Archive for the ‘CLASSIC ALBUMS’ Category

The ROLLING STONES – ” Some Girls ” Super Deluxe Edition

Posted: July 4, 2024 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The Rolling Stones have long established their resiliency, but perhaps the most impressive artistic testament to their endurance is having top-rated albums a decade apart, in both 1968 and 1978. It’s not just the time between the acclaimed releases of “Beggars Banquet” and “Some Girls”, but the dramatic differences in those respective eras of popular music that the Stones were able to somehow dominate.

As they approach the end of their sixth decade of performing and recording, The Rolling Stones know they’ve been written off by some critics and music fans as irrelevant has-beens—just about as many times as they’ve been hailed for their ability to “reinvent” themselves and stage a “comeback.” To be anointed the World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band one year and a weak parody of themselves the next is no doubt a source of some vexation, and perhaps rueful hilarity, to a group that transcended any need to defend itself many years ago.

The band was entering the recording studio to follow up 1976’s “Black and Blue“, an album that got mixed reviews and only yielded one rather anemic hit single, “Fool to Cry.” With highly regarded lead guitarist Mick Taylor gone and Keith Richards’ buddy Ron Wood now officially on board, the group took advantage of its new European recording contract to enter the EMI-owned Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris, with the trusted Chris Kimsey once again engineering.

In 1968, the American sound of Bob Dylan and The Band were the rage, with Dylan coming off a string of electric albums that revolutionized the genre and The Band graduating from backing Dylan to orchestrating their own towering musical achievement with their debut, Music From Big Pink. A decade later, the pop landscape was in the midst of the disco craze while rock was overthrown in Britain and New York by an ascendant punk movement, with classic-rockers like the Stones seeming hopelessly out of step.

But the Rolling Stones managed to adapt to 1978 as deftly as they had 10 years earlier by co-opting the prevailing disco sound and somehow making it cool for rock fans. As impressive, they captured both the sound and tone of the punk scene in downtown Manhattan, which may as well have been a thousand miles from the pulsating and chic Studio 54. Songs like “Shattered” and “When the Whip Comes Down” successfully established the Stones’ continued relevance. The former song, written by Jagger in the back of a cab, is the greatest rock song ever written about New York City, The Ramones’ own turf. “When the Whip Comes Down” sounds influenced by Dee Dee’s male prostitute confessional “53rd and 3rd.” It’s openly gay, as Jagger explained at the time, somewhat uncomfortably. But Jagger’s singing actually channels Sex Pistols leader Johnny Rotten, who ironically would call the Stones “one of the most notoriously inept bands in music.”

“When the Whip Comes Down” uses only a few chords and relentless forward movement to tell the lurid story of a gay Manhattan street hustler: “I’m going down 53rd street/And they spit in my face/I’m learning the ropes/I’m learning a trade/The East River truckers/Are churning with trash/I’ve got so much money/That I spend so fast.” It’s one of the punkiest performances the Stones ever laid down, a successor to “Midnight Rambler” in its ferocity.

On Beggar’s Banquet, the Stones had clearly been influenced by Dylan and The Band. In fact, the famous bathroom graffiti on the cover included the words, “Music From Big Brown,” a sly reference to the Canadian rockers. Note that the Stones on their 1968 opus were working for the first time with an American producer, Jimmy Miller. Dylan comes through most clearly (though not entirely convincingly) on the slide-guitaring “Jigsaw Puzzle.” And “Parachute Woman” echoes Dylan’s Basement Tapes, which had been recorded in 1967 and, though not released until 1975, was heard by 1968 by everyone who mattered in rock.

While released a decade apart, Beggar’s Banquet and “Some Girls”, and even individual songs, are easily connected beyond trying to channel rock’s cutting edge. Both albums are salacious to the point where teenagers at the time could never listen to them with their parents in the room. “Stray Cat Blues,” from Beggar’s, and the “Some Girls” Some Girls title track are unapologetically misogynistic.

The mid-tempo romp “Some Girls” is next, with its infamously offensive lyric, “Black girls just wanna get fucked all night/I just don’t have that much jam.” Jagger struts and sneers, multiple guitars wailing behind him as he (humorously?) castigates women for being gold-diggers, spreading venereal disease and being too generous when they treat him like a gigolo. As a contribution to the long history of the band’s misogynistic lyrics, it attracted numerous critics, and drew a typical Jagger response noting that Ahmet Ertegun at their American label “tried to get us to drop it, but I refused. I’ve always been opposed to censorship of any kind, especially by conglomerates. I’ve always said, ‘If you can’t take a joke, it’s too fucking bad.’”

The frantic “Lies” closes the first LP side with another three-guitar attack, Jagger pushing his voice to its breaking point. Again, one or two chords suffice and Watts pounds away in a way that few we’re-proud-we-can’t-really-play punk rockers would even attempt.

Side two begins with “Far Away Eyes,” with Jagger affecting an even thicker phony American accent than usual to recite a countrified tale straight out of Bakersfield, with Wood’s expert pedal steel and Richards’ note-bending electric in full flower (Richards also handles the piano part). There’s some beautiful harmony singing too, but beyond some light amusement from the parody, it doesn’t earn its prominent position in the album sequence. The spirit of Richards’ running buddy Gram Parsons, and his influence over “Let it Bleed”, “Sticky Fingers”, “Exile on Main St”. and beyond, is clearly still alive in some corner of the collective Rolling Stones brain.

Both make you wince today. Incredibly, Jagger wasn’t even content to make the girl at the centre of “Stray Cat Blues” 15, as on the album. On the 1969 live album Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out!, he changed her age to 13. But it’s too over-the-top to take too seriously. It’s just Jagger strutting. In “Some Girls,” he sings about women who are seemingly of appropriate age, but sexualizes possessing them while also making it clear that they are sexualizing and trying to possess him and Keith, too. “Some Girls” is the evil twin of The Beach Boys’ “California Girls,” lumping women together by race and region.

“Street Fighting Man,” like “Shattered,” tried to capture the essence of urban despair in its era. But neither offers answers, which would be too preachy and idealistic for the Stones. While that can leave listeners of “Street Fighting Man” cold given the stakes at the time, with
Civil Rights on the line and a war raging in Vietnam, it actually works on “Shattered,” where laughing at the madness of the Carter era seems the most appropriate response.

“Sympathy for the Devil” and “Miss You,” the tentpole songs on Beggar’s and “Some Girls”, respectively, are relentless dance grooves. Jagger said of “Sympathy” at the time, “It has a very hypnotic groove, a samba, which has a tremendous hypnotic power, rather like good dance music. It doesn’t speed up or slow down. It keeps this constant groove.”

The parallels continue with the albums’ respective cover songs. “Prodigal Son,” on Beggar’s, is a retiled version of Robert Wilkins’s “That’s No Way To Get Along.” “Some Girls” similarly nods to music crafted by black Americans with a cover of the Motown hit “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me),” written by Whitfield-Strong and originally performed by The Temptations. While that cover version is fine, the Stones actually wrote a better soul ballad than that original. The version of the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination” is absolutely fine, but one can’t help but wonder if the slot would have been better served by something like the hard rocking “So Young,” one of the outtakes featuring barrelhouse pianos by Ian Stewart and Chuck Leavell that showed up on the 2011 CD expanded reissue of the album.

“Beast of Burden,” from the groove right down to the Eddie Kendricks-inspired falsetto, is a masterpiece on par with “Miss You“.

