mucho dinero for these recordings in ten years or so when the Exploding Hearts become a much-coveted cult band. (Dirtnap Records)         

LOS STRAITJACKETS – Twist Party
Twenty-something years ago, when guitarists Danny Amis and Eddie Angel launched a surf-rock band called the Straitjackets and began playing the honky-tonks and rock clubs of Nashville, who would have believed that these guys would still be grinding it out here in the new millennium? Yet here they are, Mexican wrestling masks intact, hooking up with vocalist/saxmaniac “Kaiser” George Miller for Twist Party. Taking their inspiration from the early ‘60s dance craze, Twist Party finds Miller and the Straitjackets pounding out 16 infectious tunes, all with a “twist” dance theme.
    Of course, this is the kind of riff-driven, tremolo-fed, Dick Dale-inspired soundtrack that the band can really sink its teeth into. From the hilarious “Twistin’ Gorilla” and the soulful “Twistin’ Out In Space” to the B-movie horror-flick theatrics of “All Back To Drac’s,” these tunes rock with a joy de vivre that transcends the ultra-cool retro-rock vibe that is the band’s trademark. Twist Party comes packaged with a bonus DVD, providing visual dance lessons courtesy of the beautiful and, apparently, “world famous” burlesque trio the Pontani Sisters. Somehow, I think that Chubby Checker would approve… (Yep Roc Records)

ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES – Love Their Country
You’d think that after five albums that this joke would have gotten tired, run its course, and been discarded. Not on your life, pal! The premise is simple, really – punk rock royalty (members of NoFX, Lagwagon and No Use For A Name) get together in the studio to torture other people’s songs. To date, the Gimme Gimme boys have tackled show tunes, R&B classics, and pop music, and with Love Their Country, they give the punk treatment to Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and even the Dixie Chicks. Funny thing is, the gimmick still works ‘cause the guys have a genuine fondness for the material that they reinvent.
    This means that they have a hell of a lot of fun while punking up such inherently country songs as “(Ghost) Riders In the Sky” and Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” (tilting towards Celtic punk here). Other highlights on Love Their Country are the blazing cover of Dolly’s classic “Jolene,” a metallic interpretation of the Eagles’ “Desperado,” and an almost joyous reading of Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” Always good for a laugh or two and a half-hour’s entertainment, you can never go wrong with Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. (Fat Wreck Chords)
 

PAUL STANLEY – Live To Win
The problem with Live To Win, Kiss frontman Paul Stanley’s first solo effort in nearly three decades, isn’t in the uber-slick production afforded these cheesy slices of nerf-metal composed with help from lite-rock scribe Desmond Child. No, the problem is in the high expectations afforded the legendary frontman of one of rock’s larger-than-life bands. Whereas Kiss managed to wrestle ‘70s metal from the grip of stoned proto-slacker adults and deliver it back into the greasy hands of stoned proto-slacker teenagers where it belonged, Stanley does little on Live To Win to challenge the sluggish new millennium musical status quo. The singer’s pipes are in fine form, Stanley’s vox on tunes like “Wake Up Screaming” and the title cut amazingly supple considering 30+ years of hard rock histrionics.
    Although Stanley would never be mistaken for, say, for Frankie Marino, his guitar playing is often underrated and overshadowed by standard Kiss theatrics; on Live To Win he delivers a passable performance as a modern rock axeman. What troubles me, perhaps, is that provided the opportunity (and budget) to create any sort of recording that his heart desired, Stanley chose to choke up the potential of Live To Win with creeping mediocrity and tortured cliché. When the album shoots for the moon – as it does with the anthemic “Bulletproof” or the soaring “Where Angels Dare” (with guitarist John 5) – Live To Win fulfills its promise. Otherwise, it’s mostly inoffensive and mildly entertaining filler. Kiss fans be warned…this Paul Stanley album has very little in common with his work in that great band, but it stands well enough on its own. (New Door/Universal)

CD Review: John Lee Hooker’s The Standard School Broadcast Recordings (2025)

With well over 100 full-length recordings to his name (and more than a few under other names), we’ve long since passed the point where John Lee Hooker could surprise us…or are we? The Standard School Broadcast Recordings captures a recently-discovered, long-lost 1973 session by ‘The Hook’ and a trio of trusted musicians – bassist Gino Skaggs, drummer Ken Swank, and his son Robert Hooker on piano – recorded for the award-winning “The Standard School Broadcast” radio series, which broadcast on the NBC network in the western U.S. Copies of its shows were sent on vinyl to schools to teach kids about music, and three songs by Hooker were accompanied on the disc by performances by jazz guitar greats Joe Pass and Herb Ellis, pop/rock session player Chuck Day, and classical guitarist George Sakellarious.

