There are a few ups and downs here, like in every Springsteen tribute, but I think that Glory Days as a pub singing song is simply genius!.
It’s a mouthful of a title for a mouthful of an album. At a colossal 38 tracks, Play Some Pool… is more of a Now That’s What We Call Broooce. And helpfully there’s nary a part of the Bruce canon untouched for any long term fan who wishes to be offended/ delighted by the homages contained herein.
Usually found in order of importance to an artist’s reputation beneath live albums and remix compilations, tribute albums are notoriously iffy affairs at the best of times. Lots of phoned-in performances by big(ish) names, or just downright weird-bordering-on-insulting pastiches, as anyone who has sat through one will attest.
Despite no actual presence of recent Bruce torchbearers such as The Hold Steady or The Gaslight Anthem, all manner of semi-known indie herberts line up to doff a cap. Probably the best known acts here concern fans of Art Brut – singer Eddie Argos fronts Glam Chops’ version of “Born In The USA” (done, as you’d imagine, in the style of the Glitter Band fronted by Mark E Smith, all deeply unsober at a kebab house) and ex-Hefner youngster Darren Hayman.
Highlights? The splendid Butcher Boy’s delicate reading of Streets Of Philadelphia; Help Stamp Out Loneliness’ gorgeously electro I’m On Fire; School’s C86-y take on Hungry Heart; ‘Allo Darlin”s rippling indie makeover of Atlantic City and the superbly named Swedish Chef’s glistening weaklingness take on Used Cars. Unfortunately Linda Black Bear’s banjo-assisted version of Born To Run sounds like Neil Young at a music workshop, and The WinterSleep’s half awake meander through Dancing In The Dark doesn’t really add anything to your life, other than sucking away what seems like two hours.
There’s actually nothing completely horrendous on here, although the chances of you wanting to sit through it all again are slim. Instead there’s a good dozen or so tracks here to be selected by everyone, Springsteen fan or not.
With their 3rd album “Under The Big Black Sun”, Los Angeles punk pioneers X had created an album that was every bit as good as their landmark debut. Not an easy feat for any band who started their career which such seminal albums as “Los Angeles” and “Wild Gift”. But where “Wild Gift” largely repeated the winning formula of their debut, the musical growth and emotional depth of “Under The Big Black Sun” was undeniable.
“X’s first album issued on a major label, 1982’s “Under the Big Black Sun”, is arguably their finest record. All 11 songs are exceptional, from both a performance and compositional point of view. The DoorsRay Manzerek’s production is more akin to hard rock bands than their earlier punk works, but the songs still pack quite a punch. Before the recording of the album, singer Exene Cervenka’s sister was killed by a drunk driver, and the band decided to work out their grief in the music, as evidenced by two of the album’s best tracks: the melodic “Riding With Mary” and the vintage ’50s sound of “Come Back to Me.” The highlights don’t stop there, however; also included are the Led Zepplin’esque “The Hungry Wolf” (an early video favorite of MTV), the accelerating “Motel Room in My Bed,” the rocker “Blue Spark,” the spacious title track, and the album closer “The Have Nots.” Again, Cervenka and John Doe supply some great vocal harmonies (perhaps the only punk band to ever do so), while Billy Zoom shows off great rockabilly chops throughout. “Under The Big Black Sun” is one of the quintessential rock records from the ’80s.”
Formed in 1977, X quickly established themselves as one of the best bands in the first wave of LA’s flourishing punk scene; becoming legendary leaders of a punk generation. In 2020 – they released their first new album in 35 years, “ALPHABETLAND”.
Beefheart’s debut album, originally released in 1967 on Buddah Records, was the most accessible and pop inflected of all the releases from his catalogue. Still ‘Safe As Milk’ is a very strong and heavily blues-influenced work but it also hints on many of the features that would later become the trademarks of Captain Beefheart. Not only did a 20-year old Ry Cooder play bass and guitar on ‘Abba Zaba’ and ‘Grown So Ugly’, he also arranged the latter as well as ‘Sure ‘Nuff ‘N Yes I Do’. Also, Cooder’s role in the recording process was ‘to translate the Captain’s wilder ideas to the rest of the band and generally acts as musical director’. With him as a supervisor the sessions proceeded more or less smoothly and ‘Safe As Milk’ was recorded within a month.
I can’t praise this album enough I loved it when it was first released, having not heard it since the early 70,s, Originally released in 1967, I was taken aback by just how good this record is. It makes you wish that the Captain Van Vliet had done a few more R&B albums before veering off into avant garde territory. The stereo mix on this cd whilst typical polarised sixties style does open up the sound a lot more than the old mono version that was originally released ,The mastering too is great.
I played this 3 times in a row when i opened the package, it’s just flawless as an album Even tracks i was less keen on as a kid such as “I’m Glad” have grown on me. Opener “Sure ‘Nuff ‘N Yes I Do’ bursts out of the speakers compressed to death by the engineers it pulls along with the fabulous meaty Jerry Handley bass that dominates all early Beefheart tracks. “Electricity” still my fav track, shows the direction the band were headed with it’s jagged rhythms and tempo changes.
A brilliant track that, astoundingly, never made it onto any of Beefheart’s albums proper; Korn ring Finger was made around the same time as the ‘Mirror Man’ album, and fits in perfectly with that sound. This is The Sentinel’s favourite era of the tCaptains music, and this piece is just as good as ’25th Century Quaker’,‘Tarotplane’ etc. The sound, like ‘Mirror Man’ is bouncy, expansive, and effortlessly psychedelic.
Lou Reed’s influence has touched each new generation of music fans. These are his best albums, When American rock critic Lester Bangs called Lou Reed “a completely depraved pervert and pathetic death dwarf… a liar, a wasted talent, an artist continually in flux, and a huckster selling pounds of his own flesh”, he was describing his hero.
Lou Reed famously changed his mind, frequently, regarding which of his songs he liked and which he loathed. But listen – he loved every last one of them. Every single second of every last one, OK?” There were many turkeys along the way, as well as many triumphs. Few artists in the history of rock’n’roll are as enigmatic as Lou Reed, and few have created a body of work as influential, erratic and controversial as with Lou Reed’s, first seminal art-rock group The Velvet Underground and then as a solo artist.
Born Lewis Allen Reed in Brooklyn, New York on March 2nd, 1942, he was always an outsider. As a teenager he was subjected to electro-shock therapy intended to ‘cure’ homosexuality. In his early 20s he dropped out of university to work as a staff songwriter at Pickwick Records where he wrote novelty pop songs, completely at odds with his love of experimental jazz. It was at Pickwick that Reed met Welsh classically trained musician John Cale. The pair formed a band called The Warlocks, which by 1965 had mutated into The Velvet Underground, comprising Reed on guitar and vocals, Cale on bass, viola and organ, Sterling Morrison on second guitar and Maureen ‘Moe’ Tucker on drums.