While those assessing the entire The Rolling Stones cannon inevitably place these two albums next to one another in the top 5—often behind Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street and Let It Bleed, it’s almost always Beggar’s Banquet over “Some Girls”. Yes, their 1968 effort set the stage for arguably the greatest stretch of recording excellence in rock history. But the public voted with record sales and made “Some Girls” the best-selling Stones album of all-time. Could the public be right in ranking “Some Girls” over Beggar’s Banquet?

Their 1968 LP has three to five essential tracks: “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Stray Cat Blues” and probably “Salt of the Earth” and “No Expectations.” The rest of the album grades passable to okay—not filler, necessarily, but nothing historic. “Some Girls” is stronger up top with “Miss You,” “Beast of Burden” and “Shattered,” and then adds “When the Whip Comes Down” and Keith Richards’s “Before They Make Me Run,” about his heroin bust in Canada.

“Shattered” is a virtual spoken-word piece, which Jagger acts out magnificently—listen to what he does with “Pride and joy and greed and sex/That’s what makes our town the best” and “Don’t you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up/To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough/You got rats on the West Side/Bedbugs uptown.” Jagger gives the impression of improvising the lyrics, an illusion he no doubt meticulously rehearsed. The grinding background holds on two chords during verses, and saves any development for the bridge, which adds Wood’s pedal steel and a variety of percussion (probably among those few elements overdubbed in brief additional sessions in Paris, New York and Los Angeles). The track ends dramatically with no fade, the equivalent of a mic-drop in today’s parlance.

In his autobiography, “Life,” Richards explained: “For sheer longevity—for long distance—there is no track that I know of like ‘Before They Make Me Run.’ That song, which I sang on that record, was a cry from the heart. But it burned up the personnel like no other. I was in the studio, without leaving, for five days…”

Richards’ feature “Before They Make Me Run” is one of his best songs, right up there with Exile On Main St.’s “Happy.” He and Wood handle half a dozen guitar parts, including slide and pedal steel, and Richards even subs for Wyman on bass. The strong lyrics are constructed from a series of contrasts and juxtapositions (“Only a crowd can make you feel so alone,” “Gonna find my way to heaven/’Cause I did my time in hell”), ending in the sardonic and defiant affirmation that, “After all is said and done/I did alright, I had my fun/But I will walk before they make me run.” With Jagger and Wood providing backup vocals, Richards’ keening, strangled vocal becomes beautiful in a characteristically offbeat way.

If you include “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” from the “Beggars Banquet” sessions, then there is no quarrel with ranking that album higher. But it’s not on the LP, having been released earlier as a stand-alone single, rising to No. 3 on the U.S. charts. The rest of “Some Girls” is stronger with the title track and the funnier (and far less offensive) “Far Away Eyes.” “Some Girls” has a stronger cover song and “Lies” is a more conventional, throwaway Stones rocker, while “Respectable” is another punk-inspired, snarling song that Jagger and the band pull off. Richards said of “Respectable,” “This is a punk meets Chuck Berry number…”

Mostly true to Jagger’s no-frills wishes, the album revolves around the still-potent blend of drummer Charlie Watts, bassist Bill Wyman, Jagger, Richards and Ronnie Wood, the latter on pedal streel, acoustic and electric guitars. Jagger himself contributes guitar parts to several songs, especially beefing up the power on “When the Whip Comes Down,” “Lies” and “Respectable.” The harmonica of Sugar Blue (a Paris busker Jagger found who’d played professionally with Roosevelt Sykes and Louisiana Red) greatly enlivens “Miss You” and the title track, and there are contributions from Faces keyboardist Ian “Mac” McLagan and saxophonist Mel Collins, but the overall sound is vintage five-piece Stones. Under Kimsey’s scrutiny, the recording clarity is extraordinary, every nook and cranny of the arrangements illuminated.

While it’s arguably hair-splitting, “Some Girls” is not only stronger at the top but the deeper album, too.

Released on June 9th, 1978

JOANNA STERNBERG – ” This Is Not Who I Want To Be “

Posted: November 29, 2023 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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When they’re not penning comics, Joanna Sternberg records songs fit for New York’s anti-folk era in the early 2000s, the scene that birthed the Moldy Peaches and Diane Cluck. Armed with an extensive compositional background from the New School, Sternberg turns their worries and daily battles — depression, suicidal ideation, self-hatred — into lo-fi folk jaunts. From piano ballad “My Angel” to the self-explanatory “This Is Not Who I Want To Be,” a painful transparency takes hold, and it lingers long into the night.

Sternberg has turned pain into beauty in the making of their second album, written during pandemic exile. Balancing raw emotion with meticulous craftsmanship, their warm voice soothes with disarming self-deprecation.

HOWLIN WOLF – ” The London Howlin Wolf Sessions “

Posted: August 7, 2023 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Sometime around 1969, record producer Norman Dayron—fresh from producing the multi-generational “Fathers & Sons” album by Muddy Waters and his younger disciples—ran into Eric Clapton, who may have been backstage at an Al Kooper/Mike Bloomfield show, or perhaps it was a Blind Faith concert. No one seems to remember for sure. In either event, Dayron seized the opportunity to ask Clapton if he’d like to record an album with master bluesman Howlin’ Wolf.

Dayron was a staff producer at Chess Records, and that the offer was indeed legit, arrangements were made by Chess Records. Howlin’ Wolf—born Chester Burnett on June 10th, 1910, in White Station, Miss. would come to London. Clapton was over-the-moon excited, yet agreed under one condition: that Howlin’ Wolf’s longtime guitarist, Hubert Sumlin, be involved as well. There was some initial balking at Chess regarding the expense of flying two players from Chicago O’Hare to Heathrow. 

Howlin’ Wolf was another Chess Records mainstay, releasing numerous singles and “best of” LPs on the label. This 1971 album consists of recordings Howlin’ Wolf made with the popular British blues musicians of the time, all of whom had been inspired by the early days of Chess Records. Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts all feature prominently on the album, and are credited on the LP’s cover.

From May 2nd-10th, 1970, at London’s Olympic Studios home of sessions for the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie, among others—the house was rockin’ with Howlin’ Wolf and British rock royalty. Clapton was enlisted to play lead guitar on each of the 20-some songs, some being alternate takes) with Sumlin on rhythm guitar. Thankfully, Clapton yielded to Sumlin in establishing the songs’ grooves, although Sumlin’s rhythm work dominates “Do the Do.” And on “The Red Rooster,” Clapton nods not only to Sumlin, who played on Wolf’s 1961 original, but also to Keith Richards and Mick Taylor’s guitar moods.

The highlight of the LP is the “false start” rehearsal track for “Little Red Rooster,” which is essentially a peek into the artists’ studio session. The song starts, then stops, and then listeners get a peek into the ensuing conversation between Howlin’ Wolf and his British collaborators. It’s not 100 percent intelligible, but it breathes a new sense of life into an already vibrant work.

The Rolling Stones’ rhythm section was enlisted: Bill Wyman, bass; and Charlie Watts, drums, with Klaus Voormann on bass for one song (five if one counts the bonus tracks that saw the light of day on the 2003 expanded reissue), and Ringo Starr on drums on one track from the original album (plus three reissue bonus tracks). When Voormann laid down the song-defining bass riff on “I Ain’t Superstitious,” Wyman played the cowbell. And yet another Rolling Stone (albeit not an official band member), Ian Stewart, played piano on “Rockin’ Daddy.”

