Live at Ebbets Field (Tommy Bolin & Friends, 1974)

Someday I'm going to list all the live shows where I wish I could have been a fly on the wall, and this would definitely be on there. There something about guitar pyrotechnics in front of a three-man percussion section in a tiny venue that I find completely irresistible.

Most people, myself included, discovered Tommy Bolin as the poor sap who had to replace Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple. Although his background was far different than the other nine previous or current members of the band, he brought an incredible talent to a band that, unfortunately, only had one album left in them. Prior to his stint in Purple he was in the Boulder-based Zephyr. After their second album, he struck out for New York and got wrapped up in the fusion scene, culminating in the creation of his own band, Energy, which never had an official release. Nevertheless he was able to make connections through his contributions to albums like Billy Cobham's Spectrum before becoming one of Joe Walsh's numerous successors in the James Gang, which brings us to the time of this recording.

Tommy always liked to get back to Colorado (with apologizes to a similar-titled album by Zephyr) during his busy touring and recording schedule. The entire lineup of Energy (minus the keyboard guy) joins him on this recording, plus an additional drummer and an assorted-percussion person, resulting in a juiced-up rhythmic spin on various classics of jazz fusion and the blues, with a couple Bolin originals thrown in for good measure.

More adventures awaited the band members heard here. Bassist Stanley Sheldon would put everyone to shame when he appeared on Frampton Comes Alive. Jeff Cook would go on to work for Capricorn Records and probably spends a great deal of time telling people he was not a founding member of Alabama (different guy with the same name). After two albums with the James Gang, Bolin himself joined Purple on the recommendation of David Coverdale. Within a year, the band had split apart, leaving Bolin and bassist Glenn Hughes left to fend for themselves. Bolin launched the Tommy Bolin Band in 1976 and released a single album before dying of a heroin overdose at the end of year. Thankfully, the Tommy Bolin Archives have cranked out a ton of demos, live recordings and other unreleased materials from his relatively brief but diverse career, so I've got plenty more Tommy Bolin to listen to for the foreseeable future.

Destiny of the Republic (Candice Millard, 2011)

This past Wednesday I had the joy of completing my first 5-star book of the star, Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard. It's not really a presidential biography on Garfield, though I certainly gained a greater appreciation for the man after reading this. It's more of an intersection in the lives of Garfield, Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Guiteau (Garfield's assassin). I think the real "bad guy" of the book was Dr. Doctor Bliss (yes, his first name was Doctor), who's barbarian medical practices ultimately killed the president. We usually think of presidential assassinations as "bang...dead" type events, but Garfield lived for almost three months after being shot. That was surprising and painful to learn. Other interesting bits included the unlikely rise of President Arthur and the significance of Bell, being more than just the "telephone guy". About the only thing more I could have asked for was about Lucretia Garfield's ultimate landing in Southern California, which would explain the abundance of "Garfield" names around Los Angeles and Pasadena!

Who Will Save the World? (The [Mighty] Groundhogs, 1972)

The British blues "boom" of the 1960's launched bands in all directions, many of them hurtling away from the pure "blues" sounds into more progressive arenas. The Groundhogs, one of the lesser-known bands of the movement, followed this path. They had already made a decisive move away from a pure sound with 1970's Thank Christ for the Bomb and 1971's Split, which gave the world their best known song, "Cherry Red". Who Will Save the World moved things even further into prog territory with added instrumentation, mostly notably the Mellotron. The band fizzled after the following album, Solid, then re-emerged with Tony McPhee fronting an entirely new lineup, but the glory days were pretty much over for the band.

I've often wondered what causes bands to change their sound. Are they just moving with the times, are they seeking new audiences, or are they just crazy? Typically a change in sound results in the alienation of the original fan base. This has been famously illustrated through history with moments like Bob Dylan "going electric" or Metallica abandoning (mostly) speed metal in the 1990's. Sometimes the result is financially rewarding. Even though history has been unkind to Rainbow's change from proto-metal to commercial hard rock in the 1980's, the album sales seem to support general acceptance at the time. A lot of people have never heard a single Fleetwood Mac song recorded before 1975, so dominant was their Buckingham/Nicks lineup. Other bands seem to actively shun popular trends. Iron Maiden has been notorious for ignoring trends in modern music (and now are currently reaping the rewards of staying "true"). Other times it's the individual that changes bands and identities. Ever heard Ronnie James Dio sing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"? Well in 1963, the voice of metal was more of a crooner than a rocker. Lemmy was into folk music and space rock before giving the world the stripped-down raw metal of Motorhead. Billy Joel was in a keys-and-drums metal band called Attila in 1970. The list goes on and on. While I have my preferences, I enjoy to listen over the years and take in the successes and failures.

The Present (The Moody Blues, 1983)

The Present is sort of the "forgotten album" of the Moodies' 1980's output. The other three albums all had big-time hits to prop them up ("The Voice", "Gemini Dream", "In Your Wildest Dreams" and "I Know You're Out There Somewhere"), while The Present had to rely on tepidly received songs like "Blue World" and "Sitting At the Wheel". Deserved? Partly. The Present was trying to emulate the success of its predecessor, which it does with its eerily similar track listing, but the music itself is just a moderate reflection of what came before. It feels more processed and synthesized than the previous album, but nowhere near the "synth-pop" era albums that were to follow, which would relegate Ray Thomas to the ranks of band members that don't play a note.

I grew up listening to the Moody Blues, primarily through a cassette-tape dub of their 1970's double-album greatest hits package This Is the Moody Blues. When I started to collect for myself, I went after the "Core 7" albums, which is a much different band than what we have here, courtesy of long-gone keyboard player/mellotron guru Mike Pinder. My parents were more than happy to promote this interest (although when I asked for Metallica's Kill 'Em All for Christmas 1991 there were concerns). I trooped on through a couple of the reunion albums (Octave and Long Distance Voyager) but pretty much stopped there. The Present was a much later acquisition; I even skipped it to go after the highly-synthetic but energetic Other Side of Life. Lately I picked up 1999's Strange Times, which doesn't herald back to "Core 7" days, but sounds far more honest than some of the prior albums (and Ray Thomas kind of returns, which is nice). I'm still missing some of their later stuff, but I'm in no hurry to complete my collection. I'm actually spending more energy on the "Go Now" era (1964-1966) where there are a few songs still eluding me (the fifty versions of The Magnificent Moodies is making for problems).

Here's some killer old footage of the band from 1966, before the beards, baldness, and Justin Hayward. The studio version was later cut with the more familiar "Core 7" lineup.

There used to be some crazy-old footage of the band playing "Bo Diddley" but that doesn't seem to exist anymore.

The Theolonius Monk Quartet With John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall (1957)

I got treated to a little bit of buried treasure (this concert from 1957 didn't see daylight until 2005) on this increasing jazzy week I'm experiencing. It made the drive in the morning much more pleasant and took my mind of watching people get tailgated at 75 mph on 280 while bracing for the possibility of crumpled cars or at least about 1/2 inch of brake padding getting smoked away in about a millisecond.

As I've said a zillion times before, I don't have any kind of magic jazz ear. However, in addition to Bill Evans, I can usually tell when Monk is at the keys. I read somewhere that early critics thought he was mentally deranged because his playing is somewhat discordant at times. Meanwhile, if I tell people I'm listening to Coltrane, I usually need to specify the era in the next breath. Trane was in Monk's boot camp, exiled from the Miles Davis groups of the late 50's, learning new styles and so forth. However, his journeys to Interstellar Space (or just A Love Supreme at least) were still a ways off.

I discovered this through an active collecting of an arbitrary "100 greatest" list, but I've had to work off of an archived list because one day I went to the website and the whole list changed. For instance, this album was demoted from the 40's down to the 110's (the "auxillary" list). Not sure change was good in this particular instance.