The Velvets were a band ahead of time. Their debut album, released in 1967, was the antithesis of the Summer Of Love’s hippie idealism. Their lo-fi sonics and Reed’s dark lyrics proved too uncompromising for mass consumption, but the Velvets’ influence would carry over generations, from David Bowie to punk rock and beyond. It was Bowie who helped Reed achieve his breakthrough success as a solo artist, co-producing 1972’s “Transformer”, the album that featured two of Reed’s best-loved and biggest songs: “Walk On The Wild Side” and “Perfect Day”. But pop stardom didn’t suit Lou Reed, and in 1975 he attempted career suicide with “Metal Machine Music”, an album comprised entirely of guitar feedback.
This maverick streak runs throughout Reed’s career, as evidenced by his final two albums: the ambient electronica of 2007’s Hudson River Wind Meditations, and the unlikely collaboration with Metallica on 2011’s “Lulu”. But it’s with a guitar in hand that Lou Reed created his definitive work as a classic rock’n’roll anti-hero: the outsider, in black leather and shades, the original poster boy for heroin chic, the straight-talking poet laureate of New York City.
Lou Reed – Lou Reed (RCA 1972)
After leaving the Velvet Underground, Reed debuted as a solo artist with a self-titled album in June ’72, though most of the songs were originally played at Velvet Underground concerts, or were outtakes from “VU” recording sessions. Reed would establish himself as a major artist in his own right soon enough, but the songs just aren’t strong enough here. My favourite always is the taut, very VU-ish “I Can’t Stand It.”
Lou Reed – Transformer (RCA, 1972)
“Transformer” remains a remarkable arranged marriage of gritty, witty words and pop succour. It anointed him the godfather of anti-stars, opening up a career that may otherwise have swiftly gone the way of all flesh.
“I don’t have a personality of my own,” Reed said in 1972. “I just pick up on other people’s.”
He’d come to London for a change of pace, to “get out of the New York thing”, but his first, eponymous, post-Velvets solo album, recorded on the dirty boulevards of Willesden Green in West London, had stuttered rather than strutted. Nobody, least of all him, was sure where a former Velvet Underground frontman should go next.
Lou Reed may not have made much of an impact, but Reed’s second album, “Transformer” co-produced by David Bowie and released just five months later that year was a revelation. Its most famous song is the hit single “Walk on the Wild Side,” and “Perfect Day” has become something of a standard over the years. “Vicious” and “Satellite of Love” are quite well known as well. But I’ll go with “I’m So Free,” a catchy rocker that sounds like it could have been made by The Ramones (though that band didn’t even exist yet).
Reed’s self-titled solo debut included various Velvets leftovers and, most bizarrely musicians, Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman of Yes. Unsurprisingly it sold no better than the Velvets’ albums. His second album, released just six months later, made him a superstar. The first time many of us clapped our eyes on Lou Reed was via Mick Rock’s camera lens. “Transformer’s” haunting, kabukistyle cover image was captured during Lou’s debut London show, at King’s Cross in July ‘72. Reed, hastily dressed to impress in a rhinestone jacket by Angie Bowie, gazes into middle distance, the Velvets in his rear view mirror, on the cusp of solo greatness. It’s the ultimate Lou Reed shot.
There’s the fabulous Rock ‘N’ Roll Heart-era shoot: Reed in shades, a leather jacket so small it could’ve been made for a child, under a see-through plastic jacket from Ian’s of St. Mark’s Place, an NYC boutique that did fetish before McLaren and Westwood, just as Lou did punk before Pistols and Ramones. There’s bleached ‘74 Lou: mean ‘n’ moody, dead-eyed ‘n’ skeletal, magnificent. With lines inspired by Warhol (‘hit me with a flower’) and Mick Ronson restraining himself until the fade, it’s a great “hate song”.
Yes of course this should be number one… but we’re non-mainstream, hardcore obsessive fans here, right? And if you’re not being perverse and contrary, you’re not doing Lou Reed right. Whether Lou liked it or not – and he argued both sides depending on that day’s mood swings – it’s the song which made his post-Velvets name and by which the world at large remembers him. He didn’t even think it was a single. Inspired by Nelson Algren and the colourful characters and pansexual “superstars” he’d met at The Factory, its atmosphere, created by Herbie Flowers’ two-note bass slide, The Thunder Thighs’ “doo da doo”s and baritone sax from Ronnie Ross (Bowie’s sax teacher) is immortal. Its purring sarcasm that transformed his career.
“Satellite Of Love” had been demoed by The Velvets in the “Loaded” era, but not with this level of grace and grandeur. The Bowie-Ronson arrangement is redolent of Drive-In Saturday, with the piano flourishing in all the right places and the backing vocals, finger clicks and handclaps extracting the pop from the pomp.
It’s frequently tricky to deduce whether Lou’s being open-hearted or slyly sneering. Is “Perfect Day” a transcendent, vulnerable love song or a subversive paean to smack? Of course, it’s been taken out of his hands since – not least, insanely, by the likes of Boyzone and Pavarotti on the BBC’s chart-topping 1997 Children In Need interpretation. Yet even upon “Transformer’s” release, most listeners heard genuine romance: sangria in the park, feeding animals in the zoo and catching a movie worked as sincerity incarnate. We thought we were someone else. Someone good.
Produced by David Bowie and his guitarist Mick Ronson, Transformer caught the mood of the glam-rock era with Mick Rock’s cover of an androgynous Reed, and some classic pop songs – notably Satellite Of Love and Perfect Day – that echoed Bowie’s early-70s material. The album even gave Reed a Top 10 hit “Walk On The Wild Side”, despite blasé references to drugs and oral sex.
Lou Reed – New York (Sire, 1989)
New York (1989) is widely regarded as one of Reed’s strongest solo albums, and “Dirty Blvd.” is its principal gem of a song: An unflinching but compassionate tale of a New York boy trapped in a life of squalor and abuse, and yearning to escape. Dion’s aching backing vocals are a perfect touch.
Not for Lou Reed the celebratory swing of Sinatra’s Theme From New York New York, or the romance of Woody Allen’s Manhattan; Reed’s portrait of his home town was drawn from the mean streets he knew so well in his junkie years. New York is essentially a concept album, with instructions by Reed for it to be “listened to in one sitting as though it were a book or a movie”.
Withering satire dominates, with Dirty Blvd. one of many brutally funny vignettes. Dirty Blvd. is also fundamentally a great rock’n’roll song, and New York is an album filled with them. It’s Reed’s late career classic. Recorded in late 1988, Lou Reed’s New York album sounded like he’d spent months glued to six TV sets blaring out a cacophony of bad news. Making sense of noise was always his trick and, given that he liked nothing better than turning observation into fast art, Reed managed to juggle references that ricochet from TV trash talkers like Morton Downey, homicidal killer Bernard Goetz, some bloke called Donald Trump, the Virgin Mary and questionable UN leader Kurt ‘just following orders’ Waldheim.
