Archive Review: Robert Johnson’s The Centennial Collection (2011)

There are few musicians as legendary, as essential to the history of their genre as Mississippi Delta bluesman Robert Johnson is to the blues. Perhaps only Hank Williams (country), Elvis Presley (rock ‘n’ roll), and Charlie Parker (jazz) cast as long a shadow on their respective musical styles as does Johnson. It doesn’t hurt his legacy that a larger-than-life mythology has grown up around the enigmatic Delta bluesman, or that his life is largely shrouded in mystery, and that his youthful death at the age of 27 remains a subject of academic and historic controversy.

What is certain is that Johnson seemingly emerged out of nowhere as a great blues vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist that reportedly shook hands with the devil in a Faustian bargain to obtain his immense talents. Only two known photographs exist of the guitarist, and in spite of the general confusion about the specifics of Johnson’s life as a wandering blues troubadour, we know that in 1936 and 1937, Johnson made his way westward to San Antonio and Dallas, Texas to record 29 songs that were destined to change the course of blues music history.  

King of the Delta Blues Singers

Because of his itinerant ways, wandering from town to town across the southeast and performing in juke-joints and on street corners, Johnson experienced little commercial success during the brief six years (1932-38) that he plied his trade. Although he sometimes traveled with bluesmen like the younger Johnny Shines or Robert Lockwood, Johnson would disappear from an area for months, and his music had little impact, at the time, on but a few musicians that he had personal contact with like David “Honeyboy” Edwards.

In 1961, Columbia Records released King of the Delta Blues Singers on vinyl, the album representing the first modern-era release of Johnson’s performances. To say that the 16 songs included on the album had a major impact would be an understatement, King of the Delta Singers firing the imagination of young British musicians like Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Keith Richards and others, jump-starting the British blues-rock boom of the 1960s. The album would have a profound effect on American musicians like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix as well, and would go on to be successfully reissued in various incarnations in the decades to come, including a second volume in 1970 with unreleased songs. Digging up every extant Johnson recording, Sony Music released The Complete Recordings as a two-disc set in 1990, earning the producers a Grammy™ Award and selling a truckload of copies.     

Robert Johnson’s The Centennial Collection

Robert Johnson – The Centennial Collection was released as a celebration of what would have been Johnson’s 100th birthday. Truth be told, Johnson only ever cut 29 original songs in his lifetime, with a handful of alternate takes pushing the number of performances up to 42, and The Centennial Collection differs from The Complete Recordings set only in sequencing and in slightly improved sound…to be honest, there’s only so much you can do when sourcing from antique 78rpm shellac recordings. Throw some interesting new liner notes from historians Ted Gioia and Stephen C. LaVere into a lavishly-illustrated CD booklet and you’ve accomplished putting a modern sheen on the same old songs…

These are some great old songs, however, regardless of the format in which they’re preserved. The Centennial Collection changes up the song sequencing somewhat and sticks the alternate takes at the end of each disc, behind the original versions, which makes for smoother listening in my mind. The improved re-mastering doesn’t seem compressed, and the songs are heard with a nice flow. The first CD, taken from the 1936 San Antonio sessions, offers up some of Johnson’s most popular material among its 16 songs, from the often-recorded “Kind Hearted Woman Blues,” which offers up sweetly warbled vocals and laid-back fretwork, to the blues standard “Sweet Home Chicago,” a spry stomp with soulful vocals and a vamping rhythm.

Hell Hound On My Trail

Johnson’s sly “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” with an incredible descending guitar riff, would later be re-worked into a hit by the Johnson-influenced slide-guitar master Elmore James, while the up-tempo rocker “Terraplane Blues,” the closest Johnson ever came to a hit song during his short career, is an overlooked gem in the bluesman’s catalog. The well-trodden “Cross Road Blues” loses not a lick of its emotional power due to familiarity, Johnson’s arcane tale as potent today as it was in 1936. “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day” is equally strong, Johnson sounding like Blind Willie Johnson with his apocalyptic lyrics, haunting vocals, and energetic guitarplay.   

The second CD of The Centennial Collection documents the 13 song, 1937 Dallas sessions and includes some of Johnson’s most moving and lasting work. Most notable, of course, is Johnson’s “Hell Hound On My Trail,” the singer’s chilling voice wrapped around darkly poetic lyrics, accompanied by imaginative fretwork. In the same vein, “Me and the Devil Blues” offers a taut performance, Johnson’s voice often rising to a spine-tingling high falsetto. “Love In Vain Blues” is another often-covered Johnson song, and here it’s delivered as an almost unbearable romantic lament. Some overlooked treasures came out of the Dallas sessions, like “I’m A Steady Rollin’ Man,” a tale of lonely life on the road, or “Little Queen of Spades,” Johnson’s vocals rising and falling from warble to falsetto while his guitar line incorporates familiar Delta blues patterns with contemporary jug band licks.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

 
There’s not much that can be said about Johnson’s life and these 29 original songs that hasn’t been rehashed and worn out by critics, academics, and historians for 50 years since the release of King of the Delta Blues Singers. If you don’t already have a copy of Johnson’s The Complete Recordings on your shelf, then get thee hence to a record store (or online) and get your copy of The Centennial Collection, the latest and greatest reissuing of these blues classics. These are the songs that modern blues and rock music were built on, and if you’re a blues fan and have never heard Robert Johnson, you’ve only been hearing half of the story. (Sony Legacy Recordings, released April 26th, 2011)

Buy the CD from Amazon: Robert Johnson’s The Centennial Collection

CD Review: John Lee Hooker's The Healer (1989/2022)

By 1989, blues legend John Lee Hooker was entering the final chapter of an impressive career that had endured for over 50 years. Hooker scored his first chart-topping R&B hit in 1948 with “Boogie Chillen”, and he visited the charts sporadically over the years with songs like “Crawlin’ King Snake”, “I’m In the Mood” (a Top 30 pop hit!), and “Boom Boom”. He’d recorded better than 100 albums over the course of his career, including collaborations with young blues bands like the Groundhogs and Canned Heat and guest appearances on albums by artists as diverse as Peter Townshend, Jim Morrison, John P. Hammond, and Miles Davis. Clearly, John Lee had little left to prove…

Enter Mike Kappus, a legendary artist manager and agent. Kappus became a licensed booking agent in 1970 at the age of 19, promoting shows while attending the University of Wisconsin. Moving to San Francisco in 1976, he founded the Rosebud Agency, signing guitarist Michael Bloomfield and singer/songwriter John Hiatt the first day he opened the doors. Over the ensuing years, Kappus was instrumental in launching the careers of artists like George Thorogood & the Destroyers, Robert Cray, and Los Lobos and he also worked with veteran music-makers like Muddy Waters, Albert Collins, Captain Beefheart and … you guessed it … John Lee Hooker. Kappus dabbled in record production as well, receiving ‘Executive Producer’ credits on albums by Hooker, Robert Cray, J.J. Cale, Duke Robillard, and Loudon Wainwright III, among others.

John Lee Hooker’s The Healer

Kappus helped launch the HART (Handy Artists Relief Trust) Fund for The Blues Foundation in 2000, providing financial assistance to blues musicians in need, and he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2014. As Hooker’s manager and agent, he envisioned a late-career “comeback” album by the 73 year old bluesman, assisted by some of the talents whose contact info stuffed his Rolodex. He found a like-minded ally in Stephen Powers, the founder and president of Chameleon Records, who he knew from his early days in Wisconsin. Chameleon had recently purchased the long-dormant Vee-Jay Records label and had reissued several of Hooker’s earlier Vee-Jay albums with some success so, after a little coaxing, Powers agreed to release The Healer.

Recruiting blues guitarist Roy Rogers from Hooker’s Coast To Coast Band to produce the album, Kappus enlisted eager volunteers like guitarists Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, George Thorogood, and Robert Cray to join Hooker in San Francisco’s Russian Hill Recording Studios in September 1989. Hooker’s basic backing band in the studio was comprised of Rogers on guitar and drummer Scott Matthews, with members of Canned Heat and Los Lobos sitting in on some tunes. The album’s tracklist featured material from Hooker’s deep and wide song catalog, with the new title track co-written by the blues legend along with Santana, Rogers, and keyboardist Chester D. Thompson.