The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery (1960)

In the history of jazz the guitar just doesn't get a whole lot of respect. Then again the saxophone was considered a "clown's instrument" before becoming central of most of the history of jazz. The guitar, of course, found a lot more love in rock music, but it's always been around in jazz in varying colors. Artists like Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt were early innovators that lifted the instrument out of its largely rhythmic role. Wes Montgomery showed the world that the guitar was a real double-threat, an instrument that could double up in rhythm and lead all at the same time. Furthermore, this recording abolished the horn section altogether. Montgomery's sparring partner on this album is the versatile pianist Tommy Flanagan. (Meanwhile, Ornette Coleman was taking the opposite approach and eliminating the chord-playing instruments from his combos.)

1960 fell on the early edge of a great transition in music and culture, so this album pre-dates the guitar advancements (e.g. Hendrix) that would make the instrument central to rock and roll, and then by the end of the decade rock guitar was thoroughly infiltrating the jazz scene. However, the hollow-body electric guitar has a really cool sound that the solid-body successors don't quite capture, and listening to Wes Montgomery on the drive in this morning was a real pleasure.

The Gods of Guilt (Michael Connelly, 2013)

I'm still staying on track with the reading. I've been reading Michael Connelly ever since I picked up The Black Echo on my honeymoon. I've now read just about everything he's written except for some of the short pieces, e-books, and the true crime book from a few years back.

This is one of his Lincoln Lawyer books. The first one was very good and the movie was also surprisingly good as well. The next two were somewhat worse, I think mainly because he was trying to work a balancing act with his two favorite characters, Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch. The fourth book, which relegated Harry to a cameo appearance was much better and I think this book learned from that one.

Don't be surprised if you see this book made into the next movie in the franchise. Also, don't forget to check out Harry Bosch in his own Amazon-produced series next month!

Next up...The Destiny of the Republic. Finally I'm reading a book about Garfield! (the president!)

Clear Air Turbulence (Ian Gillan Band, 1977)

As we saw yesterday, just because you were in a metal band (or even a band others would call "metal") doesn't mean everything you do has to be metal. Case in point: today's random selection, Clear Air Turbulence by the Ian Gillan Band (IGB for short).

Although open to debate, Ian Gillan has never considered himself to be "metal" or Deep Purple to be a heavy metal band. For a not-metal guy, he's managed to end up in some pretty hard-hitting combos, including a freakish stint in Black Sabbath and inadvertently linking himself to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the late 1970's. IGB was most definitely not metal. After quitting Deep Purple in 1973, Ian tried to leave music altogether and his return was reluctant, with thoughts of doing something totally different, like music for children and soft pop. The IGB era started with what seemed like a return to rock, but turn a hard left on this album, their second, which showed tendencies toward the burgeoning jazz/fusion scene of the mid-1970's.

The main problem with IGB is the huge disconnect between the vocals, which are unmistakably Ian Gillan's style, and the rest of the band. Guitarist Ray Fenwick and bass player John Gustafson both had careers stretching back into the early 1960's and I think they were getting tired to playing rock and roll. Meanwhile drummer Mark Nauseef, freshly booted out of Elf as it turned into Rainbow (see yesterday's post), was becoming increasing artsy in his drumming. Although he was right in the thick of it on this album, keyboard player Colin Towns would be keying in breaking the fusion era in Ian's career and getting him back into the hard rock (metal?) scene with the similar-sounding in name but totally-different in sound Gillan.

This album is a product of its time. It rubs most Purple/Sabbath classic rock fans the wrong way, with horns, quirky synthesizers, and long meandering musical passages. However, if one approaches it with an open mind and sees it as the start of a rebuilding process by a singer who was struggling to emerge from the shadows of his old band, it makes for an interesting listening experience.

The Rainbow Family Album (Various Artists, 1995)

The Rainbow Family Album is part of a series released by the Connoisseur Collection in the 1990's that assembled collections of artists related to a particular band. Yes, Fleetwood Mac, and Deep Purple (and probably others) are part of this series.

What makes the Rainbow collection so compelling is that it really drives home two points: (1) Ritchie Blackmore recruited from the strangest places, and (2) more often than not members of Rainbow go in light and emerge heavy. When you have a band that did not retain the same lineup for two consecutive studio albums, things get interesting!

There probably wasn't room to account for everyone, which is fine (I wasn't really dying to know what David Rosenthal did post-Rainbow), but the credits are a bit erroneous. First off, the opening track (Deep Purple's "Speed King" with the opening guitar solo cut) should credit Roger Glover alongside Blackmore. The Elf song "Wonderworld" should also note that Craig Gruber, Gary Driscoll and Mickey Lee Soule were also members of Rainbow's first album. Finally, Jimmy Bain should also get credit for playing on the final track (Dio's "Don't Talk To Strangers").

As I seem to like to do with compilations, a little bit of who's where:

Guitar:
Ritchie Blackmore (1975-1984) - Formed the band after leaving Deep Purple and split the band to rejoin Deep Purple. Left Purple again for one more Rainbow album and now plays Renaissance-inspired music that I hear is big in Germany.

Singers:
Ronnie James Dio (1975-1979) - Joined the original lineup along with most of his old band Elf. Quit to join Black Sabbath and later formed Dio (the band).
Graham Bonnett (1979-1980) - Lead singer of 1960's sensation The Marbles who suddenly emerged out of nowhere for Rainbow's fourth album. He was fired after one album and went on to front other 80's metal outfits like Alcatrazz.
Joe Lynn Turner (1980-1984) - Joined the Rainbow ranks after a 1970's career in relatively soft rock and like Bonnett seems to thrive in the hard rock and metal climate post-Rainbow, including a notorious stint with Deep Purple.

Keyboards:
Mickey Lee Soule (1975) - Joined Rainbow with Dio, but his honky-tonk style never clicked with Blackmore and he left quickly. Most recently was seen working backstage for Deep Purple.
Tony Carey (1975-1977) - Pretty much joined Rainbow out of nowhere, then went on to enjoy considerable fame as a solo artist in Europe. Not bad for a California native!
David Stone (1977-1979) - Following Carey, the keyboard slot dissolved into a virtual session-man position, so not surprisingly, Stone is mainly known for various session work.
Don Airey (1979-1981) - Airey was another session guy, fresh off a gig with Black Sabbath. He's settled down a bit, calling Deep Purple home for the past ten-plus years.
David Rosenthal (1981-1984) - Yet another session man. Hell, he was backing up Billy Joel on his last tour.

Bass:
Craig Gruber (1975) - Joined the band from Elf, along with Dio and Soule. Dubious claims about his participation in the creation of Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell abound. He's been working with a bunch of bands I've never heard of since then.
Jimmy Bain (1976-1977) - Another artist brought out of obscurity by Blackmore. Post-Rainbow he would form the pseudo-supergroup Wild Horses, then later join Dio on a number of his solo albums.
Bob Daisley (1977-1979) - After Bain was fired, the bass position dissolved into a number of failed replacements, which reach the point where Blackmore ended up take over the part himself for most of the album Long Live Rock and Roll. Daisley, an all-around journeyman both pre- and post-Rainbow, would handle the rest. Daisley is probably best known for his work on Ozzy Osbourne's first two solo albums and "erased" from the remastered versions by the management (and thankfully restored in later editions).
Roger Glover (1979-1984) - It seemed that the whole bass gig for Rainbow was a raw deal when an unlikely person took on the role and kept it until the band folded. Glover was fired from Deep Purple by Ritchie Blackmore in 1973, yet Roger is such a nice guy he didn't turn down the invitation to join (and largely steer) his old nemesis's band. The two stuck together past Rainbow all the way to Blackmore's stormy departure from the band in 1994.