British keyboard legend Steve Winwood (Traffic, Blind Faith) overdubbed piano and organ on five tracks while on tour in the U.S. At certain points, it’s impossible to distinguish between Clapton and Sumlin (apart from Clapton playing most of the solos) and between Winwood and first-generation Chicago blues pianist Leake. John Simon, a popular producer in the late ’60s (Leonard Cohen, The Band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Janis Joplin) takes a turn on piano on ‘Who’s Been Talkin’.”

As for the Wolf, he could do no wrong. The year 1970 found him in excellent voice, spirits and energy, able to moan, growl, snarl, roar and bellow as he’d done since his earliest Sun Studio sessions in 1951. Were there London Sessions songs on which he excelled more than others? Absolutely. “Worried About My Baby,” on which Wolf played his own harmonica, comes to mind. (There are two additional outtake versions of “Worried About My Baby” on the expanded reissue, the most intriguing of which features Wolf, Clapton and Wyman, with no drummer.)

And the groove of Willie Dixon’s “Wang Dang Doodle” and, on the expanded reissue, “Killing Floor,” come to mind. The Wolf saved some of his best howlin’ for the Willie Dixon-penned classic, which closes the original LP, released in August 1971

The ROLLING STONES – ” Black and Blue ” Released 23rd April 1976 Classic Albums

Posted: July 9, 2023 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The Rolling Stones didn’t end up touring the U.S. in the immediate wake of the April 1976 release of “Black and Blue”. However, the band still managed to cause controversy in the States, thanks to the album’s ad campaign and a Sunset Boulevard billboard promoting the record.
The ad featured model Anita Russell sitting atop an unfolded copy of the “Black and Blue” LP. She’s bound with rope and wearing dark makeup, to make it look like she was bruised by a beating. The giant billboard was even more controversial, as it contained the same image of Russell and the LP, but added the text, “I’m ‘Black and Blue’ from the Rolling Stones – and I love it!” in giant script.
Reaction to both the ad and billboard was fierce. “This campaign exploits and sensationalizes violence against a woman for the purpose of increased record sales. The ad contributes to the myth that women like to be beaten and condones a permissive attitude towards the brutalization of women.”
Five stealth women “armed with buckets of fire-engine-red paint” visited the billboard one night and triumphantly defaced it, scrawling “This is a crime against women” near the text and also painting over Jagger’s face, the stealth artists also painted the “women’s movement symbol” next to the Stones’ iconic tongue logo.

Atlantic Records took down the billboard soon after, “It was not the intention of Atlantic, Mick [Jagger] or the Rolling Stones to offend anyone.”

The Rolling Stones recorded “Black and Blue” while auditioning Mick Taylor’s replacement, so it’s unfair to criticize it, really, for being longer on grooves and jams than songs, especially since that’s what’s good about it. Yes, there are two songs that are undeniable highlights “Memory Motel” and “Fool to Cry,” the album’s two ballads and, therefore, the two that had to be written and arranged, not knocked out in the studio; they’re also the ones that don’t quite make as much sense, though they still work in the context of the record. As the Stones work Ron Wood into their fabric. And the remarkable thing is, apart from “Hand of Fate” and “Crazy Mama,”. They play with reggae extensively, funk and disco less so, making both sound like integral parts of the Stones’ lifeblood.

Rolling Stone magazine wrote at the time: “In a way, “Black and Blue” is an admirable
album just for its refusal to bow to the past. A few songs here try to sound like “Brown Sugar” and “Tumbling Dice” and those few aren’t the best ones. Still, the Stones have problems. Keith Richard recently has seemed to run out of melodic ideas altogether and, like the majority of their post-Exile on Main Street repertoire, the new numbers are based on loose riffs rather than tight song structures. Like the Who or any rock band, the Stones are obsessed in their way with age and time, but unlike the rest, they’ve matured with confident gracefulness. For Soul Survivors, I guess, dying before you get old is simply not relevant.”

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The band that made “Black and Blue” isn’t the same one that made “12 x 5” or even “Aftermath”. But that doesn’t mean today’s Stones are not a great band playing great music. They’re a different sort of band, playing a different kind of music. Too much of “Black and Blue” picks up the trail of “Fingerprint File.” “Hot Stuff,” which opens side one, and “Hey Negrita,” which opens side two, are intricate funk jams, fusing reggae, Latin rhythms and the Meters’ brand of funk without achieving the focused mood of “Fingerprint File.” Some of the playing is exceptional — on “Hot Stuff,” Charlie Watts might be playing .44 magnums instead of drums.

There is plenty of good stuff left, although all of it is marred by the need for fuller, firmer instrumentation. “Hand of Fate,” which isn’t as melodic as the Stones riff usually is, is brought to life by a blistering Wayne Perkins guitar solo and Jagger’s incredibly live vocal. “Crazy Mama,” the wild little rocker that closes the set, is hot stuff. It sounds as out of control as the Faces, although Wood doesn’t play on it. (He’s “in the band,” but he only plays on two songs.) The lyrics are marvelous: “‘Cause if you really think you can push it/I’m gonna bust your knees with a bullet.” Those two are the only hard rockers on the album, and the only time Jagger pulls the standard macho-demonic act, too.

Since the “Memory Motel” was the only place in the area with a pool table and a piano, The Stones would occasionally come by and hang out at the bar. The owners at the time were not impressed…they hated The Stones. The Memory Motel is in Montauk on Long Island. It’s near The Church Estate, which Andy Warhol bought in 1972. Arthur Schneider, who owns the Memory Motel, said that The Stones stayed at Warhol’s estate when they were on tour in 1975-’76.

“Memory Motel,” a sort of return to “Moonlight Mile,” the stops are all pulled out. Once more, Watts propels the tune with his drumming. The story begins when Mick meets a girl before last summer’s tour. (The real memory motel is near the house in Montauk, Long Island, where the band rehearsed.) But it soon becomes entangled with his recollections of the tour.

But “Memory Motel” is more than just a vignette or two. In the end, it becomes the perfect agony-of-the-road song, for it dwells not just on the difficulties of touring, but also on the ultimate joys: As Watts moves in like a locomotive, pushing the song upward, Jagger explains in one brief flash what it’s worth to him, what keeps him coming back for more: “What’s all this laughter on the 22nd floor?/It’s just some friends of mine/And they’re bustin’ down the door!” There’s no way to capture the exhilaration he expresses as his pals roust him from his reverie, lifting him away from his cares. For that one moment, at least, Jagger feels his music as deeply as he ever has. Jagger’s voice swooping and snaking around Preston’s piano and harmonies. If “Black and Blue” leaves us nothing else, it is the knowledge that Jagger has become a total pro in a way that, of rock’s great white vocalists, only Rod Stewart and Van Morrison can match. With Mick Taylor gone, The Stones were auditioning lead guitarists while recording “Black And Blue”. Harvey Mandel from Canned Heat played lead on this while session man Wayne Perkins played acoustic, but Ron Wood eventually got the job.

It has a haunting melody and lyrics that stick with you. Some say the Hannah in the song is referring to Carly Simon and some say it’s Annie Leibovitz. Whoever the muse was, they inspired a beautiful song.