With Carlos’s guitar weaving a Latin-flavored tapestry of sound and the rhythm section establishing a strong rhythm with timbales, conga, and drums, the title track kicks off The Healer with a jazzy, exotic vibe that’s only enhanced by Hooker’s smoky, almost-muted vocals and Thompson’s nuanced keyboards. Santana’s mid-song solo soars out of the mix, the guitarist clearly enjoying himself (he’d enjoy a late-career revival of his own a decade later, with 1999’s Supernatural album). Hooker’s duet with Bonnie Raitt on “I’m In the Mood” earned the bluesman his first Grammy™ Award (for “Best Traditional Blues Recording”). The combination of the two old friends, a darkened studio, and an erotic vibe sizzles like steak on the grill, with sultry vocals and the red-hot coals of Raitt’s slide-guitarwork. Hooker originally released the song in 1951, enjoying a #1 R&B chart hit, but the ‘89 version is superior in sound and performance.

Hooker ‘n’ Heat

“Baby Lee” was the B-side of Hooker’s 1956 R&B hit “Dimples” and, revisited for The Healer with Robert Cray on guitar, the performance is so laid-back that you can’t tell if it’s coming or going. The song’s strong rhythm overwhelms Hooker’s slight vocals, but Cray’s subtle fretwork rides along Richard Cousins’ fluid bass line to create a cool, bluesy ambiance. By contrast, Hooker and his old friends from Canned Heat (their 1971 collaboration Hooker ‘n’ Heat is a blues-rock treasure) raise a bit of dust with “Cuttin’ Out”. Henry Vestine’s guitar licks rip ‘n’ roar alongside Hooker’s spoken-sung vocals while the rhythm section of bassist Larry Taylor and drummer Fito de la Parra establish a swinging booger-rock groove. As icing on the cake, blues harp legend Charlie Musselwhite rages on the harmonica in counterpoint to the rhythm, making for an invigorating performance.

Hooker is backed by Los Lobos for “Think Twice Before You Go”, the entire band pitching in and creating a low-slung sound above which Hooker croons his vocals. With David Hildago’s accordion in the background, it really sounds like a Los Lobos cover of a vintage Hooker song, with the bluesman guest-starring on vocals … and that’s not a bad thing! Probably the oldest song on The Healer, “Sally Mae” was the flipside of Hooker’s first hit, “Boogie Chillen’”. He’s accompanied here by George Thorogood, who’s forged a decades-long career from his Hooker influences, but the guitarist plays it straight here, reverent to the material, garnishing Hooker’s smooth-knit vox rather than stomping on them.

“That’s Alright” defines the difference between the Detroit school of blues (i.e. Hooker) and the better-known Chicago style … the song establishes a strong, stuttering rhythm endemic to the Detroit style, courtesy of drummer Matthews and bassist Steve Ehrmann, and then layers on Rogers’ ringing guitar tones and Musselwhite’s mournful harp notes beneath Hooker’s moaning, droning vocals. Whereas Chicago blues often relies on an up-tempo swing with both rhythm and guitar, Detroit blues is heavier and more atmospheric, often as thickly-constructed as night in a Louisiana swamp. Hooker breaks out his National Steel guitar for the haunting “Rockin’ Chair”, the solo performance echoing the ghosts of the Mississippi Delta while displaying his fractured, jagged guitar style. “No Substitute” is in a similar country-blues vein, Hooker wielding a twelve-string like Big Joe Williams, while the previous “My Dream”, with Canned Heat’s rhythm section, is a soulful ballad that displays a more constrained side of John Lee’s talents.         

The Healer eventually sold better than a half-million copies, an unheard of number in the blues world, and it helped launch a roots-music revival that continues to this day. Quoted in British music critic Charles Shaar Murray’s John Lee biography, Boogie Man, Kappus states that “The Healer had a major impact on the entire genre of roots music. The door had been cracking open for years for roots music with George Thorogood and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray, but here was an older artist, one of the originators, actually having success on the level of a contemporary rock star.” Recently reissued on CD and vinyl by Craft Recordings after being out-of-print for over a decade, The Healer was pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Records Pressing with lacquers cut by award-winning engineer Bernie Grundman. Although the new reissue doesn’t include any bonus tracks (according to Murray, several tracks were recorded at the time and used on subsequent albums like Mr. Lucky), it’s just good to have this groundbreaking album available once more.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

If The Healer represented the final chapter of John Lee Hooker’s lengthy career, it was really just the opening paragraph. Using the album’s guest-heavy format as a blueprint, Hooker went on to write a hell of a closing for his story with subsequent albums like 1991’s Mr. Lucky (which included Santana, Keith Richards, and Albert Collins); 1992’s Boom Boom (with Jimmie Vaughan and Robert Cray); and 1995’s Chill Out (with Santana and Van Morrison), all of them produced by Rogers and overseen by Kappus. The Morrison-produced Don’t Look Back (1997) was Hooker’s final studio album, earning him his third and fourth Grammy™ Awards.

Hooker was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. He also received the Grammy™ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. Passing away in June 2001, John Lee Hooker went out on top, enjoying more than a decade of critical and commercial success (and long-overdue monetary reward) as well as numerous accolades and the respect and adoration of his peers. His career was often overshadowed by the successes of his contemporaries, but after better than half a century in the blues business, John Lee became a bona fide “overnight success”… and it all began with The Healer. (Craft Recordings, reissued October 28th, 2022)

Buy the CD from Amazon: John Lee Hooker’s The Healer

CD Review: Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers' American Babylon (1995/2021)

I bought my first Iron City Houserockers’ album on a whim, after seeing a picture single of “Love’s So Tough” featuring the same soft-focus, high-contrast photo of  feminine beauty that was to be found on the front cover of the band’s debut album of the same name. A cursory glance at the credits (if not the band’s name) revealed their Pittsburgh roots, enough to sell it to this Greensburg, Pennsylvania-born Pirates fan. That purchase happened around 1979 or so, just as the first exhilarating wave of punk was fading away and rock music was threatening to become dreadfully bland once again.

A quick listen to the I.C. Houserockers put those fears to rest, the band kicking out a bluesy, street-smart style of rock ‘n’ roll with lyrics concerning themselves with the hopes and dreams and desires of the great unwashed working class, of which I was a proud member. I became a life-long fan of the band, and it was greatly disappointing that the I.C. Houserockers never found an audience beyond its cult of hardcore fans and appreciative critics. The band broke up before the great mid-‘80s indie rock boom, leaving in their wake a handful of albums and a lot of great songs. Luckily, the talent behind the band – singer, songwriter, and guitarist Joe Grushecky – would later embark on what is now a lengthy and critically-acclaimed solo career as an indie rocker.

Joe Grushecky’s American Babylon

Flash forward from 1979 to 1995 and the release of Grushecky’s landmark album, American Babylon. Produced by rock superstar Bruce Springsteen, who also co-wrote a song and played and sung on several others, it represented the first significant Springsteen creative collaboration since Southside Johnny’s early albums in the late ‘70s. Although Bruce’s name, at the time, didn’t carry the weight it once did in mainstream rock, it still provided thrilling possibilities. Along for the ride were the Houserockers, those seasoned veterans who had worked with Grushecky on the early solo discs – guitarist Bill Toms, drummer Joffo Simmons, and original I.C. Houserockers bassist Art Nardini.

From the opening lyrics of “Dark and Bloodied Ground” to the fateful closing riffs of “Only Lovers Left Alive,” American Babylon is a powerful collection of songs, brimming over with the sort of rock ‘n’ roll spirit that most artists never approach, much less capture in song. Much like Springsteen himself, Grushecky was raised on the music of the 1950s and ‘60s, the first generation literally weaned on rock ‘n’ roll and infatuated with the power of the music to change lives, the music’s ability to transcend class and race, and its promise of escape.

Like Springsteen, Grushecky is also teller of tales, a point illustrated by cuts like “Never Be Enough Time,” with its ill-fated lovers, or the broken family searching for hope on “Only Lovers Left Alive.” The passion and emotion expressed on “Labor of Love” comes only with age and experience, lifting the cut far above the level of the typical love song you’ll hear on the radio. Thirty years of American history are dissected by the clever verses of “What Did You Do In the War.” Phrased as a child’s questions to their father, the song crams Vietnam, 1960s-era rock and Woodstock, the moon walk, Iran-Contra, and much more into the child’s innocent queries. “No Strings Attached” is an anthemic rocker reminiscent of the old Iron City Houserockers’ finest moments.

