CD Review: Jean-Michel Jarre’s Planet Jarre (2018)

Guest review by Steve Morley

Electronic music enthusiasts comprise the kind of niche group that generally knows all the inputs and outputs regarding its genre of choice, so there's probably not a lot that a reviewer can hope to do in terms of educating them regarding the pros and cons of this 4-disc overview of French composer and performer Jean-Michel Jarre. (A flurry of online fan posts confirms this, in fact.) There are, however, fans whose familiarity is centered upon Jarre’s first two non-soundtrack albums, the hugely successful Oxygène (1976/1977) and Équinoxe (1978).

Jarre has certainly proven his ability to evolve and stretch his sound in the years that followed, but his career-defining breakthrough albums nonetheless formed the foundation for his entire body of work. Planet Jarre’s 41 tracks are arranged non-chronologically, bringing to mind the creative sequencing of Pink Floyd’s career-spanning Echoes collection. But while Floyd’s condensed oeuvre presents the juxtaposition of near-outrageous extremes (and a host of songwriters), Planet Jarre largely possesses a cohesion made possible by the artist’s longstanding vision for an orchestral approach to synthesizer music.

Those who know Jarre’s music only casually, based on his early commercial success, likely have no sense of his subsequent significance in the electronic genre; those who have followed the artist closely are likely aware that Jarre was active for the better part of a decade, learning his craft and creating music for soundtrack and background applications before emerging into the mainstream and finding massive, near-immediate exposure. While hardly the first electronic musician to hit the charts, Jarre had the musical goods to challenge his predecessors: unlike the interpretations of existing works electronically realized by Tomita and Walter/Wendy Carlos, Jarre offered original pieces with album-length compositional depth.

Rich in their melodies, themes, textures, and sonic innovations, his pieces set themselves apart from Kraftwerk’s spartan and likeably nerdy synth-pop tweedlings and Tangerine Dream’s pensive, trance-inducing explorations, while still mirroring various aspects of their work. Fans of the aforementioned Krautrock synth pioneers may find Jarre a bit too rich and elaborate for their tastes, and yet Planet Jarre demonstrates that, in the midst of constructing his synthesized symphonettes, he can indeed muster up ethereal atmospheres and robotic rhythms a la his German contemporaries.

This particular Jarre compilation differs from previous entries in that it presents four individual playlist-styled sections, each representing a particular element of his work: soundscapes, themes, sequences, and experimentation. With all but a couple tracks here available elsewhere, it would be possible for any Jarre-head to assemble something similar, though not directly from the mind of the artist himself, who — while pondering approaches for assembling this sprawling collection — evidently had an epiphany about the multiple layers within his compositions. That burst of inspiration did not, however, include formatting choices designed to accommodate his most fervent followers.

With two box-set versions available (one on limited-edition vinyl and one comprised of two CDs and two cassettes) and a double-CD set that partially spoils the four-playlist effect by pairing them on its two discs, only those with a turntable can experience the intended quartet of playlists in a single format (unless they’re willing to copy and burn the original track list to four separate discs). Even more curious is the fact that the 5.1 surround-sound content (confusingly including tracks not otherwise included on the collection) is made available only via a download card included in the box sets, not in a more conventional and convenient (not to mention appropriately audiophile-ready) format such as DVD or Blu-Ray.

While we’re in complaint mode, it’s worth adding that the “50 Years-of Music” concept behind Planet Jarre is something of a stretch: The first track here, the debut single and utter flop “La Cage,” was recorded in 1969 but not released (and subsequently ignored) until 1971. Even if you count the year of origin, and that in itself is pushing it, your handy abacus will tell you that doesn’t add up to a 50th anniversary. That said, the extremely inaccessible and downright clunky track (and others of similar vintage and avant-garde vibe on the fourth disc) is a minor revelation for the still-uninitiated, demonstrating how far Jarre moved the then-stuffy and academic electronic genre toward musicality and mainstream viability within about a half-dozen-year span. That fourth disc, loaded with examples of Jarre’s least-accessible work, offers comparatively little insight into his overall compositional makeup, though it does help complete the story of his career for those who wish to delve into every chapter.

Evidence that the career-defining Oxygène remains the artist’s calling card du jour is offered in the six sections of that extended work featured here, half of them drawn from the original 1976 album and half from the two sequels released between 1997 and 2016. Still, this overview of the synthetic sphere spinning under Jean-Michel Jarre (its multi-format fiasco notwithstanding) is a fairly comprehensive and well-organized one. And while Oxygène might be a dominant element in his sometimes peculiar world, Planet Jarre proves that there’s more than that on the table. (Sony Records, released September 21, 2018)

Buy the box set from Amaxon.com: Jean-Michel Jarre’s Planet Jarre

CD Review: Van Morrison's It's Too Late To Stop Now (1974/2016)

Guest Review by Steve Morley

Not every rock artist in the early ‘70s stood open-shirted amidst Marshall stacks and Guinness Book decibel levels – it was a diverse period, with a menu that included everything from roots-meisters the Band and folk-poet balladeers like Jackson Browne to the Allman Brothers Band’s simmering Southern fusion. But it’s hard to think of anyone who was defying rock’s increasingly over-amped norms more vehemently than Van Morrison. In 1973, he took the versatile and impressively well-oiled 11-piece Caledonia Soul Orchestra on a three-month tour of the USA and Europe, summarized the following year on the double-disc live set It’s Too Late to Stop Now.

