Archive Review: Living Colour’s Pride (1995)

It took a combination of factors to make Living Colour possible: several years of the Reagan administration’s attack on progress, a volatile indie rock scene that spawned important changes in the music industry, and the growth in success of rap music that brought elements of African-American culture to a receptive white mainstream. Into this atmosphere stepped one of the funkiest, baddest, hardest rocking and most technically adroit rock ‘n’ roll outfits to grace the genre (that just happened to be composed of four talented Black men). Living Colour’s debut, Vivid, was released in 1988 and instantly received almost universal critical acclaim. The album broke down barriers of race, musical style and fashion that had been long-standing in rock.

The band’s members brought varied backgrounds to the creation of Living Colour. Singer Corey Glover was an actor with little or no musical experience, possibly enabling him to develop a unique and individually powerful musical style. Drummer Will Calhoun was a Berklee School of Music grad, his jazz background serving to shore up the band’s complex and diverse stylistic experiments. Guitarist Vernon Reid, an alumni of Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society, came into the public eye as a player in Mick Jagger’s solo band. Together with bassist Muzz Skillings, Living Colour made Vivid an international success, the disc’s masterful blend of hard rock, blues, and jazz riffs winning them a loyal audience that cut across race lines.

Living Colour’s Pride

Successful tours and multi-platinum status was to follow as, over the course of three albums and an EP, Living Colour developed its unique musical voice and identity. The recent release of Pride showcases the incredible talent that is Living Colour. Much more than a mere greatest hits album, Pride serves quite well instead as a musical document of Living Colour’s first six or seven years. The hits are all here, of course, from the raging “Cult of Personality” or the confrontational “Funny Vibe” to the memorable “Open Letter To A Landlord” and the band’s “theme song,” “What’s Your Favorite Color?” Pride culls a lot of material from the band’s ground-breaking debut, with a handful of cuts thrown in from Time’s Up and only a couple from Stain and the Biscuits EP. A number of unreleased songs and a single release round out the disc.    

Of the previously unreleased cuts included on Pride, “Release the Pressure” particularly stands out. A wicked, no-compromise rocker, Corey Glover’s vocals are menacing, primal growls backed by some wonderfully chaotic guitar playing. “Sacred Ground” is a metallic thrasher run amok, echoed vocals laid on top of a frantic beat and Reid”s heaviest playing yet. A jazzy beat and muted guitar open “These Are Happy Times,” the focus on Glover’s soulful reading of the song’s lyrics. Bassist Doug Winbush, who replaced Skillings after Time’s Up, performs some understated but tasteful fretwork to underline the song’s social message. These three cuts show the band’s enormous musical diversity and skill at improvising upon a standard hard rock foundation.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

A lot has been written of Vernon Reid’s six string prowess, every compliment quite justified by the man’s large talent. As evidenced by Pride, it is Reid’s guitar that lends the band the greatest part of its identity, filling each song with a creative energy and breathing life into an otherwise morose musical genre. After seeing and experiencing Reid perform live more than once, I’d personally place him among the legends of rock guitar, artists like Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan who redefined styles and pushed the envelope. It is also shown by Pride, though, that it is a combination of talents, from Glover’s vocals and Calhoun”s rock-steady drumming along with the contributions of two skilled bassists that play along with Reid to make Living Colour great. The band is made up of four very talented men without which the accomplishments of Living Colour would not have been possible. Pride is a wonderful showcase for the band and what they can do musically. (Epic Records, 1995)

Review originally published by R.A.D! music zine

Buy the CD from Amazon: Living Colour’s Pride

Archive Review: James Blood Ulmer’s Birthright (2005)

There’s no doubt in my mind that James Blood Ulmer is one of the most ground-breaking, earth-shaking musicians to ever strap on a guitar and make the six-string beast talk. Best known as a “free jazz” artist and an acolyte of Ornette Coleman’s Harmolodic theory, Ulmer has been kicking around since the early ‘60s, first playing with folks like Art Blakely and Coleman and, later, with Ronald Shannon Jackson, through whom he met Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid. Ulmer has enjoyed a lengthy solo career as well, recording his debut in ’77 and nearly two dozen albums since, the artist’s work gradually redefining the role of guitar in both jazz and contemporary rock music.

James Blood Ulmer’s Birthright

Heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix, Ulmer has always incorporated elements of rock and blues into his jazz experiments, but it was Reid who convinced the guitarist to rediscover the blues at length. Beginning in 2001 with Memphis Blood, a stellar collection of blues classics recorded with Reid in Sun Studios in Memphis, through No Escape From the Blues two years later, Ulmer has embraced and sharpened his understanding of the blues. With Birthright, Ulmer completes his journey into the heart of the blues. Recording unaccompanied, again with Reid at the board, Ulmer turns the blues into a sort of spiritual journey from which no one returns unscathed.