Drums:
Gary Driscoll (1975) - Driscoll always sounds great on the old Elf albums, but he hit a wall on Rainbow's first album and was quickly dismissed afterward. He stuck around the New York music scene into the 1980's and was murdered in 1987.
Cozy Powell (1975-1980) - Hailing from various low-key projects punctuated by some successful UK singles, Powell put the real heft into the band's second and third (and probably best) albums. When Blackmore decided to steer the band in a more commercial direction, Cozy quit and his 1980's career would include a number of big name metal acts. He died in a motorcycle crash in 1998.
Bobby Rondinelli (1980-1983) - He pops up in a lot of places, usually heavier acts. Oddly enough he is the only member of the Difficult to Cure lineup that was never in Deep Purple (past or future).
Chuck Burgi (1983-1984) - Like the keyboards, the drum spot was essentially a session-man position by the end of the band's lifespan. And wouldn't you know it, he was ALSO playing with Billy Joel on his last tour!

Egad that ended up being a lot more than I meant to write. Serves me right - I should know there's a lot of Rainbow alumni out there. Since it wasn't in the scope of the collection, I did not include the personnel from 1995's Stranger In Us All, which featured an entirely different band working with Blackmore (although Burgi was recalled during the subsequent tour). Anyway, the solo/spinoff output of the Rainbow alumni is worth exploring. It's not all gold and you probably need to step outside your musical comfort zone at times. That's what's so great about bands like Rainbow. They get you exploring new musical terrain. Hopefully some of their work will show up here and I can share a bit more about it.

Love Is (Eric Burdon & the Animals, 1968)

Listening to this will make you think "Wow, 'House of the Rising Sun' was a loooong time ago." If you consider 2010 to be a long time ago (as of 2014 of course), then you'd be absolutely right. The wild history of musical transitions over the course of five years that is the basis of the Animals story is something you just don't see anymore in today's music scene. Looking back nearly fifty years, it is quite dramatic how much a band can change in such a short period of time.

Love Is, the final album by the Animals as a continuous recording entity, is the final chapter in a long history of changes. The Animals circa 1964 were just one of numerous bands jockeying for the #3 spot behind the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the British Invasion. Although they produced a lot of great music, they were mostly known (and still are) for making "House of the Rising Sun" a big hit. It was also the song that would drive Alan Price out of the band after he managed to secure sole credit for the song to the annoyance of the others (they didn't have a Nanker Phelge or McGannahan Skjellyfetti to consolidate group writing credits). Producer Mickie Most would soon follow and the band sound began to shift in a more aggressive direction, but still within the constraints of American R&B covers. Finally by the end of 1966 the band pretty much imploded, with Eric Burdon as the sole remaining original member. In full control, he took the band in a wild new direction with two guitarists (one who doubled on violin) and a lot of crazy psychedelic original compositions. After two albums of this, the novelty wore off (even faster than the first era) and the "new" Animals released a third and final recording, then underwent another lineup shuffle, creating a "new new" Animals, which would record Love Is, their third album of 1968.

Love Is returns to the cover material, but instead of Chuck Berry and Ray Charles, they take on Sly & the Family Stone, Johnny Cash, the Bee Gees, Traffic, and others. They also have a lot of fun with it, throwing in whispered adoration of Tina Turner during "River Deep Mountain High" and tossing in a ridiculously long guitar solo into "Colored Rain". They also turn in one of the most unusual versions of "Ring of Fire" you'll ever experience. The psychedelia of the previous albums is muted or gone for the most part. On many of the songs, keyboard man Zoot Money (aka George Bruno) duets with Eric and all guitar duties are handled by Andy Summers (yes, the same Andy Summers who would enjoy a career in law enforcement a few years down the road with Sting and Stewart Copeland).

The band quickly dissolved following the release of the album. Eric would move on to join War for a couple albums and guitarist-turned-bassist John Weider joined Family while the others (except Andy Summers) would largely drift off into relative obscurity for the 1970's and beyond. Speaking of obscurity, many of the Animals albums were impossible to find on CD during the time I was collecting them, which made for some rather expensive acquisitions. Since that time, pretty much all of their (legit) recordings have been released on CD or some kind of purchasable and re-mastered media (Animalisms, Winds of Change, The Twain Shall Meet, Every One of Us, Love Is), so they are all worth tracking down. If you are craving the Alan Price era stuff, The Complete Animals is a perfect compilation which includes the entire first two albums plus stray singles and oddballs from 1964 and 1965. For some reason the 1966 album Animalism (not plural) is stupid expensive via third party sellers, but there are some nice folks out there who managed to stuff every track from said album into a handy "Bonus Hits" compilation. Happy hunting!

December's Children (The Rolling Stones, 1965)

Compared to the likes of the Beatles, the Kinks, or the Who, I don't have a whole lot of the Stones in my library. This is not because I hate them, but probably more to do with the fact that their early catalog is a mess. It wasn't uncommon to have different releases in the UK and US, but the Rolling Stones (or their management) took this to ridiculous levels. If you want a complete catalog, you basically need to buy every album up though Between the Buttons (plus Flowers for good measure) twice. Also problematic is the band's reliance of cover material, which dominates all albums prior to Aftermath. The Jagger/Richards writing team was slow to develop.

December's Children is a fine album, but the Stones had gone about as far as they could under their old image. It's super short (under 1/2 hour). The studio tracks sound restrained, and not just because we have the gift of hindsight, knowing that bigger and better things were ahead. The two live cuts have so much fire in them that it does a disservice to the studio material. Finally it lack cohesiveness. Even the band is on record calling it just a collection of songs. Even with all of this said, the Rolling Stones enjoyed the power of name recognition, second only to the Beatles. The original material (on side 2) shows signs of improvement over some of the previous albums. As for the covers, they're a lot of fun.

Aftermath, released the following year, showed a lot of changes and the beginning of a golden age for the band. Their fling with psychedelia wouldn't last more than a couple years, but the albums up through at least Exile on Main St. (and arguably Goat's Head Soup) all far outclass the quality of their earlier work, plus you only need to worry about one edition of each. It gets spotty after that. I'm not exactly going to kill myself to add Tattoo You to my collective anytime soon. The glory days may be long over for the Stones, but amazingly they continue to troop on fifty years down the road.

13 (Black Sabbath, 2013)

I swear the selections here are chosen at random (how else does one explain going from Anthrax to Oliver Nelson in a single day?). So here we are at January 22nd and have our first repeat artist, Black Sabbath. If that wasn't strange enough, it is also the latest album, which I compared to the new Deep Purple album, released the same month.

When discussing Black Sabbath Vol. 4 earlier this year, I noticed how the band was always trying to distance themselves from the sound they have been credited with making famous. What makes 13 so unusual in the history of Sabbath is that they are now running back to embrace that sound, with overt nods to classics like "Black Sabbath" (the first song from their first album) and "Planet Caravan".

What Black Sabbath is doing isn't all that unusual. In fact, Deep Purple is far more the exception than the rule when it comes to the latest output of the old first-generation metal bands. In the case of Purple, in the mid-1990's they made a decisive break with a formula was producing diminishing returns with regard to artistic satisfaction (making money is different matter, alas). Meanwhile, most other bands are doing the back-to-basics approach, usually with the help of a producer/spirit guide. Examples include Metallica's Death Magnetic (Rick Rubin), Iron Maiden's Brave New World (Kevin Shirley), and Judas Priest's Angel of Retribution (Roy Z), whose latest output typically followed a particularly flimsy or poorly-received album (St. Anger, Virtual XI, Demolition and the Sabs' own Forbidden are all albums most consider to be the worst of these bands). In all cases except Metallica (a latecomer to this phenomenon), the following albums show more progressive leanings: Dance of Death and Nostradamus point to new directions from old bands.

