Archive Review: Grateful Dead’s Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 (2008)

Let’s be as honest as churchmice here, shall we? The corpse that once was the Grateful Dead has long since been flayed, flogged, and laid to rest along with the hopes and dreams of so many ‘60s-era flower children. With better than fifty – count ‘em! – fifty live albums on the shelf (many consisting of two or three discs, or more), even the Dead’s long-standing reputation as a great performing outfit that typically underperformed in the studio is questionable in light of the growing body of evidence.

In the annals of hardcore Grateful Dead fans (a/k/a “Deadheads,” which the Reverend’s dictionary defines as “one who has smoked so many flowers as to make their musical judgment suspect), no live performance by the band is more legendary that the Dead’s journey to the sands of Egypt during late 1978 to play three nights in front of the Great Pyramid. Outside of the historical significance of the performances, there’s little here to recommend, however. A two-CD and one-DVD set in a nifty fold-out pop-up package with images of the pyramids, Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 is a document of the band’s experience, but offers little else.

With audio culled from two of the Egyptian nights for the CDs, and video from one night’s concert on the DVD, the band sleepwalks through performances of songs from the upcoming Shakedown Street album along with a few older chestnuts. The usual spark of the Dead’s free-form live performances seems to be missing here, however, and highlights are few and far between. The band gets behind a cover of the New Orleans Cajun classic “Iko Iko,” slowing down the pace to that of a strutting fly-by with a loping groove and a couple of solos full of rich tones. “I Need A Miracle” offers a few hot licks threaded throughout the longform jam, but an obligatory performance of “Truckin’” suffers from a too-mellow vibe, reducing the song’s innate anarchic spirit to a hearty bassline and rushed vocals. Sadly, much of the rest of the album’s 18 tracks (and their DVD doppelgangers) are entirely somnambulant.   

Don’t get me wrong here folks, and please don’t deluge Blurt editor Fred with barrels of hate mail – the Reverend simply adores GD albums like Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, Blues For Allah, even In the Dark – but methinks that you should spend your lunch money on one of those stellar efforts rather than waste your hard-earned coin on this snoozefest. You’ll thank me later… (Rhino Records, released September 30th, 2008)

Review originally published by Blurt magazine...

Short Rounds: Miller Anderson, The Heartsleeves, The Nervous Eaters, Old Town Crier, Orang-Utan, Roxercat & Bob Weir (March 2023)

Stuff I’m listening to this month…

Miller Anderson – Bright City (Esoteric Records, U.K.)
Scottish guitarist Miller Anderson was part of the British blooze boom of the late ‘60s and while he’s best known for his tenure with the Keef Hartley Band (four LPs from 1969-71), he also played with Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack, and Dog Soldier during the 1970s and ‘80s and recorded with mates like Ian Hunter, Jon Lord (Deep Purple), and Dave Cousins (Strawbs). Anderson has also pursued an on-again, off-again solo career that began with this 1971 album, Bright City. Although ostensibly a bluesman, Anderson displays a deft hand here at several genres, like the proggy Goth of “Alice Mercy (To Whom It May Concern),” which carries its Procol Harum influences nicely, and ends with a folkie vibe that could easily pass for an Incredible String Band jam. The album’s title track offers a dreamy soundscape in the best British folk tradition, with a lofty string arrangement and Anderson’s filigree guitarplay.   

Bright City isn’t flawless, however…“The Age of Progress” is an underproduced trifle with tinny harpsichord and soulful backing vocals, the song never really picking a lane and sticking with it. “Grey Broken Morning” is a little too jazzbo for my tastes, crossing lanes into middle-of-the-road turf with syrupy instrumentation and treacly backing vox. Much better is the nearly eight-minute, fiercely-rockin’ “Hight Tide, High Water,” which fits all of its kitchen sink styles together into a singular, impressive performance that leans prog-rock but masterfully incorporates elements of blues, funk, and hard rock all fueled by Anderson’s nimble fretwork and a fluid line. Friends and former bandmates like guitarist Neil Hubbard (Juicy Lucy), bassist Gary Thain (Uriah Heep), keyboardist Mick Weaver (Wynder K. Frog), and flautist Lyn Dobson (Soft Machine) contribute to the album, but Bright City is otherwise a showcase for Anderson’s often-underrated six-string skills. Grade: B-   BUY!