Evidently, it’s not too late to start releasing additional evidence of that historic jaunt, thought by many to have yielded one of the most dynamic live recordings in rock history. And, in fact, Sony/Legacy’s recently issued multi-disc-and-DVD package, which expands the original by three volumes, benefits from the four-decade-plus distance since the original’s debut. For one, it serves both as a primer for the not-fully-initiated and a time capsule compiling a near-perfect overview of Morrison’s most creatively fertile and enduring period as a recording artist.

Van Morrison’s It’s Too Late to Stop Now

The five-album salvo of Morrison releases between 1969’s Astral Weeks and ‘72’s Saint Dominic’s Preview traces a high-peaking artistic incline and represents the foundation of his entire career since. To be offered three discs’ worth of classic-era live performances centered around this prime period of Morrison’s work is not a gift his appreciators are likely to receive with a halfhearted shrug. The faithful, of course, require no additional background info about how this particular time period found the notoriously temperamental Morrison in unusually genial mood onstage, and it’s doubtful they’ll need to be convinced to pony up for Holy-Grail-esque extras from the tour (and in some cases, the same shows) that produced his definitive live recordings.

Sure, they’ll wish the DVD contained the entire London show that was originally broadcast on BBC TV, but they’ll settle for the truncated version, which contains a few performances (like the greasy “Green Onions”-like version of Sonny Boy Williamson II’s “Help Me”) not featured elsewhere on the currently available set of live discs. But for the benefit of newcomers, latecomers, and the random Van fan sitting on the fence pondering the price tag, let the record show that the deluxe set is a generously stuffed, meaty burrito divided more or less evenly between titles that did not appear on the 1974 Too Late collection and alternate performances of tracks that did. In combination with the original release (it seems reasonable to assume that the majority of interested parties would already own it), there are more than a dozen duplicate tracks and an additional seven that appear a total of three times.

Among the previously unreleased performances from this period are Van’s delightfully jaunty, jazzy reworking of Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’,” a trio of tracks from the unimpeachable Moondance album, a wacky cover of Louis Prima’s tango-tinged “Buona Sera” (see, he does have a sense of humor lurking in there somewhere), and a spirited sneak preview of the then-fresh “There There Child,” a worthy number that wouldn’t see release in original form until 25 years later on the rarities compilation The Philosopher’s Stone.

Hard Nose the Highway

The new sets also feature the lion’s share of the then-current Hard Nose the Highway album, one that’s gotten drastically mixed reviews over the years. (In hindsight, this album may well have inspired the then-highly-uncommon decision to add two violinists, a viola player and a cellist to the touring lineup, as it was heavily enhanced with strings; in fact, three members of the touring quartet had appeared on several of its tracks.) The Highway material, while generally more down-tempo, proves compatible enough with Morrison’s previous catalog and offers occasional highlights.

One, “Snow in San Anselmo,” departs from its rigid and slightly ostentatious studio version to feature a bebop-flavored excursion in mid-song. Stunningly, it turns on a dime, transitioning from its swinging, trumpet-led interlude into an almost weightless segment built upon swelling strings that elicit a spontaneous grunt of surprise and approval from Van himself. The same sudden horns-and-strings contrast is played to great effect in a pastoral section of the Sesame Street standard “Bein’ Green,” which Morrison invests with an impressive emotional heft, particularly considering he’s reinterpreting Kermit the Frog.
 
As for the anchoring and set-closing numbers that show up in multiples, you could probably live contentedly enough without three separate live versions of “Cyprus Avenue,” “Caravan,” “Listen to the Lion,” “Domino” and Van’s covers of Ray Charles’ “I Believe to My Soul” and Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” But while it’s initially more enticing to hear performances of newly issued songs from these historic sets spanning May, June, and July of 1973, the alternates make for a fascinating study in the onstage dynamics and unplanned interplay between Van and his core band. While this is a crack section that’s clearly well-rehearsed, it’s comprised of skilled, creative players who balance tight execution with an in-the-moment looseness heard in a myriad of deviations distinguishing each performance of any one particular song.

A Fearless Approach

Small and usually subtle flaws can be heard (which Morrison refused to fix in the studio in the interest of authenticity), but nothing you wouldn’t expect from musicians who are more interested in walking the tightrope than playing it safe. It’s precisely this fearless approach, which itself is in perfect keeping with Morrison’s modus operandi, that injects so many of these performances with their bracing vitality. For his part, Morrison endlessly explores minute variations in his vocal phrasing and delivery, never singing a song exactly the same twice. His ad libs spur the musicians to their own spontaneous responses and put their ability to anticipate him to the test. The London Rainbow rendition of “Listen to the Lion” on Volume IV poses a challenge to drummer David Shaw in particular; as it reaches its climax, Morrison unleashes a series of syncopated guttural punctuations that Shaw links up with just in time for a hilarious game of rope-a-dope in which his boss suddenly, perhaps capriciously, alternates the pattern.

