Random Record Revisit:

Majesty Shredding – Superchunk [2010]

   Didja ever have a favorite band that you just loved and loved and loved and then one day they put out a new album and you’re just “over them?” Superchunk became that band for me.

   I was turned on to the Chunk by Mr. Dunnigan in 1994. We spun side 1 of Foolish a lot at Chaz Dunnigan and hen I spun it a lot more at home. The next four records became staples in my little red truck [1990 – 2000] and little black truck [2000 – 2010]. I put on a lot of miles back in those years so there was a lot of Chunking going on. Despite the fact that the band went on deep hiatus from 2002 to 2010. That was fine – 2001’s Here’s to Shutting Up was as perfect a record as the band ever made. So it was a surprise when the Leaves In the Gutter EP appeared in 2008, a single in 2009 and finally an album in 2010.

   My initial excitement at the idea of Majesty Shredding turned to indisposition. While the kick off song Digging For Something fed my Chunk jones with a feel of Shutting Up, the second cut My Gap Feels Weird was just not for me. Musically it harkens back to the early 90s but I just don’t dig a lyric of “my gap feels weird.” Rosemarie is pretty stock mid-tempo Superchunk. Crossed Wires [the first single] is pure Superchunk power pop, which is to say pretty power pop until you get to the middle eight / bridge where they tend to go somewhere that a “normal” [i.e. popular, radio ready] song would not go. Slow Drip would fall under that same umbrella. Fractures In Plaster is a good slower track – nice little lead guitar lick 00:06 – 00:17. The kind of thing that keeps Superchunk off mainstream radio. I think it’s Jim Wilbur on that one. [Mac and Jim are just listed as guitars, no “lead.”] Learned to Surf was originally on the Leaves In the Gutter but this version [or remake] is heavily compressed and lacks the jangly charm of the “single” version. Winter Games is more mid-tempo Chunky goodness. Rope Light is more back to the roots Chunk. Hot Tubes feels like an out take from the late albums Hello Hawk [1999] or Here’s To Shutting Up – not that that’s bad!

   If you ever ask yourself [or ask me] “why revisit records haven’t heard in a while and obviously aren’t missing?” Everything At Once is your answer. I had completely forgotten this song. It starts off with some ambient noise, then breaks into some Chunkian chording under some simple “whoo hoo hoo hoos”s for a couple of choruses and the goes into a typical Mac McCaughan vocals – usually buried in the noise so that you feel them and get sounds more than real words – but then the chorus comes up: So here’s a song about nothing / And everything at once / All the minutes and the months / Nothing and everything at once.” Then there’s a little instrumental break, then some more whoo hoos, an extended chorus, a little middle eight action, another swing through the whoo hoos on through the four minute mark and then a fairly fast fade out. I mean there’s nothing more I can say. It’s power pop for the “alternative” crowd and it’s just a slice of musical heaven.

   The “bonus tack” February Punk is another 2:46 of early Chunk roots. I forget if this was a download track with the single or maybe from buying from Merge directly. The player just went to the next album in the queue, 1991’s No Pocky For Kitty and February Punk just fits right in there.

   I can think of many reasons why this didn’t become a hardcore favorite but number one is going to be that it came out in 2010. By 2010, I had a CD player in the car and I do not play these factory CDs in my vehicles – well not very often. By that time, I was focused on making my car mix CDs [8 Track Years, Walkman Years and FM Flashback] and rarely listened to whole albums anymore. Honestly, I still don’t listen to whole albums anymore, in the car or otherwise. I don’t recall ever loading Majesty Shredding into my work MP3 player either. It just kind of fell off of my radar pretty quickly.

   Secondly, I just lost interest in the band. I think that happens to lots of bands after a decade or so. With exceptions of source – R.E.M. seemed like a band that didn’t repeat a lot of things so their records always seemed fresh. But most bands kind of found their formula and kept doing what they did.

   Majesty Shredding is not a bad album but it just feels like I’ve heard it all before. So if I’m in the mood for some Superchunk, I’m obviously going to go back the ones I already know and love.

   Field Of Dreams is on – maybe it was already on the schedule being that it is the end the “summer” but likely it’s a tribute to James Earl Jones. Of course Jones’ soliloquy on baseball stands as one of the truest statements on America’s yen for nostalgia and simpler times even as we tear down our grandfather’s life’s work to build Mc Mansions and freeways.

   If I was in those bleachers in Field Of Dreams, my seats would be the bleachers on the first base side at Watt Powell Park. It’s Charleston West [by God] Virginia circa 1976. The AAA [International League] Charleston Charlies are hosting their major league sponsor, my beloved   Pittsburgh Pirates.

   We got to see some future major league talent roll through Charleston. The 76 team had pitchers Ken Macha and Doug Bair, shortstop Craig Reynolds, catcher Steve Nicosa and outfielders Miguel Dilone and Tony Armas. Pitchers John Candelaria and Kent Tekulve and outfielder Omar Moreno had been with the Charlies in ’75 and were now with the big club. Going from a big astroturf collusion like Three Rivers Stadium to the rinky dink confines of Watt Powell with the B&O just beyond the outfield and the mountain as a backdrop must have been quite a change. But it’s only one game and it’s only half an hour by plane or maybe six on the bus back to Three Rivers.