In Homestead

It’s with his social commentary, however, that Grushecky’s skills as a wordsmith really shine. Witness “Homestead,” the logical sequel to “The Biddle Mine” from Grushecky’s 1989 “solo” debut, Rock and Real. The story of a steel mill worker, it evokes memories of Springsteen’s “My Hometown,” with a more midwestern, ‘rust belt’ point-of-view. Co-written with Springsteen, the song describes the horrors of the foundry – as close to hell, I’m told, as one can get on Earth – with a poet’s deft touch: “And the steel glowed in the white hot chambers/The furnace spit fire and smoke/And the sunlight came through the cracks in the roof/The dust was so thick you could choke.”

“Homestead” speaks with great eloquence of organized labor’s betrayal of the working man and expresses the importance of the mill town community to the workers (“It was more than a job, it was my family/I got married, settled down, bought a home/And in the bars down the street, in the late summer heat/You never had to feel alone”). In the end, it’s the loss of the job and the stubborn loyalty of the worker to a dying industry that remains: “I got work tearin’ those old mills down/Until there’s nothing left but the sweat and blood in the ground/At night we tuck our little babies in bed/We still pray to the red, white and blue in Homestead.”

If the story told by “Homestead” is strong in its simplicity, the sort of ode to the working man that Woody Guthrie championed, then it is American Babylon’s title cut that tears off the veil that covers what Guthrie’s cherished land has become. The song’s opening verse is based on a true event suffered by Grushecky: “A kid stole my car the other day/Broke in and drove it away/Took it for a joy ride and when he was done/Held up a liquor store with a great big gun/He said I didn’t do nothing wrong/It’s just the way we live around here.”

The song rolls into an anecdote of a junkie’s dilemma, her desire mixing with pragmatism before slamming into the chorus: “In American Babylon, puttin’ my protection on/Got everything I need – drugs, money, sex and greed/In American Babylon, puttin’ my blindfold on/I can’t tell right from wrong/In American Babylon.” Backed by a no-frills, guitar-driven soundtrack, “American Babylon” sums up the results of three decades of ill-conceived social policy in a few short lines. It’s a powerful statement of despair, one far-too-seldom expressed by rock music in any era.

American Babylon Revisited

The recently-released two-disc version of American Babylon expands the album with a trio of demo tracks tacked onto the first disc, while the second disc offers a raucous live set by Grushecky and the Houserockers, playing on their home turf at Nick’s Fat City, with Springsteen as a special guest. All three of the demo songs are winners, providing an invaluable blueprint to the construction of the final versions. “Never Be Enough Time” and “Only Lovers Left Alive” are both finely-crafted songs with smart, insightful lyrics that would stand out in any situation; I’m still not a huge fan of “Chain Smokin’,” which nevertheless gets the job done in a workmanlike fashion.

On the original album, “Chain Smokin’” serves an important purpose in bringing the listener down from the ledge after the lightning bolt that is “Dark and Bloody Ground.” The haunting “Only Lovers Left Alive” is enchanting in this subdued initial take, but the full album version provides a simply devastating ending to American Babylon, the song’s desolate lyrical theme writ large with its explosive instrumentation. Grushecky’s powerful vocals, wavering with emotion, are matched by his taut, evocative fretwork and the band’s muscular soundtrack. It’s one of Grushecky’s best songs in a catalog full of winners, and the original album version’s awe-inspiring instrumental ending provokes shivers with every listen.

I was lucky enough to see Grushecky and the Houserockers perform for the first time on the American Babylon tour and it was easily one of the top three rock ‘n’ roll shows that I’ve ever witnessed out of hundreds. Playing in Nashville at the smallish 3rd and Lindsley club, the band dominated the postage stamp-sized stage, spilling over into the audience. Joe jumped up on our table in front of the stage for a guitar solo and the audience of around 100 drunk-on-rock ‘n’ roll patrons went nuts. The live disc of American Babylon offers similar cheap thrills, Grushecky and his talented band commanding the stage at the Pittsburgh venue in October 1995. The twelve-song set features much of the American Babylon album, performed with all the electricity and energy Houserockers fans have come to expect.

The live versions of “Dark and Bloody Ground” and “Homestead” are particularly brutal, offering the full, complex instrumentation of the studio versions but pumped-up on steroids. Grushecky’s fiery fretwork leaves scorched earth in its wake on the former, while the latter is a deceptively damning slab of working class blues. Joe throws old-school I.C. Houserockers fans a bone with a swinging take on that band’s “Pumping Iron,” and Bruce joins in fun for high-octane performances of his roadhouse rocker “Light of Day” and the booger-rock jaunt “Down the Road Apiece,” which would sound perfectly at home in any Southern juke-joint. The live disc is more than enough reason to pick up the expanded reissue of American Babylon. I’ve heard bootleg recordings of Joe’s shows from the club, and they never sounded this good, producer Rick Witkowski (also a member of prog-rockers Crack the Sky) doing a magnificent job of capturing the band’s livewire set on tape.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Joe Grushecky has often been compared to Springsteen, because of his similar vocal style and sound, the commonality of their musical influences, and their shared lyrical concerns for the working class as related in story and song. It’s an unfair comparison, however, one that robs both artists of their dignity and creative integrity. The two rockers are similar enough to fit into the same critical pigeonhole, sympathetic enough to understand the other’s plight, but there the similarities end. Both are extremely talented artists, among the best that rock ‘n’ roll has ever produced.

Since the mid-‘90s release of American Babylon, Springsteen has become an elder statesman of rock ‘n’ roll tradition, still creating engaging music but with nowhere near the commercial impact he had in the ‘80s, after the release of Born In the U.S.A. and the accompanying worldwide tours. By comparison, Joe Grushecky has been forced to stay true to his muse, working for every break he’s received, staying honest by default. It’s hard to sin when temptation is never offered. He’s a rocker through and through, his work influenced by weary experience formed by hundreds (thousands?) of nights slamming out tunes in bars and clubs.

Although he and Bruce have remained friends and creative collaborators, Joe’s perspective was never been further from that of Springsteen than was with American Babylon. A fierce statement of defiance that said that the artist was not “going quietly into that good night,” a quarter-century afterwards, Grushecky is still creating intelligent, insightful, and hard rocking music with albums like 2004’s True Companion, 2013’s Somewhere East of Eden, and 2018’s More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows, to name but three of many. It was with American Babylon, however, that Grushecky gave voice to society’s ills and purged his inner demons with a raucous rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack. It’s a bona fide classic, and the rare “anniversary” reissue that lives up to its promise. Grade: A+ (Cleveland International Records, reissued October 29th, 2021)
      
Buy the CD on Amazon: Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ American Babylon

Also on That Devil Music:
Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows CD review
Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ True Companion CD review
Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ American Babylon Live CD review

On Rock & Roll Globe:
Have A Good Time…But Get Out Alive! Turns 40

CD Review: Little Richard's The Second Coming (1972) & Lifetime Friend (1986)

In 1970, rock ‘n’ roll legend “Little” Richard Penniman was more than a decade removed from his late ‘50s commercial peak. Recording for Art Rupe’s Specialty Records label with producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell, the two men racked up an impressive string of hit singles between 1955 and 1958, songs like “Tutti Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Lucille,” and “Rip It Up” that would influence a generation of artists to follow, from R&B giants like Otis Redding and James Brown to rockers like Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and the Beatles, among many others.

Although he hadn’t released an album of new material in three years (and hadn’t enjoyed anything resembling a hit single since 1958), Reprise Records signed Richard on the strength of his success at the time as a dynamic live performer. The singer would four albums for Reprise, including 1970’s Little Richard-produced The Rill Thing, which scored a minor chart hit with the socially-conscious single “Freedom Blues.” The following year’s The King of Rock and Roll, produced by Richard’s old friend H.B. Barnum, was met with critical disdain even while it inched into the upper-reaches of the Billboard album chart.

Undeterred, Richard returned to the studio in 1972 and recorded two more albums for Reprise – Southern Child, an uncharacteristic collection of Southern rock and country music, and The Second Coming, a more straightforward set of old-school rock and R&B. Both albums were produced by Richard’s former partner-in-crime, “Bumps” Blackwell, and featured a hybrid band combining R&B vets like saxophonist Lee Allen and drummer Earl Palmer playing alongside young turks like slide guitarist Michael Deasy and steel-guitar wizard “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow. Southern Child would be shelved by the label for over 30 years before finally seeing release in 2005 as part of a Rhino Records box set. Reprise instead chose to roll the dice with The Second Coming, which was immediately savaged by critics who were disappointed in the songs and complained of the album’s overproduction.