There’s an additional factor to consider – the sometimes audible difference in the energy from venue to venue, presumably owing to variations in each audience’s and theater’s vibe and the resulting effect on the artist and musicians. The particularly responsive crowd at the Santa Monica show heard on Volume III, in fact, may be the reason why the set reveals a few more rough edges and features more wild cards in the song list. Evidently, the rapt Rainbow Theatre crowds later helped Van conjure particularly affecting mojo, as the original Too Late set drew heavily from those London shows, as does the DVD footage; Volume IV, from the same venue and pair of July performances, may well be the most inspired and cohesive of the three new volumes. However much Morrison was enjoying the concert stage and acknowledging the ticketholders during this fleeting season, though, make no mistake: he wasn’t there to entertain as much as to stoke his emotional fire before a host of witnesses, and he’s far less focused on commanding a crowd than in commanding his band, perhaps even his own voice, to bend to his artistic will.

This is a rare thing to behold in rock, and it was hardly the norm in 1973, when arena rockers like the Rolling Stones were expertly milking crowds for response and the trend toward sensational theatrics found such acts as Alice Cooper and David Bowie employing alluring artifice and relying on steady, predictable musical backing to support them. Conversely, Morrison’s natural idiosyncrasies and eyes-closed intensity, coupled with an experienced band closely bonded to his impulses, were in themselves sufficient to compel his audiences.

Steve’s Bottom Line

Morrison disciples such as Bruce Springsteen and Bono may have since carried pieces of his sound and style to rockdom’s highest heights – and on their good days are nearly as hard to classify – but not even the likes of them breathe the rarefied artistic air that makes Morrison such an anomaly in rock ‘n’ roll. It must be said that “Gloria” is a bona fide rock ‘n’ roll classic, but this nugget from his pre-solo days as frontman of the Irish band Them is the one song that never quite settles comfortably into the rest of Morrison’s masterful musical mosaic (Them’s oddly bipolar 1965 hit “Here Comes the Night,” with the string section taking the instrumental interlude, fares better here).

By this point in his career, Morrison had surpassed rock’s basic forms, as pretty much everything else on these discs demonstrates. While they function as more than mere documents, It’s Too Late to Stop Now’s four volumes stand as affirmation of a sometimes-overlooked fact: Van Morrison was an island unto himself in the world of rock music. This fiery furnace fueled by jazz, R&B, country, folk, gospel, and blues can still claim temporary citizenship there because his fusion of those elements circa the early ‘70s was simply too potent and far-reaching to find a home anywhere else. (Sony Music Group, released June 10, 2016)

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Van Morrison's It's Too Late to Stop Now

Big Star's Nothing Can Hurt Me

When it comes to pop and rock music from the last 40-odd years, the world can easily be divided into two simple parts: those who’ve heard of Big Star, and those who haven’t. The cult following that has been growing around this quasi-mythic Memphis band for decades now is such that the very words “big” and “star,” spoken in that particular sequence, have become a kind of code-speak for insider hipness.

It’s been this way at least since the Replacements’ song “Alex Chilton” (which name-checks the band and its most famous member) came out in 1987. It was intended as a tribute, which it is, though it also created a problem: it made a demigod of Chilton, erroneously implying that the former singer of the late ’60s pop act the Box Tops was the de facto leader and founder of Big Star. This misconception is now being remedied, thanks to the documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, which was officially released in July and has been playing in select theaters.

Big Star's Nothing Can Hurt Me

For the faithful flock that has long been genuflecting at the altar of Big Star, this is video manna raining down from rock ’n’ roll heaven. For the curious, the as-yet-unconverted, and the true music maven who has somehow overlooked the band, there’s no better starting place than this film, which will likely stand as the definitive version of the Big Star saga. Nothing Can Hurt Me presents the reasons behind the band’s commercial failure and resulting semi-secret status at the pinnacle of rock’s anointed few, and does a good deal more.

The film lays out the far larger pop-culture context in which Big Star emerged, fizzled and improbably found new life on the sheer strength of its once-hard-to-find records, aiding the viewer in appreciating what the band accomplished within perhaps the worst possible time period and circumstances. The sprawling and often poignant story is told by a sizable cast of Memphians who played roles ranging from central to supporting to peripheral (though the late and notoriously media-wary Alex Chilton, who was still with us when the film began production, characteristically opted not to participate). Cameos from members of the music press and the international indie-rock elite confirm the extent of the band’s effect upon them and the disciples who were still to come.

Memphis Music In The 1970s

Then, of course, there’s the music. It seeps through the very pores of the film, as well it should, providing an essential dimension of the story (and one that threatens to distract from it at times). An accompanying soundtrack (available on CD and, fittingly, vinyl) offers various remixes and one original demo, while the film itself does contain bits of lesser-known music from founding member Chris Bell and other associated Memphis bands.

Indeed, Nothing Can Hurt Me is secondarily a film about the Memphis music scene in the ’70s, and includes such items of interest as interview segments with legendary producer and indie-music godfather Jim Dickinson (including a look inside his inner sanctum) and a vintage local TV clip that hilariously demonstrates just how revolutionary—or at least controversial—Memphis rockers were capable of being. The film also documents Chilton’s late 1970s move to New York City, where he became involved with such groups as the Cramps and retooled his own career, drawing from punk and alternative sensibilities that left many of his fans befuddled.

