Man Rocks The Roadhouse!

First things first – ya gotta remember that this is a DVD of a 32-year-old concert film. If you're expecting a lovely, multi-camera digital tape with pristine 5.1 surround sound, well, you're living in the wrong era, Charlie Brown. What you do get from At The Roundhouse 1976 is an engaging vintage performance by one of rock music's most overlooked prog-oriented bands, Man.

At The Roundhouse 1976 features, perhaps, Man's best line-up as far as pure talent and chemistry is concerned. The performance captured on tape includes vocalist/guitarist Mickey Jones, guitarist/vocalist Deke Leonard, keyboardist Phil Ryan, bassist John McKenzie, and extraordinary drummer Terry Williams. Man was formed by Jones and Leonard in 1969 in Swansea, Wales and was originally considered somewhat of a pub-rock band. Influenced by the San Francisco sound of bands like Quicksilver Messenger Service, Man also incorporated elements of blues, psychedelic and prog-rock into their unique sound.

Over the course of the band's history, Deke Leonard would depart and return a number of times, recording brilliant solo albums before coming back to the comfort of the band atmosphere. Guitarist and keyboardist Clive John was an original member of Man, leaving during the mid-70s to pursue a solo career that resulted in a single highly-collectible album before disappearing from the scene. Williams, who came on board for the band's self-titled third album, would later play with both Rockpile and Dire Straits.

At The Roundhouse 1976 was originally designed to be the band's swansong, a final shot at glory captured for the ages on celluloid. After 1,500+ performances and 13 albums over the course of eight years, the band had decided to call it a day. Man returned to the site of their greatest triumph, London's Roundhouse, where they had experienced their breakthrough performance for the Greasy Truckers Party benefit show and resulting LP. The band decided to say "farewell" to their fans with three nights at the Roundhouse, which were filmed for this DVD.

At The Roundhouse 1976 kicks off with the bluesy "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You," a rock-and-soul song with a distinctive rhythmic groove, Jone's pleading vocals, and tasty twin guitars that mimic Quicksilver Messenger Service (just one of the band's numerous influences). QMS had often performed this song in their early-70s concerts, and QMS guitarist John Cippolina had appeared with Man during the band's 1975 tour, Man and Cippolina jamming together on the tune. Man kept the song in their setlist, and here it's captured for posterity in all of its funky glory!

"C'Mon" follows, beginning as a raucous call-and-response styled rocker with an odd, spacey interlude in the middle. Jones sings some nonsensical lyrics that are wedded to the strange tones that coaxes from his guitar. As the song stretches out, the band wanders into uncharted territory, each instrumentalist adding their own color to the overall musical tapestry. Leonard provides a few scorching leads, Williams' powerful drums support the song's unlikely structure, and Ryan's keys lend an otherworldly hue to the song. The result is a breathtaking, unconventional jam.

"Let The Good Times Roll" is a jazzy blues romp. Leonard's vocals aren't particularly suited to the song, but they're supported by Jones' soulful backing vox. McKenzie sets a steady bass groove and Leonard's stinging six-string accomplishes the expression that his voice couldn't. "7171-551" is a swaggering, riff-driven up-tempo rocker that showcases Jones' wild guitar leads and Leonard's more deliberate, scorched-earth style. Both axemen rock hard throughout the song, infusing the rhythm with a thunderstorm of lightning fretwork and squalls of sound.

Leonard's edgy, rough-hewn vocals are better-suited to "Born With A Future," a less-than-subtle raver that provides short, sharp shocks of guitar pyrotechnics. There's an unexpected slow passage where Jones lends his vocals above washes of keyboards, before he and Leonard dive into some fine harmonies. Leonard provides the song with some first class axe-mangling, riffing madly with reckless abandon as Jones throws his single-note leads into the deep, chaotic instrumentation.

The longtime audience favorite "Bananas" is provided an OTT performance; a balls-out rocker that fades into near silence before swelling with Ryan's evervesant keyboard romps and Williams' steady, potent drumbeats and fills. Jones adds a finely-crafted solo with hints of rich tone and McKenzie's bass work is funky without overpowering the song's unique vibe. Leonard's vocals are crazed here, swapping back-and-forth with Jones more grounded voice, and the song ends the show as a last-man-standing instrumental free-for-all.