Hooker and band recorded eight songs that day at San Francisco’s Coast Recorders, the tapes subsequently disappearing until recently. The Standard School Broadcast Recordings offers the entire session, 100% live and raw, with no overdubs, and the performances stand tall with anything that Hooker recorded before or after. “Bad Boy” and “Hard Times” are scary good, both songs haunting blues-dirges heavy-laden with Hooker’s sonorous vocals and scraps of edgy guitar. “Rock With Me” offers a dose of Hooker’s trademark boogie while the reprised “Sally Mae” – the B-side of “Boogie Chillen,” his 1948 debut single – offers a sordid tale of booze and betrayal. “I Hate the Day I Was Born” and “Should Have Been Gone” are equally distraught, displaying Hooker’s expressive genius and son Robert’s inspired piano-pounding (which shines throughout the sessions, delivering exactly the nuance each song demanded).

A medley of “When My First Wife Left Me” and “Hobo Blues” is the heart of the album, showcasing Hooker’s improvisational skills while “Coast Recorders Jam” is a spry, old-school instrumental romper-stomper with the younger Hooker’s lively piano-play up front of a jaunty, swinging rhythm, upon which John Lee embroiders various guitar patterns that, while not straying far from his trademark boogie-blues fretboard-bashing, nevertheless display the guitarist’s dexterity and imagination. For John Lee and his crew, it was just another sorely-needed payday; for the innocent schoolchildren who heard these performances in the classroom all those years ago, experiencing Hooker’s lamentations firsthand, I’m sure that it warped a few minds. Some may have even gone on to sing the blues while others…just maybe...became music critics. That’s the magic of John Lee Hooker! (BMG Music, released January 9th, 2025)

Buy the CD from Amazon: John Lee Hooker’s The Standard School Broadcast Recordings

Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm Report: Jeff Beck Group, The Buzzcocks, The Church, My Morning Jacket, Only Living Witness (November 2006)

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)     

THE BUZZCOCKS – Flat-pack Philosophy
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)         

THE CHURCH – Uninvited, Like the Clouds
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)  

MY MORNING JACKET – Okonokos
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)

ONLY LIVING WITNESS – Prone Mortal Form/Innocents
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)

 

Archive Review: John Lee Hooker's Live At Newport (2002)

During the 1930s and ‘40s, countless hopeful musicians traveled the “blues highway” from the Mississippi Delta through Memphis and St. Louis to their final destination, Chicago. Many of these talented former sharecroppers – the sons and grandsons of slaves – made a name and eked out a career in the Windy City. John Lee Hooker’s sojourn took a different path, however, the blues legend turning off the well-traveled path from Clarksville, Mississippi to Memphis, making his way to Detroit in 1943 and starting a musical career that would span six decades. John Lee was a true original, the “Godfather of Boogie” more comfortable in blazing his own trail rather than following someone else’s lead.

Influenced in his childhood by blues talents like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charlie Patton, friends of his stepfather Willie Moore, Hooker absorbed the music around him and was comfortable performing in a number of stylistic genres, from big city blues to raucous R&B, all tempered by his Delta upbringing. The recently reissued Live At Newport portrays Hooker in a different light, that of the acoustic “folk blues” artist. The tracks are culled from two different performances at the Newport Folk Festival – a handful of songs feature Hooker in solo performances from the 1960 festival, while the remaining tracks are taken from the 1963 festival and include Bill Lee on upright bass. The album was originally released as Concert At Newport in 1964 by Vee Jay Records (with slightly different song titles).

The resulting performances are stark reminders of Hooker’s roots, dark-hued dirty blues that rise up out of the Delta like saber-rattling ghosts to demand your attention. Along with better-known songs from the John Lee milieu, tracks like “Boom Boom” and “I Can’t Quit You Baby,” you’ll find gems like the forceful “Bus Station Blues” or a powerful cover of Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Stop Now Baby.” John Lee Hooker was a singular talent, a charismatic presence that mesmerized audiences wherever he performed. Live At Newport may not be the most technically polished album you hear this year (there’s only so much improvement that can be made on 40-year-old tapes), but there’s no denying the power behind the performances. Although he died in 2001, John Lee Hooker remains a giant among blues musicians; his influence will continue to be felt by musicians for a generation to follow. (Vanguard Records, reissued April 2nd, 2002)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ music zine...

Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm Report: J.J. Cale, Crash Kelly, Def Leppard, Radio Birdman, Satyricon, Towers of London (October 2006)

October 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...

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)
   

CRASH KELLY – Electric Satisfaction
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)

DEF LEPPARD – Yeah!
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)

RADIO BIRDMAN – Zeno Beach
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)
        

SATYRICON – Now, Diabolical
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)
   

TOWERS OF LONDON – Blood, Sweat & Towers
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