Random Record Revisit

Sheer Heart Attack [1974] – Queen

 

   Producer Roy Thomas Baker passed almost two weeks ago on April 12th [although it was not announced until ten days alter on the 22rd. Of course, I know who RTB is [was] – famously producing four of the first seven Queen albums and the first three Cars albums as well as Foreigner’s Head Games and Journey’s Infinity and Evolution. He famously assisted Queen achieve the multiple layers of vocals on Bohemian Rhapsody [and its bookend, Brian May’s The Prophet Song]. In a quick Facebook thank you, I eschewed the obvious RTB produced song and posted In the Lap Of the Gods… Revisited. That’s the way my mind works. So as a tribute to Roy Thomas Baker, I went back and listened to Sheer Heart Attack a couple of times.

   Sheer Heart Attack is currently my favorite Queen album because I burned myself out on A Night At the Opera a long time ago. Jazz and The Game stand tall and Queen II is pretty good but Sheer Heart Attack I can still put on and play fully and a couple of times in a sitting. It very easily slides from style to style with tongue planted firmly in cheek. In taking the Queen catalog as a whole, it seems that they had to make Sheer Heart Attack as a prelude to A Night At the Opera.

   The album kicks off with Brian May’s powerhouse Brighton Rock. The middle section beginning at 2:40 allows May to fire off some flaming lead work before moving into the section with May playing against himself using an Echoplex [3:20 – 4:20] before the band jumps back in for the final verse and he ride out. It’s followed b Queen’s big hit [# 2 U.K., # 12 U.S.], Killer Queen. What can I say about Killer Queen? If someone asked about Queen, this is the song I would hand them and say “Here’s a starting point. This is a great example of all that they do.” It’s followed by the A-side medley of Roger Taylor’s paean of rock and youth Tenement Funster into Freddie Mercury’s sinister con man threatening to end one with a Flick Of the Wrist if one fails to cough up what is owed…this somehow melts into the pretty melody of Lily Of the Valley. The side ends with May’s other great rocker of the album, Now I’m Here.  Is this an homage to one of those ladies of the road that bands sometimes encounter? I’ll leave that to the imagination of those who deem to look up the lyrics. Of course “go, go, go little queenie” quotes the lyric master Charles Edward Anderson Berry.

   Side two plays almost as one long medley [there are a couple of seconds between the end of Stone Cold Crazy and the beginning of Dear Friends, one supposes to allow the listener to catch their breath after the blitz of SCC]. It leads of with In the Lap Of the Gods with a heavily treated and slowed vocal by Freddie with Roger’s impossibly high wails flying in and out of the background. It is followed by the blistering proto metal of Stone Cold Crazy. At only 2:16, it’s played at a pace as if the band had five minutes left of the day’s session before being charged overtime! As noted, its intensity demands a moment to catch your breath before flowing into Brian May’s lullaby of Dear Friends executed by Freddie and a piano with a few soft background vocals. This rides into John Deacon’s first song to appear on an album, Misfire. One can hear elements of what will come in his next composition, You’re My Best Friend. That is followed by the purely camp, vaudeville style Bring Back That Leroy Brown featuring a short appearance of Brian May’s fathers ukelele banjo. That is followed by the acoustic lead plod of May’s She Makes Me [Stormtrooper In Stilettos]. It is May’s lone vocal track on the albums and has  Taylor’s drums drowning in reverb and guitars droning. In the last minute various sirens and bomb bursts fade in and out of a heavy panting. In a strange way it’s hypnotically beautiful. A second later Freddie is back high in his range kicking off In the Lap Of the Gods… Revisited with a soft “its so eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeasy…”   Really it has no connection to In the Lap Of the Gods unless one takes the literal meaning that one is leaving one’s fate in the hands of the gods – whether they smile and grant favor and success or disprove and cause failure. One can read many things into the lyrics of course, that’s what’s fun about reading lyrics. Anyway, the song simmers through a verse, Roger and John restrained, tied to Freddie’s piano in the verses until Freddie’s vocals in the verses until Brian brings a little thunder in the chorus, another slowly bubbling tight verse, then Brian unleashes the hammer of the gods…. It rides out over four more repeats of the chorus, each one building with more layers of background vocals before an “explosion” ends the album.