Little Richard’s The Second Coming

Critical barbs aside, when viewed from the far-off distance of today, Little Richard’s The Second Coming (Grade: B) is nowhere near as bad as claimed at the time. Does the album hold another “Tutti Frutti” or “Lucille”? You know it does not, but the album does kick off with the raucous, no-frills rocker “Mockingbird Sally,” an unbridled romp that features one of Richard’s most over-the-top vocal performances, shards of 1950s-styled twangy guitar, dueling saxophones, and Richard’s most manic piano-pounding. “Second Line” is equally audacious, if not as effective, with Richard’s strutting vocals dominating above a funky, New Orleans-inspired groove that, while entertaining, eventually goes nowhere in particular but does allow the singer to reference a number of colorful characters in the meandering lyrics.

Richard switches gears with “It Ain’t What You Do, It’s the Way How You Do It,” an up-tempo number with a fervent soul undercurrent. The instrumentation is a bit busy, like Blackwell knocked all the players in a blender and hit ‘puree’…but it’s a fun tune nonetheless, with a sort of Southern rock vibe that can’t quite keep up with Richard’s energetic vocals. I can see the infectious semi-instrumental “Nuki Suki” becoming an FM radio hit back in 1972, the song displaying a funky, horn-driven rhythm and electrical instrumental dexterity easily the equal of what was being pumped out by Stax Records at the time.

“Rockin’ Rockin’ Boogie” is as close to his 1950s-era roots as Richard gets on The Second Coming, his vocals exploding above a tsunami of sea-horn saxophones and amphetamine ivories. By contrast, “Prophet of Peace” is a stab at appealing to the contemporary zeitgeist, Richard’s lyrical sermon delivered atop a manic soundtrack of clashing instrumentation that creates a bedrock groove beneath the singer. The lengthy, seven-minute R&B instrumental raver “Sanctified, Satisfied Toe-Tapper” closes out the album, wasting Little Richard’s immense talents as vocalist, but the song delivers such a liver-quivering good time that it’s hard to disregard.

Bonus tracks on this Omnivore Recordings reissue of The Second Coming include the Quincy Jones written-and-produced tunes “Money Is” and “Do It-To It” from the 1972 film $. The former is a red-hot slab of early ‘70s urban funk with a strong-as-steel Chuck Rainey bass riff, ‘chunka-chunka’ guitar licks, and Richard’s bold vocals while the latter is a similar contemporary construct with an even hotter bass line, more upbeat arrangement, great vocals, and some Latin-styled background percussion. Sadly, The Second Coming failed to chart and would represent the final album of the rock legend’s early ‘70s trilogy.

Little Richard left Reprise feeling that they’d under-promoted and under-valued his work for the label, and I can’t disagree since they shelved an entire album and seemingly ignored the rest. Two of his three LPs for the label (The Rill Thing and The Second Coming) are inarguably above-average efforts, and even The King of Rock and Roll, has some stellar moments alongside the chaff. Richard would record one more rock ‘n’ roll album during the decade – 1973’s low-budget Right Now! – with Blackwell at the helm but, by the end of the ‘70s, Richard’s substance abuse problems had spiraled out of control and he returned to the ministry to find some inner peace.

Little Richard’s Lifetime Friend

 

Richard recorded a poorly-received Gospel album, 1979’s God’s Beautiful City, in Nashville for the Christian-oriented Word Records label to close out the decade. He recorded some backing tracks for his TV appearances during the early ‘80s, and released his autobiography, The Quasar of Rock and Roll, in 1984 to some acclaim. Little Richard returned to the studio in 1986 to record Lifetime Friend, his first album in seven years and a curious balancing act between Richard’s religious leanings and his secular past in rock ‘n’ roll.

Richard recruited with his old friend and touring band member Travis Wammack, who had played on The Rill Thing, to help make the new album. The rest of Richard’s studio band included bassist Jesse Boyce, drummer James Stroud, and keyboardist Billy Preston, working with producer Stuart Coleman in London. Lifetime Friend (Grade: C) kicks off much like The Second Coming did 14 years previous, with the rip-roaring “Great Gosh A’Mighty.” Written by Richard and Preston, the song’s R&B foundation is embroidered with blasts of sax, honky-tonk piano tinkling, and scraps of fluid guitar with backing singers providing a Gospel tint to the recording. The song was Richard’s first hit in years, peaking at #42 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart when released as a single after appearing on the soundtrack to the movie Down and Out In Beverly Hills.

Oddly, much of Lifetime Friend actually sounds like it could be from a 1980s-era Eddie Murphy movie soundtrack. “Operator” is a swaggering, high-rent, R&B tinged rocker with a funky groove, groovy harmony vocals, and a vamping soundtrack while “Somebody’s Coming” is a slight, pastoral performance that could easily play behind a film’s pensive moment. The title track is encouraging, but under-produced almost to the point where Richard disappears. Much better is the raunchy slice of Southern rock that is the Wammack co-write “Destruction,” which provides a brassy instrumental backdrop for Richard’s growling vocals.

Another Wammack co-write, “One Ray of Sunshine,” provides a fine showcase for Richard’s more nuanced vocals. It’s not quite a Gospel song, but Richard approaches it as such, providing the pop-soul tune with subtle, reverent vocals that float, gossamer-like, above a tentative drum-beaten rhythm and mournful saxophone cries. “Someone Cares” is another Gospel-tinted pop-rock construct that, provided a more dynamic radio-friendly production, may have appealed to mid-80s ears just the right way to have a hit. Richard’s passionate vocals are accompanied by a shuffling rhythm and a backing chorus but are mixed too low to truly be effective. Ditto for the otherwise enchanting “Big House Reunion,” a mid-tempo rocker with a firm rhythmic backdrop, swinging horns, and restrained Little Richard vocals.     

Coleman’s production of Lifetime Friend is plagued with the clichés and idioms too-frequently found in 1980s-era recordings. Stroud’s drums sound tinny and are underserved in the mix, Wammack’s typical razor-sharp guitar is robbed of its bite, and even Richard’s usual crazed piano-playing is underrepresented in favor of his vocals, which are too-often overshadowed by the instrumentation. Although Coleman was an old hand at producing “legacy” artists, working with folks like Cliff Richard, Billy Fury, and Phil Everly, there’s too much production sheen shrouding these performances in mediocrity, and not enough electricity. Part of the problem may have been Coleman’s preference for recording the instruments individually to a click track, preventing any spontaneity in the studio. There are some good songs on Lifetime Friend, but even Richard’s vocals often seem subdued by poor arrangements and worse production choices.

The Omnivore Recordings Reissues

The Omnnivore Recordings reissue of Lifetime Friend includes two bonus tracks, including the single edit of “Operator,” which charted in the U.K. and condenses the song’s energy into a more percussive blast of musical amperage. An “extended mix” of the song, however, just highlights the flaws in Coleman’s production technique. Aside from the album’s one modest U.S. hit single, Lifetime Friend under-performed in an ‘80s music market tailor-made for comebacks (i.e. see Roy Orbison, Tina Turner, the Everly Brothers, et al) by old-school rocker and R&B shouters like Little Richard. Both of these CD reissues feature extensive liner notes by music historian Bill Dahl, who puts each album in context to the singer’s enormous legacy. While none of these Reprise albums offer anything as ground-breaking as Little Richard’s late ‘50s singles, they stand up to scrutiny decades after their release.

Little Richard recorded an album of kid’s songs (Shake It All About) for Disney in 1992, and one last album of rock ‘n’ roll – Little Richard Meets Masayoshi Takanaka – the same year, re-recording his old hits with the popular Japanese guitarist. Richard continued to tour the world throughout the ‘90s and early ‘00s, frequently appeared on TV, and recorded with artists like Elton John and Solomon Burke before illness and age sidelined the timeless rock ‘n’ roller. His legacy secure, Richard Penniman was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1984, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 (as part of its inaugural class), the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, and the Blues Hall of Fame in 2015. (Omnivore Recordings, released October 23rd, 2020)

Also on That Devil Music: Little Richard’s The Rill Thing & The King of Rock and Roll CD reviews

Buy the CDs from Amazon.com:
Little Richard’s The Second Coming
Little Richard’s Lifetime Friend

CD Review: Little Richard's The Rill Thing (1970) & King of Rock and Roll (1971)

 

In the early 1950s, “Little Richard” Penniman was just another struggling Southern rhythm & blues singer. A handful of singles released by both RCA Victor and Peacock Records between 1951 and 1954 failed to chart, leaving the dynamic performer back in Macon, Georgia working as a dishwasher. He’d form a new band, the Upsetters, touring the Southern chitlin’ circuit for months before fellow R&B performer Lloyd Price recommended that he send a demo tape to Art Rupe’s Specialty Records. The label liked what it heard and Rupe paired him with producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell, sending Richard to New Orleans to record at Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studios, thereby changing the course of rock ‘n’ roll history.