It’s widely speculated that “Hannah Honey” with the curled nose is none other than Carly Simon. Jagger had been romantically linked to Carly around this time, and her physical traits are eerily similar to the song’s descriptions. One theory is that Simon wrote “You’re So Vain” after a one-night-stand with Jagger at The Memory Motel. Simon has never said who that song is about. 

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards duet on vocals. Richards did not play guitar on the track – a rarity. Jagger played the acoustic piano, Richards the electric piano, and Billy Preston the synthesizer.

On their live album version “No Security“, Dave Matthews duets with Jagger in place of Richards. Matthews joined The Stones onstage from time to time and also sang this with Jagger on a televised St. Louis concert in 1997

The Rolling Stones

  • Mick Jagger – lead vocals (all tracks), backing vocals (1, 3, 4), percussion (1), piano (4), electric piano (7), electric guitar (8)
  • Keith Richards – electric guitar (all but 4), backing vocals (1-5, 8), electric piano (4), bass guitar (8), piano (8), co-lead vocals (4)
  • Bill Wyman – bass guitar (all but 8), percussion (1)
  • Charlie Watts – drums (all tracks), percussion (1)

Additional personnel

  • Billy Preston – piano (1, 2, 5, 6, 8), organ (5, 6), synthesizer (4), percussion (6), backing vocals (1, 4, 5, 6)
  • Nicky Hopkins – piano (7), synthesizer (7), organ (3)
  • Harvey Mandel – electric guitar (1, 4)
  • Wayne Perkins – electric guitar (2, 7), acoustic guitar (4)
  • Ronnie Wood – electric guitar (3, 5, 8), backing vocals (1, 2, 4, 5, 8),
  • Ollie E. Brown – percussion (1-3, 5, 8)
  • Ian Stewart – percussion (1)
  • Arif Mardin – horn arrangement (6)

PREFAB SPROUT – ” Steve McQueen ” Classic Albums

Posted: June 25, 2023 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Steve McQueen released on 22nd June 1985, . Remastered vinyl versions of Prefab Sprout’s albums are available through Sony.

Paddy’s songwriting skills is so good on this album – ‘how’s your new girlfriend? How’s the wife taking it’. So many good lines. Some just make me laugh – it’s not easy to crack jokes in songs – Jarvis is good at it too but it’s uncommon. Paddy is just a world class songwriter. Put him together with Tomas Dolby and you have a very special partnership.

I have played this album to death over the years, For me, Prefabs best work was with Thomas Dolby. His production is pure class. He added a polished sheen to Paddy’s songs. He buffed them up. They were already brilliant songs as the acoustic albums testifies but Dolby turned then into jewels.

Paddy McAloon, singer, songwriter tells us, I grew up in Witton Gilbert in County Durham and started Prefab Sprout with his brother [Martin, who played bass] and Michael Salmon, who lived down the street. Michael borrowed a drum kit and Martin and I shared an amplifier. We rehearsed in my dad’s run-down wooden-framed petrol station. We were as rough as can be, but we sounded like a band, at least to ourselves.

We didn’t have music lessons but drawn to music that I read about and devoured everything from T Rex to Stravinsky. but we dreamed about influencing the course of pop. I’d been writing songs since I was 13 years old, Loving Bowie who didn’t like country and western, so I wrote “Faron Young” from the world-view of someone who disliked country music.

Bonny was written around the same time. People think it’s about my father’s death, but he wasn’t dead then – I imagined grief. Goodbye Lucille #1 started out as a 50s doo-wop parody – “Ooh, Johnny Johnny Johnny” – in waltz time, but turned into something serious. Most breakup songs were sad or accusatory, but I straddled the viewpoints of both the intense guy and the girl breaking up with him (“She’s a person too”).

I’d always written on an acoustic guitar, but just as we started making records I had a crisis and thought I’d exhausted the guitar and started writing instead on a Roland synthesiser. I was too eccentric or nervous a songwriter to incorporate a big chorus, but when “When Love Breaks Down” came along I didn’t fight it. I wrote that, and “Appetite” – over a hip-hop-type groove on a drum machine – and then Desire As in the same week in June 1984. “I’ve got six things on my mind. You’re no longer one of them” is so cold. I wouldn’t want to say that to anybody. “Desire as a sylph-figured creature who changes her mind.” I’ve no idea where these things come from.

I’d used my most off-kilter ideas on our first album, “Swoon”, and I’d deliberately held back my more commercial songs. The album title – “Steve McQueen”  came to me in a dream. It doesn’t mean anything, but I decided to use it and we shot the cover using a motorbike like the one McQueen had in The Great Escape.

The album went gold and has sold steadily ever since. I’m humbled that it’s become a classic and people still discover it, but I still remember driving away from the studio in the snow thinking we’d get a lot of praise for something I felt I didn’t have much to do with. It was us playing the songs in the studio – Thomas Dolby and the team did a marvellous job of making us sound grand and opulent. When we were doing “Johnny Johnny” there was this embarrassing clunk, which was the sound of me hitting the microphone stand while singing. Thomas loved the take and wanted to keep it, so he went to the Fairlight sampler, looked at the wave form of the sound and just took out the clunk. I remember thinking, “Wow, so that’s what pop is going to be like in future.”

Thomas Dolby, producer, I was on Radio 1’s Roundtable programme reviewing records, and the other guests were raving about all these awful Christmas songs. Then Prefab Sprout’s Don’t Sing came on. I’d never heard anything like it. Paddy’s ideas seemed detached from everything except maybe a mid-20th-century American novel. The next thing I knew their manager invited me up to their old rectory in Consett. Paddy’s bedroom was twice the size of a single mattress. He sat with a guitar and played me songs from sheets of paper. I recorded them all, took them home and whittled 40 down to 12.

There was fantastic flair and imagination but the arrangements were hard to listen to, so we restructured the songs in a rehearsal room right down to the exact placement of a crash cymbal – Neil Conti was a tasty drummer. We recorded in a big London studio over three months, which today would only be an option for a platinum-selling band. Paddy’s voice was warm and emotive, Wendy [Smith]’s was pure and pristine – they created a nice aura together.

I played Paddy’s chords on my synthesiser using my own sounds. The Fairlight sampler had just come out so I could make orchestral arrangements. The gunshot on Faron Young came from a BBC sound effects disc played backwards. I did things like sampling Wendy’s voice and “playing” it on a few songs.

I’ve never seen a band eat like Prefab. Wendy would say “Paddy, do you want a bacon sandwich?” and they’d all go off for a fry-up. We recorded “Horsin’ Around” after a pub break. Paddy launched into a swing version à la Frank Sinatra. I laughed my head off, and thought it might make an interesting style for the middle section, so we kept it.

‘I dreamed of changing the course of pop music’ … Prefab Sprout with McAloon, second right.

YO LA TENGO – ” Electr-O-Pura ” 25th Anniversary

Posted: May 30, 2023 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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For Electr-O-Pura’s 25th anniversary, the 58 minute master has been expanded into a 2xLP edition for the highest quality audio. Now in a gatefold sleeve. Reuniting with Painful producer and engineer Roger Moutenot, Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew set up shop at Alex the Great studios in Nashville, TN to record their seventh studio album “Electr-O-Pura“. Chock full with moments of pop gold like “Tom Courtenay”, melancholic ballads such as the gorgeous, Hubley-fronted “Don’t Say A Word (Hot Chicken #2)”, and sweeping, feedback-laden jams like the show-stopping “Blue Line Swinger”, “Electr-O-Pura” expands on the venturous song writing established on Painful with stunning craft and a deepened exploration of contrasting textures, moods and atmospherics.