Alex Chilton, Chris Bell, Andy Hummel & Jody Stephens

Because the nearly two-hour-long documentary is packed—more correctly, layered—with compelling music and multiple story threads, as well as some very artful visual moments (like, for instance, the neon sputnik scene that aptly accompanies one of Big Star’s eeriest tracks), one viewing won’t likely be enough to catch all that it has to offer. One, however, is all it takes to explicitly convey to the viewer what is often implicit in the songs and vocals of Chilton and Bell: that is, the considerable struggle experienced in their interior lives.

Don’t be misled by the title—Nothing Can Hurt Me, for all its celebration of Big Star’s music and its belated, bittersweet victory, is anything but pain-free. For the faithful flock, however, the opportunity to finally see this long-deserved story come to life so splendidly on the screen will make the ache bearable. [Review by Steve Morley]

Bringing It Back to the Bare Essentials: The Making of Darker Than Light

Bobby Bare photo by Pete Mroz, courtesy Plowboy Records

If you know the name Bobby Bare, it’s as likely as not because you know the song “Detroit City.” With its low-twanging signature lick and forlorn account of a man geographically displaced by economic need, the 1963 hit cemented Bare’s career in country music—which became his primary place of residence, despite his pop beginnings and his broadminded musical sensibilities. Just as the blue-collar character in “Detroit City” longed for his home, so has Bare experienced the discomfort of being constrained by a musical classification that was never a completely comfortable fit. He managed better than most, though, employing his restless artistic bent to carve out a niche as one of country music’s more unconventional successes.

Bobby Bare's Outlaw Reputation

His concept album Bobby Bare Sings Lullabyes, Legends and Lies, a collaboration with famed left-field songwriter/poet Shel Silverstein, is often regarded as one of country’s first conceptual works (and is certainly one of its bravest), preceding Willie Nelson’s 1974 landmark album Phases and Stages by a full year. Like Nelson, Bare would become known, if not as widely remembered, as one of the questionably-labeled “Outlaw” movement’s early practitioners. Music historians, including Frye Gaillard in his now-classic book Watermelon Wine, point to Bare as a free thinker who helped reconcile the once-strained relationship between country and folk music in songs such as Bare’s co-written “500 Miles Away From Home” and his hit version of Canuck folkie Ian Tyson’s “Four Strong Winds.” It mattered not a whit to Bare that folk music had previously been viewed by Nashville industry principals as being too politically progressive to make nice with country’s conservative listener base.

Bare’s “folk-you” attitude about such artistically arbitrary designations makes him first-line kin with Johnny Cash, who also refused, somewhat more famously, to be corralled by industry-imposed boundaries. Also like Cash, Bare began to score increasingly lower chart numbers as the 1970s morphed into the 1980s, when the country industry chased the cash cattle unleashed by the runaway success of the movie Urban Cowboy. The execs at Columbia Records, to which both Cash and Bare were signed at the time, stopped putting promotional clout behind acts who were older, more established and—perhaps most significantly—weren’t known for being compliant.

In a 2006 conversation with writer Rick Kelly, Bare was direct and dryly humorous about the inevitable changing of the guard. “When they were playing my records, I was glad they were playing them,” he told Kelly. “But that meant they weren’t playing Hank Snow or Roy Acuff or Lefty Frizzell. Eventually they started playing newer artists and stopped playing me.” Bare goes on to say that “there was no real reason to do albums anymore because there was nowhere to go with them. They basically told me, ‘Come back when you’re younger.’

The Moon Was Blue

Bare eventually parted ways with the standard “star” system, maintaining age-appropriate dignity and a lower profile, and letting 22 years pass between solo albums. Had his son Bobby Bare, Jr. not persuaded him to return to the studio to capture his earthy eclecticism on 2005’s critically acclaimed The Moon Was Blue, the 77-year-old singer might still be between projects, happily casting a line from the bass boat he favors these days. But an artist so comparable in spirit and gravitas to the iconic Johnny Cash is worth luring out of retirement, and it was with a concept similar to the one behind Cash’s stripped-down American Recordings series that music historian/author, professor, and Plowboy Records co-founder Don Cusic sparked Bare’s interest in once again getting behind a recording studio microphone.  

“I saw all the stuff that Johnny Cash did before he died, with [producer] Rick Rubin,” says Cusic, seated behind the piles of pages and projects-in-progress crowding his spacious office in the former CBS Records building on Nashville’s Music Row. Cusic, who was both friend and biographer to country legend Eddy Arnold, says he had initially approached Arnold with the idea of doing a project similar to Cash’s unvarnished Rick Rubin sessions. Arnold, whose smooth, mild-mannered way with a song was distinctly unlike Cash’s, wasn’t convinced. 

“Eddy, before he died, he wanted to do another album,” says Cusic, “and he was doing love songs and doing full-production [recordings]. I said, ‘You know, what you need is just some story songs,’ and he said, ‘Well, [love songs] are great stories,’ Cusic recalls, chuckling warmly at the recollection. “’Cause, you know, he was kind of the romantic, leading-man type.” Even while unsuccessfully attempting to cajole Eddy Arnold down a road less traveled, Cusic says it occurred to him that “the perfect guy to do this would be Bobby Bare. So I carried that idea around. This was before Plowboy [Records] was even an idea, when Eddy Arnold was still alive.”