 

If previous albums in this loose-knit trilogy mixed traditional blues with scraps of guitar rock, psychedelia and funk with full band accompaniment, Birthright strips the music down to the bone. Raw, fiery and unadorned by modern trappings, Ulmer takes the blues back to its Delta roots (and maybe even further back, to Africa) with a stark and dark-hued collection of songs and performances. Ten of the twelve songs are Ulmer originals, but they successfully channel the cold presence of ghosts long passed. The Gospel-tinged “Take My Music Back To the Church” evokes the haunting sound of Blind Willie Johnson while “The Evil One” is a musically hypnotic dirge with eerie black cat moan vocals. A cover of Willie Dixon’s classic “I Ain’t Superstitious” is transformed into a plea for divine intervention supported by forceful six-string work. “Devil’s Got To Burn” offers a complex soundtrack of guitar rhythms behind Ulmer’s gleefully diabolic vocals.  

Along the lengthy musical sojourn that is Birthright, Ulmer makes his guitar scream, cry, dance and sing with the skill that only a master can bring to bear. Ulmer’s mournful, weathered vocals perfectly embrace the lyrics with a combination of soul, pathos, fear and passion. Birthright is a heady musical elixir, an incredible musical effort that could only be created by an artist that threw away the textbook long ago. Musically and intellectually challenging, Birthright may prove too difficult for some, though it is well worth the journey for the adventurous listener.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Underrated and overlooked by all but a handful of aficionados, one day in the not-too-distant future academics and musical historians will recognize James Blood Ulmer for the genius that he is and Birthright as a shining example of Ulmer’s incredible talents and far-seeing vision. (Hyena Records, 2005)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ zine
   
Find the CD on Discogs: James Blood Ulmer’s Birthright

Archive Review: Living Colour’s Vivid (2010 reissue)

When they came along in the late ‘90s, Living Colour was an anomaly among hard rock bands. First of all, the members were all young African-American men with musical backgrounds in jazz, R&B and improvisational avant-garde music. Rock ‘n’ roll at the time was sheer whitebread, dominated by longhaired white boys, the cultural diversity of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s overthrown by corporate homogenization.

Living Colour didn’t fit into MTV’s nerf metal demographic but damned if they didn’t rock harder than half a dozen Motley Crue clones. The band seemingly appeared out of nowhere in the summer of 1988 with the release of its debut album, Vivid, but New York City fans knew differently. Living Colour had been banging around town for a couple of years, refining their sound and stage presence with residencies at clubs like CBGBs.

Living Colour’s Vivid

The release of Vivid would break through the barriers of race in rock, opening the door for multi-cultural ‘90s hard rock bands like Rage Against the Machine and System of A Down. This breakthrough was accomplished mostly on the strength of a single song, the blistering “Cult of Personality,” the accompanying video dominating the MTV playlist well into 1989 and breaking the band with a white audience. It was apparent from the video for “Cult of Personality” that Living Colour wasn’t kicking out the same old shit.

Vernon Reid wasn’t just another heavy metal guitar god, but a world-class six-string wizard who had earned his bones as a member of the experimental Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoder Society. The rhythm section of bassist Muzz Skillings and drummer Will Calhoun provided as big a beat as a band could ever want while frontman Corey Glover – largely untrained and with little experience as a singer – perfectly complimented the band’s funky, unpredictable groove with his rough-hewn, soulful vocal style.

Listening to the recently remastered reissue CD of Vivid shows that the album held much more great music than the celebrated hit single. Living Colour incorporated many styles and influences into the band’s sound, placing disparate elements of freeform jazz, funk, soul, heavy metal and guitar pyrotechnics into a hard rock framework. While songs such as “Open Letter (To A Landlord)” and “Funny Vibe” showcased the band’s social consciousness, visiting themes of poverty, homelessness and race, songs like the hedonistic “Glamour Boys” or “I Want To Know” were pop-influenced rockers with an almost new wave sound. (This was the ‘80s, after all….) When the band hit a metallic groove, however, as with “Cult of Personality,” “Middle Man,” or “What’s Your Favorite Color?” there were few other bands around who could match Living Colour’s powerful and innovative sound.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

The CD reissue of Vivid includes five bonus cuts culled from 12” singles; most of which have never appeared on compact disc before. A hip-hop remix of “Funny Vibe” by Prince Paul includes cameos from rappers like Daddy-O and Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy. A red-hot cover of the Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” and a live version of “Middle Man” appeared previously on the band’s Biscuits collection. A Keith LeBlanc remix of “What’s Your Favorite Color?” adds to the funk quotient while a live performance of “Cult of Personality” closes Vivid and blows the roof off the mutha!