At The Roundhouse 1976 provides the viewer with a true concert atmosphere, sans smoke and crowd noise. The band's performance is shot mostly in close-ups, more than likely by a lone pair of cameras. The DVD's sound is quite good and consistent throughout, much better than I would have though given the age of the concert. Lighting is as good as one could hope for: spotlights sometime flare up into mini-sunspots of white light, but mostly the visuals are clear and well-lit. In-between songs, especially near the beginning, there are brief interviews and commentary by the band and its fans, and backstage footage shows the various band members loose and ready to roll. Forget about the tracklist on the rear of the DVD box, 'cause it's just plain wrong – the way that I outlined the performances above is how they play out on your TV screen.

By 1976, virtually all of Man's progressive elements had largely disappeared from the band's music, replaced by a hard rock edge that benefited from their explosive twin guitars and the powerful drumming of Terry Williams. Man would break-up after these Roundhouse performances, and a final live album culled from the shows would be released in '77 as All's Well That Ends Well.

Jones would reunite with Leonard as Man a few years later, however, and over the past 25+ years former Man band members like Williams, Ryan and original bassist Martin Ace would rotate in and out of the roster for performances and recordings (many live). Man continues to perform in Europe to this day, and released the band's most recent album, Diamonds and Coal, in 2007. (Music Video Distributors)

(Click on the DVD cover to buy At The Roundhouse 1976 from Amazon.com)

Man - "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You"

Revisiting the Greasy Truckers Party

The "Greasy Truckers Party" was a benefit show for Greasy Truckers, an English flower-power group raising money for a number of social causes. Held at The Roundhouse in London on February 13, 1972, the showbill featured the improbable trio of Hawkwind, Brinsley Schwarz and Man. Originally released as a two-album set back in the day, the original eight-track tapes were recently unearthed, cleaned up, and reissued as a proper thee-disc set featuring complete performances from each of the three headlining bands. In a couple of cases (Man, Brinsley Schwarz), the chance to hear the complete set is quite breathtaking – on the original LP, for instance, only two of Man's five distinctive performances were offered, tho' that did include the incredible "Spunk Rock."

Prog-rockers Man opened the show strong with a set that included their impressive twenty-two-minute jam "Spunk Rock." The song features some incredible interstellar fretwork from Mickey Jones and Deke Leonard, the two guitarists seemingly engaged in some earth-shaking duel as their jagged riffs and razor-sharp leads intertwine like concertina wire. Drummer Terry Williams acts as both a referee and a cheerleader here, his steady, explosive drumbeats providing a constant barrage of rhythm and noise for the two six-string gladiators to build upon. The song's ever-shifting time signatures, emotions and directions is enough to put many of today's limp-wristed so-called "virtuoso" jam bands to shame.

It would be tempting to say that the remainder of Man's set was a letdown after the high-flying antics of "Spunk Rock," but 'tain't so … the band clearly set the bar high and then attempts to demolish it with an impressive set of material, the band clearly influenced by the sounds emanating from San Francisco over the previous five years. Shimmering guitars and subdued rhythms lead into the scary, riff-driven, semi-psychedelic "Many Are Called But Few Get Up," which sounds eerily like Volunteers-era Jefferson Starship at their dark, menacing, flower-power-is-kaput best. Once again, Williams' machine-gun drumbeats provide the foundation for some really spacey and entertaining guitarwork.

"Angel Easy," the other carryover from the original "Truckers" LP, is a shorter, more traditionally-structured rocker with distant vocals and a slightly funky rhythmic undercurrent. Whether it's Leonard or Jones kicking in the notes here, the guitars set the pace for the song to rumble along like QMS on any given night at the Fillmore.

The fourteen-minute "Bananas" sounds every bit like the band had been torching some peels on its way to the show, a mild hallucinogenic cloud settling over a rollicking pub-rock rhythm. The song extends for a whopping 14-plus, tho', which lends itself to all sorts of cosmic abuse, lane changes, and slippery mountain curves. The set-closing "Romain" is pure electric-booger-rawk, with long sweeping rhythms, bent-wire guitar tones and some of the most brilliantly bombastic drumming that you'll ever hear.