   The Bucs were chasing down the wrong end of the state Phillies for the NL East title – they would ultimately end up 9 games back of the Steve Carlton, Larry Bowa, Greg Luzinski and Mike Schmidt led Phils who lost the pennant to [ugh!] Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine. The Reds would sweep the Phillies in the NLCS and the Yankees in the Series to complete the only perfect post season in the League Championship era.

   But back to the game. Me and Dad are on the wooden bleachers, maybe second row. And I’m seeing my heroes – Willie Stargell, Dave Parker, Frank Tavares, Al Oliver playing in our little burg! Of course I have my glove and we almost caught a foul ball off 2^nd baseman Rennie Stennett bat – it hit the guy just to our right and he managed to hang on to it. And I wandered down to the bullpen and got Larry Demery to sign his baseball card.

   I don’t remember much else, which is why I’d like to go back. Any box score I had would have been erased and erased as I needed scorecards for dice baseball [NOT Strat-O-Matic, just a simple two dice game me and my cousin Hal would play]. Always the Reds versus the Pirates. Always. I knew those two line ups cold.

   I didn’t know it then but the Pirates would end their affiliation with the Charlies that winter. Shortly after the opening of the 1977 season, we moved to Arlington, TX anyway. American League baseball? Well, it’s the only game in town. And those late 70s / early 80s Rangers teams were colorful and entertaining to say the least. Bump Wills, Toby Harrah, Jim Sundberg. A couple familiar names - centerfielder Al “Scoops” Oliver and pitcher Dock Ellis came to town for a spell. Evenings on metal bleachers that had been baking all day in the Texas sun? Yes, please! On the other hand we got to see other great players of the era – George Brett and the Royals, Reggie Jackson with both the Yankees and the Angels.

   But one night – to be 9 years old again. The smell of the hot dogs and popcorn, the feel of the well-worn wooden bleachers with no backs, me and my dad just enjoying a game. Yeah, I could do that

 

   “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

    “America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

   “This field, this game -- it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

   “People will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.”

 

   Amen.

 

Random Record Revisited:

Little Robbers – The Motels [1983]

  In the 1980s, there were a handful of female fronted bands that hit the radio, Three of my favorites were Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, Missing Persons [Dale Bozzio] and the Motels fronted by Martha Davis. Chrissie and the Pretenders had that hard edge, Chrissie’s fuck off / fuck all attitude and her oh soooo wonderful vibrato! Dale and Missing Persons [full of Frank Zappa alumni] had a minimalist new wave sound topped with Bozzio’s nasal sometimes squeaky tone. Davis and the Motels were very middle of the road pop with a new wave tinge wit Davis’s sultry, smoky voice.. Three very different styles but all good bands. But I admit, the Motels come in a very distant third in plays.

   The Motels seemingly came out of nowhere in 1982 with the top 10 new wave torch song Only the Lonely [the song that caught my ear] and the equally good but only eh charting [#60]  Take the L. But All Four One was actually the band’s 3^rd album. The band [in its second incarnation] had come up through late70s LA scene alongside X, Los Lobos, the Go-Gos and the Knack. Exene Cervenka of X recalled bitterly that Madam Wong’s owner Esther Wong seemed a soft spot for the Motels. But producer Val Garay had sidelined most of the band for the album, preferring to use session musicians like Waddy Wachtel and Craig Krampf. And with the success of All Four, Garay would do the same for the follow up.

   Little Robbers opens with the upbeat Where Do We Go From Here. The opening has a snaky middle eastern motif that will boil under through the whole song except then it goes into the riffing from the Motown classic Money [That’s What I want] around the 1:20 mark. With the electronic drums and a certain overdriven guitar sound [even though it is mixed very low] it’s definitely an 80s record. Dated, yes but not to the point of being overly cheesy 40 years later. The Motels’ second top 10 single Suddenly Last Summer follows. Suddenly falls between Only the Lonely and Take the L on the scale. It’s slightly uptempo but it’s lyrics are bittersweet. Davis said “…is a reflection on those moments in life when things are changing, like when it’s a beautiful sunny day and a cold wind blows and you know the end of summer is coming." Isle Of You has a reggae beat and a progression and melody that is reminding me of a song that I absolutely cannot place AND IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY. I can so clearly feel it but I just can’t place it. I checked the Police’s Ghost In the Machine but it’s not there. But I know it is one of those second to last songs that goes into a mourning sounding song like Darkness [from GItM but Ghost’s 2^nd to last is Secret Journey and it is definitely NOT that!]. All of that aside, it’s a good song, obviously familiar and comfortable. Nice double use of a phrase – “I need to escapes from the isle of you / I love you.” Trust Me is pretty stock 80s rock. Monday Shutdown is a nice new wave comment on working. Remember the Nights rides a nice bouncy synthesizer riff similar to the little riff that starts Styx’s Too Much Time on My Hands. Co-written by the ex-Stooges (yes as in Iggy & the… he also played on a few of Iggy’s late 70s albums) / future Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers 2^nd keyboardist Scott Thurston. Nice sax break in the middle. The title cut Little Robbers has a little galloping drum beat  which feels musically like something Iggy or David Bowie [or Bowie producing Iggy ala 1986’s Blah Blah Blah] would be doing about this time. Actually, if this and Bowie’s Blue Jean were played back to back it would be really good on a mix tape / CD. Into the Heartland [co-written by Bernie Taupin] has very Springsteen [or Tom Petty ala Same Old You] lyrics about a coupla working class stiffs getting sick of “taking orders” and “slinging hash” and stealing a Pontiac and “driving that sucker straight into the heartland.” Taupin could always write good characters – check out the menagerie on Elton’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. For the record, the Motels predate Born In the U.S.A. by about nine months. Great little Greg Hawkes [The Cars] like keyboard fills and a Gary Numan [Cars] like ride out riff. Even a very good Elliot Easton [The Cars] style guitar work, too. Guy Perry is listed as lead guitarist in the credits but there are three other guitar players listed. Tables Turned rides a riff similar to Journey’s Faithfully and the goes into a stock little mid-tempo tale of “you were mine but you broke it off and now you want me back? Screw you.” Said in a nicer way, of course. Footsteps end the album on another reggae-ish motif with a snaky middle eastern motif. Actually it’s got a really strong Ric Ocasek [The Cars, again] influence.