Darker Than Light

Plowboy, the indie imprint to which Cusic refers, was started last year in honor of Eddy Arnold. The author/professor is a partner with Arnold’s grandson, Shannon Pollard, and—get ready for this one—punk-rocker and former Dead Boys founding member Cheetah Chrome, forming an unlikely triumvirate that sounds like the setup for a music-business inside joke. Snicker if you like, but the trio has already won considerable respect and praise for Plowboy’s debut release, Bobby Bare’s Darker Than Light.

True to the label’s mission of releasing worthy American music with no regard to genre, the album combines lesser-known alternative-country numbers with new compositions and folk songs of various vintages, ranging from the venerable “Shenandoah” and Woody Guthrie’s “Going Down the Road” to the sturdy latter-day blues standard “House of the Rising Sun.” Bare, along with a hand-picked Nashville band that includes Randy Scruggs, Buddy Miller, and some of Miller’s cohorts from Robert Plant’s Band of Joy, re-purposed these and other tunes into a pleasingly dark, potently rootsy brew. It’s a concoction well suited to Americana tastebuds, yet deeper and historically richer than most current roots-music, evoking the flavor of the Johnny Cash sessions that served as the album’s initial inspiration. Bare’s version of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” for example, is a brilliant stroke that Rick Rubin may be wishing he’d have thought of first—it would have been an ideal fit for the Man in Black in his grey-haired days, and its inclusion here further underscores the kindred-spirit bond connecting Bare and Cash.

Cusic, confirming the similarity between the two artists, says, “Both of them had an integrity about the music they did. They weren’t just after hits; they were after songs that said something. Their tastes were quite similar in songs. And Bare brought that up several times [saying], ‘Yeah, Cash would like that.’” Darker Than Light, though, boasts a gritty, often easygoing vitality that distinguishes it from the stark stoicism of Cash’s latter-day works. Don Cusic’s concept, as it turned out, met and exceeded the potential he had envisioned; just as importantly, it all fell together without undue force or hand-wringing, as inspired ideas—and inspired music—sometimes have a way of doing.

Music City Roots

It took little effort from Cusic to convince partner Pollard that his concept for Bare would make an ideal project with which to launch their new label, as well as one certain to garner plenty of media attention. It took even less effort to persuade Bare after the two met by chance at Nashville’s Loveless Barn, the venue where fast-burgeoning radio show Music City Roots is performed, filmed and streamed live.

“I happened to run into Bare backstage at Music City Roots one night,” Cusic says, picking up the story. “It just so happened that Shannon and I had been talking about [the prospect of a Bare album] just shortly before, and I said, ‘What do you think about this idea?’ and man, his eyes lit up. It just kind of snowballed from there.”

Cusic and Pollard lobbed song suggestions such as Bob Dylan’s “Farewell Angelina,” Alejandro Escovedo’s “I Was Drunk” and the aforementioned U2 selection—which Bare had somehow never heard. “The U2 song, that was my idea,” explains Cusic, recounting his and Bare’s near-comic exchange. “I played that for him, and I said, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘Who is it?’ [Cusic:] ‘It’s U2, this was a worldwide hit.’ [Bare:] ‘How long ago?’ Cusic says Bare, once his curiosity had been quenched, then made the proclamation, “That’s a country song.” If it wasn’t before, it is now: with Bare’s craggy, wizened vocal and a simple, organic treatment miles removed from the digital guitar effects reverberating across U2’s 1987 original, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” becomes a rustic expression of cowboy-outlaw restlessness worthy of folk-song posterity. 

The Devil and Billy Markham

Conversely, hoary chestnuts such as “Tom Dooley” and “Boll Weevil,” rendered all but toothless through the decades by over-familiarity and anemic white-bread cover versions, are convincingly enlivened by Bare and crew. Not unlike the rope that wrought vengeance upon the real-life murderer memorialized in “Tom Dooley,” Bare’s version of the saga swings loosely and roughly, while his take on “Boll Weevil” is a rhythmic romp that stands as one of the album’s most joyful and gratifying tracks, gliding on a spacious and slippery Levon Helm-styled groove.

More often than not, though, the tone of Darker Than Light reflects its sober title. As Cusic notes, “[Bare] likes the dark stuff, he likes the edgy stuff. He didn’t want to cut—none of us wanted to cut—a Music Row album.” They made that objective clear enough on the closing track, “The Devil and Billy Markham,” a nod to Bare’s late friend and collaborator Shel Silverstein. Not only does the song—an old Silverstein poem set to a minor-key melody by Bare—brandish the Grand Poobah of forbidden words, it also levels a none-too-subtle indictment at the country music industry and its tendency to foster insincerity and cowardice in the artists who cash in by hedging their bets. Because Bare has proven his mettle as an artist who does otherwise, the song’s appearance on the album is emblematic of artistic liberty and Bare’s lifelong commitment to it.

“We had to decide whether to put [“The Devil and Billy Markham”] on the album or not, ’cause it had the F-bomb in there,” relates Cusic. “And we tossed around ideas about not having it on the CD, [or only] putting it on the vinyl, ’cause you can’t get it in Wal-Mart that way. And finally we said, ‘This has got to close the album.’