Hawkwind closed the show with its unique psychedelic space-rock, punctuated by Robert Calvert’s bizarro poetry. The Hawks' set suffered from some initial sound and power problems – a bit of a drag, indeed, for a band whose entire vibe was built upon the manic manipulation of the sonic realm. Nevertheless, by the time that the band gets its set off the ground and launched towards the stratosphere with the lengthy "You Shouldn't Do That," the chemically-assisted among the audience were soaring wing-to-wing alongside 'em, if you know what I mean (and I think that you do). After all, this was '72 kiddies, and mind-altering goodies like LSD and 'shrooms, and even peyote had yet to be bulldozed in favor of the extreme highs-and-lows of coke and 'ludes (and the coming tragedy of the disco era).

Even if many in attendance had brought their aviator helmets and flight jackets with them, nothing could have prepared them for the lightspeed, white lightning, brightly-flashing magic migraine that was Hawkwind in its prime. This is Lemmy the K era 'wind, with wings of razor-sharp titanium and the most god-awful sonic roar heard this side of purgatorio. "You Shouldn't Do That" starts with the sound of full-thrust afterburners and steadily climbs to a crescendo build upon shards of crystal riffage, claustrophobic drumbeats, and switchblade synthesizers. You didn't have to be as high as a Greek god sitting in a stupor on Mount Olympus to enjoy this stuff, but it didn't hurt any, either.

Not that the old Reverend would prescribe dangerous substances to his gentle readers, but as one who was around back in '72 and … ahem … as someone with a taste for various illicit mind-benders and cerebellum-snacks, Hawkwind was definitely playing my song. "The Awakening" is like falling headfirst into a shimmering puddle of quicksand, as slug-like, squiggly guitar lines and odd bodkins synth-squawks leave a slimy, colorful trail across your skullpan. "Master Of The Universe" is a delightful proto-metal spacewalk with stunning fretwork, Lemmy's incandescently heavy basslines, and steady backbreaking rhythms clearly spawning the entire glut of "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" bands that would stumble into the future from the Roundhouse's doorstep that night.

Of course, Hawkwind was never a band to leave an audience simply awestruck when they had a real opportunity to thoroughly reprogram their collective gray matter (reference: the band's subsequent Space Ritual LP). Devoid of hope, the dark vibe of "Paranoia" is overwhelming in its desperation, but the short, sweet, shock-to-the-brain that is "Earth Calling" is pure Kafka set to something that approximates music, an alien-encounter with intense-sound-and-emotion unheard of in these parts of the galaxy. The out-of-this-world, hard rocking "Silver Machine" was as close to a hit song as Hawkwind's merry pranksters were ever going to experience (albeit in a slightly different form). Almost traditional in its rock-and-roll aspirations, the song includes some high-flying synth work among its scorching guitars and driving rhythms nonetheless.

The band's final tune here, the free-form "Brainstorm," is a cosmic-orgy of massive proportions, a sheer lysergic-fueled attempt at traversing time and space, a mock-battle where no single instrument dominates, but rather they tend to all meld together into a singular noisy conglomeration of sound and fury. When a random guitar or voice does manage to break out of the musical miasma, it's only to herd the listener back into the hive with electric cattle-prod efficiency. This is the kind of transcendent, out-of-control moment at which Hawkwind often excelled, and their attempt to rewrite the laws of physics that February night back in '72 is duly appreciated.

In the middle of the night, however, tucked between the two dynamic, prog-oriented monoliths, was Brinsley Schwarz (with a pre-cool Nick Lowe). The pub-rockers faced down a hostile crowd, winning them over with their exclusive blend of pre-No Depression twang-rock and blue-eyed soul. Whereas the previous two bands left the audience in awe of their mighty instrumental powers, the Brinsley boys pursued a vision of pure songcraft with actual melodies, choruses, and catchy hooks. "Country Girl," one of the band's signature songs, is a gently-rolling Byrdsian outtake with more keyboards and less 12-string, while "One More Day" is a playful mid-tempo country rocker that would have fit right in on any Uncle Tupelo album.