On their seventh studio album, Yo La Tengo would further expand on the venturous song writing established on their previous album “Painful” with stunning craft and a deepened exploration of contrasting textures, moods and atmospherics.

The heartbreaking “Pablo And Andrea”, and sweeping, feedback-laden jams like the show-stopping “Blue Line Swinger”, “Electr-o-pura” is a thrilling document of one of America’s most beloved bands hitting their creative stride and remains one of the most sublime records the band has released in their uninterrupted 36-year career.

Continuing with their ever-expanding Revisionist History series, Matador Records release a 25th anniversary reissue of Yo La Tengo’s 1995 album “Electr-o-pura”. Now in a gatefold sleeve and cut from the original 58-minute master, the new reissue is pressed for the first time on two LPs to ensure the highest quality of audio the album has had on vinyl to date.

DEEP PURPLE – ” Machine Head “

Posted: April 28, 2023 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Deep Purple’s “Fireball” was the second album recorded with the Mark II line-up. It was another No.1 hit in the UK, but despite its success there was a nagging feeling within the band that the best was yet to come. As 1971 drew to a close, it was time for a change of scene.

After four years, five albums and some line-up changes, Deep Purple finally hit their stride on ‘Machine Head.’ “Smoke on the Water” instantly made the Guitar Riff Hall of Fame, and the remainder of the record – especially the opening “Highway Star” – made the band one of the biggest on the planet. More records and more line-up changes over the years haven’t dulled the impact of ‘Machine Head.’

Roger Glover (bassist): We needed to make another record, and we’d become pretty successful, and accountants and lawyers and management said: “You know, if you record outside of England you pay a different tax rate.” And that’s the reason we were in Switzerland. It could have been Germany or France, anywhere as long as it was out of England. 

Jon Lord (keyboard player): We’d heard the Rolling Stones had a wonderful mobile studio, so we contacted them and we were able to get hold of that. And the reason we went to Montreux was because we were going to be in America at the end of 1971, but Ian Gillan got ill. It was hepatitis, I think – which was the disease to have at the time. 

“…Machine Head is a stroke of genius…Even if the Purple hadn’t recorded a note and “Machine Head” had been released as a 12” empty cardboard sleeve with that title on it, then that would have been enough”

Glover: “Highway Star” is the opening track on the album. Ritchie is the driving force behind this. He plays with such precision – that driving, machine-gun effect. I came up with the title and a couple of lines. Most of he song is Gillan’s, and everyone joined in on the arrangement. The thing that really impressed me when I first heard it again after so many years was Paicey is swinging – and we’re all playing straight. And that’s the essence of rock’n’roll. 

Bach goes heavy rock on the opening track from the classic album “Machine Head” by Deep Purple, released this month in 1972. Both Jon Lord’s organ solo and Richie Blackmore’s guitar solo borrow heavily from the arpeggiated baroque styling of the classical composer.

Blackmore: “I wrote that out note for note about a week before we recorded it. And that is one of the only times I have ever done that. I wanted it to sound like someone driving in a fast car, for it to be one of those songs you would listen to while speeding. And I wanted a very definite Bach sound, which is why I wrote it out—and why I played those very rigid arpeggios across that very familiar Bach progression—Dm, Gm, Cmaj, Amaj.

Ian Gillan (vocalist): “Fireball” gave us a chance to actually bring out what I always call the funk in the band, instead of just pure English rock. However, when we got to doing “Machine Head”, there was a lot of pressure to do what most people saw as a follow-up to “In Rock”. We’d got to get back to doing that rock stuff, and that was pretty much how we approached it. 

Jon Lord worked his part out to mine. The keyboard solo is quite a bit more difficult than mine because of all those 16th notes.

Blackmore: We did “Smoke On The Water” there, and the riff I made up in the spur of the moment. I just threw it together with Ian Paice. Roger Glover joined in. We went outside to the mobile unit and were listening back to one of the takes, and there was some hammering on the door. It was the local police, and they were trying to stop the whole thing because it was so loud. We knew that they were coming to close everything down. We said to Martin Birch, our engineer: “Let’s see if we have a take.” So they were outside hammering and taking out their guns… It was getting pretty hostile.

Blackmore: With “Space Truckin”’, I remember in the early sixties there was a TV series called Batman. And I had this riff that was similar to the theme tune, and I saw how simple that was. I came up with this riff and took it to Ian Gillan and said: “I have this idea and it’s so simple and so silly.” I went over into the corner and played it to him very quietly – I was very shy – and he grasped it immediately, and said: “I think we can use it.” And that turned into “Space Truckin’. 

Paice: My favourite track rhythmically on “Machine Head” is “Space Truckin’, because of its solidity and simplicity – it’s about the only time Ritchie played block Chuck Berry chords, four to the bar.

Over the years, I’ve always played that solo note for note—again, one of the few where I’ve done that—but it just got faster and faster onstage because we would drink more and more whiskey. Jon would have to play his already difficult part faster and faster and he would get very annoyed about it.”

Ritchie Blackmore – guitar, Ian Gillan – vocals, Roger Glover – bass, Jon Lord – keyboards, Hammond organ, Ian Paice – drums, percussion

FLEETWOOD MAC – ” Tango In The Night ” Reissue

Posted: April 14, 2023 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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No photo description available.

“Tango in the Night” is the final album the band would record as an infamous quintet. It’s a pop and production masterpiece, yet remains this monolithic, lucrative idea of a Fleetwood Mac record. In reality it’s this brilliant album that is really the first Buckingham/McVie Record.

Made at a time of complete turmoil in the band. If you were a Fleetwood Mac fan in 1987 this album definitely caught you off guard because at that time no one expected the most successful line-up of Fleetwood Mac to reunite again.
Not only that but the band members themselves at that time were really in no position to record a Fleetwood Mac record. Stevie Nicks, coming off a successful solo career, was dealing with her cocaine abuse. John McVie was a full blown alcoholic, and Mick Fleetwood also was dealing with his personal demons, still addicted to cocaine and actually broke, having to file for bankruptcy.
if it wasn’t for Christine McVie and especially Lindsey Buckingham, this album never could’ve been made.
Taking a painstaking 18 months to record, both Lindsey and especially Christine had arrived to the sessions (which took place at Lindsey’s home) with some of their strongest songs to date.

It started with “Sara.” The first two Fleetwood Mac albums to feature Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks—the self-titled album and then “Rumours” featured production typical of the pop-rock generated in Los Angeles in the ’70s. They were professional and pristine, exhibiting an instrumental and emotional warmth that was, in terms of the actual recording technique and the cerebral atmosphere of the people making the records, a product of isolation. On their next record, “Tusk”, Buckingham shifted the balance of Fleetwood Mac’s studio pop. He deliberately produced his songs so that they sounded trebly and makeshift as if they were translated from brain to tape as quickly as possible—and produced Nicks’ and Christine McVie’s songs with a lush and carefully-sculpted dimensionality. “Sara,” a song Nicks wrote to a daughter she never had, is so gently shaped that every instrumental and vocal materializes in the song like vapor in the atmosphere. Nicks said that when she writes songs, she tries to “make little worlds” for the listener. Whether intentional or not, this sensibility invaded Buckingham’s production of the song; “Sara,” as it appears on “Tusk”, is its own world.