One of the most important albums in rock history, Vivid sold over a million copies and earned the band a Grammy® Award. More important, though, is the influence the album and Living Colour would have on those that would follow. With Vivid, Living Colour literally changed the face of rock ‘n’ roll. (Legacy Recordings, released May 4, 2010)

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

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Living Colour’s Vivid

Living Colour & Mike Doughty vinyl reissues

Great music and charity have gone together forever, and there are a couple of special releases coming that are worth your time and money to buy. On September 28th, 2018 Living Colour’s Time’s Up and Mike Doughty’s Live At Ken’s House albums will be released as limited-edition green vinyl editions as part of the Mindful Vinyl initiative for mental health awareness. A portion from the proceeds of both albums will benefit The Jed Foundation (JED), a non-profit organization that exists to protect emotional health and prevent suicide for teens and young adults.

Originally released in 1990 as the follow-up to the band’s breakthrough LP Vivid, the equally hard-rockin’ Time’s Up featured tracks like “Pride,” “Elvis Is Dead” and “Love Rears Its Ugly Head.” Winner of a Grammy Award for “Best Hard Rock Peformance,” Time’s Up featured guest appearances by Maceo Parker, Little Richard, Doug E. Fresh, and Queen Latifah. The album is being reissued by Megaforce Records.

Mike Doughty’s Live At Ken’s House was released in 2014 and featured the frontman of 1990s-era alt-rockers Soul Coughing performing re-imagined versions of his former band’s best-known material. The singer/guitarist was back on the live performance by Catherine Popper on upright bass and Pete Wilhoit on drums. This vinyl reissue of Live At Ken’s House is being released by Doughty’s own Snack Bar label. In a press release for the vinyl reissue, Doughty – who has written frankly about his own mental health challenges in his memoir The Book of Drugs – says “there's an emotional-pain crisis in America, and it's incumbent on us to make medical care and talk therapy normal and accessible for people who suffer from depression and anxiety.”

The Mindful Vinyl initiative was created in 2016 with a goal of increasing conversation and awareness of mental wellness issues and connecting those conversations to music. Other titles reissued on vinyl as part of their series include Living Colour’s Stain, Fishbone’s The Reality of My Surroundings, and the Silver Linings Playbook movie soundtrack. JED partners with high schools and colleges to strengthen their mental health, substance abuse, and suicide prevention programs and systems. You can learn more about JED on the organization’s website.

Buy the vinyl from Amazon.com:
Living Colour’s Time’s Up
Mike Doughty’s Live At Ken’s House

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume Three: Heavy Metal

Excitable Press and That Devil Music’s Rev. Gordon are happy to announce the publication of the third volume in the Rev’s ongoing series of archive interviews. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume Three: Heavy Metal is a budget-priced collection of ten vintage artist interviews from metal pioneers like Living Colour, Faith No More, King’s X, and Sepultura as well as cult artists like Killing Joke, Voivod, and Warrior Soul, among others. The book also includes album reviews for many of the featured artists.

The “Reverend of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Rev. Keith A. Gordon has been writing about music for 45+ years. A former contributor to the All Music Guide books and website, and the former Blues Expert for About.com, Rev. Gordon has also written for Blurt magazine, Creem, High Times, and The Blues (U.K.), among many other publications, and has written fifteen previous music-related books, including The Other Side of Nashville and Scorched Earth: A Jason & the Scorchers Scrapbook.

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume Three: Heavy Metal is a 70pp 5.5” x 8.5” paperback with B&W photos, priced at $6.99 for the print book and $2.99 for the eBook version with the same content. Get your copy through the handy Amazon.com links below:

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume Three: Heavy Metal print edition

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume Three: Heavy Metal eBook

Also available:

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume Two: Punk Rock print edition

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume Two: Punk Rock eBook edition

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume One: Southern Rockers print edition

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Archives, Volume One: Southern Rockers eBook edition

New Music Monthly: September 2017 Releases

Talk about a wealth of choices, the month of September has it all – blues-rock (Walter Trout, Tommy Castro), indie rock (Mogwai, Ted Leo), hard rock (Living Colour, Foo Fighters), and classic reissues (Bash & Pop, Chris Bell, Frank Zappa & the Mothers) – as well as a fitting goodbye to an old friend with Gregg Allman's final album, and much, more more! There are five Fridays in September, meaning more new releases, so no matter your taste in music, there's something for you here. If we wrote about it, there'll be a link to it in the album title, if you want an album, hit the 'Buy!' link to get it from Amazon.com...it's just that damn easy! Your purchase puts money 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!