The Heartsleeves – So Far, So What EP (self-produced)
Nashville’s Scott Feinstein has been kicking around the scene for so long that it’s easy to take the guy for granted. A member of popular local 1980s-era rockers Shadow 15, this recently-released five-song EP represents the first new music from Feinstein in memory. Clocking in at a too-short fifteen minutes, the tunes on So Far, So What nevertheless smack you in the face with what feels like an hour of high-octane, ultra-energetic rock ‘n’ roll and power-pop. EP-opener “Angie” is a ramshackle rocker with roots in the Replacements and absolutely no glass ceiling, with delightfully-discordant guitars and bold drumbeats courtesy of Music City veteran Brad Pemberton. “Things” follows a similar blueprint, tho’ maybe even rowdier, with a melodic edge partially driven by Feinstein’s fine vocal performance and stunning Bob Mould-styled six-string overkill.

The underlying melody of “Understanding Jane” is carpet-bombed with pulse-pounding, explosive, smothering instrumentation – a gleefully wicked, groove, indeed! – while “The Warning” swerves a bit, with ubiquitous local talent Jonathan Bright taking over the drum stool. Bright brings a different tempo to what is a more considered, but no less powerful rocker, but the EP closer “Hate” hits the auditory canal like Trent Reznor dropping acid with Timothy Leary, the performance a virtual chokehold of flexed muscle and tense sinew with tortured vocals and devastating instrumentation that lingers. It’s quite a stylistic departure from the previous songs, but also a showcase for the immense and often-overlooked talents of Scott Feinstein and fellow travelers. In the wise words of my pal Jeffersün Jëbëdiah Schmützig Schanchëz, “BUY IT! You can thank me later…” Grade: A   BUY!

The Nervous Eaters – Monsters + Angels (Wicked Cool Records)
Beloved Boston rockers the Nervous Eaters – whose hard melodic sound has more in common with, say, the Del Lords than with the Sex Pistols – were ‘one-and-done’ with a single 1980 Elektra Records album recorded by an unsympathetic producer (the better-suited Ric Ocasek was proposed by the band but rejected by the label); ultimately underpromoted to death by a clueless label. The band has soldiered on with founder, singer, songwriter, and guitarist Steve Cataldo carrying the torch through various incarnations and indie LPs like 1986’s Hot Steel and Acid. This 21st century version of the Nervous Eaters was formed in 2018 by Cataldo and a brace of Boston rock veterans, who recorded Monsters + Angels during the pandemic year. Released by Little Steven’s Wicked Cool Records, the foursome cranks through ten red-hot tunes that are guaranteed to scratch your rock ‘n’ roll itch. If FM radio wasn’t such a barren landscape of spineless cretin programming, Nervous Eaters tunes like the hard-rockin’ “Tear Me Up” or the throwback power-pop of “Superman’s Hands” would be dominating the airwaves. If guitar-happy, harmony-rich, big beat classic rock is your jam, you owe it to yourself to (re)discover the Nervous Eaters. Grade: A   BUY!   

Old Town Crier – A Night with Old Town Crier (self-produced)
Old Town Crier is the solo musical project of Middleborough, Massachusetts multi-instrumental talent Jim Lough, who has a pair of fine previous EPs under his belt. I wrote last year about You, a benefit EP raising funds for progressive political candidates. The results were so successful that Lough decided to release a full-length live album, A Night with Old Town Crier, with half of the proceeds donated to The Pine Street Inn, a charitable organization located in Boston with the worthy mission to end homelessness. Joined by talented young musicians like guitarist Garrett Jones, bassist Alex Bilodeau, keyboardist JennHwan Wong, drummer Avery Logan, and saxophonist Stephen Byth, Lough and band run through eight rockin’ tunes that could have just as easily been recorded in the early ‘70s as in the early 2020s.

Old Town Crier pursues a throwback sound that is famously diverse with a contemporary feel and nary a shred of musical revisionism. Reminiscent of such genre-blending, melting-pot bands as the Charlatans and Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, Old Town Crier mixes rock, classic R&B, blues, jazz, and Americana in a huge cast iron cauldron and lets it boil over for our entertainment. For instance, “Before You Came Along” displays elements of 1950s-styled rock with period R&B, Lough’s soulful vocals accompanied by honky-tonk piano licks and blasts of icy saxophone. “Come Home Caroline” offers a more measured performance, cool blue sax providing a jazzy intro to a heartfelt love song with plaintive vocals and gorgeous instrumentation while “Della May” reminds of Leon Russell with its bluesy, jazz-flecked piano, loping bass lines, and mournful sax with Lough’s effective heartbreak vox the icing on the cake.