I'm not sure if Black Sabbath will do a follow-up album, but it would be interesting to see what it would be like. Just to get 13 to market, they had to battle cancer, alcoholism, and Bill Ward, not to mention the 18 years of drama since Forbidden's release. The Heaven and Hell era with Dio was a far more professional era for the band. I think they were recording new tracks a matter of days after they reunited for the Dio Years compilation. I will say to Ozzy's credit though that 13 is a more adventurous album (even within the restraints of Rubin's back-to-basics decree) than The Devil You Know and even with it's flaws and limitations it's nice to see that there's still some spark to this old warhorse of a band.

Wuthering Heights (Charlotte Bronte, 1847)

I'm pretty much on pace* to reach 52 by the end of this year, and by golly I read a real tough one.

Wuthering Heights is basically a very good book about truly awful people. They are either born awful or simply turned awful by being in the presence of other awful people. Some people think the the romance between Heathcliff and Catherine was something deep and profound. I think "obsessive-compulsive" is a more apt term, so much so that it drove them to hurt and/or kill everyone around them thanks to their single-mindedness. And I haven't even mentioned the part about graves.

Did I like the book? Actually, I did! Most reactions I got to "hey, I'm reading Wuthering Heights!" included "Ugh!", "Why??", "Don't!!!" and "Heathcliff is a stalker" (thanks, Mom). It's a dark one and should not be confused with works such as Jane Eyre or anything by Jane Austen (which is actually a poor comparison as this came much later). There is a lot of lit-crit about this book, but the opening essay was all I really needed to understand the background of the book and where much of the nastiness comes from. Also, this book was quite a bit easier a read for me than Pride and Prejudice, which I took on a couple years back, I think because the language of the Victorian era is a bit closer to our own than that of the Romantic era. I'm not an English major; I'm just throwing that out there!

Up next, Michael Connelly's latest, The Gods of Guilt. I can't just read old books, you know.

* - I actually wrote this Saturday and only now realized I didn't publish! Book 3 is well underway at this point!

The Blues and the Abstract Truth (Oliver Nelson, 1961)

Back to jazz and me repeating the disclaimer that I am a total jazz novice. I can only discuss what I know.

What's remarkable about this album is that it is STACKED. Even a jazz infant like myself knows that if you get Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Roy Haynes into one room and your name isn't Miles Davis, you have pulled off an amazing feat. Not only did Nelson pull them all together, but he also managed to record an amazing album.

However, Nelson himself is a bit of a puzzle. This album completely towers over the rest of his work. With many jazz artists I like, the first question I have is "what album should I get next?", but with Nelson, I can't seem to figure out what else of his is worth tracking down.

As with many jazz albums, all the personnel except for Haynes are dead (and at a young age to boot, except for Hubbard). Haynes, bizarrely enough, is known to a number of people as the DJ from the jazz station in Grand Theft Auto IV.

Persistence of Time (Anthrax, 1990)

So I spent my MLK Day holiday upgrading my computer (hence the delay) and listening to more Anthrax than any other day of my life post-high school.

This was the album where Anthrax abandoned songs about John Belushi, Stephen King, and Judge Dredd for ones about the Holocaust, intolerance, and other issues the band wasn't really renowned for addressing. Although the album is neither fun nor funny, it's the one I grew up with. In fact, I was blissfully ignorant of their 1980's output until listening to the Greater of Two Evils covers album from about ten years back. That's how lame a fan I am.

How cool was speed metal in 1992? Good enough for the most notorious sitcom of the era. Check it out:

Actually by 1992 we were entering the world of "grunge", "alternative" and "whatever", so this was pretty much as good as things got for Anthrax. The anthrax mailings of 2001 didn't help the band image either. From what I've heard the last two albums are a more "back to basics" approach for a band that could never seem to hold a stable lineup. Next time I need some hard hitting speed metal, say, before a long day at the office, I think I'll need to stock up.

Beruhren Meiner Affe (New Bomb Turks, 1999)

First off, the answer question #1 about this EP, it's German for "Touch My Monkey", which was all rage thanks to 1990's era Saturday Night Live.

The last few entries here have been pretty music-critic-ish, so I'll try to reign in those impulses a little bit. I first heard of the New Bomb Turks back in 1999 while working the college radio circuit. This one is related to the station that had only a minor impact on my listening tastes because the playlists tended to skew to the overtly weird. Slogging through a lot of weird music, I had to the good fortune to stumble on this EP, on vinyl no less! It's still the only thing of theirs I have in my library. However the garage-punk impulses would herald my expanded interest in the genre in later years. It's probably heavier than what a true "garage revival" band would put out, but it's a lot of fun to play from time to time.

I would later leave the aforementioned radio station to spin Top 40, where the announcing was everything and the music meant nothing. Oddly enough, I still have fond memories of both, though neither one really influenced my taste in music.

Now What?! (Deep Purple, 2013)

By all accounts, Deep Purple should not exist today. During its first 8 years of existence they managed to plow through 10 different members before finally imploding, the 1976 lineup bearing little resemblance to the 1968 lineup in personnel, appearance, and sound. Against all odds, the most famous lineup (the second one) reunited in 1984. Again many changes occurred in the following years, but 30 years later the band remains alive and well.

Now What?! is the ninth album of the post-reunion era and the fifth of the "Morse" era. It's hard to believe that Steve Morse, who essentially saved the band from annihilation in 1994 after Ritchie Blackmore's stormy final departure, has been with the group for nearly 20 years. Obviously, the release of albums is nowhere near as frantic as back in the 1970's, but the band still tours around the world fairly aggressively.

Among the five "Morse" era albums, there seems to be a pattern of an uneven but exciting album (Purpendicular, Bananas) followed by a more confident but less gripping followup (Abandon, Rapture of the Deep). Now What?! marks yet another change in sound thanks to a change of producer (Bob Ezrin), but amazingly manages to capture the best qualities of the previous four albums. In other words, the band delivers a confident album, but one that can still excite after all these years.

Above: First Deep Purple music video in 20 years!

In 2013 there was a lot of hoopla over the long awaited Black Sabbath album (the first in 18 years), but this album, even with only a mere 8 year hiatus from the previous album, is the better of the two. Where Black Sabbath struggles to recapture the classic sound (after years of trying to escape it), Deep Purple continues to explore new, more progressive musical territory and succeeds brilliantly. Now only if the rest of America could take notice.....

Nuggets II - Disc 3 (Various Artists, 2001)

The Nuggets box sets (the first two anyway) are a great place to start any real collection of "garage" music. Circa 1972 the world of music had a much shorter memory and a whole genre ("garage") was falling into oblivion. If it hadn't been for the release of the original Nuggets compilation, most of what we'd know about the 1960's would be the Beatles, the Stones, and a lot of schmaltz. In fact, the first compilation succeeded so well that to us some of the selections seem fairly standard for any 1960's compilation. Around 2000, Nuggets and its successor compilations were pulled into a box set. While the first box set, an expansion of the original compilation, focused on the USA, Nuggets II covers the rest of the world. Obviously, the U.K. dominates, but there is ample representation from the rest of Europe, Canada, and Australia/New Zealand, with a sprinkling of cuts from Latin America and Asia.

Disc Three offers a lot of diversity and a surprising number of truly unknown bands from the era. I've often found that Nuggets tends to choose tracks from the "before they were famous" set and that is the case with a number of the tracks here, though not nearly to the level of the first two discs. Also, less than half of the cuts are from outside the U.K., so this is definitely not "British Nuggets".