   Little Robbers isn’t one of the great or important albums of 1983 – a year that saw Talking Heads’ Speaking In Tongues, Tears For Fears’ The Hurting, U2’s War, the Police’s Synchronicity and debuts by Stevie Ray Vaughn, Metallica and Madonna. [Geez, what a spread of styles, huh!?!] No, the legacy of Little Robbers is just being a really nice sorta new wave pop album featuring a female singer with a great voice that gives you a warm feeling when you go “I haven’t heard this for a while” and slip it on.

Just opining for a moment. 

Kamala Harris' [presumptive] nomination has turned the election on it's ear. Donald J. Combover is reeling not having "Old Cooked Joe" to kick around, His whole political stance [so far] remains in personal attacks and telling everyone what's "Wrong" with the country but not a whole lot of anything about how he will fix it if he is re-elected. 

He's counting on an eroding base of uneducated [i.e. no college] white people and his aging ultra-rich allies and he's losing the same middle that turned on him in 2020. Now he's the lost old dude in this race and I personally feel that if people aren't worrying about voting for the infirm Joe Biden, people will start talking about issues again and since Mr. Trump can't stay on message to save his life, that should worry the people trying to ride his coat tails.

If this comes down to a personality contest, Mr. Lightning Rod J. Fear-monger is going to lose. 

Not that I think the Vice President is anything to write home about. In a policy speech Friday [8/16], she spoke of giving first time home buyers up to 25,000 dollars in down payment assistance. I'm sure paid for by additional taxes on top 1% earners. I am not a fan of cancelling student debt unless I get to cancel 10,000 or 20,000 dollars of my debt. I will not be voting for Kamala Harris because I believe in her policy or agenda.

I think there will be significant numbers of people who will be doing the same - holding their nose and voting against Donald Trump. Some will be voting for her because she is black or a woman OR BOTH, which I think is the worst reason to vote for someone - because they check a different box in the gender or race columns. But I will take the win and hope that 2028 sees the political pendulum swinging more towards the middle than the extremes on either side. Can it swing father out? I live in Texas and I see how far out things CAN go. The right wing here has the party so far to the right that they're driving in the grass next to the shoulder of the freeway. They certainly have lock on political moroninsm, cronyism and asshattery, which is saying something given who is at the top of the ticket again this year. So I think that it can go a little farther out nationally before swinging back... but I hope it doesn't.

Which leads me to my final point of the evening: all of this extremist posturing is going to be a thing in the future because neither party really has a clue what the electorate really wants. Both sides are taking the election of "Their Person" as a mandate that the nation agrees with what their candidate is offering up and I'm afraid that it isn't so. Policy has not [really] been the focus of the electorate for  a long time

I hate to say President Obama was only elected for ticking the "not white" box but I think it was part of it. [8 years of George W. and going back to war the Middle East and Afghanistan didn't help the Republicans in 2008.] The nation rejected Hillary Clinton's Iron Lady personality in 2016. [Although I don't think her even farther to the left agenda helped her cause.] 2020 was a rejection of the hard right agenda that played out under President Trump. I think 2024 is going to be a referendum on Donald Trump and ONLY about Donald Trump. I don't think that his pronouncements that he will jail all of his political enemies will help him any. As Powers Booth's character Lt. Col. Andrew Tanner [USAF] said to C. Thomas Howell's Robert Morris in Red Dawn [1984]: "All that hate's gonna burn you up kid."]

But the pendulum is due for a swing back and the extremism war that has left the common sense, willing to compromise moderates [on both sides] silent will end. We will again focus on the things that unite us instead of those that divide us. We will learn again to give a little and take a little and both sides will be left with a little bitter in their mouth. Politicians will have to cut out some of the demagoguery and time wasting investigations and actually get back to  working for The People again.

Please Lord, sooner than later!

 

Random Record Revisited:

The Division Bell – Pink Floyd [1994]

   [No, I did not ever plan to do a second Pink Floyd RRR. Life is funny sometimes.]

   Searching. Searching. Another Chaz mix CD in the making, need the next song, need the next song. Maybe Pink Floyd. Thinking Learning To Fly from 1988’s A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. Maybe something off The Division Bell. God, it’s been a long time since I heard it. I wonder why. Play… next song… next… next song… hmm doesn’t seem that great. The reviews on Rate Your Music seem to be split between “Five Star Aural Eden” and “One Star Nails On A Blackboard.” [https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/pink-floyd/the-division-bell/] But you know what, you haven’t done a Random Record Revisit / Rewind in a while, let’s give it a deep spin.