My fave performance on A Night with Old Town Crier is the jubilant “Everybody’s Somebody’s Baby,” a jaunty rocker with an old-school vibe and shades of jazzy ‘60s R&B. It’s just a great, up-tempo love song with simple yet brilliant lyrics, rampaging saxophone, big beat drums, and an overall “feel good” finish to the album. If you’d like to hear some fun, finely-crafted, and excellently-played music and support a good cause at the same time, head on over to Bandcamp and check out A Night with Old Town Crier. Grade: A   BUY! 

Orang-Utan – Orang-Utan (Sommor Records, Spain)
From musical trailblazers like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and Cream to one-shot wonders like Killing Floor and Black Cat Bones, England in the late ‘60s was wall-to-wall with blooze bands grasping at the brass ring. Orang-Utan (née Hunter) were one such outfit, a talented bunch o’ young punters who got a raw deal, literally drawn up in a back-alley by a fast-talkin’ producer-cum-label impresario, resulting in this lone self-titled album released in 1971*. There’s a lot of promise in these tunes, which fall into a psych-blues groove fueled by Mick Clarke’s imaginative fretwork and drummer Jeff Seopardi’s ahead-of-his-time songwriting chops. But there’s also a presage of skillful progginess that suggests a future evolution of the band’s sound that would never be. R.I.Y.L. Cactus, Mountain, The Groundhogs, et al. Grade: B+   BUY!

* Due to its obscurity and stateside-only release, Orang-Utan, the album, has long been a mid-priced collectible; an original vinyl copy in good condition will run you $50 or more. This 2022 CD reissue will cost you much less, and is the only authorized reissue of the album after decades of dodgy releases that didn’t pay the band a dime in royalties.

Roxercat – Pearls EP (9 Dog Records, digital release)
When I reviewed The Fortunate Few: The Rock Opera a couple of years ago, I mentioned that Nashville rock veteran Price Jones left the singing on the album’s songs to the capable hands of Ryan Greenawalt and Talisha Holmes. This evidently struck a chord with the talented singer, songwriter, and guitarist as, for Jones’ latest project with her new band Roxercat, she’s taken back the microphone with happy results. Collaborating again with legendary jazz guitarist Stan Lassiter and bassist Bill Francis, with various guest musicians pitching in, the six-song EP Pearls offers up gems of shimmering, gorgeous, guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll.

The title track is a lovely, poetic song rife with imagery built around Lassister’s fluid guitar lines and Jones’ yearning vocals. “Crime” adds a bit of funk to the EP’s rockin’ framework, with Jones’ playful, buoyant vox doing the heavy lifting alongside a foot-shuffling, booty-shakin’ rhythm. “Baby I Tried” is a more traditional love song with guitar lines that perfectly capture the song’s emotions, Jones’ heartbroken lyrics backed by soulful harmony vocals, while “I Changed Today” highlights Lassiter and Francis’s jazz roots with a complex soundtrack that includes a few hard rock riffs and some funky Booker T-styled keyboard flourishes, atop of which ride Jones’ defiant vocals. The instrumentation is top-notch throughout the six songs on Pearls – creative, imaginative and, at times, edgy and adventuresome while Jones’ lyrical chops are as strong as ever.

As they were released digitally rather than in physical form, it’s hard to actually buy these tracks – only two songs are available from Amazon – but trippy, too-cool videos for four of the EP’s six songs are available on the Roxercat website and YouTube, and you can stream the entire Pearls EP on services like Spotify and Apple Music. The Rev sez “check it out!” Grade: A     

Bob Weir – Ace [50th anniversary edition] (Rhino Records)
Although Grateful Dead singer, songwriter, and guitarist Bob Weir wasn’t the first of the band’s members to release a solo album (Jerry Garcia’s Garcia beat him to the punch by a few months), Weir’s 1972 debut Ace was nevertheless the better-received of the initial Dead bandmember’s solo efforts, establishing Weir’s status as a standalone talent and Garcia’s creative equal. Although the core members of the band (Garcia, bassist Phil Lesh, drummer Bill Kreutzmann, and keyboardist Keith Godchaux) contribute in the studio, Ace is undeniably Weir’s show, the guitarist singing and co-writing all eight of the album’s songs (five of ‘em with hippie lyricist and Dead friend John Perry Barlow), several of which would subsequently become enduring staples of the full band’s nightly set list.