Here are some little sketches on the significance (if any) of the bands included on this disc:

Cuby & the Blizzards was a mainstay of the Dutch music scene until 2011, when Cuby succumbed to cancer.
A couple members of the Twilights would be key parts of the Australian music scene.
Pete Sears, keyboard player for The Fleur de Lys, would go on to be a founding member of Jefferson Starship.
The Matadors, being in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia, remained pretty much isolated from the greater rock and roll scene.
Q65 would enjoy a couple resurgences in the Netherlands during the 1970's.
Los Chijuas, Mexico's representation in the Nuggets collection, disbanded in 1972. As with many of the non-English speaking country-based groups, information is sketchy or nonexistent.
The Bluestars spent most of their short career battling numerous rejections from record labels, which inspired some of their best writing, featured here.
Steve Howe, guitarist of the Syndicats, would go on to more obscure bands like Tomorrow, Yes, and Asia.
The Sound Magics are a true one-hit wonder from the Netherlands.
You don't need me to explain the Guess Who.
The Open Mind managed to squeeze out a single album before moving on to jazz...and obscurity.
The Missing Links was a veritable flash in the pan, but would contribute to other prominent Australian groups in the years to come.
As far as I can tell, the Jury contributed one single to the musical heritage of Canada.
Marc Bolan is best known for his work in T-Rex. John's Children is his old band.
Sands was a one-single phenomenon. Even Brian Epstein couldn't save them. The duo that made up Sands would move on to the similarly ill-fated Sun Dragon, which is notable for featuring backing musicians earning seed money to finance their first album, "Shades of Deep Purple".
Graham Gouldman of the Mockingbirds ironically made far more of a name for himself writing songs turned into hits by other artists, most notably "For Your Love" by the Yardbirds.
The Idle Race was Jeff Lynne's old band, pre-Electric Light Orchestra.
The Elois was another one-hit wonder from Australia.
Information is sketchy on the Factory. They had two singles, both rooted in the latter-era psychedelic sound.
Episode Six contributed a singer and bassist to Deep Purple.
Status Quo continues to enjoy a long and respected career, though they are not well known across the pond outside their earliest work.
The Voice is another one of those one-hit wonders.
The Playboys (one of many bands using this name) didn't amount to much, but frontman "Normie" Rowe had a successful career in the Australian scene.
According to the YouTube comments section, The Slaves (another popular band name of the era) were from Austria. That's all I've got.
The Red Squares were an English band hiding in Denmark.
The leader of Scrugg was a native South African who would find success in later years as a record producer and served as a technical assistant for Def Leppard in the early 1980's.
The Downliners Sect was a short-lived group, but reunited in 1977 and became a long-lived group.

There's much more to the whole Nuggets thing than just this disc, but I can really only recommend the first two sets. There are three other box sets under the Nuggets banner. "Children of Nuggets" is groups "inspired" by the garage scene of the 1960's, so it's a different style of music altogether. There are also "local" collections for San Francisco and Los Angeles which are considerably better, but much more narrow in focus and sound. Overall, the Nuggets may be among the least obscure compilations (try "Pebbles", "Rubble", etc. for that), but they still make for good listening.

Preservation, Act 1 (The Kinks, 1973)

If anybody needed a reminder by 1973 that the Kinks had moved a long way from "You Really Got Me" and all of those early hits, the ambitious two-part "Preservation" should have served that purpose quite well. In 1966, between a well-documented nervous breakdown by Ray Davies and a US performance ban, the band veered into quaint tea and tobacco territory, while their peers (The Who, the Rolling Stones, etc.) embraced LSD, pot, and flower power. In spite of producing some of the finest work in their extensive career during the following three years, the band nearly vanished from the public stage altogether. During these "kwyet" times, Ray Davies wrote a little song called "Village Green", which failed to make the cut for 1966's "Face to Face" or 1967's "Something Else". However the idea went into full blossom in 1968 with the release of their first concept album, "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society" (a full year before "Tommy", mistakenly called the first rock concept album). Like its two predecessors, the album basically went nowhere, and to add insult to injury, bassist Pete Quaife permanently left the group after its release. 1969's "Arthur" would continue the early concept album era of the band's history, but with a little more heft that "Village Green". In 1970, the group finally nailed their first big hit in years with "Lola" and was finally freed from the performance ban. The "Lola" album was somewhat of a concept album, but like the following two albums, it was more rooted in individual songs. In 1973, however, the "Village Green" idea came back more powerful than ever, launching four grandiose concept albums that largely wiped out their British fan base, but set the stage for a surprising resurgence Stateside.

Unlike many rock concept albums ("Tommy", "The Wall", "S.F. Sorrow"), Ray Davies' writing tend to explore issues we would normally consider kind of dull, at least in a musical context: imminent domain, corporate greed, unions and government takeovers, and so forth and so on. And unlike some albums of the period ("Thick As A Brick"), Ray was deadly serious about all of it! Although he may look at individuals in the community setting, the concept is not really about a single individual's story. If any individual dominates "Preservation", it's the evil Mr. Flash (corporate greed) and his death struggle with the yet-to-be-named and not-so-great-himself Mr. Black (socialist forces), with the villagers (the "sheep") being tossed about like pawns. This album gets heavily panned by the critics, but there are some really good tracks on here. You need to dig a bit through the schmaltz to find them, but a number of them hold up in their own right. As an album listening experience it is fairly enjoyable as well. I cannot speak for Part 2 (yet), but I know it was a different album than a mere continuation of Part 1, which left a lot of people confused. I will have to listen for myself, but it's high time I continue boldly into the wild world of 1970's Kinks concept albums. This remains the last Kinks album I got, and that was quite some time ago!

The Madcap Laughs (Syd Barrett, 1970)

In high school and college it was trendy to debate who was the essence of Pink Floyd. Was it Nick Mason? He was the only constant member of the group, but he didn't do a whole lot of writing. Was it Dave Gilmour? Perhaps. The last two albums were only possible through his determination and his good nature kept the band together even during its most divisive periods, even though he didn't officially join until the second album. Or was it Roger Waters? No doubt he wrote the lion's share of the group's material and albums like "Animals", "The Wall" and "The Final Cut" are essentially his work from beginning to end. However he has a reputation for being a megalomaniac and effectively drove everyone from the group by 1983.

Go back in time to around 1968 and the answer would probably be "none of the above because it's all about Syd Barrett". At least that's what the group's management felt when they essential abandoned the group to support Syd's solo career. On paper it seems like a no-brainer. "The" Pink Floyd had been running in the same circles as the Beatles in 1967 and in many minds they were well on the way to being their musical successors in the heyday of psychedelia and swinging London, with their charismatic and wild front man. Syd wrote virtually the entire first album, all supporting singles, and handled most of the vocals. Compared to the other three (Mason, Waters and keyboard guru Richard Wright), he was the complete artist. Only Wright came anywhere close to matching him in the performance department, but his songwriting was minimal at best. Mason and Waters came from architectural backgrounds, and performance-wise, they can best be described as "adequate" for the job. The problem, of course, with everything under Syd's lead, was that, fueled by ample amounts of LSD, he was well on the path to debilitating mental illness.

With this in mind, "The Madcap Laughs" feels like a horribly exploitative album. Even in the earliest recording sessions from May 1968, Syd was clearly running off the rails. The number of producers, session players, and sessions involved in the torturous recording sessions was heading toward "Chinese Democracy" proportions, and yet the majority of the cuts that comprise "The Madcap Laughs" sounds like an insecure guy with his acoustic guitar. Wild and outgoing Syd Barrett, the vanguard of the psychedelic era, was gone.

The powers that be managed to squeeze one more complete album from Syd Barrett (the appropriately-titled "Barrett", also 1970). After that Syd careened from one failed venture to another before finally dropping out of sight after the abortive all-star band called Stars. He showed up during Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" recording sessions in 1975, but the bald, overweight Syd Barrett was in no condition to reunite with his old bandmates, and he simply wandered away, this time for good. By the time of his death in 2006 he was just another face in the crowd, but his 1960's alter-ego left a legion of admirers who still considered him to be the true face of Pink Floyd.