Don Cusic & Bobby Bare photo by Shannon Pollard, courtesy Plowboy Records

Nashville's RCA Studio B

While Cusic was the album’s de facto instigator, he maintained responsibility for aligning himself with Bare’s musical personality. His role, as he saw it, was “to put Bare in a situation where he could be Bobby Bare…[where] he could let his integrity show.” To create a sonic context consistent with that role, the professor-turned-producer consulted with Buddy Miller and Randy Scruggs, who tag-teamed as session leaders. Together, they located musicians who would intuitively know what to do. Then, Cusic gave them room to do it. “Producing is not something you do by yourself,” he says. “It’s a collaborative process. You’ve got all those guys that are so talented. . . .” Cusic’s main caveat was that no keyboards were to be used on the sessions. “I didn’t want it to be so smooth, I wanted some rough edges to it,” he emphasizes. “The songs are pretty straightforward, and the musician lineup sort of dictated the sound.”
 
The sound to which Cusic refers is centered around the album’s unfussy arrangements, tracked live inside Bare’s old haunt, the now-historic RCA Studio B—where he started his country career a little more than five decades ago. “The sessions] really seemed to bring full- circle that era where you cut songs live. We didn’t just put down a drum track and then a bass track and then phone in something from Vancouver,” cracks Cusic, who noted that the overdub sessions consisted of little more than adding backing vocals. “We cut it all live, and the musicians could feed off each other. Obviously, we used Pro Tools and all that, but we basically did it the old-fashioned way.”

In 1962, you’d have found extraordinarily talented musicians gathered in the same room and cutting tracks live, but you wouldn’t have found them doing it without taking careful and necessary aim at making polished, radio-ready records. Not while on the clock, anyhow. But those clock hands have done some turning since Bare last exited Studio B in 1977. In a Rip Van Winkle-like twist, the indie-music aesthetic for which Bare once waged battle has come into its own while he wasn’t looking, with a committed cadre of non-conforming singers, songwriters and musicians now espousing his fringe-dweller way of thinking.

Defining the Americana Genre

If today’s Americana movement has given Bobby Bare the gift of a ready outlet—and a willing audience—for his particular brand of rough-hewn rootsifying, Bare, as one of Americana’s most legitimate progenitors, has given the movement something of arguably greater worth: a first-hand stamp of validation for a musical genre that, while on an upswing, is still in need of galvanizing, larger-than-life figures. Weighing in on Bare’s effortless alignment with the core values of the movement, Cusic says a mouthful: “Of course, when Americana talks about what it is, it talks about blues, it talks about country, it talks about rootsy music, and man, we’ve got rootsy music on [the album]. We’ve got songs that go way back. It’s really kind of a history lesson,” he proposes. “For young ears, all that stuff’s brand-new. When you can make history brand-new, you’ve got something, because those sounds and those songs are timeless.

“The problem with Americana,” he offers, “is that it’s everything that isn’t something else.” Cusic offers the notion that Darker Than Light is a kind of one-stop solution for a genre that, in his opinion, has experienced “an identity crisis [and] an acceptance crisis.” Says Cusic, “It’s like they say about Hank Williams—if you want to know what country music is, listen to a Hank Williams album. If you want to know what Americana is, listen to this Bobby Bare album.”

For his part, Bare seems enthused by his affiliation with the Americana camp. During his release-week appearance on Music City Roots, he offered high praise for Buddy Miller and the other musicians on the album and declared to the crowd, “This is a brand-new movement, folks—this is what’s happening in music.” His contribution, as he aptly described it, involved “[taking] folk songs and treating them like honest-to-God songs”—probably as good an assessment of Americana’s objectives as any.

One suspects that Bare was unprepared for this rejuvenating development in his career, unfolding just as his breakthrough hit, “Detroit City,” celebrates its 50th anniversary. All these years later, the classic song’s lonely protagonist, of course, has no choice but to remain forever marooned. Bobby Bare, however, seems to have found his way home. [Article by Steve Morley]

CD Review: Duane Allman's Skydog box set

The first time Duane Allman’s name ever appeared on a nationally released album, the occasion was the 1967 Liberty Records debut by Hour Glass, a band featuring both Duane and younger brother Gregg Allman — names that meant little then, but ones which would rise to the ranks of rock’s best-known within a mere few years. And, speaking of a mere few years . . . in retrospect, there’s something almost eerily prophetic about the band’s name. Duane Allman’s brief and brilliant career can be likened to that of a sand-filled timepiece, impassively ticking off a small and finite number of minutes.

Indeed, the release of Hour Glass’s less-than-auspicious debut album in October of 1967 marked the beginning of Duane’s final four years. Within that brief period, he would become a blues guitar hero, the Allman Brothers Band would emerge under his leadership to record a small but essential body of work (including one of rock’s finest live albums), and he would lose his life in a motorcycle accident, just short of his 25th birthday, in the Allmans’ adopted hometown of Macon, Georgia.

Of course, Duane lives on through his work—his reputation is, in fact, bigger than life. An entire new generation of Allman Brothers fans has come of age since then, many of whom have heard only a fraction of Duane’s sprawling musical legacy. Serious students of the guitarist—and they are legion—are aware of his role in dozens of late ’60s/early ’70s recordings made predominantly in Muscle Shoals, Ala., but a broad overview of his session work has never been made available in one package until now.