   The sheer diversity of the album marks the shift from Queen as a sort of prog-rock band into …well, Queen! Meaning they can shift styles at the drop of a hat, heavy and light, serious but fun, serious but not that serious. Layered vocals will remain a part of the sound even after Roy Thomas Baker moved on. Sheer Heat Attack stands as a band gaining the confidence to do  what they want to do, not following trends nor certainly the wishes of the record company.

   Little did I realize when Lederman introduced me to Queen via A Night At the Opera and Jazz [two of the RTB produced albums] I would be introduced to such a range of music. Of course I like some more than others and I’ve gone through my phases with them but they remain a mainstay in my collection.

 

Random Record Revisited:

Back To the Bars [1978] – Todd Rundgren

   Todd’s last album of the decade is this double LP live set. Recorded at more intimate venues [New York’s Bottom Line, Los Angeles’ Roxy Theater and Cleveland’s Agora – yes, the original “Hello Cleveland!”], this is a pretty good retrospective.

   That said, this is really as much a Utopia as it is a Todd Rundgren record as the band plays on sides 1 and 4, even though ‘technically’ only one song [Love In Action] on the album is a Utopia song.  In my mind, if Todd had focused on Utopia, they could have challenged the Cars for the New Wave Crown. However, Todd being Todd just ping-ponged from Oops! Wrong Planet and Adventures In Utopia to the Beatle-esque Deface the Music to the political Swing To the Right before landing back in pop world with the brilliant power pop of Utopia [an album I was introduced to by Tracey Berry] and POV. Throw in a couple of Todd solo albums and the forgettable Utopia album Oblivion and it’s pretty clear that even the uber prolific Todd was become a little stretched.

   Oops! Wrong Band. I was talking about Back To the Bars.

   The record glides along swimmingly through the first six songs. The great mid tempo pop of Real Man and Love Of the Common Man slow down into The Verb ‘To Love’ then rise into the guitar heavy power pop of Love In Action. The action slows again as we go into the solo Todd on piano reading of A Dream Goes On Forever. Good Lord this song with this arrangement could have been a show stopper for Daryl Hall. Two Philly soul brothers! If you have not seen Todd and Daryl togethers, definitely check out their episodes of Live from Daryl’s House! [Here is The Last Ride originally featured on Todd’s Todd album.] Then it’s back to Todd’s offbeat pop for Sometimes I Don’t Know What I Feel. The record hiccups with the faux country The Range War but picks up with the heavy power of Black And White and then what seems is going to be a subdued take of The Last Ride which picks with a couple of great sax solo from Bobby Sedita and then into some fiery guitar from Todd over the last 2 minutes. Oddly it goes into Todd on acoustic guitar on Cliché. It works but it’s an odd transition. The side / CD 1 ends the Todd ballad Don’t You Ever Learn with it’s almost Zappa-esque dissonant riff.

   Side 3 opens with Todd on the piano for an odd cover of Never Never Land from Peter Pan. Todd covered the song on his psychedelic A Wizard, A True Star album and three of the four songs on this side are from that album. The outlier is track 2, a hard, hot take of Black Maria from Something / Anything? It’s followed by the waltz time of Zen Archer. The majority of the side is the soul medley from Wizard: the Impressions I’m So Proud > the Miracles Ooh Baby Baby > the Intruders La La Means I Love You > Todd’s own Hello It’s Me. Utopia is back as side 4 kicks off with one of my favorites from Something, the oft anthologized It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference. I love how in the booklet Todd says “Most people think it means ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference to me if you love me or not.’ I always thought it meant ‘If you really did, then why did you act like such a schmuck?’” It’s hard to believe that the single of Difference didn’t gain any traction for this album. The next 2 tracks come from Todd’s Zen / prog-rock album Initiation, Eastern Intrigue and the title track. Given the breadth of Todd’s work, a little prog doesn’t seem too out of place. Eastern Initiation is unlikely to be found in my list of favorite Todd tracks. Initiation though is a pretty high energy cut and it might now find it’s way onto one of those road CDs of mine. The high energy continues with a run through Couldn’t I Just Tell You. The album ends with an all star take of Hello It’s Me featuring Hall & Oates and Stevie Nicks on vocals and the mighty mite Rick Derringer on guitar.