Despite a bewildering set of references, Lou gave it a universal rock’n’roll thrust, reverting to Velvet Underground aesthetics – two guitars, bass and drums, with occasional glimpses of Moe Tucker on percussion. From the violent click-clack opening of “Romeo Had Juliette” to the sombre investigation into divine versus human doubt of crucifixion epic “Dime Store Mystery”, “New York” demanded close investigation. Once achieved, you could only marvel at how redolent of time and place the sound was. You can smell the stink of the Hudson River and that unique aroma of greasy avenues that characterise the city in heat. Warhol died, Nico died, but Reed somehow pulled himself out of the creative doldrums to deliver his most acclaimed album in many years, “New York” is so good he only named it once. Its “fierce poetic journalism” (Rolling Stone) now called out, instead of wallowing in, urban squalor.
The remastered Deluxe Edition brings clarity to the hit song Dirty Blvd (Dion DiMucci’s vocals providing an appropriate Latino twist) and the stately evisceration of political corruption held like a flaming torch above Strawman.
All the songs get the live treatment from an already available concert recorded in Montreal. Work tapes and a live Sweet Jane and Walk On The Wild Side add heft, but the main work is the thing here.
Lou Reed – Berlin (RCA, 1973)
Rolling Stone magazine billed Lou Reed’s third solo album as “the Sgt. Pepper of the 70s”. Many since have called it The Most Depressing Album Of All Time. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
Berlin is undeniably Reed’s most over-the–top statement. With a lavish production and an all-star cast including Steve Winwood, it’s a concept album-cum-rock opera: the story of a doomed, drug-fuelled romance, told by Reed in the style of a heavily medicated torch singer. He was rewarded with a Top 10 hit in the UK. In the US the album stiffed and Lou went back underground.
Berlin (1973) is, I think, one of Reed’s greatest efforts — an extremely dark song cycle whose characters suffer through addiction, abuse and more. It really has to be heard in its entirety to be fully appreciated but here is “Lady Day,” the album’s second song, which offers a first glimpse at one of the doomed characters, foreshadowing what is to come but not fully descending into tragedy yet. “I said, ‘No, no, no, oh Lady Day,’ ” the narrator sings over and over, as if trying to fend off what is coming.
Berlin – the most gothic thing ever made in Willesden – works best as a whole, especially the slide into unrelenting sorrow of its second half. Yet the great concept albums – “a film for the ears”, producer Bob Ezrin called this – demand a big pay-off finish, and boy does Berlin bring that home. “Sad Song” is bombastic, but Reed’s forlorn, muted voice contrasts perfectly with the sturm und drang. Every time you think his character’s getting soft (‘she looked like Mary Queen of Scots’), he snaps back brutally (‘just goes to show how wrong you can be’). They don’t do mean-spirited melodrama like this any more.
Before Side 2 of “Berlin” gets really dark, Side 1 is merely very dark indeed. This straddles the line between autobiography and fiction (‘speeding and lonely’), with Reed’s phrasing urgent yet studied. Bob Ezrin lets Alice Cooper’s guitarists fully let rip only once the story’s told. A tangible plea for a reprieve from the horrors of existence and making love by proxy. The album’s most upbeat track, then.
Lou Reed – Coney Island Baby (RCA, 1976)
After the commercial disaster of 1975’s Metal Machine Music, Lou had his back to the wall. “I had no money and no guitars,” he confessed. Reed had to promise his record label that he wouldn’t make ‘Son of Metal Machine Music’, and he was as good as his word. Just five months after releasing Metal Machine Music, Reed went in almost the direct opposite direction on “Coney Island Baby”. Though not without its dark moments, it’s dominated by melodic, straightforward pop and rock music, and Reed has rarely sounded as tender and sincere as he does on the doo wop-flavored title track.
“Coney Island Baby” is classic Lou Reed, described in Rolling Stone as “timeless, terrific rock‘n’roll”. Reed has never written a more beautiful song than this album’s title track. A bitter-sweet lament, reminiscent of Dylan’s best 70s work, it ends with the redemptive mantra: ‘The glory of love might see you through.’ In desperation, Reed had dug deep. It’s emblematic of Reed’s career that as many fans think Coney Island Baby is a flaccid filler as rate it as one of his strongest. Following Metal Machine Music with a tender, vulnerable pastiche of soul and doo-wop had everyone confused. Yet its mellow mood is broken by the incongruous, visceral fusion of words, music, muttering voices and jolting sounds which constitute Kicks. It’s as if Reed’s dark side is banging on the closet door, demanding to be let out. Sex, blood and adrenalin: it’s intense.
His piece de resistance: a loping soul groove, deft doo-wop and Bob Kulick’s glistening guitar interjections knit a backdrop over which wannabe tough guy Reed drops the façade and exposes his youthful dreams and emotions (‘I wanted to play football for the coach’). It’s also a love letter to his transgender muse, Rachel. From the opening monologue’s intimacy through the nod to The Five Keys’ Glory Of Love (one of his favourite oldies), to the redemptive public-declaration-of-commitment punch-line, Coney Island Baby is as sensitive as it is audacious, and, sonically, a glory. Reed’s world was often ‘a funny place, something like a circus or a sewer’, but here his better angels come shining through.
You could argue the case for A Gift as being one of Coney Island Baby’s highlights – “it’s so funny”, said Lou – but this old Velvets draft from 1968 is updated with terrific feel, for which one-off producer Godfrey Diamond never got due credit. An exquisite surge of rhythm and lead guitars mesh with Bowie-influenced call-and-response “la la la”s, and Reed gauges his vocal to build from confident to pleading. Either his most sincere or artificial love song.
Growing Up In Public (1980)
On the witty, intricately arranged “Growing Up In Public”, Reed takes one last long hard look at his various personalities before hitting forty. ‘I’m so damned sane’, he said. This pomp-rock opener, all piano pirouettes and dovetailed dynamics, a capella blurts and handclaps, borders on sounding like Queen. Lou gives it conviction, asking how he’s supposed to talk to pretty girls when his father was “weak” and “simpering”.
“Think It Over,” from Growing Up in Public (1980), is, I think, an overlooked gem in Reed’s catalogue, a sensitively sung grown-up love song that finds the singer proposing marriage but being warned by his partner that they shouldn’t rush into anything: “When you ask for someone’s heart/You must know that you’re smart/Smart enough to care for it, so I’m gonna/Think it over.”