The follow-up to “Tusk”, 1982’s “Mirage”, was a kind reflexive scaling back; both Warner Bros. and Buckingham wanted to regenerate the success and the coherent atmosphere of “Rumours”. It didn’t take.

After a brief tour, the band went on hiatus. Nicks released two successful solo albums; McVie and Buckingham put out one each. In 1985, Buckingham had begun work on an additional solo album, when Mick Fleetwood suggested Buckingham fold his new songs into the more monolithic, more lucrative idea of a Fleetwood Mac record.

The resulting album, “Tango in the Night”, is exactly that: a monolithic, lucrative idea of a Fleetwood Mac record. It was recorded over eighteen months between 1986 and 1987, mostly at Buckingham’s home studio in L.A. Buckingham devoted himself to the record, labouring intensely over its songs, its sounds, and the integrity of its design. Recording technology had advanced substantially since the early ’80s, and Buckingham found the methods by which he could determine the shape and temperature of a Fleetwood Mac song had expanded.

“Most of the vocal parts were recorded track by track,” . “The voices used in the textured vocal choirs were mostly mine. I used a Fairlight machine that samples real sounds and blends them orchestrally.” Out of these newly available materials, he could practically build an entire band, which was useful at the time. Mick Fleetwood was almost entirely consumed by his cocaine habit at the time, and the band had been experiencing an internal drift for years. “Constructing such elaborate layering is a lot like painting a canvas and is best done in solitude,” Buckingham added.

Out of these 18 months recording Stevie Nicks participated in the sessions for only two weeks and when she did show up most of the time she seemed either uninterested, high, or drunk. It’s not surprising that Lindsey had to cut/splice many of her recorded tracks to make them listenable.

The album’s artwork, “Homage a Henri Rousseau” by Brett-Livingstone Strong, is so lush and romantic that it walks a fine line between formal elegance and kitsch, blending the terrestrial with the celestial. It’s an accurate illustration of “Tango in the Night’s” sound design, of the glitterings and humid shimmers that Buckingham placed in the songs. He made each track on “Tango” just as he produced “Sara”: less an arrangement of bass, guitar, drums, and vocals than a complete world, a living panorama. There’s a phenomenal wholeness to the recordings on “Tango” that seems like a superficial compensation for how deeply fragmented the band was at the time.

After Nicks resurfaced from her cocaine addiction at the Betty Ford Clinic, she visited Buckingham’s studio for a few weeks. Three of her recordings figure into the finished “Tango”, only two of which were written by her. Her voice, invariably hoarse after years of cocaine abuse, often warps or fails the already incomplete material. She howls her way through “Seven Wonders,” a song written mostly by Sandy Stewart. (Nicks receives credit because she misheard “All the way down you held the line” as “All the way down to Emmiline”; For all of its bluster, the song is not only enhanced by the incidents of its arrangement but is the incidents of its arrangement; try to imagine the song without its synth hook and hear the rest of it evaporate. On “When I See You Again,” Nicks’ voice almost crumbles and shatters into atoms. “Stevie was the worst she’s ever been,” Buckingham has said 2013. “I didn’t recognize her…I had to pull performances out of words and lines and make parts that sounded like her that weren’t her.” Fittingly, each verse and chorus that Nicks sings sounds generated by a different uncanny assemblage of Stevie, among them one who sings in a kind of mutilated whisper. After the bridge, Nicks completely disappears. Buckingham finishes the song.

Buckingham’s songs on “Tango” are less knotted than they were on “Tusk” and “Mirage”, newly permissive of space. The first single, Buckingham’s “Big Love,” is a song that inadvertently simulates the essential failure of the album. It is devoted to a totally abstracted and imaginary form of love, while “Tango in the Night” is devoted to a totally abstracted and imaginary form of Fleetwood Mac (neither of which could be assembled in reality). The song’s arrangement feels austere and detached, a by product of the narrator’s alienation, but it’s also decorated with overlapping, pointillist guitar phrases. Even the empty spaces on “Tango” feel like deliberately-wrought emptinesses—for instance, the airy synths that hover over the verses of McVie’s “Everywhere,” or Buckingham’s title track, which through its sense of space imparts the feeling of rowing through fog and mystery.

Still, it’s McVie whose work is most realized by Buckingham’s impressionism. Her “Everywhere” is the best song on the record. Like “Big Love” it too is about encountering an idea too big to contain within oneself (love, again). But where “Big Love” apprehends it with icy suspicion, “Everywhere” responds with warmth, empathy, and buoyancy, describing a kind of devotion so deeply felt that it produces weightlessness in a person. Its incandescent texture is felt in almost any music that could be reasonably described as balearic. Elsewhere, “Isn’t It Midnight,” McVie’s co-write with Buckingham and her then-husband Eddy Quintela, seems an inversion of the values of “Everywhere,” a severe ’80s guitar rock song that gets consumed by a greater, more unnerving force by its chorus, as if it’s succumbing to a conspiratorial dread. “Do you remember the face of a pretty girl?” McVie sings, and Buckingham echoes her in an unfeeling monotone (“the face of a pretty girl”) while behind him synths chime in a moving constellation, UFOs pulsing in the dark.

Christine’s songs, (co-written with her new husband at the time Eddy Quintela,) like “Everywhere”, Mystified”, “Little Lies”, and “Isn’t It Midnight”, have became radio staples all over the world.

Lindsey’s album tracks like “Caroline”, “You And I (Part II)”, (the excellent Part 1 Of The song is now included on the expanded 30th Anniversary edition,) the killer title track which has some of his most ferocious guitar playing, to “Family Man”-a song that also should’ve been a huge hit yet many radio stations thought he was saying “Mother F**ker” instead of “Mother/Father” which made program directors hesitant to play the song.

This is the essence of “Tango in the Night”: something falling apart but held together by an unearthly glow. More of a mirage than “Mirage”, it is an immaculate study in denial (its most enduring hit revolves around McVie asking someone to tell her “sweet little lies”). It’s a form of dreaming where you could touch the petals of a flower and feel something softer than the idea of softness. In this way, “Tango” seems to emerge less from Buckingham’s pure will and imagination than from a question that haunts art in general: How can one make the unreal real, and the real unreal?

The remaster of “Tango in the Night” isn’t as topographically startling as  “Mirage”, where new details seemed to rise out of the mix as if in a relief sculpture; it sounded good on CD in 1987. The reissue does sound warmer and brighter, and the instruments feel less digitally combined, which lifts background elements to the surface, like the seasick drift of the bass notes in “Caroline” and the coordinated staccato harmonies in the title track. The reissue also includes two discs of b-sides, demos, and extended remixes, several of which were previously unreleased. “Special Kind of Love” is described as a demo but sounds like a completely developed Buckingham song, gentle and simple, with every edge expressively filigreed; it could’ve been a potential second sequel to “You and I.” “Seven Wonders” appears in an earlier, more relaxed arrangement, with Lindsey’s guitar warmly swanning between the notes that would eventually be reconstructed in perfect digital isolation by a synthesizer.