   As an FYI: I’m under the headphones. Probably the first time I’ve listened to this album on headphones! HEAD PHONES, not ear buds or Walkman style earphones. Sigh. One of these days these 80s vintage Radio Shock Nova 40s are going to fail and I’m going to be the saddest little rock & roller in the world. But they’re still working for now.

   Cluster One. After a minute forty-five seconds of noise we are finally greeted by something musical. Richard Wright’s lovely arpeggiated chords and David Gilmour working volume pedal / volume knob swells and waves in some classic Pink Floyd interplay. Of course this is what we all came for. About four minutes in it takes a turn into something very similar to Parts 1 – V of the great Shine On You Crazy Diamond [Wish You Were Here]. Finally, it fades down and a bass line comes in, soon joined by Nick Mason’s singularly Nick Mason style drumming and we’re into What Do You Want From Me. This is not unpleasant, now far off anything that we heard on Momentary Lapse. Cooing “oohs” and “aahs” from background singers are well used. Not far off the mark.

   Poles Apart is where things seem to start going wrong. Vocally Gilmour is gushing out paragraphs were sentences will do. The ELO like interlude [2:58 – 4:10] seems totally unnecessary, straining to inject some of the weirdness missing since the early 70s Floyd albums. When the band picks up again they’re in double time. The final two minutes is some stock Gilmour soloing. The whole thing just seems warmed over, uninspired and uninspiring.

   Marooned follows. More great interplay between Wright and Gilmour – I just love, Love LOVE Richard Wright’s playing. Love his phrasing. The Endless River [2014] is supposed to be made of instrumental works from these sessions – maybe worth looking into. Marooned melts into A Great Day For Freedom. This may be the closest thing to a Roger Waters composition in the post Waters cannon. Maybe this is the influence of producer Bob Ezrin [also produced The Wall and Momentary Lapse]. Surprisingly short at 4:17, it feels like Gilmour is just getting warm when it fades out. It feels like this needs that two minutes  that was wasted in the middle of Poles Apart!

   In the vinyl world, this probably would be where you’d flip the record to side 2 although 25 minutes would be a long, long side. Hmmm, Wikipedia says there was a 1994 vinyl pressing – probably Europe only, that clocks in about 8 minutes shorter than the CD. Oh, no a limited-edition US pressing also. Almost 59 minutes for the vinyl, it does not say if it was one LP or two. Discogs says it was 1 LP. That’s pretty damn long given most 70s LPs were 18 – 20 minutes a side. Let’s see Cluster One loses 30 seconds, Poles Apart 90, Marooned another 90, Great Day about 45, Wearing The Inside Out about 15… Oh and the break was after the just mentioned Wearing The Inside Out. So let’s go…

   Wearing is the first Rick Wright composition and lead vocal on a Pink Floyd album in almost 20 years. [Well, technically he wasn’t a member of the Floyd for eight to ten of those years.] Wright’s gentle vocal floats along over one of those lazy river Floyd tracks. Unfortunately, it lacks Wright’s great keyboard work! It must be in there in the synthesizer swells and valleys. There’s a Shine On fanfare here, some organ there, some piano very late. Ultimately and unfortunately though, it’s pretty forgettable.

   Take It Back [first single] is up next, borrowing the pedal guitar feature of Run Like Hell under a much less interesting track. It’s not a bad track but by the halfway point I start wondering how much longer this [both the song and the album] is going to go on. Coming Back To Life was played a bit as an album cut. It’s okay. Talk To Me [second single] is a nice return to a little darker, angrier side of the Floyd. [Another Brick In the Wall, Run Like Hell, Sorrow] Gilmour’s tone on the soloing is just pure Comfortably Numb. At this point [40 minutes in] it’s a shot in the arm for the record.

   Lost For Words [ironically not an instrumentally] is a sharp dig at Roger Waters ala John Lennon’s How Do You Sleep? Oher than Gilmour’s use of the four-letter F word, it’s pretty spare. The uber dramatic High Hopes ends the album commenting on aging and nostalgia, equal parts “Wasn’t that an amazing ride?!?” and “Is this all there is?”

   I’ve pondered before if it is worse to be a truly bad album or a very forgettable album. The Division Bell is not a bad album, there just aren’t a lot of high points to keep one coming back to it.

 

   There’s a thing I gotta say. Ad I gotta say it here because number show no one is listening here. I don’t want to start a family feud or split my group of friends.

   I was watching The Daily Show, John Stewart hosting because it’s Monday night [3/11/24]. I take it with a grain of salt because I know he leans to the left but he’s still funny.

   As usual they were taking on Donald J. Combover and I was shocked by persons claiming blind allegiance to The Don. One basically said “If he wants to be a dictator, let him be a dictator.” Another said “He could commit a murder on the White House steps and I would still be with him.” [Never mind that murder is not only a crime but is one of the No No’s expressly forbidden in The Bible, that other document besides the Constitution that these same people seem to believe so deeply in. Mr. Trump will have immunity – he hopes.]

   The sad and scariest part was that these people were not joking. The fact that 60 % of the “Republican” Party still think that the 2020 election was stolen from “Them / Donald Trump” says a lot about something. Unfortunately, I think it says that Mr. Combover has tapped into a pool of ugliness and hatred deeper than any Saudi oil reserve, cloaked it in an American Flag and “patriotism” and “taking back the country” and “making America great again” and a whole lot of people bought it hook, line and sinker.