The R&B stomp-and-stammer of the vintage Otis Rush tune "Home Work" benefits from some manic string-mangling, while the Nick Lowe rocker "Nervous On The Road (But Can't Stay At Home)" offers up swaggering soulfulness, Bob Andrews' Staxian keyboard riffing, fine vocals and subtle touches of rockabilly-tinged guitar. Blessed with two considerable songwriters in Lowe and Ian Gomm, the band had a wealth of material to choose from. Gomm's "Range War" is a romping, stomping melodic twangfest that expands upon late-era-Byrds with ringing guitars, rapidfire keyboard-bashing and some truly odd lyrics – something about an Old West fracas with six-shooters and, for some strange reason worthy of Hawkwind's poetic nightmares, Marvel Comics' anti-hero the Silver Surfer.

The traditional "Midnight Train" is provided an appropriately raucous reading, with some crafty honky-tonk piano, twangy vocals, and South Nashville chicken-picking. The savvy "It's Just My Way Of Saying Thank You" offers whip-smart lyrics, strutting keyboard-led rhythms, and great live harmonies. A cover of Allen Toussaint's New Orleans soul classic "Wonder Woman" offers a lively rhythmic soundtrack, Andrews' finest Booker T-influenced pianowork, and some Steve Cropper-styled wiry fretwork.

Brinsley Schwarz's fourth album, 1972's Silver Pistol, included two songs from obscure American folk-rock songwriter Jim Ford; one of those is performed here – the blues-tinged, countryish "I'm Ahead If I Can Quit While I'm Behind." Paradoxical title aside, the song is a freak-folk ballad featuring Schwarz's finely-crafted guitarwork, mournful vocals, and weeping rhythms … a heartbreaking hillbilly lament if ever there was one. Lowe's wonderful "Surrender To The Rhythm" is a fine example of what Brinsley Schwarz did best, a seamless fusion of Nashville-by-way-of-Camden-twang with a rolling R&B backbone, '60s-era pop aspirations and an "anything goes" '70s rock mentality that lends a timeless quality to a relatively obscure but vastly underrated pub-rock genre.

Sadly, rather than closing on a high note with the delightful "Surrender To The Rhythm," the second CD in this set instead crawls out on all fours with the atrocious hippie-cretin blathering of Magic Michael. The sort of free-spirited acid-casualty that the late-60s and early-70s spit out by the handful, Magic Michael haunted London's rock underground like a drooling phantom, often gracing the stage during mid-band set changes, offering the audience the measure of his limitless lack of talent. Michael's "Music Belongs To The People" is a mindless, improvised mess including members of the audience climbing onstage to "jam" alongside the magic one's yelping vocals and cacophonic guitar strumming. This insipid, fetid chunk of stoner-era trash wouldn't cut the mustard at the height of Flower Power's drug-fueled insanity; in this day-and-age, it's more painful than a botched root canal by a drunken dentist.

If this all sounds like an odd combination of music that I've described for you all well, yeah, it is. Any one of these three bands stands on its own, and all three are distinctly different in both style and ambition. That was the magic of the early-70s, however … long before corporate radio and major label homogenization lowered expectations across the board, young music fans had a gluttonous buffet of bands to choose from, and we often ate from the trough with glee.

It was a high-flying time for music-as-culture, and art often times outweighed commerce. Although it's unlikely that a performance of the diversity and scope of the Greasy Truckers Party could take place these days, the album represents more than a mere cultural artifact – Greasy Truckers Party also captures a magical night of music. (Liberty Records)

Photos of Man, Hawkwind and Brinsley Schwarz taken from the great Greasy Truckers Party CD booklet, which includes more photos and extensive liner notes on the evening.

(Click on the CD cover to buy Greasy Truckers Party from Amazon.com)

MP3s:
Man - "Angel Easy"
Hawkwind - "Master Of The Universe"
Brinsley Schwarz - "Country Girl"
Brinsley Schwarz - "Surrender To The Rhythm"

Blue Oyster Cult's Lost Album - Imaginos

One of the most commercially successful and critically-acclaimed rock bands in American history, Blue Oyster Cult created the perfect fusion of '60s pop and '70s proto-metal that would have a profound influence on the evolution of both hard rock and heavy metal in the decades to follow. Intellectual, but reveling in their counter-culture roots, lyrically the band mixed elements of mythology, the occult and contemporary literature with science fiction and horror film trash culture in the creation of a new musical paradigm that celebrated high-and-lowbrow culture equally.