In my music library, the musical prowess of the mentally ill is on full display with a number of recordings from the likes of Ray Davies, Brian Wilson, Roky Erickson, Peter Green, Skip Spence (see previous post) and many more in lesser-known groups. Listening to their work is both saddening and enlightening all at once.

All Together Now (Argent, 1972)

If ever a band was born from a song, it would be Argent. By 1968, Rod Argent's old band, the Zombies, was effectively deceased. The boom times of their earlier hits ("She's Not There", "Tell Her No") had faded and the individual band members were beginning to seek out new ventures. In one heroic final gasp, the Zombies pulled together for one last album, "Odessey and Oracle", and evaporated. What nobody anticipated was that the band had one last great hit left in them, "Time of the Season" (NOT a Christmas song, but that's another rant for another time). By the time the song was topping the charts, two members of the band, Rod Argent and Chris White, were scrambling to assemble some kind of "New Zombies" to capitalize on the success of the song. For matters of personnel and changing musical tastes, the "Zombies" name was tossed and the new lineup, which added Rod's cousin Jim Rodford on bass (with occasional T-Rex sounding vocals), and Unit 4+2 alumni Russ Ballard (guitar, vocals) and Bob Henrit (drums). White elected to work behind the scenes as this point.

This is probably their most solid, if not adventurous, album. "Hold Your Head Up", even in its awful radio-edited form, was a monster trans-Atlantic hit, welcome news for a hit-starved Rod Argent. Ballard's "Tragedy" is an excellent song in its own right. Already evident on this album is the growing divide between Ballard and the rest of the band. Argent and White's songs show increasing progressive tendencies, with the final song being a virtual mini-concerto showcasing Rod's keyboard prowess. Meanwhile, Ballard was more in a hard-rock vein, with more down to earth material. More often than not it was his songs that were giving the band greater exposure, but his role within the group was diminishing.

Following 1974's "Nexus" the original lineup split, heralding the launch of Ballard's solo career, the dissolution of the Rod Argent-Chris White songwriting partnership, and the band's dramatic turn into prog-fusion with Ballard's two (two!) replacements. Even though the post-Ballard albums are virtually forgotten, they really aren't that bad and certainly worth checking out if you like all of Argent's other albums, especially the transitional "Nexus". Some free advice though: the final album "Counterpoints" never made it to CD, iTunes or any of that, but a certain popular video streaming service can help with that problem.

The CD released back in the 1990's seems like a great deal, with as many bonus tracks as the original album, but only two of them are true bonus tracks ("Kingdom" and "Closer to Heaven"). The rest can all be found on the preceding "Ring of Hands" from 1970 or the following "In Deep" from 1973. However, if this is the only Argent album you ever get, then it's a nice mini-anthology you get on top of their best-known album.

Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (1966)

Hot Tuna, Moby Grape, Jefferson Starship, Starship, New Riders of the Purple Sage...just a few of the bands birthed from the members of the first two Jefferson Airplane albums, not counting solo careers for just about everyone. Yet listening to the first album it's hard to believe how much would spawn from such origins. The first album is hesitant and relies more on a blues sound (with a few covers) than its folksy successor, "Surrealistic Pillow". I think this may have helped the band to not fall victim to the "first is the best" phenomenon that hobbles many groups that limp along for years after a strong first album.

This is the only album to feature Skip Spence on drums. Apparently he was enlisted to join the group because he looked like a drummer. He would pull a Dave Grohl-style move and form Moby Grape the following year and switch back to his preferred role as guitarist. Very much unlike Dave Grohl, his band did not survive the decade and in 1999 he died homeless and destitute in Santa Cruz. Sad. Incidentally, being a drummer in Jefferson Airplane is hazardous to your health. Spence's successor, Spencer Dryden, passed away in 2005, broke but mostly reconciled with his old band. Joey Covington, Dryden's successor, died in a car crash in 2013. Spinal Tap?

My Airplane collection is fairly meager. I have only the first two albums in my library. I've heard isolated cuts from the later albums and they sound pretty good, so it's definitely an area I'd like to expand into. Jefferson Starship is another animal altogether. The first album, "Dragon Fly" is enjoyable (even though the levels are criminally low on the CD), but after "Red Octopus", the follow-up album, my interest tapers off.

Toolbox (The Naildrivers, 1997)

In my reflections on the Hillside album by Arnold, I had mentioned that numerous bands from the late 1990's have utterly vanished. Trying to find information on these bands can be best described as "digital archaeology", executing numerous keyword searches, following leads, and making the best deductions possible.

So who were the Naildrivers? From the little bits and pieces I found on the web, the band was started in 1991 by drummer Scot Parsons and bassist Chet Harrison in Boulder, Colorado. They released three albums prior to 1997's "Toolbox" and I couldn't find names for any of them. Also along the way they shed a keyboard player and switched guitarists, adding Barefoot Geno in 1996, completing the trio. Around this time they seem to have established themselves in Delaware. In 1998, a little radio station in Maine played a bunch of stuff from the album and yours truly officially added "Toolbox" to the library as a promotional item. It doesn't appear there were any releases following "Toolbox" and it seems that the band disintegrated around 2001. R.I.P. Naildrivers.

Where are they now?
Barefoot Geno seems to have had the most success in music post-Naildrivers. Even in 1997 he was mentioned in an article as having a solo career. Sources from around 2006 indicate he was doing well as a local act in Florida. One interested tidbit is that he played in a "three man quartet" and, in addition to playing guitar, played bass with his feet. There's a lot of interesting bass lines in "Toolbox" (go no further than opening track "R-19") but I don't know if that's a factor or not.

Scot Parsons (credited as "Wyatt Parsons" on "Toolbox") stuck around the Delaware music scene, playing in a band called Trailer Park Casanovas. Their website seems to have fallen on hard times, so I'm not sure how long ago that was. His roots in Delaware seemed to be the reason a Colorado band was getting a lot of attention back east.

Chet Harrison moved to Orange County (California) and he is credited as the CEO of an app called "Nimble Chef" that helps folks at home succeed at cooking with pro tips from pro chefs (I think?). This is certainly one of the more interesting post-music careers I've stumbled on. And this has been stated by a librarian who used to be a radio DJ.

Finally, this is not the same group as Pontius Pilate & the Naildrivers, a ska band from Ireland. They are well-represented on YouTube if you are curious about them!

Here are some of the electronic breadcrumbs that helped put the story together:
Early article about the band from an Iowa newspaper in 1995:
http://www.iowastatedaily.com/article_18fdcbe1-b1d6-5265-96dd-36e9fb3eee98.html
Article from a Delaware paper when the band was about to release "Toolbox":
http://cpg.stparchive.com/Archive/CPG/CPG02211997p46.php
Update on Barefoot Geno in 2006:
http://www.marconews.com/news/2006/nov/03/band_q_marco_entertainment_icon_barefoot_geno_reco/
Trailer Park Casanovas website, for what it's worth:
http://www.tpcasanovas.com/
Nimble Chef responsible parties:
http://www.nimblechef.com/about-us

Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio (1952)

Nothing like a little jazz for the weekend. Again, I'm not a jazz critic and identify more as a novice, so I can't really add much value other than my own thoughts here. Two interesting things I learned: (1) The title is inaccurate - Lester Young is playing with a quartet (the guitar is the giveaway). (2) The album is a combination of three different releases and the creation seen here was compiled in 1997.