Magic And Loss (Magic And Loss, 1992)
Reed stared into the abyss of death on 1992’s “Magic and Loss”, which also, somehow, included one of his catchiest songs ever: “What’s Good,” in which he explores existential confusion in a playful way (“What good is seeing eye chocolate/What good’s a computerized nose/And what good was cancer in April/Why no good, no good at all”) and concludes, “Life’s good, but not fair at all.”
Lou’s “Magic And Loss” album, which he compared to Beethoven’s Fifth, was a set of buttoned-up ponderings on cancer and death which came dressed as Lofty Art: audiences who came to see him play it were barred from drinking or talking. Some believed his hype: weirdly it’s his highest-charting UK album (no.6). But it was no Berlin, bar this slow-burn finale about passing through fire.
Lou Reed – Rock ’N’ Roll Animal (RCA, 1974)
The best of Reed’s 11 live albums was partly a reaction to the harsh criticism and weak US sales of the ambitious “Berlin”. As its spiky title implied, “Rock ‘N’ Roll Animal” had Reed going back to basics, reprising Velvets songs while reaffirming his popular image as rock’s junkie-in-chief. After releasing his commercial breakthrough Transformer in 1972 and the ambitious Berlin song cycle in 1973, Reed made one of the all-time great live albums, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal”, recorded at the Academy of Music in New York in December ’73 and released in 1974. With the exception of “Lady Day,” from Berlin, the songs all dated back to his Velvet Underground years, and benefited from the muscular, polished guitar work of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner. Hunter also wrote the stunning new extended intro for album opener “Sweet Jane”:
Reed is backed by a slick five-piece band featuring guitarists Dick Wagner (a future Alice Cooper sidekick) and Steve Hunter. Their flashy licks transformed “Sweet Jane” and “Rock ‘N’ Roll” into swaggering arena rock anthems, while the album’s centrepiece, a woozy, 13-minute version of “Heroin”, couldn’t have done more to glamourise Reed’s drug of choice.
Reed’s 1974 live album “Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal” was such a revelation that in 1975, he released more songs from the same 1973 concert as Lou Reed “Live”.“Vicious,” like the best of Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, got a major boost from the hard-hitting guitar work of bandmates Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner.
Metal Machine Music (1975)
The double album Metal Machine Music (1975) — almost universally reviled upon its release and rarely played again by anyone, afterwards — is an audacious experiment: Each side of the vinyl release contains 16 minutes of screeching electronic noise. I can hear some music in it, if I try really hard. But I would never listen to more than 30 seconds or so, voluntarily. To endure the whole thing in one sitting would be torture. Yet Reed clearly intended it as a sort of symphony (or anti-symphony) in four parts, so I am sharing, here, the whole thing. Enjoy.
Rock And Roll Heart (1976)
1976’s “Rock and Roll Heart” was all over the place, ranging from plainspoken ballads to moody, Berlin-like art-pop and hard-edged rock, with even some occasional jazz influence working its way in. “Follow the Leader” was written back in the Velvet Underground days and still feels unformed — more like a sketch than a finished song. But Reed’s new band (featuring keyboardist Michael Fonfara, saxophonist Marty Fogel, bassist Bruce Yaw and drummer Michael Suchorsky) helps give it an urgent edge and make it a standout.
“Rock And Roll Heart”, with Reed producing and playing all the guitars, was a confused response to CBGB punk, which he took a while to grasp. “I’m too literate to be into punk rock”. It leaps between fiery riffs and self-parodying neo-jazz. Just when you’re boxing it off, he pulls out this moody, wilfully repetitive showstopper, a love-hate song, possibly to drugs, which feels clammy, grubby – you can smell it in your hair the next day. It’s trashy, it’s melodramatic, it’s Reed in excelsis.
New Sensations (RCA, 1984)
In the early 80s, Reed quit booze and drugs, and regained his credibility with two cult classic albums: The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts. What followed those was the most accessible work of his entire career. Shockingly, New Sensations was the sound of Reed lightening up.
I Love You, Suzanne, the most upbeat pop song Reed has ever written, set the tone, while the nonchalantly funky title track even had him pledging to ‘eradicate my negative views’. The album wasn’t a hit (No.56 in the US, No.92 in the UK). Perhaps the public just wouldn’t buy a happy Lou Reed. Five years later the bleak New York proved a more effective comeback.
Mistrial, 1986
“Mistrial” (1986) was notable for Reed’s experiment in rap — lead single “The Original Wrapper” as well as “Video Violence,” a bracing protest song about the pervasiveness of violent images in film and television. Horrors have become mundane: “Up in the morning, drinking his coffee/Turns on the TV to some slasher movie,” Reed sings.
“When I was thirty my attitude was bad”. Yes, and your records were good. “Mistrial” is, apart from the hilarious The Original Wrapper, the sound of a forty-something man yelling at the telly from the sofa (Video Violence), and even Reed later bemoaned the production. This closing curveball, where Lou mistakes a film set for a UFO, carried a sly hint of the ghost of Transformer.
The Bells (1979)
Yep, we’re *that* hardcore obsessive. Recorded in Germany, the left-handed jazz-rock of “The Bells” climaxes with this noir nine-minute electronic drone, punctuated with Don Cherry’s wailing tributes to Ornette Coleman and semi-audible whispers and prayers. At the last, Reed’s chipped voice breaks in, spontaneously reciting the story of a Broadway actor falling in ecstasy from a rooftop to his death. “The whole thing is a mood piece, supposed to cause an emotion”, he explained. It does. Not an easy listen, it’s inexplicably profoundly affecting.
“The Bells” is most notable for its daring, haunting title track, which lasts more than nine minutes, most of which is devoted to an ominous, free-form instrumental (featuring co-writer Marty Fogel on saxophone and Don Cherry on trumpet) wrapped around a short song about an actor committing suicide.
“If you can’t play rock and you can’t play jazz”, declared Lou, “put the two together and you’ve really got something”. “The Bells” is a bizarre, bipolar mix of experiments in binaural sound and so-dumb-it’s-smart pop, as if he’d noticed Bowie’s Berlin wall-demolishing and fancied some of that. Hated by punk purists at the time, “proof” to them that Reed had “lost it”, Disco Mystic is white funk if you ran it through a photocopier fifty times then drained its blood then got an inauthenticity expert to triple-check it was fully inauthentic. Pastiche? Homage? It’s stupidly, brilliantly funky.
Street Hassle (1978)
The title track of 1978’s Street Hassle and its 11-minute, three-part centerpiece is musically gorgeous and lyrically ambitious, starting with tales of deadpan decadence but building to a heart breaking peak, with a cameo by Bruce Springsteen in the middle. Interesting fact: Reed claimed he wrote the “Tramps like us, we were born to pay” line without consciously thinking about “Born to Run.”