Initial sessions at J&M Studios yielded little in the way of marketable recordings. When Blackwell and Richard went to the Dew Drop Inn to relax one night, Richard commandeered the piano and launched into a song he called “Tutti Frutti.” Sensing a hit, Blackwell hired songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to rework Richard’s risqué lyrics into something more “radio friendly,” and they managed to record Little Richard’s first hit single in a mere three takes. Released in November 1955, “Tutti Frutti” peaked at #2 on Billboard magazine’s R&B chart and #21 on the pop charts, eventually selling better than a million copies. Richard’s next single, “Long Tall Sally,” was released in March 1956 and surpassed its predecessor, topping the R&B chart and peaking at #13 pop, while also hitting Top Ten in Great Britain on its way to another million flapjacks sold.

During the mid-to-late ‘50s, Little Richard and producer Blackwell recorded a string of Top Ten R&B hits, songs like “Rip It Up,” “The Girl Can’t Help It,” “Lucille,” and “Good Golly Miss Molly.” By the end of the decade, though, Richard had grown dissatisfied with his fame and turned to the ministry, releasing a trio of gospel-oriented LPs in 1960 and ’61. When the British Invasion struck, and bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were confessing their love for Little Richard, the singer turned back to secular music with an under-performing string of singles and albums like Little Richard Is Back (1964) and The Explosive Little Richard (1967), which did little to improve the singer’s commercial fortunes.     

Little Richard’s The Rill Thing

Flash forward a few years and Little Richard was working on his comeback. Booked by his then-manager Larry Williams, a R&B singer from New Orleans, to perform rock festivals like the Atlantic City Pop Festival and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, Richard would steal the show from stars like Janis Joplin and John Lennon. Subsequent TV appearances cemented his renewed celebrity status, while Richard’s still-explosive live performances earned the singer a three-album deal with Reprise Records that resulted in 1970’s The Rill Thing, 1971’s King of Rock and Roll, and 1972’s The Second Coming, three somewhat underrated albeit uneven recordings that served to complicate rather than cement Little Richard’s legacy at the time.   

Little Richard journeyed to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and the legendary FAME Studios to record his comeback disc, 1970’s The Rill Thing (Grade: B). Produced by Richard, the album featured the minor hit single “Freedom Blues.” Co-credited to longtime friend and musical influence Esquerita, the song found Richard in R&B shouter mode, his vocals riding high in the mix above blasts of sax, Travis Wammack’s fatback guitar, and Roger Hawkins’ steady drumbeats. The song’s socially-conscious lyrics attracted an audience, the single hitting #28 on the R&B chart and inching up to #47 on the pop chart. The album’s second single, the energetic “Greenwood, Mississippi,” performed less well, the rocking tune failing to break on the R&B chart and only rising to a meager #85 on the pop chart.

‘Tis a shame, too, ‘cause Richard’s performance on “Greenwood, Mississippi” is like lightning in a bottle, the singer delivering inspired, soulful vocals around which he layers Wammack’s red-hot, psych-tinged guitar licks, and a solid, almost funky rhythmic track. In 1972 or ’73, they might have garnered FM radio airplay as part of the “Southern rock” revival but, in 1970 with AM radio still relying on bouncy pop songs, programmers largely ignored the adventurous and exciting track. Memphis guitarist Larry Lee’s “Two-Time Loser” rides a similar musical vein, Richard’s bluesy delivery nicely complimented by some fine chicken-picking and an up-tempo R&B groove. Paying homage to the New Orleans club that helped launch his career, Richard’s “Dew Drop Inn” is a reckless, old-school rocker with plenty of whoops and hollers and raging piano-play and honking saxophones.

“Somebody Saw You” is another Southern rock precursor, the band’s strolling rhythms matched by a bit of country twang and Richard’s unvarnished R&B vox. The album’s title track is a real poser, however – when you have one of the greatest, most recognizable vocalists in rock ‘n’ roll and R&B history, why do you want to hide him in a ten-minute instrumental track? That’s what “The Rill Thing” is, ten minutes of Little Richard not singing, nearly a quarter of the album’s running time spent jamming to a funky groove…fine, maybe, for Booker T. & the M.G.’s but not for Little Richard’s first album in three years. It’s not a bad song, just a bad choice – cut the performance in half and stick in another song the quality of “Freedom Blues.”

Luckily, the album finishes with the playful, New Orleans-styled romp “Lovesick Blues” and a high-octane cover of the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” which both showcase Richard’s powerful vocals and underrated keyboard-bashing. Only Jerry Lee Lewis, perhaps, could do as much damage to a piano as Mr. Penniman. This Omnivore reissue includes bonus tracks in the form of the single edit version of the Beatles’ songs as well as promotional radio spots as only Little Richard could deliver them, along with the non-album single “Shake A Hand (If You Can),” a very cool, gospel-tinged slow-rolling R&B jam with a great vocal performance, a swinging rhythm, and funky sax-play. 

Little Richard’s King of Rock and Roll 

 

After the modest success of The Rill Thing, Little Richard returned to L.A. to record the album’s follow-up, the audaciously-titled 1971 release King of Rock and Roll (Grade: B-). Working with his old friend, H.B. Barnham, as producer and, well…who else? Reprise Records oddly didn’t keep any records for the sessions, so there’s no clue to the guitarist or others that played on the album, just Little Richard’s vocals and electric piano. The album cover features Don Peterson’s regal cover photo of Richard sitting on the throne in all his resplendent glory with beams of light shooting out of his head as he reigns at the top of the world. It’s a fitting image for an album comprised largely of contemporary rock and soul covers by artists as diverse as John Fogerty (Creedence Clearwater Revival), the Rolling Stones, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, and Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, among others.

King of Rock and Roll kicks off with the bold, throwback title song, a swaggering R&R honker with a farcical introduction replete with horns and excited shouting before Richard cranks up the amp and belts out his roller-coaster vocals, name-checking peers like Ike & Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, and Aretha Franklin to a soundtrack that evokes his best-known hits of the ‘50s. Little Richard wears his best P.T. Barnum ringmaster clothes throughout the album, introducing songs with the self-mythologizing and braggadocio that would become the singer’s stock-in-trade throughout the ensuing years. The Hoyt Axton-penned Three Dog Night hit “Joy To the World” is provided nearly two minutes of introduction before launching into a perfectly on-point performance that adds gospel-styled harmonies to Richard’s soulful vocals.

A cover of the Stones’ “Brown Sugar” suffers not from a lack of commitment on the part of the legendary vocalist as much from a lackluster arrangement that robs the song of its bite and sidelines Richard’s performance behind mediocre instrumentation and shallow production. We may not know who was playing on the record, but they sure weren’t the Swampers. Richard’s original “In the Name” fares better, offering a more nuanced and soulful vocal performance on a fine lyrical Penniman story-song. Richard’s take on the antique folk-blues standard “Midnight Special” is all over the place, the singer choogling like a rattletrap freight train one moment and pouring it all out with joyful abandon the next.

The lone single released from King of Rock and Roll was “Green Power;” ostensibly penned by Barnham, the song’s chill funk soundtrack and a powerful Little Richard vocal performance that offers both bluster and nuance should have made the song a hit. It seems that, much as with his previous Southern rock exercises from The Rill Thing, Richard was a couple of years ahead of the trends with the engaging “Green Power,” the song failing to make the charts at all. Richard displayed a deft hand with the Hank Williams’ chestnut “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” imbuing his performance with a yearning, emotional edge while his cover of Hank’s “Setting the Woods On Fire” is reimagines the song as a rompin’, stompin’ R&B rave-up with a vocal performance that’s hotter than July, accompanied by roaring saxes and backing harmony vocals.