As mentioned earlier here, the library is a treasure trove of jazz, so I have had a lot of fun identifying key recordings and then identifying the libraries that have them. Generally a "top 100" list can be 95% obtained from libraries. I'm beginning to move into my next level of music exploration where I identify the artists I like most and find more recordings. Currently I have Peterson's "Night Train" (by an actual trio) and this is Lester Young's only appearance in my library as leader. I definitely plan to add to both!

All Things Must Pass (George Harrison, 1970)

1970 was a time of great transitions in Beatles history. Paul McCartney was laying low, John Lennon was having mommy issues, and Ringo Starr was feeling nostalgic. Meanwhile, George Harrison was making up for about ten years of lost time, recording the heavyweight triple album "All Things Must Pass" with about twenty of his closest friends.

I picked up this album when the deluxe edition was released in 2001, which is the entire original album (with slight track order adjustments) and a clutch of demos and the 2000 version of "My Sweet Lord". He also decided to colorize the front cover and "modernize" the look on the pages of the CD booklet (see below). Sometimes I let my guilty pleasures crowd out what I would say are the albums that are universally good, so it was nice to listen through this one and reaffirm that this is an absolutely essential album.

George Harrison's career would gradually sputter out as the 1970's and 1980's wore on, with a little post-"Anthology" bounce in the late 1990's. This is the only solo album of his I own, so I'm probably part of that problem. His time as the "bestselling Beatle" was very short, as Lennon and McCartney both found their footings as solo artists. Nevertheless, the money from his Beatle and early solo years would finance some of the finest British humor (Monty Python, Terry Gilliam and others benefited heartily from his generosity). Not bad for the "Quiet Beatle".

The Allman Brothers Band (1969)

It's been a busy day, so not a lot of time to put thoughts into pixels. Isn't that how it always goes as the new year progresses? I'm shocked I've almost made it to the 10th and kept up with all of my resolutions.

What can I say about this album? It's probably still my favorite, with my only criticism being it's way too short! I'm probably going to be sent to Allman Bros. fan hell for saying this, but even "At Fillmore East" falls short of this. Maybe it's a product of the times, falling at a key crossroad between the demise of psychedelia and garage, combined with the rise of the "Southern Rock" sound. Engineer Tom Dowd hadn't even got his hands on the band yet, so there's a certain rawness in the first album you don't hear of subsequent releases. Also no Dickie Betts tunes to be found here.

Acquiring the album was a bit of a process. I picked up a few tracks through a free "greatest hits" compilation from my bookstore days. In fact it covered 5 of the 7 tracks. I think I iTune'd the other two, which turned out to be premature on my part because I later picked up a combo set of the first two albums from the library last year. Oh well, I've come out so far ahead I can hardly complain.

Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein, 1959)

Yesterday I finished my first book of the year, Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Other than a few familiar elements, it bears almost no resemblance to the movie. Since Heinlein was moving out of his juveniles period, I didn't expect the writing to be very flowery and it isn't. While the movie really played up the satirical elements, I couldn't find anything in the book to support any claims of satire. In some ways I would have almost preferred satire to the glorification of militarization so evident in these pages. In was clear in a few places, notably in his teacher Mr. Dubois's lectures and well as protagonist Johnny Rico's own monologue, that Heinlein was using the science fiction story as a construct for expounding his own libertarian platform. But was it really libertarian? He describes a future where modern society (for Heinlein, the Cold War era 1950's) is brought down by brats who were never brought to heel because corporal punishment was outlawed by pesky "social workers". That sounds libertarian. However, the resulting society, where enlistment in the Federal Service is made mandatory in order to be able to be a voting citizen, definitely smacks of socialist thinking and militarism. In the end I'm not really sure what Heinlein was getting at and the story was fairly routine science fiction. I'm glad I read the book, but it was nothing special.

1 down, 51 to go.

Next up...Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. No joke!

Beethoven: Symphony #9 in D Minor "Choral" (Berlin Philharmoniker & Ferenc Fricsay, 1958)

A few years backs, when asked if I liked classical music, I replied, "I like the idea of classical music" which was my silly way of confessing I knew nothing about it. Where does one begin? How much do you really need to know to enjoy classical music? As with jazz, I decided to "go it alone" to start. I found a nice "100 basic works" list to work with. Number One in the series is Beethoven's Ninth, which is probably as good as any of a place to begin. The actual recordings of the "Basic 100" tend to stick to only a few conductors/performers, with inconsistent results, so as I went down the list I tried doing a little research to learn what recordings are the best.

When I rearrange iTunes to show my what I play the most, this one routinely comes out on top. I think this probably has to do with the fact there is really no bad place to listen to this, and, as one at the beginning of a classical music exploration, one cannot listen to it too many times. As with languages, I learn through repetition. I may only read a book or watch a movie once, but I listen to pieces of music over and over, learning new things with each listening.

Since I picked this one up last year, I've added Schubert, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Strauss (Johann), Vivaldi, Debussy, Handel and Bach to the collective. As you can see, I'm all over the map right now so don't even think of asking about favorites!

As with the Cecil Taylor entry last weekend, I leave it to others to dissect the inner workings of the piece and the recording. There are lots of good resources out there. I freely admit that I am a complete novice and all I can do is speak from my own experiences.

The Hillside Album (Arnold, 1998)

During the mid/late 1990's I was well into the college radio scene and as a result I ended up with a fair amount of albums from 1998 in my library. For the most part they have stood the test of time fairly well, but as the years go by it is easier to tell these albums come from a different era. Although many of the bands stay fresh on my mind, I've seen some, even a few signed to major labels, utterly vanish, without even a Wikipedia page to memorialize them. It's even worse for the minor-label and true indie groups of the time.

Arnold is very much a product of their time. They have a pastoral sound with lots of accoustic-based melodies punctuated by electronic noises with varying levels of distortion ("Ira Jones"), with a generous dash of WTF on collage-type songs like "Rabbit" and the not-so-hidden track medley following the punny yet head-bopping "Moroccan Roll Part 2". Take a trip back in time with the music video to one of the better tracks on the album and a good representation of their sound:

Arnold would go on to add a couple members to the band and survive the demise of the Creation label and the whole Britpop scene in general to eke out another album (Bahama) which I have never heard. Probably by virtue of the fact that the band name starts with the letter A, this remains high on my list of albums to keep a lookout for when I'm lurking among the used CD's at Amoeba.

The Family That Plays Together (Spirit, 1968)

When I picked up this album at the library last year, I knew exactly two things about Spirit: (1) they did the song "I Got A Line On You", a song I always enjoyed hearing on the radio and (2) guitarist Randy California filled in for an ill Ritchie Blackmore during a 1972 Deep Purple American tour.

I'm hardly a Spirit expert just from listening to the album, but I learned a few other interesting facts about the band. First off, the old bald dude is Ed Cassidy, who was Randy California's stepdad and was a drummer of some reknown in various jazz circles. Cassidy was also the only member of the band to appear on every album. This album, their second, marked a turning away from their more experimental first album. They would undergo numerous changes in sound and personnel over the years. In short, it sounds like the Spirit catalog alone could provide me with a lifetime of listening. This lineup is 3/5 passed away: California drowned in 1997, Cassidy died of old age in 2012, and John Locke passed away in 2006. Interestingly, the two surviving members, Jay Ferguson and Mark Andes, did quite well for themselves as session musicians and, much to my surprise, Ferguson composed the theme song to the US version of The Office. Way to go!

Icky Thump (The White Stripes, 2007)

I wasn't an "original" White Stripes fan, being one of many people who heard "Fell In Love With A Girl" back around 2002 and dutifully purchased each studio album as it came out from that point onward. Another confession: I still haven't got the first two albums. I think I may have stumbled on the first album in 1999 back in the college radio circuit, but I don't remember anything more than that.