Part seedy punk, part cello-led rock opera, “Street Hassle” was, hoped Reed, a cross between “Burroughs, Selby, Chandler, Dostoevsky and rock’n’roll. Dirty mainstream snot”. The 11-minute, three-movement title track sees those looped cellos circling like vultures as Lou tells a graphic (even by his standards) tale of O.D.s, “little girls” and “bad shit”. And ultimately, “bad luck”. Probably the eeriest thing Bruce Springsteen has ever anonymously guested on.
Take No Prisoners (1978)
The double album Take No Prisoners (1978) was Reed’s third live album of the ’70s, and his fifth if you count Velvet Underground live albums. It was recorded at The Bottom Line in New York — an intimate, hometown venue for him — and finds him frequently talking at length, rambling on about all kinds of stuff, though he sticks to the music on the explosive album closer, “Leave Me Alone.”
Set The Twilight Reeling (1996)
After a run of painfully worthy, hark-at-me I’m-so-profound albums, it was a relief and release to hear Lou crank up the guitars again, even if it meant his interviews became yawnsome drones about amplifiers and studio technology. It’s full of clumsy poetry, but this attempt to echo Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle” does climax with a flare of the old heat.
“Set the Twilight Reeling” (1996) contained some of the strangest songs of Reed’s career (“Egg Cream,” “Sex With Your Parents”), and that’s really saying something. But it also boasts, among its highlights, one of his greatest heart-to-heart ballads, the low-key but musically beguiling “Hang On to Your Emotions.”
The Blue Mask (1982)
“The Blue Mask” marked a new chapter, with a new, often loud guitar band. But its best moments involve restrained musical subtlety. Stand-out The Gun has that, but also has Reed’s sinister, deadpan narration covering violence, intimidation, home invasion, possibly rape. It’s genuinely scary, reminding us that Reed had the genius to make a track haunt your psyche.
The Blue Mask(1982) was widely hailed as a triumph on its release, featuring sympathetic and dynamic backing by a tight three-piece band (guitarist Robert Quine, bassist Fernando Saunders, drummer Doane Perry) and a strong batch of songs. There’s no camp and no bizarre experiments here, and no hip indifference. Here is the album’s opening song, “My House,” which functions as both a tribute to Reed’s lyrical mentor (the poet and short story writer Delmore Schwartz) and an introduction to the new, mature, contented Reed. “I really got a lucky life/My writing, my motorcycle and my wife/And to top it all off a spirit of pure poetry/Is living in this stone and wood house with me,” he sings.
Sally Can’t Dance (1974)
Reed claimed to hate “Sally Can’t Dance” (his only US top ten album), but it’s rich with wry asides. Ennui, all but hidden away, is one of his frequent accidental not-trying-too-hard flashes of genius. It floats on a sullen mood, his voice so low it rumbles as he, cynical but arch, advises, ‘Pick up the pieces of your life/maybe someday you’ll have a wife’. Then he adds, ‘And alimony’. That punchline’s so unexpected that you laugh as you reel. “It’s the track most people skip, I guess”, said Lou. “It must be; it’s the one I like”.
After three striking albums in a row, Reed ran out of steam on 1974’s “Sally Can’t Dance”, which goes for shock value at times and crass commercialism at others while rarely making much of an impact. The only track I can really recommend is the raw, harrowing “Kill Your Sons,” inspired by Reed’s own family history and his experiences with mental illness.
Legendary Hearts (1984)
When writing about Reed, one tends to focus on his lyrics and his audacious sonic experiments, but the main attraction of “Martial Law” (the standout track from 1983’s Legendary Hearts) is the hypnotic groove Reed creates with the album’s stellar band: guitarist Robert Quine, drummer Fred Maher and bassist Fernando Saunders.
Live in Italy (1984)
The double album Live in Italy (1984) offers a snapshot of Reed’s great early-’80s band (guitarist Robert Quine, bassist Fernando Saunders and drummer Fred Maher) and shows them, here, stretching out on an intense medley of the Velvet Underground songs “Some Kinda Love” and “Sister Ray.”
Songs For Drella
Starting with 1989’s New York, Reed’s stretch on Sire Records saw a robust return to form after years of weak albums, in a period that also saw him pick up his guitar again and finally find personal happiness with partner Laurie Anderson.
Reed reunited with John Cale for the poignantly Warhol-homaging “Songs For Drella”, No one expected Reed and his equally headstrong Velvet Underground partner John Cale ever to make an album together after Cale left the group in 1968. But that’s what happened in 1990, when they reunited to record a tribute to their mentor Andy Warhol, who had died in 1987. Their chemistry was back in full force on much of it, including “Work,” which is about Warhol’s fierce work ethic. Reed sings: “Sometimes when I can’t decide what I should do/I think what would Andy have said/He’d probably say you think too much/That’s ’cause there’s work that you don’t want to do.”
Perfect Night: Live in London(1998)
Perfect Night: Live in London(recorded in ’97, released in ’98) was Reed’s fifth concert album (his eighth if you count the Velvet Underground) and unique among them for its calmness and clarity. This isn’t Lou Reed the showman or Lou Reed the provocateur, just Lou Reed the rock craftsman and a great, sympathetic band (guitarist Mike Rathke, bassist Fernando Saunders, drummer Tony “Thunder” Smith) working their way through his catalogue. Here’s “Busload of Faith,” from Reed’s New York album.
Ecstasy (2000)
In 2000, Reed released his “Ecstasy” album. With a one-of-a-kind video like this, how could I not share “Modern Dance”? (I actually like the song quite a bit, too.)
The Raven (2003)
Lou Reed’s 2003 double album “The Raven” was an ambitious, uneven affair, featuring songs written for “POEtry” — Reed’s 2000 collaboration with director Robert Wilson, an experimental opera based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe — with support from a multitude of guest musicians and actors, including David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, SteveBuscemi and Willem Dafoe. Here’s “Guilty,” featuring one of Reed’s biggest influences, Ornette Coleman, on alto sax.
Animal Serenade
“Animal Serenade”was a live album, recorded in Los Angeles in 2003, featuring a kind of chamber-pop band configuration with Reed and Mike Rathke on guitars, Fernando Saunders on bass and vocals, Jane Scarpantoni on cello, and some guest vocals by Antony Hegarty (of Antony & the Johnsons). Rathke also does an amazing job of re-creating the sound of a piano on a guitar synthesizer: Listen to him do so here on “Vanishing Act,” originally from the then-recent album “The Raven”.
Lulu ( 2011)
LouReed’s last studio album was “Lulu”, recorded with Metallica and released in 2011; he died in 2013. Lulu got mixed reviews, including some very negative ones. I’m not a huge fan of it myself but do offer, here, a track that I think does work pretty well: “Iced Honey.”