   The sadder part is that the rejection of Hillary Clinton that brough Mr. Trump into the Oval Office was taken as a mandate by the Bible thumping, God fearing prigs that they spoke for Everybody. And when Everybody spoke in 2020 and Mr. Trump lost as fair and square as he won, suddenly the game was rigged.

   I voted for Trump in 2016 because I dd not want Mrs. Clinton as the President. But after watching Mr. Trump in action for four years, I would not have voted for him if he was the only candidate on the ballot. Nor did I vote for a lot of his friends and people he endorsed. I did not like the way the country was heading. If that makes me “Un-American” and a traitor in the eyes of some people, so be it. I exercised my right to vote as guaranteed by the Constitution you all claim to love so much.

  I will concur with Mr. Stewart on this point [I paraphrase]: “If you want to pledge your allegiance to Mr. Trump, if you like what he says, go to the rallies, buy his shoes, sing his praises and vote away – but please don’t call it Patriotism.”

   Don’t tell me he is the only person who can “save” America or make America “Great” again. America will be fine once we get over bickering over every petty little thing and reunite in the things we share. When we see our neighbors as people again – maybe with different ideas, traditions and values but people none the less. Once we remember that compromise is necessary and not everything is “my way or the highway.”

    Four more years of Donlad Trump may turn into the biggest bloodbath on American soil since the Civil War. I do not for a moment believe that Mr. Trump has any interest in leading or legislating any longer. I think he is blinded by the thought of taking revenge against those who stood against him – which means everyone who was not blindly loyal to him. And unfortunately, the Republican Party which once stood to unite the country has become a party of divisiveness who can be the biggest uptight prig on the planet.

   History tells us that this swing to the hard right will eventually swing back toward the middle and that this great national anger will dissipate. I hope to see that but I do not expect it anytime in the near future. Meaning any time this decade.

 Random Record Revisited
The Wall – Pink Floyd [1979]
 
   I was in the library last week picking up a couple of books [Only ONE book on poker? In the whole Fort Worth library system? Come on!] and wandered into the “other media” section. One of the CDs I spotted was Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Now I have not had a physical copy of the album for years, having sold my LP in one of my purges. I have actually been very down on this record for a while. Probably about the time I decided I can’t do Tom Petty anymore. Anyway, that was a week ago and The Wall had been drifting in and out of my head for a few days but yesterday I woke up singing In the Flesh and I decided I needed to revisit this album. So after a 45 minute wait at CVS [don’t get me started], I went over and checked it out.

   I had played The Wall a lot in the 80s.I sang “We don’t need to education” a thousand times and played air guitar to Comfortably Numb, saw the movie at the midnight movies and on VHS. But listening is sometimes not the same as hearing and hearing is not always the same as understanding. So I had an acquaintance with The Wall. But this time, I was listening with headphones. And I mean HEADPHONES, not ear buds or earphones but full 1970s / 1980s Nova 40s that I’ve had since high school. And this time I wasn’t half listening doing something else – not reading, not writing, not “not doing my homework”. And in the dark recesses, the furthest corners of The Wall, I found some disturbing things.

   A little backstory or those not familiar with the “concept” of The Wall. During of their 1978 tour, bassist and main songwriter Roger Waters became jaded with playing concerts, feeling that people were there for some experience [“to feel the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow…”] but not really listening. At one point, Waters spat on some overly excited fans in Montreal Canada. It lead Waters to create a concept for the next Floyd album, Bricks In the Wall. [An alternative concept Waters offered would become Waters’ first solo album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking.] After the band accepted the concept, the band hired producer Bob Ezrin [Lou Reed, Kiss, Alice Cooper] and he helped shape a working script to remove some of Waters autobiographical elements and creating the character “Pink.” [A reference to the lines from Have A Cigar “the band is just fantastic, that is really what I think! Oh by the way, which one’s Pink?”] The album itself [per Wikipedia – link:  The Wall - Wikipedia] explores abandonment, isolation and existentialism symbolized by a / the wall.

   To summarize the plot, all of those traumas we go through growing up [in Pink’s case the death of his father, nasty teachers, an overbearing mother] cause Pink to isolate himself by building that metaphorical wall to try and protect himself. All of this on side 1 [and the first song on side 2]! Side 2 is adult Pink, married, a musician, on the road calling home to have the phone answered by a man. He brings in a groupie for some revenge but he instead has a freakout and decides to close himself off, completing the wall. Side 3 is Pink locked into his room, deeply depressed and flicking the TV channels and contemplating it all. But the show must go on and the tour manager breaks in to find catatonic Pink and give him some sort of something to get him to the stage. Side 4 is Pink hallucinating that he is not a rock star but a Hitler-esque dictator ordering violence against “those folks who aren’t like Us” and rallying to take over Britain. As the drug wears off, Pink places himself on trial and determines in order to carry on he must tear down the wall and rejoin the world and thus he tears down the wall. The end.

   Now remember – YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO UNDERSTAND ALL OF THIS THROUGH NOTHING MORE THAN THE RECORD AND THE LYRIC SHEET. And the lyric sheet looks like it was written by Hunter Thompson on a speed rush with a leaky fountain pen.