Duane Allman's Skydog

Rounder Records’ Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective is a seven-disc set with extensive liner notes detailing the legendary guitarist’s fast-rising fame amid his dwindling days. Numerous tracks contained here were previously made available on a pair of Duane Allman anthologies and the Allman Brothers’ box set Dreams; some of the cuts on which Duane appeared — by such notables as Boz Scaggs, Wilson Pickett, Ronnie Hawkins and Delaney & Bonnie Bramlett — are still in print. The box does, however, comprise an impressive one-stop, and it contains hard-to-find and previously unreleased tracks. Among them are the very first known recordings from Duane and Gregg in their fledgling band the Escorts, plus demos from transitional band the Allman Joys that, until now, have remained unheard by most.

These formative recordings, while they lack finesse and polish, illustrate the brothers’ raw talent as well as the range of musical influences that would soon coalesce in the proto-Southern rock sound of the Allman Brothers. In addition to the more obvious blues and R&B workouts are garage- and psych-styled numbers including the early Gregg Allman composition “Gotta Get Away” and a version of “Spoonful.” The Allman Joys’ tautly performed take on the Willie Dixon-penned blues standard, notably produced by music-biz legend John D. Loudermilk, is more attuned to the style of, say, the Blues Magoos than the moody, amped-up “Spoonful” served by Cream, whose version had not yet been released at the time of this session.

The straight-ahead covers of songs by seminal English blues-rockers the Yardbirds indicate that Duane was still several steps away from transforming his influences into a more original and personal style. The oldest tracks, riddled with signs of audio decay, are important mainly as historical documents, featuring performances that rarely, if ever, accomplish the remarkable. What is remarkable, though, is how quickly these early efforts morphed into muscular, though still somewhat derivative, examples of late ’60s American rock and soul.

While the brothers Allman were prevented from exploring their desired, still-unfolding blues-rock fusion on their Hour Glass albums, it is on these sessions that they began seriously honing their studio chops, and they play like they mean business in spite of the imposed stylistic restraints. Their medley of B.B. King numbers — which remained unreleased for many years — demonstrates how fully Duane had absorbed the blues vocabulary into his lead guitar work, which rings with authenticity and zeal on this track, a heartfelt tribute to a key musical inspiration.

 

The Allman Brothers Band

Had the brothers intended to head in a commercial soul-pop direction — a credible enough choice in light of their love for R&B and Duane’s later association with the Muscle Shoals and Memphis studio scenes — they couldn’t have done much better than the propulsive stomper “Power of Love,” sung by Gregg with gritty gusto and written by the storied Southern songwriting duo of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham (perhaps best-known for the Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby”).

If they had wanted to be remembered as laughable psychedelic pseudo-jazzers, though, they couldn’t have hit the bull’s-eye any more perfectly than they did on their sitar-stained instrumental cover of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” — an abomination that one can only suppose was the imaginary brainstorm of some cigar-puffing record company man. Such is the dues-paying flux that the brothers underwent while laying groundwork for the Allman Brothers Band.

While the Allmans’ history has been laid out on previous collections, the band’s gestation and vital first phase are thoroughly revisited here, and the plentiful sampling of Duane’s session recordings ups the ante considerably. However, it narrows the appeal of the exhaustive and pricey ($140) package to only those listeners who have more than a casual interest in the soulful and rootsy Southern sounds with which Skydog is stuffed. Those with a collector’s bent will revel in the obscure oddities scattered throughout, though it must be said that occasional selections will tax even fans who are most fascinated by the era.

The most obvious audience for this almost obsessively comprehensive package, then, is a no-brainer: guitar players. Initially, the Skydog box set is being produced in a run of 10,000 numbered copies, and if no one were allowed to buy it except card-carrying six-string slingers, there’d be no problem moving the inventory. There are few musicians, living or dead, who can claim to have influenced as many guitarists as Duane Allman has done, most of them post-mortem. Two musicians who have felt Duane’s tug agreed to share their thoughts about the great bluesman: Nashville native Pat Murphy and Scott Rath, who landed in Music City via Boston and L.A.

 

Pat Murphy & Scott Rath

The fact that neither one’s name is probably familiar merely testifies to the wealth of under-sung musical talent in and around Nashville (where Duane Allman himself was born and would put in time as a working-stiff musician gigging at school dances throughout the greater Middle Tennessee region). Both men are accomplished players; Rath, in fact, worked with power-trio royalty Tim Bogert (Beck, Bogert & Appice; Cactus) and Cream co-founder Ginger Baker, and also served a brief stint in the band of Warren Zevon. Murphy, a tasteful player who by choice maintains a somewhat low profile, has nonetheless made his presence known within the Nashville blues community. He can also be heard on the Internet, where one of his well-realized homemade tracks was spotted and subsequently included in the ongoing “Editor Boy’s Big Eight” feature in Guitar Player magazine. His YouTube channel (youtube.com/murff625) has had more than 100,000 views, and his fans span the globe.

Murphy’s forte is in his deeply felt, restrained style, while Rath is more prone to engaging in full-on, careening slideplay in the upper reaches of the fretboard. What the two musicians do have in common are a remnant of Allman’s bluesman mojo as well a vital relationship with their instruments. Rath and Murphy, as was Allman, are committed players who aren’t likely to stray far from a guitar for more than a modest duration. Both are longtime admirers of the Allman Brothers Band who heard them soon after the release of their self-titled 1969 debut (included in its entirety on Skydog). Rath still waxes rhapsodic about the day he was forever Allmanized by a friend’s brother who owned the record.