The Beatles get a lot of credit for their willingness to experiment with different instrumentation beyond the traditional guitar, bass, and drums rock trifecta, but fellow English rockers Traffic made the Fab Four look positively pedestrian by comparison when it came to infusing different styles of music. Formed in 1967 in Birmingham, Traffic started out as a psychedelic outfit but soon expanded their sound with all sorts of instrumentation, including the Mellotron, harpischord, sitar, as well as brass sections.
The effect of this was the creation of one of the best jazz-rock fusions of the era and it wasn’t just a fad either, as Traffic found a way to bring the two genres together to write catchy hooks and inspired songs. The pinnacle of the band’s experimentation came in their 1970 record “John Barleycorn Must Die” and although they earned the respect of serious music fans, they’ve never been thought of in the same league as other psychedelic groups such as Cream, even though they arguably produced better music.
Meanwhile, on trivia corner: which band’s second album contained the contributions of a member who left, rejoined and left again all within the space of nine months? The answer was Traffic, whose self-titled sophomore release charted exactly 47 years ago, having come together just in time to capture the restless spirit of Dave Mason, during the few months in which he was back in the line-up before departing again (and then rejoining once more, for another short spell a few years later).
Chris Wood, the wonderfully gifted flutist and sax player for Traffic, one of my favourite bands ever. In addition to sax and flute, Wood occasionally played keyboards, bass and added vocals. He also co-wrote several of Traffic’s best-known songs, including “Dear Mr. Fantasy.” Wood introduced the 17th century traditional song “John Barleycorn” to the band after hearing it on The Watersons album Frost and Fire. It became the title song of their 1970 album, “John Barleycorn Must Die.”
Some might argue that Wood was just a supporting player in Winwood’s brilliant orbit, and that there were plenty of others who could have played the same role. But clearly Winwood, who could have had the pick of the litter, chose Wood, and were rewarded by his wonderful flourishes of sound as well as song-writing talents. Wood died in 1983 at age 39.
After the three top ten UK singles of the band’s initial period in 1967 (with ‘Paper Sun,’ ‘Hole In My Shoe’ and ‘Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush’), Traffic had started their transition to a more mature, album-oriented sound with their first LP at the end of that year, Mr. Fantasy. The new, simply-titled set again had them working with New York producer Jimmy Miller, who was doubling up between these sessions and his initial work with The Rolling Stones, which emerged a few weeks later on the Beggars Banquet album.
Traffic was made during the brief period in which Messrs Winwood, Capaldi and Wood persuaded Mason, who had first left the group early in 1968, to return for these sessions. With his pop sensibilities somewhat at odds with the more jazz-oriented leanings of his bandmates, he was gone again by the time the album started its chart ascent.
Dave left behind four of his own songs, including the enduring ‘Feelin’ Alright,’ and a co-write with Jim Capaldi,‘Vagabond Virgin,’ before departing for the multi-faceted career he had hinted at with his production, that same year, of Family’s first album, “Music In A Doll’s House”.
Traffic entered the UK album chart on 26th October, 1968 at No. 27, but took precisely one more week to become their first top ten LP, jumping to its No. 9 peak. Very surprisingly, it turned out to the band’s only top ten album in their home country.
The follow-up to their critically acclaimed debut album, ‘Columbia’, released in 2018, the album explores existential despair, mental health and society’s ills in a time of planetary crisis, and is both a riposte to, and commentary on, the rise of populist ideology. Delivering a blistering collection of powerful tracks, ‘Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath’ is imbued with the visceral energy of IDLES, the twisted melodies of solo-era Lennon and the darkness of the Bad Seeds.
A dark blues-waltz underpinned by propulsive bass and evocatively prosaic lyricism, the track straddles the lines between ode and lament while addressing life’s confusing crossroads. The track is accompanied by an arresting video, which cuts between the band performing and wandering the atmospherically bleak landscape of the Peak District.
The track is the first to be taken from their upcoming album, “Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath”, which was recorded at Manchester’s Eve Studios alongside producer Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey, Anna Calvi), and mixed by Adrian Bushby (Foo Fighters, Muse).
Following the album’s release, the band will head out on a run of intimate dates, with shows in Edinburgh, Hull, London and Southampton, between slots at festivals including Live At Leeds, Sound City, Hit The North and Sonic Wave, with much more to be announced.
In the shadow of Brexit and the climate crisis, The Blinders return with their unique brand of outspoken anthemicism and a sensational album to rouse awareness and inject vital energy into a bleak 2020. Combined with their blistering live energy, get ready for The Blinders to accelerate furiously into the limelight.
We fell hard for the Blinders’ dark blues-waltzes, stomping punk rock and garage swamp on their 2018 debut, ‘Columbia’ and they continue here, what they started there, with true vigour and style.
the album explores existential despair, mental health and society’s ills in a time of planetary crisis, and is both a riposte to, and commentary on, the rise of populist ideology. delivering a blistering collection of powerful tracks, ‘fantasies of a stay at home psychopath’ is imbued with the visceral energy of idles, the twisted melodies of solo-era Lennon and the darkness of the Bad Seeds.
When Mia Berrin started her band Pom Pom Club in high school at age fifteen, the band name and social media handles preceded the music. “It’s like the people who buy web domains with the hopes that they’ll be worth a million dollars in a couple of years,” she jokes of grabbing the Instagram and Twitter handles before recording a single song. “That was me.”
Make no mistake: Despite the order of operations, Berrin valued music above all else. The Orlando-raised singer-songwriter had been learning guitar while messing around in GarageBand, and inspired by riot grrl — specifically, the idea of “being in a non-men band” — she asked around at her Orlando school to see if any other classmates were interested. Unfortunately, the “one girl who played bass in the entire school” turned her down. “I didn’t know off the top of my head that I would turn it into something,” Berrin, now 23, remembers. But with her claim to the name in her back pocket, she graduated from high school and moved to New York to study production engineering. She also progressed from playing and singing alone in her room to performing live, first solo, then with a full line-up female bassist and all.
Within a few years, Pom Pom Squad was officially “something” indeed.
Berrin who is soft-spoken but quick with sarcasm, oscillating easily between humour and sincerity — cut her performing teeth first by singing with other bands around Manhattan and Brooklyn prior to forming her own group. (Bassist Maria Alé Figeman, drummer Shelby Keller, and guitarist Alex Mercuri round out the current Pom Pom Squad line up.) “I felt like I hopped into this stage persona. I had no idea who I was, but I was very extra and that was great,” Berrin says. “It was a lot of self-discovery and picking up a skill that I had no idea I could do.”
Berrin released singles and EPs through Bandcamp, gathering momentum with 2017’s “Hate It Here” and 2019’s “Ow“. Drawing upon indie rock, alternative, pop and grunge influences (at any given moment, Berrin’s sonic mood board might contain musicals, Ariana Grande, Weezer, or Kathleen Hanna), Pom Pom Squad quietly established itself as one of the most riveting rock acts to emerge over the year.