The demos also reveal the ways in which the songs could fold into and out of each other. On the “Tango in the Night” demo you can hear Buckingham, at the edge of every chorus, begin to invent the trembling choral part that opens “Caroline.” Nicks’ eventual solo track “Juliet” is present in two of its primordial forms—as the instrumental “Book of Miracles” (credited to both Buckingham and Nicks) and as a five-minute “run-through.” The run-through is especially curious, reducing “Book of Miracles” to a formulaic blues-rock over which Nicks’ voice produces a just-barely musical static, full of wobbles and distortions and exclamations. After the take she says, ecstatically, “I thought that was wonderful! I didn’t play! I did not play because I am so smart!”

Nicks exhibits a strange, dissonant giddiness in this moment that isn’t present in any of the band member’s memories of the recording process. At the time, in his interview with the Times, Buckingham imaginatively described “Tango in the Night” as a restorative process. “This album is as much about healing our relationships as “Rumours” was about dissension and pain within the group,” he said. “The songs look back over a period of time that in retrospect seems almost dreamlike.” Twenty-six years later, Buckingham summarized the experience to Uncut magazine in more severe terms:“When I was done with the record, I said, ‘Oh my God. That was the worst recording experience of my life.’”

The jealousy and resentment he felt toward Nicks for the success she experienced in her solo career, and the prevailing feeling that his architectural work on the band’s records went unnoticed and unappreciated, had built to a flashpoint. Later in 1987, the band met up in anticipation of the promotional tour for “Tango”, for which they had already secured dates and signed contracts. At the meeting, Buckingham announced he was quitting the band. “I flew off of the couch and across the room to seriously attack him,” Nicks said in 2013. “…I’m not real scary but I grabbed him which almost got me killed.” They spilled out of McVie’s house and into the street. Buckingham ran after Nicks and threw her up against a car. She “screamed horrible obscenities” at him, and he walked away, from the moment and the band. What’s left, after these harsh fragments of reality are swept away, is “Tango in the Night”: a remarkably complete album, Just a dream.

Once “Tango In The Night” became a huge commercial success the band, including Stevie Nicks, was eager to go on the road only to be shot down by Lindsey.
After a very bad meeting gone wrong at Christine’s home, Lindsey would end up quitting the band, only to be replaced by two musicians (sound familiar?) And even though the tour would become successful without Lindsey the magic just wasn’t there. (Once again. Sound familiar?) In the end the music from “Tango In The Night” deserved better.
Hard to believe that even through all of that turmoil and botched world tour, that today it’s the second most successful Fleetwood Mac album after  “Rumours”.
In retrospect it’s been proven that “Tango In The Night” is Lindsey’s baby. He recorded, produced, and did all of the arrangements at the sessions. It shouldn’t be surprising that by the time the record was finished he was emotionally and physically drained.
It’s ironic that the 31st Anniversary of this album occurred when we all received the news that Lindsey had left Fleetwood Mac again for a “ tour disagreement” (yeah right) except this time he was supposedly fired. (I still don’t know how Lindsey can be justifiably fired from the band that he,more than any other member, is responsible for their success.)
It’s also a shame that as of today it’s the last album recorded by the “classic five” lineup of the band.
For years fan had hoped for one more studio album, but now with the recent death of Christine McVie that will never happen.

The reissue of Fleetwood Mac’s studio album featuring the quintet of Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie and Stevie Nicks. It contains several hit singles including “Big Love,” “Seven Wonders,” “Everywhere,” and “Little Lies.” [Available in Regular, Deluxe and Super Deluxe editions. Deluxe adds a disc of rare recordings and non-album tracks. Super Deluxe adds a third CD featuring 12” remixes and more, a DVD containing five music videos, and the 180gm vinyl repress.

“Tango In The Night” continues to impress. What we know now with all of the excellent outtakes that have come to light that it easily could’ve been a double album. After 18 months of drama though, one can understand why it wasn’t.

Fleetwood Mac–
* Lindsey Buckingham – guitars, keyboards, Fairlight CMI, lap harp, percussion and drum programming, vocals
* Stevie Nicks – vocals
* Christine McVie– keyboards, synthesizers, vocals
* John McVie – bass guitar
* Mick Fleetwood – drums, percussion

NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL – ” The Collected Works “

Posted: February 25, 2023 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Neutral Milk Hotel Collected Works box set artwork Merge Records 2023

1996’s “On Avery Island” and 1998’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” give voice to the perennial spirit of youthful epiphany, of beginning to see the world clearly, to process and express it—no matter when you encounter them. For burgeoning Gen Z indie rock fans, a Neutral Milk Hotel phase is a right of passage. I stumbled across “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” early in my musical journey and quickly went from thinking “this guy’s voice sounds weird” to “there is no other music that matters.” From there, I dove into the underrated debut album “Avery Island”, the admittedly mixed bag “Everything Is” EP, and the wonderfully intimate live set “Live At Jittery Joe’s” .

Neutral Milk Hotel, the indie rock project led by the reclusive Jeff Mangum, have released a new archival box set, titled “The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel”, for release on February 24th via Merge Records.

The vinyl compilation includes the group’s two full-length LPs, 1996’s “On Avery Island” and 1998’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”, as well as two 10-inch EPs, three 7-inch singles, and an exclusive 12-inch picture disc of the concert album “Live at Jittery Joe’s, which features a 1997 performance by the band originally released in 2001.

“The Collected Works” marks the digital debut of several tracks initially included on a 2011 compilation self-released by Mangum, and expands on the previous offering with a double LP edition of “On Avery Island”, a remastered and extended track list for the 1994 EP “Everything Is”, and previously unreleased recordings for the singles “Little Birds,” “You’ve Passed,” and “Where You’ll Find Me Now.” A 7-inch single for “Holland, 1945” / “Engine” also comes in black vinyl with new artwork.

The elusive rarity “Little Birds” stands as the first preview of the Neutral Milk Hotel box set, with the collection touting a 1998 demo and an unreleased live recording from the band’s 2014 reunion tour. The song was written after Mangum confronted an anti-LGBTQ street preacher, and later gained mythic status in the band’s catalogue thanks to a long-circulated live recording from 1998.

So, I combed the internet for unreleased rarities and live demos; songs like “My Dream Girl Don’t Exist” or “Little Birds” became just as important as “King of Carrot Flowers.” Luckily, for the spoiled future fans of Jeff Mangum’s one-of-a-kind tunes, all of these threads have been brought together for a long-overdue digital and vinyl release.

There are fans of Neutral Milk Hotel who will argue that their 1996 debut, “On Avery Island”, is the better of Jeff Mangum’s two official LPs. It’s certainly less spoiled by exposure. “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” thematic ambitions can make it feel bigger than any one person: It’s an album about death and loss and evil, and about how human beings keep searching for the good in ourselves despite our long history of being awful to each other. “On Avery Island” scope is narrower. Mangum sings about himself and the people he knows. Instead of mountaintops and oceans, he sets his songs in bedrooms and public parks.

Neutral Milk Hotel Collected Works box set 2023 Merge Jeff Mangum In the aeroplane over the sea on avery island little birds single vinyl record LP

In the mid-’90s, Jeff Mangum had moved into a house in Denver where he had dreams of women in fur coats drinking champagne, yelling at him to get out of their house. During a snowy Colorado winter, the Louisiana-born songwriter and his childhood friend Robert Schneider set about recording what would become Neutral Milk Hotel’s debut album. They worked feverishly, going out to smoke cigarettes when they hit a roadblock, until, in May of 1995, they had a finished record. The North Carolina indie label Merge scooped up the young band and quietly released “On Avery Island” the following March.