“We put it on and my life changed at that point. The instrumental that starts it — ‘Don’t Want You No More’ — leads into possibly one of the greatest blues guitar licks of all time, at the beginning of ‘It’s Not My Cross to Bear,’ and then Gregg’s voice comes in,” recalls Rath. “I was slayed, and still am every time I hear that song.”

Murphy relates a story about being a youngster who had begun hearing about “the blues” but didn’t understand what they were. “I was just a kid, just past the Beatles and the Monkees. [I thought], ‘I must know what this “blues” is about.’” Soon thereafter, he happened to hear two consecutive tracks sizzle through a small radio: Derek and the Dominos’ “Have You Ever Loved a Woman,” featuring Duane on slide, and “Mean Town Blues” by Johnny Winter, the other premier slide player at the time. “I knew this was the blues, without anyone saying that it was,” remembers Murphy. “Duane spoke the language.”

Separated by well over a thousand miles, both witnessed Duane onstage in late 1970. Murphy vividly recalls attending an Allman Brothers show at Vanderbilt University on October 30. “I remember Duane, I remember the slide . . . it was mesmerizing,” he says.

Just over a month later, on Dec. 2, Rath was fortunate enough to be in Syracuse, New York for one of the only two shows at which Duane joined Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominoes, reprising the invaluable role he played on the sessions for the still-classic Layla album. Perhaps only a guitarist who’s a dedicated Duane devotee can articulate the qualities that made him so exceptional, and Rath is just such a disciple.

“Duane had the phrasing and soul of the best blues players from Chicago, but with the inventiveness of guys like Jeff Beck,” he explains, “so he basically grew up understanding the nuances of the blues and how a single note or phrase can tell a story or let you feel the blues. Listen to ‘I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town’ [included on Skydog, drawn from Live at Ludlow Garage: 1970] or the B.B. King medley by the Hour Glass, and you will hear blues guitar at its finest.”

Rath also notes Allman’s “melodic sense,” which he shared with bandmate Dickey Betts, but which, in Allman’s hands, took sometimes astounding, sometimes reckless liberties. “[Duane] was known to listen to [progressive jazz masters] Charles Mingus and John Coltrane, and his sense of abandon shows, but with melody.” Murphy points out that Duane’s tonal vocabulary hovered near the simple handful of notes in the pentatonic scale — basically, a blues mode — and that his playing could at times lack precision, be that due to unchecked passion or intoxication, but he enthusiastically agrees with Rath’s assessment of Allman’s knack for invention.

“He might put himself out on a limb, but he went for it,” says Murphy. “Dickey Betts might have been the better technician, but he played it kind of safe—he’s not going ‘out there.’ Duane did go for it, every single time.”

Allman In The Studio & On Stage

Numerous examples of these spirited improvisations can be heard on the Skydog set, though the majority are found on the Allmans’ tracks — particularly the live ones — and culled from select studio dates on which Duane was given ample room to stretch out. Numbering among these are the landmark Layla sessions and the memorable Boz Scaggs track “Loan Me a Dime,” a recording that helped to further cement Duane’s legend as a blues master. After a couple of rounds of impassioned solos earlier in the song, the guitarist revs up the energy in tandem with Muscle Shoals session drummer Roger Hawkins and is only beginning to peak at the 13-minute mark, where the track fades — despite audible evidence that the band was clearly not done playing.

No such premature endings to contend with on At Fillmore East, the unbeatable double live set that contains several performances clocking in at double digits (producer Tom Dowd, in fact, was forced to edit certain tracks, so lengthy were some of the band’s live forays). At Fillmore East stands as testament to the fact that the Allman Brothers were entirely in their element on the stage, that they could find ways to keep extended performances exciting, and that there was something seemingly magical about their Fillmore shows in particular. The recording, which commonly resides on best-album lists, inspired many a musician, Scott Rath among them.

“In 1970 I was playing slide guitar and had learned most of the songs on the Fillmore album the best I could,” says Rath, who routinely uses the same kind of Coricidin glass medicine bottles with which Duane first played slide due to the initial lack of a “real” one — serendipitously defining his smooth-fretting sound in the process. “From beginning to end, with the long jams included, [At Fillmore East] has been the inspiration for almost every guitar player I know,” he concludes. “Possibly the greatest live album ever.”

Pat Murphy echoes Rath’s sentiment almost verbatim, not even using the word “possibly” to qualify the claim. “The greatest live album ever recorded,” Murphy simply states, referring to the album as the one upon which he modeled his no-nonsense approach to playing music. “There was zero showbiz and almost no stage talk — the music was an entire piece.” 

Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective, with its overarching view of its subject, can’t boast the cohesiveness of a live Allmans document. The story it tells may be a more detailed and fragmented one than the typical Allman Brothers fan needs to hear, but it’s a tale that unquestionably deserves to be told. Given Duane Allman’s musical and historical significance, the 129 tracks on Skydog are simply too important — and most of the time, too good — to let slide. [CD Review by Steve Morley]

~~

Dedicated to the memory of Bobby Rance, another guitarist who left us too soon—and who, had it been possible, would certainly have been quoted here.