   There is no script, no booklet explaining all of this, it’s just you, two LPs [or one cassette] and your brain. Maybe you get a few pages in some magazine with the band explaining the idea behind the record but that’s it. So the average Joe putting this on in 1979 or 1980 sitting in his living room only had lyric sheet and the vibes he got from the music itself. Was some of it really bitchin’? Sure. Was some of it pretty? Yes. Was some of it dark and spooky? Definitely! Did he understand the concept? Probably not.

      Pink Floyd had been doing concepts and themes for a while. Wish You Were Here [1975] spoke to alienation and the music business. Animals [1977] spoke to class structure as depicted in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Dark Side Of the Moon [1973] was about the various aspects of human nature. But The Wall is an attempt to tell a story. This is where it runs into problems. It’s one thing to have several songs linked around a theme like the stages of life or critiquing capitalism but the "story" of The Wall is incomplete by itself. It requires someone to say "this is about THIS and this part refers to my father dying before I knew him, then that part is..."

   Music probably isn’t the best form for storytelling since it leaves too many gaps. Just listening to the soundtrack of Oklahoma probably doesn’t get the story across. But neither does the Who’s [first concept album / rock opera] Tommy. Their second, Quadrophenia certainly doesn’t. I can’t speak to Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway as I’ve never made it all of the way through.  

   Most casual listeners like myself didn’t get the theme or didn’t listen too deeply. Maybe this proved Waters’ point that people were more interested in concerts as events or having the latest “cool” band in your stack of records and that the audience wasn’t really listening / paying attention to what was being said. I paid my 12 or 13 or 15 dollars and it’s up to me how I listen or don’t listen. And double albums are hard anyway. It’s hard to keep an audiences full attention for 60 - 80 minutes.  On The Wall, the suite of Another Brick In the Wall and Mother on side one is pretty good. Side two opens well with Goodbye Blue Sky / Empty Spaces / Young Lust but drags after that. Side three has the great opening [Hey You] and closing [Comfortably Numb] tracks. Side four has Run Like Hell… and a bunch of weird shit.

   Under the headphones, listening closely I had a few of those “aha” moments. Like One Of My Turns – somehow I associated “turn” with taking one’s turn like playing a game but it’s actually meaning a mood swing, a turn from okay to depressed or turning manic. Of course in the film, this is where Pink destroys the room, scaring the bejeusus out of the groupie who has no idea what he’s angry about. Deep in the lyrics of Don’t Leave Me Now, the phrase “you know how I need you [need you, need you, need you] / To beat to a pulp on a Saturday night” jumped out. What the hell!?! Did I hear that right? Yes I did.

   Of course, one always heard the “Are there any queers in the audience tonight? Get the up against the wall.” And “that one looks Jewish and that one’s a coon / Who let all of this riff raff into the room?” during In the Flesh. But the list of things during Waiting For the Worms – the things “We” are going to do…[ in the movie this is the red and black hammers marching.] “Clean up the city [well, okay], cut out the deadwood [okay]… put on the black shirt [uhhhh], weed out the weaklings [uhhhh], smash in their windows and kick in their doors and for the Final Solution to strengthen the strain … turn on the showers and fire the ovens for the queens and the coons and the reds and the Jews to follow the worms.”

   EW.

   It always gets back to the Nazis doesn’t it?

   This is supposed to be a drugged out delusion of poor Pink [or a comment on how the power of the stage has been / can be misused?] but how is one to understand that?

   I think my final takeaways from revisiting The Wall are this:

   Art is always open to interpretation.

   Roger Waters needs some serious help.

   The Wall is as simple or as dense as the listener wants to go. As a musical work it’s pretty good but it will always be eclipsed by Dark Side Of the Moon.

 Random Record Challenge:

Rainbow – the Ronnie James Dio Years [1975 – 1978]

    I’m probably not going to make a habit get into doing requests but my Facebook [and real life friend] Mike Bond is apparently in a group that has challenges – listen to this and we’ll discus in a week or so. And the record recently was Rainbow’s 1978 LP Long Live Rock And Roll. So I have taken the challenge. But I have all three studio albums of the Dio years remastered so I’ll go over them all really quick.

   Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore originally recorded a standalone single – a cover of Quatermass’ song of Black Sheep Of the Family and the original instrumental composition Sixteenth Century Greensleeves with vocalist Ronnie James Dio and drummer Gary Driscoll from the American band Elf. But after splitting from Deep Purple in 1975, Blackmore brought back Dio and Driscoll and the rest of Elf [keyboardist Mickey Soule and bassist Craig Gruber] to record a full album which became Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow [1975]. It’s odd production has a dulling effect in that a lot of the high end seems to be compressed – cymbals just “sploosh” instead of crash and splash. Drums thud instead of thundering. It’s very noticeable when compared to the wide open range of 1976’s Rising.

   Blackmore’s Rainbow is a good album but not a great album. Of course the lead track Man On the Silver Mountain is just brilliant as much for Dio’s great lyric as Blackmore’s great riff and playing. Listen how Blackmore supports the lyric with great runs under the pre-chorus [0:45 – 1:00, 1:37 – 1:52, 2:50 – 3:04]. The galloping Black Sheep Of the Family is a great vehicle for Dio. The centerpiece of the album is the ballad Catch the Rainbow. Ballad? Ritchie Blackmore? Yes! Power chord banished [at least for this song], Blackmore lays wonderful spidery slide [!] licks all through this six and a half minute masterpiece. The notes Blackmore plays through the long fade [3:53 – 6:39] are some of the saddest, haunting lines ever laid to tape. Dio matches the subtlety needed for this song brilliantly as a Mellotron lays soft waves behind them both.