The record industry was in the best shape it’s ever been in, and even majors were willing to take chances on messy, ramshackle bands that took cues from the 1972 psych-rock compilation Nuggets. Neutral Milk Hotel didn’t set their sights on breaking through to the mainstream. They subsisted happily as part of the Elephant 6 collective, a group of psychedelic musicians based first in Denver and then in Athens, Georgia, who played unlikely instruments like the singing saw and the accordion in each other’s bands. Alongside Neutral Milk Hotel, the collective included the Apples in Stereo, the Olivia Tremor Control, and Elf Power.

“On Avery Island” earned a handful of positive reviews from music magazines, and after its release, Mangum got a band together and toured steadily. In February 1998, Merge released the band’s second album, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”, expecting to move about 7,000 copies. It sold modestly at first, receiving warm reviews in the music press. Mangum kept touring, and the band’s profile grew; fans showed up at NMH gigs knowing every word to his songs, and often sang them louder than the frontman did. Music magazines started asking for interviews, and Mangum found that he hated explaining himself. By the end of 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel turned down the opportunity to open for R.E.M. Disturbed by the unexpected success of his project, Mangum withdrew from music and spent a few years in a state of panic. Neutral Milk Hotel vanished almost as soon as it had arrived. That the band was in stasis and Mangum gone from the public eye only added to the record’s mystique. It was just a few years old, but it felt like an artifact unearthed and shared covertly among those in the know.

“Aeroplane” might be an offbeat record—its unwieldy title, its songs about cum and communism, Mangum’s brassy, abrasive voice—but its songs are simple and tuneful enough to be played at expensive weddings. In 2005, the teen drama “The O.C.” featured a cover of the album’s title track in an episode, causing a mild uproar over possessive fans who didn’t want normies in their midst. But the word was already out, and “Aeroplane” became something of a sensation, a living record of an extinct band.

“On Avery Island” is the better of Mangum’s two official LPs. It’s certainly less spoiled by exposure, and certain songs, like “You’ve Passed” and “Gardenhead / Leave Me Alone,” easily rank among NMH’s best. In “Gardenhead,” Mangum sings about a roller coaster that crashes into the ocean, and there’s a B-side from 1996, a fan favourite, called “Ferris Wheel on Fire.” “On Avery Island” is a theme park plopped down on a city: “On Avery Island” served as a throttle between “Aeroplane’s” broadening pop appeal and the sprawling collection of bootleg concert tapes that could be easily snapped up via file-sharing programs. It offers a glimpse of a pivotal songwriter in transition, moving from making shoddy cassettes for his friends to making art rock that spoke to untold thousands of lonely teens listening to pilfered mp3s late into the night.

The seeds of “Aeroplane” can be heard scattered throughout “On Avery Island”. Mangum already balanced the gross and the transcendent in his lyrics: On “A Baby for Pree,” he imagines a pregnant woman full of bees who spews infants until they fill up her bedroom. Throughout the course of the rambunctious, trombone-heavy opener “Song Against Sex,” the speaker kisses another boy while the apocalypse sets in, complains about the porn he hates and the drugs he won’t take, and then lights himself on fire.

Certain songs hit closer to the bone than anything on “Aeroplane”. “You’ve Passed” envisions a woman’s spirit coursing away from the hospital where she’s just died, while “Three Peaches” articulates an uncanny emotional register between mourning and celebration as Mangum sings to a friend who survived a suicide attempt. It’s one of the hardest NMH songs to endure; Mangum sings from the very bottom of his diaphragm as if dredging up muck from beneath the earth’s crust, dragging out the words “I’m so happy” while sounding like he’s about to keel over with grief.

There are love songs here, too, like the effervescent “Naomi” and “Leave Me Alone,” and there are spooling, chaotic instrumental tracks: “Marching Theme,” which rolls along on a breathing drone, and the 14-minute closer “Pree Sisters Swallowing A Donkey’s Eye,” which rides the album’s final triumphant burst out into a slow-growing silence. The abrupt transitions between perfect pop melodies and gaseous balls of noise lend the album a certain wildfire charm. It has less varnish than “Aeroplane”, and that raw face makes it a little easier to see into the mind of the guy who wrote it.

“Aeroplane’s” thematic ambitions can make it feel bigger than any one person: It’s an album about death and loss and evil, and about how human beings keep searching for the good in ourselves despite our long history of being awful to each other.

Neutral Milk Hotel would become a beacon for a glut of aughties bands who never quite achieved Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Wolf Parade, and Beirut all sprang up on the ground Mangum had cleared, mixing boisterous vocals with antique instrumentation.

Full Contents:

  • In the Aeroplane Over the Sea LP is 11 tracks pressed 33RPM to black vinyl in a gatefold jacket + printed insert for full album download.
  • On Avery Island 2LP is 12 tracks pressed to double black vinyl in a gatefold jacket + 11 x 11 printed insert + printed insert for full album download. Sides A, B and C pressed 45RPM. Side D pressed 33RPM.
  • Live at Jittery Joe’s 12” picture disc is 11 tracks pressed 33RPM to a full color picture disc in a heavyweight poly jacket + printed insert for full album download.
  • Ferris Wheel on Fire 10” is 8 tracks pressed 45RPM to black vinyl in a printed jacket + postcard insert + printed insert for full album download.
  • Everything Is 10” is 7 tracks pressed 45RPM to black vinyl in a printed jacket + postcard insert + printed insert for full album download.
  • “Little Birds” 7” is 2 tracks pressed 45RPM to black vinyl in a printed jacket + printed insert for full album download. 7” housed in a heavyweight poly jacket.
  • “You’ve Passed” 7” is 2 tracks pressed 45RPM to black vinyl in a printed jacket + printed insert for full album download. 7” housed in a heavyweight poly jacket.
  • “Holland” 7” is 2 tracks pressed 45RPM to black vinyl in a printed jacket + printed insert for full album download. 7” housed in a heavyweight poly jacket.
  • 2 folded posters, each printed one side and each 24” x 24” when flat.
  • 1 postcard, printed front and back with box set information and sized 3.75” x 5”
  • All of above assembled in a 12″ two-piece telescoping case-wrapped box.

The box set arrives February 24th,

WHY BONNIE – ” In Water ” EP

Posted: February 9, 2023 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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“The rest is practice, it’s not the real thing” sing Why Bonnie on “Practice”, the centrepiece of their magnificent, “At Water” EP. Like so much the Austin based quintet do, it is a line loaded with emotion, anguish and a just a glimmer of hope. “At Water” was one of two EPs the band released this year, alongside the equally vaunted “Nightgown“, yet it was “At Water” that caught our attention,  drew us into Why Bonnie’s world and refused to let us leave.

Throughout “At Water”, Why Bonnie seem to wring the emotion out of every note, something in the metronomic drums, in the pulse of keys, in the prominent driving bass, it seems to sit in your chest, demanding you listen with your heart as much as your ears. At the front of it all is the presence of vocalist Blair Howerton, at times a soaring howl, at others a perfect, subtle lilt; throughout the vocals seem a little lost, unsure where to turn, unsure what is real, as if battling through a maze of emotions and guitar lines. Despite the brilliance on show elsewhere it’s “Practice” we keep going back to, the steady pounding of drums, the dense layers of guitars, the pained cry of the vocal, so lost, so confused, yet still quietly dedicated to an idea of a reality: “I choose to say here with you”.

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released February 16th, 2018

Written & Recorded by Why Bonnie

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