Nor is it a major surprise that a lot of the songs on Ace follow a similar roots-rock, country, and blues blueprint as the Dead’s 1970 American Beauty LP, Weir seemingly expanding on musical ideas he originally had for songs like “Sugar Magnolia.” There are a lot of great songs on Ace, from familiar tunes like “Mexicali Blues,” “One More Saturday Night,” and “Playing In the Band” (all also performed by the Dead) to overlooked gems like “Black-Throated Wind” and “Looks Like Rain.” This 50th anniversary reissue has been expanded to two discs, the second comprised of a 2022 live performance of Ace by Weir & Wolf Brothers with guests like Tyler Childers and Brittney Spencer. While the second disc is entertaining, revisiting the songs with younger albeit equally-talented musicians, there’s no denying the magic and immediacy of the original Ace, which launched Weir’s solo career and remains the best album the Grateful Dead never released. Grade: A   BUY!

Previously on That Devil Music.com:

Short Rounds, September 2022: Buzzcocks, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Charlie Daniels & Friends, Will Hoge, The Pretty Things & Walter Trout

Short Rounds, July 2022: Shemekia Copeland, Jade Warrior, Gwil Owen, Prince & the Revolution, Sour Ops, Supersonic Blues Machine & ‘Heroes and Villains’

Short Rounds, December 2021: Calidoscopio, Deep Purple, Tom Guerra, The Specials, The Wildhearts, Sami Yaffa & ‘I'm A Freak Baby 3’

New Music Monthly: July 2020 releases

It's July and summer is in full-swing, and while many labels have pulled new LPs from their heavy-hitters until the fall, when things may have calmed down a bit, that doesn't mean that there isn't a bunch of groovy tunes coming our way this month. There are new albums from Americana legends Ray Wylie Hubbard (recorded with friends like Joe Walsh and Larkin Poe) and the Jayhawks, 1980s rock icons the Pretenders and the Psychedelic Furs; as well as prog-rock from Steve Howe, hip-hop from The Streets, and post-punk from Gang of Four, to name but a few. The archival releases are hopping, too, with R&B classics from James Booker and Irma Thomas, a long-overdue compilation album from Bill Kirchen, a long overdue reissue of the too-cool-for-school Flamin' Groovies album Now, and much more!
 
Release dates are probably gonna change and nobody tells me when they do. If you’re interesting in buying an album, just hit the ‘Buy!’ link to get it from Amazon.com...it’s just that damn easy! Your purchase puts valuable ‘store credit’ in the Reverend’s pocket that he’ll use to buy more music to write about in a never-ending loop of rock ‘n’ roll ecstasy! If you're boycotting Amazon and don't have an indie record store close by, may we suggest shopping with our friends at Grimey's Music in Nashville? They have a great selection of vinyl available by mail order, offer quick service, and if you don't see what you want on their website, check out their Discogs shop!

JULY 10
The Beths - Jump Rope Gazers   BUY!
The Flamin' Groovies - Now   BUY!
Glass Animals - Dreamland   BUY!
Grateful Dead - Workingman's Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition [3-CD box]   BUY!
Ray Wylie Hubbard - Co-Starring   BUY!
The Jayhawks - XOXO   BUY!
The Streets - None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive   BUY!
Rufus Wainwright - Unfollow the Rules   BUY!

JULY 17
Gang of Four - Anti Hero   BUY!
Laraaji - Sun Piano   BUY!
The Pretenders - Hate For Sale   BUY!
The Shaggs - Shaggs' Own Thing [vinyl reissue]   BUY!

JULY 24
Jon Hassell - Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two)   BUY!
Bill Kirchen - The Proper Years [two-disc retrospective]   BUY!

JULY 31
James Booker - Classified [vinyl reissue]   BUY!
The Coronas - True Love Waits   BUY!
Fontaines D.C. - A Hero's Death   BUY!
Steve Howe - Love Is   BUY!
The Psychedelic Furs - Made of Rain   BUY!
Irma Thomas - After the Rain [vinyl reissue]   BUY!

Album of the Month: Hands down, I gotta go with the long-overdue CD reissue of the Flamin' Groovies' Now! The band's 1978 follow-up to the transcendent Shake Some Action, it found the Groovies hitting the reset button with new guitarist Mike Wilhelm (The Charlatans) on a set comprised largely of covers of songs from the Beatles, Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Rolling Stones, and Cliff Richard. There are a few new original tunes by bandleader Cyril Jordan, but overall it felt like the band was trying to find its footing again after delivering a trio of classic rock 'n' roll discs in the early-to-mid-70s.

Still, Now has been out-of-print on CD for roughly 15 years, so it's good to get it back. Plus, next month our friends at MVD will be reissuing the Groovies' 1979 LP, Jumpin' In the Night. Now, if only some archival label would get around to reissuing those late '70s Roy Loney & the Phantom Strangers albums, all would be good with the world...