The earliest roots of the band lie in the relationship between two students at Stony Brook College on Long Island. As far back as 1967, Sandy Pearlman and future rock critic Richard Meltzer had plans to conquer the rock & roll world. With Pearlman managing the band and both he and Meltzer writing lyrics, they put together a group that included the core of the future BOC – guitarist Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser, keyboardist Allen Lanier, and drummer Albert Bouchard – known as Soft White Underbelly.

Signed to Elektra Records, Soft White Underbelly recorded an unreleased album and subsequently changed the band's name to Oaxaca before settling on being called the Stalk-Forrest Group. A second album recorded for the label was also buried in the vaults, although a single was later released under the Stalk-Forrest Group name. Dropped by the label and shuffling personnel, they changed their name once again to Blue Oyster Cult and signed with Columbia Records, which is where the BOC story really begins.

The band's self-titled album was released in 1972 and scraped the bottom of the charts. This must have been good enough to partially satisfy the label, as they were attempting to promote BOC as their very own homegrown version of Black Sabbath. The debut album's fortunes were helped by the media-savvy promotional efforts of Pearlman and Meltzer, as well as the creation of the band's ubiquitous hook-and-cross logo, an important precursor to the imaginative logo designs of heavy metal bands in the decade to follow.

Tyranny & Mutation followed in 1973, and Secret Treaties in 1974, each album experienced higher sales numbers. The powerful live double-album, On Your Feet Or On Your Knees, was released in '75, but it would be the following year's effort, Agents Of Fortune, that would prove to be the band's commercial breakthrough. Yielding a Top 40 single in "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," the album would be the first in a string of Gold and Platinum-selling discs that culminated five years later with 1981's Fire Of Unknown Origin.

The band stumbled badly, however, both commercially and creatively, into the new decade. Original members had left the band, or been asked to leave, and weak studio albums like 1983's The Revolution at Night and 1986's Club Ninja alienated long-time fans. With only Dharma and Eric Bloom left from the band's original line-up, BOC continued to tour. Released in 1988, the band's 14th album, Imaginos, would also be its last at the time.

Back at the dawn of the '80s, however, Imaginos was originally planned by former BOC drummer Albert Bouchard to be a solo work, a concept album based on a song cycle created by Sandy Pearlman back during the late-60s. Almost six years in the making, Imaginos includes instrumental contributions from several of Bouchard's NYC friends, including bassist Kenny Aaronson and guitarists Joe Satriani, Aldo Nova and Robbie Krieger of the Doors.

When Bouchard was nearing the finish line with Imaginos, he found out that the record label wasn't exactly enamored of his efforts. They would only agree to release the album under the Blue Oyster Cult name, so the master tapes were sent to Pearlman and the band overdubbed vocals and instrumentation. Thus the incorrect appearance that BOC had reformed with its original line-up, including Albert Bouchard…but it was all on paper, folks. Met with confusion by fans and critics alike, and under-promoted to death by the label, Imaginos was deemed an overall failure. BOC was subsequently dropped from Columbia after an almost 20-year association with the label.

Long out-of-print, and the subject of no little discussion by Blue Oyster Cult fans through the years, thanks to the good folks at American Beat we have a reissued/remastered version of Imaginos to judge on its own merits. Musically, the album-opening "I Am The One You Warned Me Of" spanks-and-cranks with typical period metal overtones, with heavy riffing, clean ringing guitars and Bloom vocals that sound eerily like Secret Treaties-era BOC. Slower-paced than the band's early-70s brain-bashers, the song is no less menacing. "Les Invisibles" is more contradictory, featuring some delectable, deliberate skull-bashing fretwork and rhythms…but the constant refrain of "seven, seven, seven" is more irritating than an itchy straitjacket, and as unnecessary to the grand design of life as ticks and garden slugs.

"In The Presence Of Another World" is a vintage BOC face-burner, opening with elegant six-string plundering before kicking into some sort of sci-fi soundscape with soaring vocal harmonies and crunchy riffage courtesy of Mr. Dharma. "Del Rio's Song" offers up some fine lead vocals but little in the way of substance; lacking distinctive instrumentation (or else it's buried too deep in the mix), it's a pleasant diversion and nothing more. "The Siege And Investiture Of Baron von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria" is as epic and long-winded as the song's title. Sounding like an outtake from a Ronnie James Dio album, the song showcases Joe Satriani's scorching six-string leads. The song kind of grows on you, as blustery as it is, and it's an excellent example of early prog-metal overkill.