Icky Thump was the final White Stripes album (for now anyway). It's a mixed bag, but most of their albums have their share of highlights and filler. Also as usual it's about 95% Jack, 5% Meg, though he did manage to make his first solo album sounds different from a White Stripes album, so maybe that's just how Jack is. There are lots of keyboards on this and most of the songs don't sound like just two people playing. Even with all of the added stuff, the White Stripes were the heart of the "new garage" scene of the last decade and they are still greatly missed.

Icky Thump was one of the first albums I ever downloaded from iTunes, marking a big leap in my ownership mentality of "if I don't have the CD, then I don't have it", which would in turn lead to a dramatic expansion in my library.

Unit Structures (Cecil Taylor, 1966)

I'm not sure I am 100% on board with avant-garde and free jazz, but I'm still in a "discerning" stage when it comes to jazz appreciation, so I pick up all types from the library. My colleague says this kind of music stresses him out and I have to agree that this isn't the kind of music you get work done to. It demands a lot from the listener.

Cecil Taylor often gets lumped in with Ornette Coleman, the standard-bearer of the Free Jazz movement. However Coleman generally omitted chord-playing instruments from his work, whereas Taylor, a pianist, presents a largely piano-dominated sound. Don't worry, though. There are plenty of squeaky horns.

There's probably better people out there to debate the merits and background of this music, so I will keep it brief here and leave it at that. I've got plenty of time to explore and ruminate about jazz in the coming year!

Live After Death (Iron Maiden, 1985)

They should make another one of those Geico ads where it ends with "Happy as Iron Maiden in 1984". The "Powerslave" album was a high point in the band's career and their first full live album release captures them at the peak of their powers, in the USA (Long Beach!) of all places! These days it seems like Maiden drops about three live albums for every studio offering, but back in 1985 the release of "Live After Death" was special. Other than a handful of B-sides and the "Maiden Japan" EP from the Di'Anno era, it was their first official live album.

Live After Death has had a tortured release history. The original 2 LP release was given a buzz cut for release on CD which wiped out the Hammersmith tracks (side 4). This was the version I bought in high school. In 1995 a 2 CD release appeared, but the second disc was the B-sides to the singles released during that time. The 1998 remaster restored the Hammersmith tracks, but left out the B-sides. Until the iPod era, getting all the tracks has been a bit of chore without purchasing the album twice, which I did. In fact, I STILL don't have the Hammersmith tracks, but I'm working to fix that.

Even today, as the band has moved well into "prog-metal" pastures, the album still holds up. I'm not a huge fan of note-perfect renditions of studio songs, but Iron Maiden does exceptionally well at this. Bassist Steve Harris is probably the driving force behind this, known for his militant professionalism. Vocalist Bruce Dickinson and the guitarists Adrian Smith and Dave Murray manage to sneak in a little bit of improvisation, lending some distinctiveness to the live renditions of the songs. An Iron Maiden show is a metal experience that is part Rolling Stones (spectacle, legacy), part Grateful Dead (obsessive fan following). Their stage repertoire is so expansive that they routinely need to do "current tours" and "retro tours" so that fans can get the whole career experience. My one Maiden show featured an entire play-through of 2006's "A Matter Of Life and Death", a technically brilliant performance, but one that left the fans wishing they had been a bit more selective and played more the classics. Life After Death however hits all the sweet spots as of 1984, representing the best songs of each of their five albums ("Killers" was relegated to the missing Side 4 and B-sides, but it was there). Clearly more focus is given to the three recent albums, given that Dickinson was the original singer on those, plus the band's sound had moved away from the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" and punk sounds of the first two albums.

For some purists, after Live After Death, it was all downhill for the band. The following studio albums would be marked with tension, acrimony and discord between Harris and Dickinson and Smith. Janick Gers replaced Smith in 1990, a move that the purists like to slag, but his "wild" style added some fire to the live shows. Dickinson followed Smith out the door in 1993 with a ceremonial on-stage "beheading" and went on to outclass his old band for most of the 1990's. In 1999 the hatchet was buried and the classic lineup reunited (while retaining Gers, who I hear is an all-around nice guy). Oddly enough, their highest-charting albums in the USA have been the most recent two (peaking at #9 and #4 respectively), far outdistancing Live After Death's #19 showing. However, as the youngsters spin their way through the progressive-era "Final Frontier", they inevitably reach back to the 1980's heyday albums. It should be no surprise that Live After Death is a certified Platinum album.

Black Sabbath, Vol. 4 (1972)

Here's another one I picked up in the early college era of life. This album is the result of classic doom metal/stoner rock laced with an ample amount of cocaine. Is this a bad thing musically? Hardly. When I put on BSV4, it's a real treat to hear the band bounce back and forth between slow doomy classic Sabbath riffs and bouncy shuffling fast sections. Virtually every song on the album works off this formula, with the opener, "Wheels of Confusion", and the closer, "Under the Sun", working nearly the same method. While this isn't my favorite Black Sabbath album, it's a cool snapshot of a transitional phase in the band's history.

The running joke with Black Sabbath is that they were almost constant trying to run away from their image as the quintessential proto-doom band, and constantly being turned back to it by the rest of the world. The first two albums stuck a tone that would be much copied by others, yet shunned by the band itself. The first album is so eerie I get this mental image of a band recording an album around a single mic by candlelight. Many of the deeper cuts of Paranoid follow in this spirit, but it was clear by the third album they were tired of this image and the "dark blues" formula that put them on the map. The fourth album was their first attempt to break free of the stereotype, a precious two years after they effectively created it. Just about every track sneaks in keyboards somewhere, with an entire song ("Changes") being nothing but a piano, a mellotron and Ozzy. As mentioned previously, the "Sabbath Sound" is there, but interrupted often by a more jaunty sound based around a crashing repeating riff, with "Supernaut" being the epitome of this. "Supernaut" and "Snowblind" were unfettered odes to the joy (and dangers!) of drugs, with cocaine unseating marijuana as the medication of choice by this time. In fact, the label nixed the whole album being called "Snowblind" due to the obvious drug reference. The whispered "cocaine!" in the first verse didn't help matters and Ozzy pretty much confirmed this decision by shouting it at the top of his lungs during live performances.

The riff-based portions of the album would become even stronger on the following album, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, followed by an abrupt change to songs featuring elaborate and lengthy solos on the sixth album, Sabotage. Sabotage was pretty much the last "classic" Black Sabbath album, though Ozzy would hang around for a another couple albums that almost fully rejected the sound they were known for. Attempts to drop the "Black" from the name failed around the time Ronnie James Dio joined the band, and Tony Iommi failed to jettison the entire name in 1986 with the release of Seventh Star. It was just too good a name for the powers that be to ever let go of, no matter how much the band tried to escape it. In 1995 it seemed that the world was about ready to put the band name to rest, but by 1998 the "reunion" era began, marked by frequent touring but little recording. Those in need of a Sabbath fix between Forbidden (1995) and 13 (2013) should check out the Tony Iommi solo albums (Iommi, the DEP Sessions, Fused), and Heaven and Hell (basically Mob Rules/Dehumanizer era Black Sabbath by another name). You could do worse than scope out an Ozzy album like Ozzmosis (1995), which features Geezer Butler on bass. Bill Ward's solo albums are lightweight, but honest. If you like super heavy Fear Factory type metal, Geezer's various solo albums are worthwhile, but probably too grating for those who find Metallica (1980's era) to mark their heaviness threshold.

To close, what about the new album, 13? It's all right, I suppose. Generally I will consider any album to feature both Tony and Geezer to be Black Sabbath, even if they don't use the name outright. I know this drives the Ozzy purists crazy, but come on. Until "13" finally appeared, the Black Sabbath "reunion" era is a wasteland when it comes to fresh recordings. They all owe Dio a debt a gratitude for bringing back a sense of professionalism to a band that was rapidly disintegrating into a nostalgia act.