The way MiaBerrin can nod to her influences—be they of the iconic 60’s girl group, characters from a John Waters film, or cutting edge fashion from today, while simultaneously spinning a beautiful and original story in her songs—is absolutely thrilling. This is the kind of record that makes you not only excited to see what you can do with an artist in a post-pandemic future, but also how you can build their career in the present circumstances.
It’s a razor-sharp bite of cathartic punk that the Brooklyn four-piece’s powerhouse frontperson Mia Berrin wrote in the traumatic throes of her adolescent feminine awakening while realizing the ever-present gaze of the male patriarchy.
“Crying” sounds like a sentimental breakup ballad but Mia Berrin doesn’t seem hung up on anyone but herself in the lyrics. It’s all self-flagellation for failing in attempts at relationships, castigating herself for making “a game of breaking promises,” feeling nothing, losing arguments, and obsessing on people who she thinks hate her. Berrin sings it all with convincing feeling, but it’s also clear she’s playing up the melodrama and winking at the audience a bit. The song effectively has it both ways – it indulges your self-pity, but also gently nudges you to notice that maybe the reason connecting with other people has been so hard is that even aside from all the ways you self-sabotage, you’re just too caught up in yourself to really notice or care about how anyone else feels.
Except for: “Cake,” music by Henson Popa (ASCAP) and lyrics by Mia Berrin and Henson Popa
“Crimson + Clover,” music and lyrics by Tommy James and Peter Lucia Jr. (Originally performed by Tommy James and the Shondells)
“Forever,” music by Mia Berrin and Garret Chabot (ASCAP) and lyrics by Mia Berrin Violin arrangement for “Forever” by Camellia Hartman
“Shame Reactions,” music by Shelby Keller (ASCAP) and lyrics by Mia Berrin
“This Couldn’t Happen,” music by Lionel Newman and lyrics by Dorcas Cochran (Originally performed by Ida Lupino) based on the version by Doris Day
Bass: Mari Alé Figeman Drums and Percussion: Shelby Keller Lead Guitar: Alex Mercuri
The band’s first release via Germany-based indie label City Slang, “Death of a Cheerleader” (out June 25th) is the impressive culmination of Berrin’s musicianship to date.
The songs on This Year’s Model are typically catchy and help the vicious sentiments sink into your skin, but the most remarkable thing about the album is the sound. Costello and the Attractions never rocked this hard, or this vengefully, ever again.”
Elvis Costello’s debut album, 1977’s “My Aim Is True”, arrived less than a year before its follow-up, “This Year’s Model”. But the two records boasted a sound, style and attitude that were far removed from each other — a sign of things to come from the singer-songwriter, whose restless catalogue has swung from one genre to another with little dip in quality along the way.
My Aim Is True was recorded in 1976 and 1977 in London by Costello, who was born there, and a California-based country-rock band called Clover that included members who would later join Huey Lewis and the News and the Doobie Brothers. (Lewis was actually a member of Clover at the time but did not appear on the album, which didn’t credit the band because of contractual reasons.)
For This Year’s Model, Costello enlisted his own band,the Attractions, which he formed after the release of his debut. (Even though they did receive credit, they didn’t receive an official cover co-billing until 1979’s Armed Forces.) And the upgrade, or at least the familiarity of working with musicians he had spent plenty of time on the road with at that point, pushed Costello’s second LP to new levels of intensity. Not that My Aim Is True didn’t have that; This Year’s Model just had more of it.
The critical success of My Aim Is True also gave Costello more confidence as a songwriter. At just 23, he was one of the best young writers of the era, pulling from earlier artists as much as he was riding the new wave of punk upstarts. With This Year’s Model, released on March 17th, 1978, Costello made his masterpiece — an album that bridged his brief past with his wide-open future.
The album’s sessions started in late 1977 and ended in early 1978 at London’s Eden Studios, with Nick Lowe, who worked on My Aim Is True, once again producing. More than a dozen songs were recorded, including some of his most enduring songs: “No Action,” “Pump It Up,” “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea,” “Lipstick Vogue” and “Radio, Radio,” among them. When it came time to release the LP in the U.S., a couple months after the original U.K. debut, two songs were dropped from the track listing — “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea” and “Night Rally,” reportedly because they were too British for American ears — and replaced by “Radio, Radio,” which was released in Costello’s home country seven months later as a stand-alone single.
“Radio Radio” was made more famous by the Saturday Night Live performance. By the time “Radio, Radio” made its debut on record, it was already a notorious chapter in Costello’s short history after Costello and the Attractions played it on “Saturday Night Live” in December 1977 (filling in for the missing Sex Pistols who were due to perform but were having problems securing visas). Costello was slated to play his current UK single “Less Than Zero,” in 1977. Costello launched into a few bars of “Less Than Zero,” but then turned to his band and told them to stop. He then apologized to the live audience, saying, “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but there’s no reason to do this song here,” and broke into a full rendition of “Radio Radio,” which still wasn’t officially available in the States, Lorne Michaels…the God of Saturday Night Live was not pleased.
As a result, he was banned by the TV producer for a dozen years, before being invited back in 1989; he then repeated the stunt, this time with the Beastie Boys and with SNL’s consent, on the program’s 25th anniversary special in 1999.
Costello later claimed he was inspired by Jimi Hendrix, who in 1969 stopped a performance of “Hey Joe” on the show Happening for Lulu and launched into the Cream song “Sunshine Of Your Love,” earning him a ban from the BBC.
Elvis Costello: “Before I got into show business, I thought radio was great, So I wrote a song about celebrating it – the thrill of listening to it late at night. This was my imaginary song about radio before I found out how foul and twisted it was.” in the song, Costello is protesting the commercialization of late 1970s FM radio. Radio stations would become more and more consolidated over the years, and their playlists tightened up considerably. Eventually, deregulation led to a few companies owning the majority of American radio stations, which led to automated stations.
This song is a takedown of radio, but it started out as a loving tribute. Costello wrote the first version of the song as “Radio Soul” when he was in a band called Flip City. They recorded a demo in 1974, but the song was never released.
In “Radio Soul,” Costello sings lovingly about radio, without any trace of vitriol: I could sail away to the songs that play upon that radio soul, Radio soul It’s a sound salvation
When he reworked the song in 1977, he changed the title and completely flipped the meaning, reflecting his newfound take on the topic.
The song serves as a linchpin of This Year’s Model, even though it wasn’t part of the original release and closed the album it first appeared on. It represented a more robust sound for Costello, thanks to both the addition of the Attractions and Lowe’s punchier production, and a more biting undertone that helped build Costello’s standing as one of punk’s most promising Angry Young Men.