   If this was meant to be a definitive career spanning retrospective perhaps Back To the Bars omits some of Todd’s bigger numbers, notably We Gotta Get You A Woman and the then current Can We Still Be Friends, with I Saw the Light appearing at the end of a medley. But live albums tend to be a snapshot of the artist at the moment. Would I personally have traded off a couple of the tracks for Can We Still Be Friends and maybe Just One Victory or Heavy Metal Kids? Probably but that’s just my preference and I don’t know the process they used to piece this together and what was available. Still if someone asked for a good starting point for an introduction to Todd Rundgren, I would certainly offer up Back To the Bars.

 

Fun fact: two of Todd’s LPs from the 70s, 1973s A Wizard, A True Star [55:56] and 1975s Initiation [68:11] pushed the limits of how much information could be put onto a double sided LP. Had they been double albums as most albums of those lengths would have been, Todd would have put out 4 double albums in a row.

 Moving Day 

   We are in the middle of moving my mother.

   The house she / we have lived in for 43 years will soon be someone else’s home.

   “My Room” will be someone else’s room. There will be new masters in the master bedroom. Someone else will be making dinners in the kitchen and eating them in the dining “room.” Someone else will be living in the living room.

   Rooms and closets have been emptied in the years and filled back up but this is different.

   This was going to happen at “some day..” I’m not sure I ever thought it would be while Mom was still with us but opportunity knocked and viola! The big furniture is moved. The internet and TV service is set up. Clothes and dishes close to put away. But there’s a lot of stuff in the back of cupboards, drawers, closets and the garage.

   I’m not sure it’s really sunk in.  We’re talking about the house of my formative years – a smidge of middle school and all of my high school years. So many memories. A lot of family and extended family, especially Leones, Hornes and Zottolas [and one “Partymobile”] fun. Some very personal stuff.

   What it has stirred up is a deeper sense of loss – the thought that someday someone else is going to live in my grandparents’ house. Literally, the house my grandfather built.

   It’s been a rock, a constant touch place of my whole life -almost or all [depending when I post this] 58 years. My mother’s 78 years. I can’t imagine someone else’s family making dinner in that kitchen. I can’t imagine a different kitchen table in there or a different family gathered around it. And the changes that would need to be made… at least one of the bathrooms gets redone which is might necessitate blowing out a wall. The carpet gets pulled. Maybe the linoleum in the kitchen replaced.

   This seems a tragedy to me [except that carpet] because it HAS been a rock. Nothing seems to have been changed there for decades. Okay, the TVs and the telephones have been updated and the pictures rearranged but other than that it seems the same for as long as I can remember and as far back as the family photos go. But it’s such a haven that my heaven would be this place. The smell of dew on the clover in the morning, my grandfather whistling passing through the basement, the aroma of a roast in grandma’s magical oven, a cool evening with lightning bugs lighting up the field.

   Of course, I would like to see it stay in the family forever but I feel that it will not be. We, the ‘grandchildren’ are pushing through our 50s and a few into their 60s. All have their own lives and homes and their own parents long time homes where other memories are entwined and I just don’t think any of us would take it over. Their children i.e. the great grandchildren might not have anymore than a fleeting connection to the place. I don’t know, though - having always been so far away I really don’t have a clue about a lot of my extended family.  Not my own cousins, certainly not their kids. There has always been a sadness in my heart about that. Family but almost strangers.

   But we are a fun bunch when we get together! There is a bond, a real genuine love that flows amongst us not unlike The Force. It surrounds us and penetrates us and binds us together in a way I don’t see in other families.

   People say that there’s a difference between a house and a home. Bricks and wood and windows are the house, it’s the people that make it a home. My grandparent’s house has always been home. I hope it remains a home to all of us as long as I am on his plane. Having said that, I hope when we are gone, someone else makes it a home for as many decades as out family has and memories just as beloved as mine become a part of their family. And I hope that another family does the same with Mom’s house.