The Omnivore reissue of King of Rock and Roll offers six additional bonus tracks, including Richard’s original “Still Miss Laza Jane,” which takes flight from what is essentially an a cappella opening to become a rowdy juke-joint rocker. Three instrumental performances – the sizzling “Mississippi,” with its loping keyboards and guitar licks; an instrumental version of “Setting the Woods On Fire,” which does exactly that with a no-holds-barred performance; and the best of them all, the raucous “Open Up the Red Sea,” which showcases Richard’s fierce piano-pounding – all could have replaced the dowdier cover tunes here and made King of Rock and Roll a much better album. It fell short of its predecessor as it was, yielding no hit singles and peaking at a lousy #193 on the Billboard pop chart.

Critical Response

Critical response for Little Richard’s first two Reprise recordings proved to be a mixed bag. In his review for Rolling Stone magazine, critic Joel Selvin effusively wrote that “as incredible as it may seem, Little Richard is as great as he says he is. His new album, the first in three years, is packed with the sort of stuff that all good rock is made of,” Selvin concluding that The Rill Thing was “the most significant chapter in the living legend of the greatest rock and roll singer ever.” By contrast, Rolling Stone critic Vince Aletti would subsequently pan King of Rock and Roll, writing that “the new album is the vocal equivalent of running through the studio audience and just as disappointing for its lack of real audacity behind the pretense of outrageousness. Much of the album seems designed around the Talk Show Personality rather than the Singer, giving it the sticky veneer of a jive extravaganza.”

These Omnivore Recordings reissues feature nice CD booklets with extensive and informative liner notes by blues and R&B historian Bill Dahl, who places these albums in proper context in regards to Little Richard’s overall legacy. Both albums have been out-of-print for over a decade, and were reissued only sporadically before that, so it’s nice to see them available again. The singer’s third and final Reprise album, The Second Coming, would reunite Little Richard with producer “Bumps” Blackwell and familiar faces like drummer Earl Palmer and saxophonist Lee Allen but when it, too, failed to chart, it looked like Richard’s ‘comeback’ had stalled.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Although Little Richard’s career would rise and fall throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, his status as a rock ‘n’ roll innovator and originator was set in stone with his 1986 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. With his death earlier this year at the age of 87, only the seemingly immortal Jerry Lee Lewis remains from that groundbreaking group of early rock ‘n’ rollers that would launch a musical revolution and influence generations of musicians to follow. There’s unlikely to be another performer like Little Richard to come our way again... (Omnivore Recordings, released September 18th, 2020)

Buy the CDs from Amazon.com:
Little Richard's The Rill Thing
Little Richard's King of Rock and Roll

Archive Review: Billy Bragg’s Worker’s Playtime (2006 reissue)

“If you’ve got a blacklist, I want to be on it…”

By the time of the 1989 stateside release of Worker’s Playtime, punk-inspired folkie Billy Bragg had found an unlikely measure of commercial success in the UK and had developed a loyal cult audience in the United States. Whereas Bragg’s first two albums, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg (1984) and Talking With the Taxman About Poetry (1986), featured many politically-charged songs delivered from the singer’s left-leaning perspective, they also offered up intelligent romantic commentary such as “Levi Stubb’s Tears” and “Love Gets Dangerous.” It is the tension of this dichotomy – the soapbox rabble-rouser shouting political rhetoric and the hopeless Celtic romantic singing love songs – that drives Worker’s Playtime.

Billy Bragg’s Worker’s Playtime

Working for the first time with noted producer Joe Boyd (Nick Drake, Fairport Convention), Bragg pretties up many of the songs on Worker’s Playtime with finely tuned melodies and lush instrumentation, a stark contrast to his sparse previous work. The angry young man of Bragg’s early EPs and debut album has, a half-decade later, mellowed somewhat, allowing the romantic songwriter to come to the foreground. The result is a superb collection of material like “She’s Got A New Spell,” the melancholy “Valentine’s Day Is Over” (featuring just Bragg’s voice, guitar and a piano), and the rollicking, self-effacing “Life With The Lions.”

The most striking moment here, however, is “Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards,” the song building from Bragg’s lone piano-backed vocals to a swelling crescendo of choral voices and a grand finish. It’s the defining moment of Worker’s Playtime, an affirmation of the singer’s social consciousness. Even so, the song displays Bragg’s growing disenchantment with politics as well as his wry sense of humor. Although proclaiming that “revolution is just a T-shirt away,” Bragg asks, “will politics get me the sack?” In the end, Bragg’s surmises “start your own revolution and cut out the middle man,” evoking Dylan’s “don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters….”

She’s Got A New Spell

Worker’s Playtime proved to be commercially questionable, fans and critics alike seemingly confused by the album’s tentative nature and artistic contradictions between the “new” Billy Bragg (stronger production, more instrumentation) and the “old” (guitar and vocals). In reality, the album’s sublime strength lies entirely in its uneasy nature, Worker’s Playtime showcasing Bragg’s evolution from street busker to self-aware musician. Somewhere between album number one and number three, Bragg realized that there might actually be a future to this music thing.

The material on the bonus disc of this excellent Yep Roc reissue – studio demos and outtakes – supports this critical perspective, showing Bragg experimenting with different ways to express his music. The demo of “She’s Got A New Spell,” with the Attractions’ Bruce Thomas and the Jeff Beck Group’s Mickey Waller, evinces a rock aesthetic while “The Short Answer” sounds like low-key Graham Parker, complete with the Rumour’s Martin Belmont on guitar. Other material, such as a stark, powerful cover of the Jam’s “That’s Entertainment” and an uncharacteristically soulful live reading of Tim Hardin’s classic “Reason To Believe” display different facets of Bragg’s talents.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

In retrospect, Worker’s Playtime is a solid collection of songs that served as an invaluable stepping stone to Bragg’s work on albums like Don’t Try This At Home as well as his collaboration with the band Wilco on Mermaid Avenue. It is in these grooves that you can hear Bragg becoming comfortable in his role as artist and musician, the album an important part of the artist’s overall catalog and an influential release in its own right. (Yep Roc Records, 2006 reissue)

Review originally published by Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog

Buy the CD on Amazon.com: Billy Bragg’s Worker’s Playtime

Archive Review: Billy Bragg's Life’s A Riot With Spy vs Spy (2006)

When originally released in 1983, the seven-song EP Life’s A Riot With Spy vs Spy earned Billy Bragg a reputation as a historical curiosity. After all, punk rock was still hanging on while new wave and Goth had begun to excite U.K. audiences. Bragg, on the other hand, was a wandering English troubadour, singing of love and justice and freedom…definitely an anachronism in the modern, trend-driven, media-savvy world.

At that time (as now), if you weren’t a beautiful actor/model/coverboy-girl with a set of safe, bland, over-produced songs, you need not apply. Bragg didn’t fit into that mold, relying instead on talent, attitude and sheer guts in his attempt to make life-changing music.

Billy Bragg’s Life’s A Riot With Spy vs Spy

Somehow, Bragg succeeded. Never a commercial artist, but always an influential one, his creative emphasis was on the lyrics, especially with his earliest work, which eschewed niceties such as production values and lush instrumentation in favor of the word, the voice and a guitar. The result, on these seven songs, was simply devastating. A talented wordsmith with a taste for the bizarre turn of the phrase, Bragg had a sharp eye for the absurdities of modern life and relationships, and a satirical wit that sinks a razor-sharp rapier into the jugular of the subjects he aims at. Bragg’s political material voiced the most radical worldview since the early days of the Clash (Joe Strummer a major influence on Bragg’s songwriting), the songs made even more effective by the sparse musical accompaniment. Bragg’s love songs are both emotional and bittersweet, never maudlin, and infected with a contagious romanticism more common to the folk genre than to punk rock.