   Snake Charmer kicks off side two with a slice of funkiness that would have felt right at home on the Mark III [David Coverdale / Glenn Hughes] Deep Purple albums. And no, it’s not about one of those road ladies who charms the ol’ one eyed trouser snake. Just more of Ronnie James Dio’s lyrics about seekers [and wizards and maidens]. On Temple Of the King, Blackmore brings out an acoustic guitar for some very nice playing and the slide is back for the very short solo. If You Don’t Like Rock ‘N’ Roll is a great little stab of old rock and roll – maybe a little tip of the hat to Led Zeppelin’s Rock And Roll? Sixteenth Century Greensleeves is a good little chugging riff akin to Purple’s Maybe I’m A Leo from Machine Head.

  The second album, Rising [aka Rainbow Rising] [1976] is this era’s peak. Dropping the whole Blackmore’s Rainbow band, Blackmore and Dio brought in keyboardist Toney Carey and bassist Jimmy Bain [both of whom lasted one studio album and the live On Stage. Bain would later join the Dio band from 1983 – 1978. Carey when ton to form the Planet P Project in the 80s, best remember for 1983’s single Why Me.] and former Jeff Beck Group drummer Cozy Powell [who would last three studio albums as well as On Stage]. A mere six songs but five amazing songs with a hot shit band that allowed Blackmore to soar in ways he hadn’t since Deep Purple’s Burn. The album kicks off with the insistent burning riff of Tarot Woman. Run With the Wolf is the filler feeling song on this album. It’s not terrible but it certainly isn’t up to the standards of the rest of the album. Starstruck has Blackmore matching Dio’s vocal line [or Dio matching Blackmore’s riff?] and has been a favorite since I heard it a long time ago on 1981’s The Best Of Rainbow. Do You Close Your Eyes is a great riff which David Coverdale would rip off for Slide It In. This album is worth the price is just for Blackmore’s middle eastern tinged solo [3:27 to 5:10] on Stargazer. And Dio’s vocals and lyrics rose to the same level, just as they had on Catch the Rainbow. A Light in the Black allows Carey to stretch out some. To be sure he’s no Jon Lord but there is [was] only one Jon Lord, R.I.P.

   Finally, there’s 1978’s Long live Rock ‘n’ Roll. Blackmore, Dio and Powell bring in keyboardist David Stone [Tony Carey plays on three of the others] and bassist Bob Daisley [soon to join Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard Of Oz band] for three tracks. [Blackmore plays bass on the rest.]  If Blackmore’s Rainbow sounds flat, LLRnR suffers the opposite problem – it’s incredibly bright, wide open in the mid ranges and treble but the whole bottom when bass thunders and the kick drum pumps is just completely dead. Of the two, I’d rather have the Blackmore’s Rainbow production. The lead off title track is just undeniable, one of the best Rainbow tracks ever. Lady Of the Lake is another vintage Blackmore riff. L. A. Connection just plods and never really gets off the ground. Gates Of Babylon feels like a return or a leftover from Rising but it was actually the last song recorded. By the time is was recorded Daisley and Stone had been out on the road with the band on some European dates, so maybe they had a better idea of what Blackmore and Dio expected. Kill the King is another great slab of rocking in he vein of the title track. Unfortunately, it’s the last great track on the record. The Shed is another plodder. Sensitive To Light is a good riff but there’s no urgency to the song – it feels like a filler track. The solo is interesting in that it feels like Blackmore is channeling Brian May’s [of Queen] tone. Rainbow Eyes… I just have no interest in it after the first 30 seconds which is really just recycling the lick from Catch the Rainbow with a few Hendrix chords thrown in. Metallica will make it better when they turn it into Nothing Else Matters.

   Rating one to five, I say three and a half stars for Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, four stars for Rising and three stars for Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll.

 

Random Record Revisited

Eldorado – Electric Light Orchestra [1974]

   ELO was the first band I found on my own. It was 1977, we had recently moved to Texas and the sad Telephone Line was all over the radio. For Christmas I asked for Out Of the Blue. This was [sort of] an error on my part – I had seen this at the record store [probably the Musicland in the Forum Mall] and I has ass-u-me-ed this hit single was on that record. Of course I was a bit disappointed that me recent favorite wasn’t on this record but it was chock full of great songs thorough all four sides [admittedly I lost interest at the end of side 2 [Believe Me Now and Steppin’ Out] but boy the Concerto For A Rainy Day on side 3 [Standin’ In the Rain / Big Wheels / Summer And Lightning / Mr. Blue Sky] – just wow! And two new great singles with Turn To Stone and Sweet Talkin’ Woman. And A New World Record would soon be in the collection – although I seem to recall being grounded when I got it for my birthday so I had to wait some time before I finally got to enjoy it.

   The next ELO in the collection was the compilation of pre World Record songs, Ole ELO. This album allowed me to connect Jeff Lynne and company to some songs I was familiar with from the radio – Showdown, Can’t Get It Out Of My Head, Strange Magic and Evil Woman. But for some reason I never went back into the 1972 – 1975 catalog until Fry’s was selling off their CDs for $ 5.00 apiece. But I didn’t follow the band after 1981’s Time either.