He also became one of the era’s most prolific genre jumpers, making R&B, country, baroque pop and Americana albums over the next decade. But “This Year’s Model” serves as Costello’s model, the record that introduced Steve Nieve’s defining keyboard riffs and fills, a sturdier musical backing and Costello’s sneering vocals — all of which would find their way in and out of various albums over the years. He’s made more cohesive records since then. And more innovative ones. But he’s never made a better one.
Chloe Foy is a Singer/Songwriter from Gloucestershire, UK.
It was back in 2013 that Chloe Foy first began to turn heads with the release of her debut single, In The Middle of The Night. Now, some eight years later, the Gloucestershire-via-Manchester songwriter is gearing up for the release of her debut album, “Where Shall We Begin”. If any album meets the definition of long-awaited, it would be this one. Recorded at Pinhole Studios in Manchester, the album saw Chloe bring a host of musical collaborators into the studio.
For Chloe, the record is the result of a decade of hard graft, gradually shaping her ideas and influences into the tracks that make up this most remarkable of debut albums.
Excited to announce a brand new EP is coming . I chose some of my favourite tunes and made ‘Covers, Vol. 1’ over lockdown, including songs by The Cure, Whitney, Nick Cave and the Velvet Underground plus a little something unexpected at the end..
Callous Copper · Chloe Foy Callous Copper ℗ 2020 AntiFragile Music Released on: 2020-01-17
Performers: Chloe Foy – Vocals, Piano, Guitar Harry Fausing Smith – Strings, Guitars, Keys, Synths, Organ, Percussion and Backing Vocals Benjamin Nash – Synth, Backing Vocals
The long awaited debut album from Chloe Foy. Released December 2020
Re-released as a double-LP with 15 new tracks, Alejandro Rose-Garcia’s debut celebrates 10 years of existence. In honour of the tenth anniversary of “Roll The Bones”, Shakey Graves presents Roll The Bones X. Available everywhere for the first time, this very special reissue includes the original album paired with 15 Odds & Ends, of never before heard songs, demos, and deep cuts. Before Roll the Bones, Rose-Garcia’s musical project consisted of two hefty folders full of lyrics, drawings, and even a zine about a mouse journeying to the moon to rescue his love.
Many moons ago in the city of Austin, Texas a lightning bolt ricocheted off of a garbage can and hit a deer before finally zapping the mayor…In his temporary insanity he declared Feb 9th Shakey Graves Day. From the smouldering fur and randomness came a glimmer of noisy hope amidst the boredom that has continued for 10 years. This year also marks the 10th anniversary of my first album’s release on Bandcamp. To celebrate, I am thrilled to announce the release of a double disc special edition of “Roll The Bones…Roll The Bones X!” This special deluxe edition includes previously unreleased music and an exclusive booklet detailing some of the history and secrets behind its creation.
Alejandro Rose-Garcia has been making music under the moniker Shakey Graves for over 10 years now. The Texas musician has released five albums—most of which are self-released—and three lives recordings. Roll the Bones is a gentle, scrappy debut steeped in heartache and exploration of the self in a new city, reminiscent of folk-rock legends Tyrannosaurus Rex and Donovan. The album was initially plopped on Bandcamp when the site was in its humble beginnings without any information about Rose-Garcia. “In a lot of ways it was a breakup record,” he says looking back. “My first serious relationship had fallen apart and I was wanting to break up with my life—run away, be transient, and figure out who I was in the world. I can hear myself blaming the girl and trying to support myself, like maybe it’s OK to be dirty and crazy and have blinders on. Then, at the end, everything’s zooming back in and I’m saying ‘I guess I just got hurt and I’m in a bit of pain and, you know, it’s going to be OK.’”
1. “Unlucky Skin”
This album was slowly collected as opposed to chronologically produced. I was freshly 20 and had started experimenting with 4-track cassette recordings and writing the songs as they appeared, and this was one of the first tunes that really stood out to me. It had its only sort of melancholy and playfulness. I recorded the banjo and vocals separately. It took years to figure out how to play the rhythm and sing the tune at the same time.
2. “Built to Roam”
I was living in Los Angeles chasing my tail trying to be an actor when this song came along. The guitar I’m playing is a haunted 1932 Gibson L7 which had magically fallen into my possession. This guitar led me into my early experimentations in open tuning and is playing all the parts, including the rhythm sounds.
3. “Roll the Bones”
I wrote this melody around the same time I wrote “Built to Roam,” but couldn’t figure the lyrics out. It finally came together two years later when I was staying in my friend’s apartment in Brooklyn. I recorded all of it using a Zoom H4n portable recorder, which was an insane task.
4. “I’m on Fire”
I never set out to record a Bruce cover, let alone his most covered tune. I had initially recorded the bass line on its own and then started singing “I’m on Fire” over it sort of as a joke. Shockingly, it all fit together and was so effortless and surprising that I just went ahead and kept it.
5. “Georgia Moon”
My best friend and I scrawled this tune out on a road trip to NYC. Originally envisioned as a tongue-in-cheek country tune about shitty corn liquor, once put to music it took on a serious tone and became a tribute to our journey.
6. Business Lunch”
Found a Casio keyboard in the garbage and made a beat out of it, the rest unfolded into a song about the dirty side of life and its eternal allure.
7. “City in a Bottle (Live @ 2023)”
On my first legendary trip to New York City I met a sex worker on the train named Quick Monique the Freak. She was an older woman and was very concerned about my boots being dirty. She offered to clean them for me and I passed on the offer, but have always thought back on that fork in the road.
8. “Proper Fence”
Built as a tribute to a lot of the old Alan Lomax recordings I was listening to at the time. A classic song about missing the love boat.
9. “The Seal Hunter”
Originally called “For a Good Time Fuck My Wife” about a despicable person. When recording it I was recording over cassette tapes I found in my house, this was a tape by some sort of spiritual sex therapist that one of my parents had—once I heard some of the tape I knew I wanted to sample his voice.
I had a little studio apartment in Culver City, the majority of the music off this record was recorded in that spot. I would sit at a tiny table and stare out the window every morning and make songs. There was a wind chime outside of the window and a palm tree in the distance. You are certain to hear the wind chime on any track written in that studio but this is the only one that features the palm tree.
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The Beatles get a lot of credit for their willingness to experiment with different instrumentation beyond the traditional guitar, bass, and drums rock trifecta, but fellow English rockers Traffic made the Fab Four look positively pedestrian by comparison when it came to infusing different styles of music. Formed in 1967 in Birmingham, Traffic started out as a psychedelic outfit but soon expanded their sound with all sorts of instrumentation, including the Mellotron, harpischord, sitar, as well as brass sections.
The Fat Angel Sings 