SEPTEMBER 1
Jonny Lang - Signs   BUY!
Mogwai - Every Country's Sun   BUY!
Starsailor - All This Life   BUY!
Walter Trout - We're All In This Together   BUY!
 

SEPTEMBER 8
Gregg Allman - Southern Blood   BUY!
Arch Enemy - Will To Power   BUY!
Bash & Pop - Friday Night Is Killing Me [expanded reissue]   BUY!
Dream Syndicate - How Did I Find Myself Here?   BUY!
Ted Leo - The Hanged Man   BUY!
Living Colour - Shade   BUY!
The National - Sleep Well Beast   BUY!
Charlie Parr - Dog   BUY!
Sparks - Hippopotamus   BUY!

 

SEPTEMBER 15
Chris Bell - I Am The Cosmos [expanded reissue]   BUY!
Foo Fighters - Concrete and Gold   BUY!
Prophets of Rage - Prophets of Rage   BUY!
Ringo Starr - Give More Love   BUY!

 

SEPTEMBER 22
Black Country Communion - BCCIV   BUY!
Michael Bloomfield - Live at McCabe's Guitar Workshop   BUY!
Flamin' Groovies - Fantastic Plastic   BUY!
The Killers - Wonderful Wonderful   BUY!
Lee 'Scratch' Perry & Subatomic Sound System - Super Ape Returns to Conquer   BUY!
Roadcase Royale - First Things First (w/Nancy Wilson of Heart)   BUY!
Leon Russell - On A Distant Shore   BUY!
Brian Wilson - Playback: The Brian Wilson Anthology   BUY!

SEPTEMBER 29
Black Stone Cherry - Black To Blues EP   BUY!
Tommy Castro & the Painkillers - Stompin' Ground   BUY!
David Crosby - Sky Trails   BUY!
Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Fanfare 1970-1997   BUY!
The Mothers of Invention (Frank Zappa) - Absolutely Free [vinyl reissue]   BUY!
Pere Ubu - 20 Years In A Montana Missle Silo   BUY!
UFO - Salentino Cuts   BUY!  

Album of the Month: Gregg Allman's Southern Blood, the final album from the rock 'n' blues legend. Produced by Don Was in historic Muscle Shoals, Alabama this is Allman's first studio album since 2011's award-winning Low Country Blues. The acclaimed vocalist chose to record some of his favorite songs for Southern Blood, including material by blues giant Willie Dixon, Lowell George (Little Feat), Jackson Browne, Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead), and the legendary songwriting team of Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn. We hate to see him go, but Allman left us a great gift in the form of one more album to cap off almost 50 years of great music! 

CD Preview: Living Colour’s Shade

Heavy metal legends Living Colour haven’t ventured into the studio very often since the band got back together in 2000, releasing a pair of well-received albums in 2004’s CollideØscope and 2009’s The Chair In the Doorway. On September 8th, 2017 Megaforce Records will release the band’s third studio album this century in Shade.

Shade was produced by Andre Betts, who first worked with Living Colour on their 1993 album Stain. Betts has worked with the band over the past five years to craft an exciting new sound. Inspired by their live performance of blues legend Robert Johnson’s “Preachin’ Blues” at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, Living Colour has incorporated elements of Mississippi Delta dirt into their trademark heavy metal thunder. “That was really the beginning of us thinking of the direction we want to take for our next project,” says Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid in a press release for the new album. “Hearing that blend of blues and metal was really what got the wheels turning.”

While Shade offers Living Colour’s unique juxtaposition of hard rockin’ blues, the album isn’t just a collection of antiquated sounds but rather a mix of various influences. “What better way to talk to the world than through the blues?” vocalist Corey Glover asks in a press release for the album. “We recorded ‘Preachin’ Blues’ several times to jump start the project and that got everybody fired up. After that, we were ready. Shade, in its final outcome, is more of a deconstruction of the blues than an interpretation. It was the idiom that gave us our voice.”

Featuring thirteen white-hot performances, Shade offers songs like the old-school thrash of “Blak Out,” the acid-funk romp “Two Sides” (featuring a guest appearance of the legendary George Clinton), and Reid’s six-string showcase “Freedom of Expression (F.O.X.).” The album includes the band’s incendiary cover of The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Who Shot Ya?,” released late last year in protest of gun violence and racial profiling, as well as an inspired cover of the great Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues,” which stirs a bit of guitar-driven hard rock into a heady R&B gumbo.
  
“To me, there seems to be a shadow cast across our collective lives,” says Reid. “We can either allow it to oppress us or we can shine a light on it. Shade is the sound of a band coming to terms with the shadows and shining a light by using the blues as a mirror.”

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Living Colour's Shade