In the thirty-three years since its original release, Life’s A Riot With Spy vs Spy has aged well, songs like “A New England” and “The Busy Girl Buys Beauty” benefiting from the timeless style of Bragg’s writing and performances. The Yep Roc Records reissue of the EP features the original seven-song EP on one disc, and a second “bonus” disc of unreleased rarities, alternative versions and a great cover of John Cale’s “Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend.” Personally, I would have liked to have seen the label include the four songs from Bragg’s Between the Wars EP here, to flesh out the first disc somewhat. However, this is a minor cavil, and since Bragg personally oversaw the Yep Roc reissue series, it was his choice, not mine…

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

In 1985, when the vinyl version of Life’s A Riot With Spy vs Spy hit these shores, I wrote that Bragg had “a great artistic future,” and that although he would never become a “big star,” he would always be an “interesting and dedicated performer.” Through the years since, Bragg has never proved me wrong. (Yep Roc Records, 2006 reissue)

Review originally published by Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Billy Bragg’s Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy

Archive Review: Billy Bragg's Talking With the Taxman About Poetry (2006)

“But if you think all I do is press words other people use into my service Comrades, come here, let me give you my pen and you can yourselves write your own verses!” – Victor Mayakovsky, 1926

By the time of the 1986 release of Talking With the Taxman About Poetry, Billy Bragg’s self-professed “difficult” third album, the artist had become the poet laureate of the musical left. A tireless troubadour of socialist leanings, Bragg placed more fervor, energy, passion and emotion in a single phrase or turn of a word than most artists are capable of mustering throughout an entire album.

After a couple of critically acclaimed British EPs and a full-length indie album, Talking With the Taxman About Poetry represented Bragg’s major label debut in the United States. Although Bragg had softened some of the rough edges that endeared audiences to his early work, the lyrical arguments presented on Bragg’s third album proved no less passionate, his penchant for radical polemics no less zealous.

Billy Bragg’s Talking With the Taxman About Poetry

Whereas Bragg’s early songs featured only his thickly-accented vocals and an accompanying guitar, Taxman was fleshed out with a few additional strings, a horn or two, and even an occasional background harmony. The music remained stark, simple and effective, Bragg’s folk-punk musical style serving to underline the importance of his lyrics. First and foremost, Bragg is a poet; a hopeless romantic with a revolutionary bent (not unlike Byron), whose lyrics deal almost exclusively with love and politics – not an entirely inappropriate combination, for one inevitably involves the other. Bragg aims his pen mercilessly at the governments, institutions and the societies that would oppress the seemingly unflagging human spirit.

Bragg champions the worker as a noble creature, envisions romantic love as the Holy Grail and, at times, jabs so deep in the heart with his lyrics and often times brutal lyrics that he is able to invoke the tears/passion he himself obviously feels. The recent Yep Roc Records two-disc reissue of Talking With the Taxman About Poetry includes the entire album, remastered and spiffed up for the digital age, along with a bonus disc of rarities and inspired covers. Songs like Gram Parson’s “Sin City,” Woody Guthrie’s “Deportees,” and Smokey Robinson’s “The Tracks of My Tears” reveal the depth and scope of Bragg’s musical influences and display the artist’s charm and joy in music-making.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Even after 20 years and better than half a dozen album releases, Billy Bragg remains an acquired taste. His music has never been a commercial commodity, although he has enjoyed a hit song or two along the way. As this critic wrote at the time of this album’s release, Bragg “is one of the most important artists to enter the rock arena in years – perhaps the most political folksinger since young Bobby Dylan strode into Greenwich Village with a guitar in hand.”

Bragg remains a man with a message, a poet of uncanny vision and a socially concerned artist whose work remains as fresh and relevant today, in the days of Bush and Blair, as it was during the Reagan/Thatcher era two decades ago. Much of today’s “folk revival,” the acid-folk music of artists like Devendra Banhart, owes a great debt to Bragg, an artist who, inspired by the music of Joe Strummer, would go on to create inspiring music of his own. (Yep Roc Records, 2006 reissue)

Review originally published by Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Billy Bragg’s Talking With the Taxman About Poetry

Archive Review: Nils Lofgren's Wonderland (2007)

There will be absolutely no argument about this, people – Nils Lofgren’s “Across the Tracks” should have been a mondo-huge radio hit. Period. I’ll hear no debate, no dispute, no qualifying…MONDO-HUGE radio hit! I’ve got the charts and pie graphs and seismograph readings to prove my point…and if that doesn’t convince you (wink, wink), I also have a ten-pound sledge and an itchy trigger-finger. Yeah, I thought so…

By the time of the 1983 release of Wonderland, Nils Lofgren had enjoyed status as a rock-n-roll wunderkind for over a decade, beginning with his brief tenure as part of Crazy Horse backing Neil Young, and continuing through his work with cult favorites Grin. Nils had half-a-dozen major label solo recordings under his belt by this time, but he was also on his second record label in only eight years, and had been unable to break free of the increasingly crowded rock guitarist pack. Lofgren seemed doomed to “also-ran” status for the remainder of his career, forever fated to being a critic’s darling. Critical acclaim doesn’t put beans on the table, however; you have to sell some records at some point in time.

Nils Lofgren’s Wonderland

Ultimately, when standing at the crossroads, Lofgren chose to put his career on the back-burner and take up Bruce Springsteen’s offer to join the E Street Band after the departure of popular guitarist Steve Van Zandt. The decision to take a walk down E Street made Lofgren a wealthy man, but one has to wonder if he has ever thought about what might have happened had he chosen to continue pursuing the brass ring on his own. Through the years, critics have pointed their collective fingers at various reasons for Lofgren’s failure to break through, from lack of label support and the unflinching ignorance of radio to the typically shallow production of the artist’s albums and even to Lofgren’s own lack of personality.

Wonderland was the last album that Lofgren recorded before jumping on the whirlwind Born In the U.S.A. tour with his New Jersey pal Bruce, and it stands tall among his best work. Contrary to what many pundits assert, Wonderland proves to this critic that Lofgren has no shortage of personality. A varied and heartfelt collection of material that was well-rehearsed and basically captured live in the studio, the album provides Lofgren with the guitar showcase that he had always deserved.

The aforementioned “Across the Tracks” is an energetic tale of star-crossed lovers, Lofgren’s spirited vocals complimented by a heavy drumbeat, an undeniably catchy melodic hook, great Romeo & Juliet lyrics and some damn fine guitar work. Edgar Winter throws in barely-audible backing vocals. Unlike some of the other songs on Wonderland, “Across the Tracks” doesn’t suffer from period production – this is a timeless rocker that plays across the decades. Kudos to Andy Newmark for his killer stompin’ on the drum kit…

Into the Night

Ole Nils switches gears with “Into the Night,” a moody, atmospheric semi-ballad that displays Lofgren’s abilities as a crooner, his passionate lyrics matched with a lush arrangement and subtle six-string flourishes. “I Wait For You” is a larger-than-life, Springsteenesque mid-tempo rocker with stellar fretwork, notes flying everywhere as the drums ring clear like a jackhammer, Kevin McCormick’s throbbing bass tossing the boys a lifeline to pull them out of this emotional quicksand. The title cut is a syncopated, slightly Latin-flavored tune that reminds me of NYC; with backing vocals by the underrated, can’t-outstay-her-welcome-in-my-house Louise Goffin, the song is an enchanting romp through, well, Wonderland. 

Wonderland was produced by Lofgren with his long-time bandmates McCormick and Newmark, and the work they did was ‘magnifico,’ accentuating their instrumental strengths and Nils’ solid songwriting chops while pushing Lofgren’s sometimes too-slight vocals to new heights. “Confident Girl” is a great example of the chemistry between the three, Lofgren’s guitar blazing with laser-like intensity while his vocals speak of a confidence that was sometimes lacking from his earlier work. Throw in some nice three-part harmonies and the one-two rhythmic knockout punch and “Confident Girl” could have easily been the second hit single from the album. Goffin also chimes in on the reggae-splashed “Everybody Wants,” Lofgren channeling his inner-Garland (i.e. Jeffreys) on this warm, infectious tune.

That’s not to say that there’s not a little chaff among Wonderland’s many pearls. “Deadline” might be a great song live, but as captured in the studio, it just stinks up the joint. The guys fell prey to the “sound de jour” and mucked up a song with an otherwise scorching guitar solo with new wavy synth punctuation that sounds hopelessly out-of-date a quarter-century later. Plus, Newmark’s delicious bass-heavy drumming is tossed aside in favor of a tinnier, repetitive, ‘radio-friendly’ snare drum beat that would induce a migraine in even the heartiest of listeners. The entire song sounds not dissimilar to the dreck produced by a lot of major label bands at the time, all trying to get their stuff on MTV. Ditto for “Lonesome Ranger,” a meager ballad that wastes Carly Simon’s perfectly good backing vocals in the creation of a funky, plasticized grab for airplay; there’s nothing here to differentiate it from a dozen other, slicker period bands that don’t have a tenth of this trio’s talent.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Overall, Wonderland signals the beginning of an evolution in Nils Lofgren’s creative direction. He would make one more very good (and similar) solo album in 1985’s Flip before taking the next six years away from recording. When Nils came back to the studio, he had matured as both an artist and a guitarist. He had toured the world as part of the biggest, baddest instrumental ensemble that has ever graced a stage in the E Street Band, taking part in marathon live shows that would test the talents of any musician.