"Astronomy" should be familiar to any BOC fan; originally included on Secret Treaties, the song sits perfectly at the intersection of the band's science-fiction fantasies and fantastic metal proclivities. "Magna Of Illusion" has delusions of grandeur, but it also includes some nifty Robbie Krieger guitar noodling, so I'll begrudgingly swallow the song's hackneyed lyrical aspirations. "Blue Oyster Cult," the song, bites down hard; a re-working of the original tune "Subhuman" from Secret Treaties, which was derived from "Blue Oyster Cult" to begin with (calling M.C. Escher), this is one limp biscuit nonetheless.

I'll call the title track a draw – although it could have sorely benefited from some big-lunged Eric Bloom vocal expertise, it kicks in with some tasty licks and keyboard riffs that rescue it from oblivion. Bloom is absent without leave from much of Imaginos, leaving the bulk of the vocal weightlifting to the capable Buck Dharma. When any of the guest vocalists kick in on a song, it's either cringeworthy, or as slight as to be as easily forgotten as last week's hangover.

As stated before, Imaginos is a conceptual song-cycle, something about a big-haired meanie that travels through time to stomp on our hopes and dreams, or some other late-60s lysergic-fueled narrative. Much like early Voivod albums, you have no idea what the hell they're talking about – you just sit back and try to enjoy the ride. By the Reverend's count, you have five bona fide BOC gems on Imaginos, three whiffballs, and one plea of "nolo contendre." That's close enough for rock & roll in my book, and certainly a better batting average than many of today's pud-pounding corporate rockers.

So, just where does Imaginos fall in the BOC canon? With the benefit of 20 years of hindsight, I'd say that it's certainly better than either of the band's two previous '80s-era albums, and it's perhaps the band's most overtly metallicized effort, ever. In spite of all the cooks here adding their own ingredients to the gumbo, some of that tasty BOC flavor rises to the top regardless. While Imaginos won't prompt any fans to pawn their copies of Agents Of Fortune or Fires Of Unknown Origin (or the classic first three BOC ear-mashers, either), you won't embarrass yourself by owning a copy, either. (American Beat Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Imaginos from Amazon.com)

MP3s:
Blue Oyster Cult - "I Am The One You Warned Me Of"
Blue Oyster Cult - "In The Presence Of Another World"

Born To Be Wilder

Webb Wilder deserves better than he's gotten from the music biz. During a ten-year period circa 1986-96, the larger-then-life performer delivered five simply brilliant albums that combined roots-rock, rockabilly, hillbilly, honky-tonk, surf-rock and rockin-blues. Although WW developed a cult following stateside, along with a significant European fan base, Wilder never got the break that would have broken him to a larger mainstream U.S. audience. Instead, much of his back catalog lies wrapped up in legal contradictions and label politics, with only Wilder's indie-label-released debut, It Came From Nashville, re-purposed for the digital age.

Better than 20 years after the release of Wilder's breathless debut album, the singer and a modernized version of his 'Beatnecks' band are still spankin-and-crankin' out the tunes. In 2005, WW and crew released About Time, their first work in almost nine years, a collection of inspired covers along with a handful of Bobby Field originals. The acclaim enjoyed by About Time would directly lead to the recording of the live album at hand, Born To Be Wilder. Captured onstage at a Birmingham, Alabama club in August 2005, the performance was also taped for a subsequent DVD release.

For those of you keeping score at home, here's the straight poop: Born To Be Wilder is, track-by-track, identical to the bonus CD that came with Wilder's 2006 DVD release, Live In Concert. So, if you have that DVD, then Born To Be Wilder is probably unnecessary…unless you want an easier-to-transport copy of the disc in its own case to throw in your car (for those of you who haven't given up and joined the iPod generation). To further complicate matters, this same live set was also released in Europe by Dixiefrog Records as It's Live Time! Did all of you get that? Good.