   One of the CDs I picked up was 1974’s Eldorado. Which I played while sitting here playing poker on line. I played On the Third Day [1973] too but I found Eldorado more interesting. So I’ll explain why.

   In 1974, ELO was a band in transition. Not yet the pop leaning hit machine they would be in the later 70s, they are also no longer the experimental - progressive band Jeff Lynne, Roy Wood and Bev Bevan created out of the ashes of the Move back in 1971. The songs were beginning to tighten up and song lengths were coming down. [Everything on ELO II was clocking in at a 7-minute minimum like a fucking Yes album! I might find ELO more listenable than Yes but not that much – it has only been spun through a couple of times.]  With the incredibly talented but equally eccentric Roy Wood gone [to form the short lived Wizzard] On the Third Day found Jeff Lynne as the sole songwriter. The album still leans heavily on the Orchestra part of the band’s name but the stand alone single [which was added to the US release of the album at the last minute] Showdown made some noise [# 12 in the UK, # 53 in the US].

   Lynne continued streamlining the sound a bit and channeling his inner Beatle for Eldorado. It is supposed to be a concept album [“The plot follows a Walter Mitty-like character who journeys into fantasy worlds via dreams, to escape the disillusionment of his mundane reality.“ Isn’t that why we all listen to music?!?] but I haven’t gone deep into the lyrics or old interviews to confirm, that for myself. Four of the songs still clock in over 5 minutes but they don’t get repetitive or meandering [read: boring] and it’s not Rock by Math. I listened to this album several times [at least 4 full passes] over the 3 days it took me to get this “on paper” and at no point was I bored with it, it didn’t feel like a chore to listen.

   The album kicks off with the sound of violins and twinkles [like in the cartoons when someone goes from awake to dreaming], a spoken poem ala the Moody Blues though this is heavily reverbed and not entirely clear and a minute of orchestration [the Overture] featuring manic strings and the orchestra crashing asunder – like something might here as the hero chases down the bad guy and finally gets a kiss from the girl as the end of a silent movie. This is the first appearance of the orchestration [full orchestra not just the three players associated with the band] and choir arrangements by Lynne, keyboardist Richard Tandy and arranger Louis Clark which will be all over the next 3 or 4 albums. These wind down to a soft dreamy sound that brings in a simple piano and leads into ELO’s first US top 10 song – Can’t Get It Out Of My Head.

   If Wood and Lynne’s original concept of the Electric Light Orchestra was to pick up where the Beatles left off with I Am the Walrus, then this song hits that mark. The lyrics hold some of the dreamy quality of Lennon [think Julia] even if the arrangement has the things Paul McCartney hated on Phil Spector’s mix of Let It Be. Kudos here to Bev Bevan on the tubs. Bevan enters here and plays very Ringo like – straight and spare and just what the song needs. In fact, Bevan plays that way across all of this record and most of the ELO catalog. He’s channels the Zen of Ringo and the late Charlie Watts, laying out when he is not needed and holding the beat but never interfering with any of those arrangements or those multi-layered vocals.

   A short fanfare, some more shimmering strings serve as a bridge and then you’re into Boy Blue, one of ELO’s songs that was a single for some reason failed to catch on. Again, this is prototypical of this era: Lynne’s slightly crunchy guitar to start and get your attention, then it falls back into the mix until the very Harrison like snaking slide lines in the last verses. I personally love the hook in the arrangement of plucking the strings through the break between the first chorus right through the final verses. The final chord of Boy Blue winds into an odd guitar intro and into Laredo Tornado. The lyric laments changes in the common ELO theme of summer fading into cold and rain. This song was a discovery for me and has flown to the top of favorite ELO album tracks. Poor Boy [The Greenwood] is a short little stab of late 50s / early 60s rock & roll that the late period Move used to do: California Man, Down On the Bay. At the end it spins back into the flurry of strings and vocals theme from the Overture and that served as the interlude between Can’t Get It Out Of My Head and Boy Blue.

   Side two kicks off with Mr. Kingdom, an ode to the King of Dreams and the many words one can visit through dreaming. It reminds me that Morpheus once cautioned a young girl named Chloe who had just woken from a dream of being lost that “You can indeed become lost, in dreams. And you may not always find yourself when you wake up.” [The Sandman by Neil Gaiman] Nobody’s Fool feels like a send up of vaudeville, based on the Minnie the Moocher [i.e. Willie the Weeper]. Despite the ritzy title Illusions In G Major, the song is a pure send up of 50s Elvis / Jerry Lee Lewis rock & roll. The finale is the title song and the Eldorado Finale [which is just a recap of the Overture theme]. Eldorado is a fitting finale, a full on homage to Roy Orbison’s]. great ballads and those schmaltzy final “I will overcome / I will be free” songs form the movies. Make no mistake, Lynne is NOT Orbison but he swings high with his limited voice and holds those notes a lot like Orbison. It still works.

   Eldorado is a fine piece of work from ELO. I will even go as far as to call it a masterpiece.  They finally settle into their own style after meandering a bit with their first couple of records. It suggests the streamlining and stepping closer to the pop music that will come with A New World Record and especially Out Of the Blue. As I said, I ran through it several times and it still felt fresh and interesting and one can hear more little details the deeper one listens.