By the time of 1991’s Silver Lining, Lofgren had better than two decades under his belt and his vision was clear, his influences fully absorbed. Although Lofgren’s creative output has been infrequent in the 24 years since Wonderland, resigned mostly to live albums and performances, there is no doubt that this album stands as a high water mark for the guitarist’s astounding career, an often overlooked album well deserving of another listen. (American Beat Records, released April 3, 2007)

Review originally published by Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Nils Lofgren’s Wonderland

Archive Review: Dead Kennedys' Give Me Convenience OR Give Me Death (1987/2001)

Although often overshadowed by legendary outfits like Black Flag, X or the Misfits, the Dead Kennedys were arguably one of the most important and influential punk bands in the history of the genre. They were the most political of the new breed, mixing a radical worldview with a tongue-in-cheek lyrical style and uncompromising hardcore punk chops to create a thought provoking and unique, hilariously satirical sound.

A late ’80s PMRC-inspired obscenity trial didn’t shut the band up but rather managed to censor Amerikka’s most infamous punk rock troublemakers by breaking the band apart. A decade later, the band members have gone through another (very public) break-up, with East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride and D.H. Peligro wresting control of much of the Dead Kennedy’s catalog away from vocalist and songwriter Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label.

Give Me Convenience OR Give Me Death is one of those former AT titles, reissued by Manifesto Records with the dissenting band member’s blessing; Biafra has disavowed the reissue series entirely. A sort of “greatest hits” compilation, Give Me Convenience OR Give Me Death is a great place for the uninitiated to sample the Dead Kennedys’ experience firsthand. Some of the band’s best material is collected here, including early songs like “Police Truck,” “California Uber Alles” and “Holiday In Cambodia.” A killer cover of “I Fought The Law” shows the band’s retro chops while a Biafra rant, “Night Of The Living Rednecks” foreshadows Jello’s spoken word career.

Old hardcore DK fans probably already have this title on vinyl or CD, but the reissue does offer cleaner sound via digital remastering and a 32-page reproduction of the album’s accompanying booklet, including song lyrics and Winston Smith artwork. I’d recommend Give Me Convenience OR Give Me Death for new fans, and would suggest that if you like this stuff, you should check out Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, the band’s best album and the lone title still available on Alternative Tentacles. (Manifesto Records, 2001)

Review originally published by Jersey Beat zine, 2001

Buy the CD from Amazon: Dead Kennedys' Give Me Convenience OR Give Me Death

Archive Review: Alice Cooper's Welcome To My Nightmare (1975/2002)

When Alice Cooper, the band, broke up in the mid-‘70s due to the rigors of stardom (insert imagination here), many thought that Alice Cooper, the man, was history. Alice was, after all, an honest-to-god freakshow, the controversial artist behind such future classics as “School’s Out,” “Billion Dollar Babies,” and “I’m Eighteen.” Without the backing of strong musicians such as Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton, cried the critics and other observers, Cooper was on his way to becoming nothing more than an interesting footnote in the checkered history of rock ‘n’ roll.

The 1975 release of Alice’s solo debut, Welcome To My Nightmare, proved the critics wrong and provided Cooper with some degree of vindication. With the benefit of hindsight, we critical types now consider Cooper to be one of the legends of rock ‘n’ roll, a heavy metal godfather who has influenced artists such as Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie, among many others. Back in ’75, though, teenage whiz kids such as myself couldn’t have cared less about the ruminations of a bunch of erudite college grads slumming in the ghetto of rock criticism. Alice Freakin’ Cooper had a new album out and for hundreds of thousands of high school stoners, rockers, and underachievers, that was good enough for us!

Conceived by Cooper as a concept album (which tied in with the effects-laden stage show and wildly successful tour that accompanied Welcome To My Nightmare), the album both blazed new trails and also revisited classic Cooper-styled songs. It introduced Cooper the ‘crooner’, yielding a monster hit in the ballad “Only Woman Bleed” that won the artist a new distaff audience and opened the door for power ballads by contemporaries like Ozzie and a slew of ‘80s hair bands. Welcome To My Nightmare also further defined horror rock with monster cuts like the title track, “The Black Widow” (complete with children’s choir) and “Cold Ethyl,” with narration provided by the crown price of terror, Vincent Price. “Department of Youth” was a stylistic throwback to Cooper’s previous band sound, with Detroit rocker Johnny “Bee” Badanjek delivering a solid drumbeat behind Cooper’s vocals. To replace the muscular sound of his long-standing band, Cooper recruited Lou Reed’s rock ‘n’ roll animals, guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, who stacked up fiery riffs like so much sawmill fodder throughout the songs on Welcome To My Nightmare. 

The remastered Rhino reissue of Welcome To My Nightmare brings new brilliance to the sound of this classic album and adds previously unreleased live versions of “Devil’s Food,” “Cold Ethyl,” and “The Awakening” culled from an ABC television special. Manic liner notes from Cooper biographer Jeffrey Morgan and a handful of rare photos round out an exceptional package. Although I personally would like to have seen Rhino begin their restoration of the Alice Cooper catalog with early albums like Love It To Death or Killer, the work that they’ve done with Welcome To My Nightmare and, previously, Billion Dollar Babies, is nevertheless impressive. If your knowledge of Alice Cooper is limited to his early band work or more recent metal horror albums, you owe it to yourself to check out Welcome To My Nightmare. (Rhino Records)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™, 2002

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Alice Cooper's Welcome To My Nightmare

Soul Asylum’s While You Were Out LP and Clam Dip & Other Delights EP reissued

Before becoming multi-Platinum™ selling major label rock stars during the 1990s, Minneapolis, Minnesota’s Soul Asylum had spent much of the previous decade plugging away in the indie-rock trenches. The band often struggled to escape the long shadows cast by critic’s darlings like the Replacements and Hüsker Dü but, truth is, Soul Asylum was a tough-as-nails rock ‘n’ roll outfit that recorded three fine albums (as well as a cassette and EP) for their independent hometown label Twin/Tone Records before getting their shot at the brass ring from A&M Records.

While You Were Out was Soul Asylum’s third album released during 1986 (following their sophomore effort Made To Be Broken and the aforementioned tape, a cassette-only rarities compilation). Produced by Chris Osgood of local band Suicide Commandos, While You Were Out saw the band begin to transcend their punk roots towards becoming bona fide rock ‘n’ roll contenders.

The band would record a final EP for Twin/Tone before jumping into the major leagues; titled Clam Dip & Other Delights, the EP’s six-songs were a scattershot affair meant to fulfill their contract and provide a good time for the band members in the studio. It would end up becoming a longtime fan favorite. On January 18th, 2019 Omnivore Recordings will reissue both Made To Be Broken and Clam Dip & Other Delights in their entirety on a single CD along with seven bonus tracks, four of which are previously unreleased.

The set includes the full track lists of both the U.K. and U.S. versions of the EP and has been produced by Twin/Tone Records co-founder and Replacements manager Peter Jesperson along with Grammy® winning producer Cheryl Pawelski. This expanded reissue of Made To Be Broken features previously-unpublished photos, artwork, and flyers as well as liner notes by Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster.

Along with the label’s reissues of Say What You Will…Everything Can Happen and Made To Be Broken on CD earlier this year, Omnivore has nicely documented Soul Asylum’s raucous early years for both long-suffering Soul Asylum fans as well as for newcomers looking to rediscover the band’s indie rock roots.

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Soul Asylum’s While You Were Out/Clam Dip & Other Delights

Track listing:

While You Were Out
1. Freaks
2. Carry On
3. No Man’s Land
4. Crashing Down
5. The Judge
6. Sun Don’t Shine
7. Closer To The Stars
8. Never Too Soon
9. Miracle Mile
10. Lap Of Luxury
11. Passing Sad Daydream
12. Take It To The Root (Jam Mix) *

Clam Dip & Other Delights
13. Just Plain Evil
14. Chains
15. Secret No More
16. Move Over
17. P-9
18. Juke Box Hero
19. Artificial Heart
20. Take It To The Root
21. Saving Grace *
22. Forever And A Day *
23. There It Goes *
24. Artificial Heart (demo) *

* bonus tracks