Born To Be Wilder features fifteen songs, about a third of 'em from About Time, the rest culled from the artist's deep back catalog. Some of these are Wilder classics, and songs like "Tough It Out," the rollicking "Poolside," "How Long Can She Last" and the crowd-pleasing "One Taste of The Bait" stand up to repeated listening in any setting. They're all just well-constructed, superbly-performed story-songs with a strong rock-n-roll heartbeat. Some of the newer material measures up well, especially the cover of obscure country vocalist (and my former neighbor) Tommy Overstreet's honky-tonk weeper, "If You're Looking For A Fool."

Unfortunately, there's something vital missing from Born To Be Wilder. The usually brilliant R.S. "Bobby" Field's production falls short here. Whereas Field, who has worked with Wilder since high school in Mississippi, typically captures the mythical WW sound perfectly, these performances seem to have been stripped of their spontaneity, grit and muscle. The sound is too antiseptic, the recording far too slick and well-mannered to effectively convey the WW vibe.

A share of the blame should be levied on Wilder and his band as well, all of which are solid, if not usually spectacular players. The performances here are mostly all lacking the nearly-supernatural, raw rock & roll vibe of a typical Web Wilder show; not surprisingly, the older material fares better. But simply listen to the '80s-era live tracks tacked onto the end of the It Came From Nashville and you'll hear the stark difference for yourself. Although most of the songs here are road-tested, tried-and-true rockin' foo, Born To Be Wilder simply lacks the one-shot knockout punch we've come to expect from Webb.

In this light, I'd grade Born To Be Wilder with a reluctant 'B'…still better than just about any other wet-behind-the-ears, roots-rock rug-rats that you'll run across in this day and time, but a far cry from the A+ work delivered by WW on Doo Dad or Acres Of Suede, or even the A- I'd award to About Time. Maybe age is catching up with the big man, maybe this was just an off night, but when you set the bar as high as Wilder has in the past, you have to be spry enough to either jump over or limbo under…and Born To Be Wilder does neither. (Blind Pig Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Born To Be Wilder from Amazon.com)

MP3s:
Webb Wilder - "Louisiana Hannah"
Webb Wilder - "One Taste Of The Bait"

It's A Good Life, After All....

When you’re the son of a bona fide Americana music legend, and named after one of greatest songwriters of the genre (Townes Van Zandt), expectations are high. With his full-length debut, The Good Life, Justin Townes Earle delivers everything expected of him in spades. Not content to merely mimic his dad’s work, the younger Earle takes his impressive songwriting skills in a number of diverse directions. Whereas his pappy's music tends to draw more from both rock and folk worlds, the younger Earle instead goes in the other direction, pulling the best from the Tennessee and Texas hillbilly traditions.

Growing up in a musical household, Earle had the opportunity to soak in all sorts of influences, and it shows in his work. An eerily-mature songwriter that is skilled beyond his years, Earle easily weaves together story-songs in his dad's image, but with his own voice and a widely differing soundtrack. The title track from The Good Life is a delicious ‘60s-styled country throwback that sounds like a classic Faron Young tune, while the heartbreaking “Who Am I To Say” is reminiscent of namesake Van Zandt’s stark folk poetry.

Other songs on The Good Life showcase Earle's mastery of a diverse range of country styles. “Lone Pine Hill” is a haunting Western dirge and “What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome” is a weepy Texas dancehall ballad. "South Georgia Sugar Babe" is a bluesy, Southern rock/R&B hybrid with gumbo-funk rhythms while "Lonesome And You," with its mournful steel guitar and slow shuffle, is the sort of honky-tonk country that Ernest Tubb could crank out in his sleep. "Turn Out My Lights" is a delicate, finely-crafted folk ballad…and about as close as Justin gets to sounding like his famous father.

The vocals on The Good Life are warm, certain and soulful throughout, and producer R.S. "Bobby" Field's deft hand and extensive roots-music knowledge allowed him to bring out the best in Earle, perfectly capturing the artist's eclectic sound. With boundless ambition and loads of talent, Earle easily ties together strains of roots-rock, folk-blues, Tex-Mex, Western Swing and traditional country in the creation of an amazing, remarkable debut album. (Bloodshot Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy The Good Life from Amazon.com)

MP3s:
Justin Townes Earle - "The Good Life"
Justin Townes Earle - "What Do You Do When You're Lonesome"