The Coral (2002)

The Coral was one of those bands I discovered purely by accident. Back in my Borders day I was working on something in the back and some slacker coworker who liked to process magazines for six hours (it was a half hour job tops) was attempting to play every single free CD the store owned. This happened to be one of them. I didn't even let this coworker get the chance to add this freebie to his collection; I was all over it. Even though the Coral didn't make a cent off of me on this album, I would go on to purchase outright all but the last album (unavailable in the US, even after 4 years!), and also grab the two-disc "best of" set just to get at some unreleased material.

The Coral have a clear trajectory from their pirate/weird first album to fairly mainstream as they matured. It's hard to believe, but I think the whole band was under 20 years old when the debut album was recorded. Most of the nautical references and shanty-style music was pretty much gone by the release of the bizarro EP Nightfreak and the Sons of Becker, and fairly scant on the second album, Magic and Medicine, both of which were released very rapidly following this album. The Invisible Invasion, their third full-length outing marked the end of an era of quick and quirky releases; the band would only release two albums after it in the following ten years, neither of which exhibit much spontaneity, though sound nice and professional.

Sometimes though it's just fun to get back to the first album. You'll never hear the band more rambunctious than on a song like "Skeleton Key", featuring an unexpected coda at the end. Songs like "Dreaming of You" and "Goodbye" sound good anytime, and (at least in the case of the former) got picked up for soundtracks around the time. Finally, I dig the clever use of horns, particularly on "Dreaming of You" and "Wildfire", something that would not occur on any of the future albums. Certainly, this is a contender of top form for my own personal "best album you've never heard" competition. Go stream it and decide for yourself!

A Fierce Discontent (Michael McGerr, 2003)

It's easy when reading American history to get clustered around antebellum/Civil War books and World War II/postwar literature, so it's always a treat to read something covering the surprisingly turbulent era between the Civil War and the first World War. McGerr isn't quite as dramatic storyteller as David McCullough or Doris Kearns Goodwin, but he brings some interesting theories to the table about how the progressive movement contributed both widely accepted reform as well as ill-advised societal changes. For example we generally like government entities like the FDA and the National Park Service, but ideas like Prohibition and segregation ultimately didn't sit too well with future America. McGerr illustrates progressivism as a struggle against the individualism, fueled by a growing middle class growing increasingly concerned about the misguided ways of the "upper tenth" (in reality the "less than 1%") and the working classes. Finally McGerr studies how future programs such as the Great Society and Reagan Revolution were relatively "disappointing" (for good or ill) on how much they delivered on their promises relative to the Progressive Era.

One extra note: there are two excellent pictures worth looking at in the book. One is J.P. Morgan taking a swat at a paparazzo (when the notion of celebrity was starting to bloom) and the other is a horrified, exhausted Woodrow Wilson, staring directly at the end of an era.

(linked images courtesy of the Library of Congress via Ancient Faces and Corbis Images respectively, presented here in thumbnail for no commercial purpose)

Cocaine Blues (Wayne Kramer & the Pink Fairies, 1978)

I can't speak from experience, but I'm sure there is a certain rush of emotions one feels upon release from prison and for Wayne Kramer, he's feeling GOOD! (James Brown inflection intended here.)

As the 1970's wore on, seemingly different groups of around 1970 were finding common cause. Wayne Kramer's band, the MC5, fizzled early on, sending its members in all directions. Hawkwind spawned Motorhead, which in turn attracted a later member (Larry Wallis) of the Pink Fairies into its ranks, which isn't all that strange as that band had moved toward a more stripped-down heavier sound. For what it's worth, in addition to brief stints with the Pink Fairies and Motorhead, Wallis also played a few gigs with UFO which went nowhere. For a guy that was all over the place it seemed to make sense that by 1978 he would find common cause with newly-released Wayne Kramer. As just about anything associated with the MC5 would end up being extremely combustive, this pairing didn't last particularly long. In fact there's not a whole lot of data on this particular live recording, which has been heartily augmented with pre-drug bust Wayne Kramer solo material of varying quality. According to some on-the-fly research I just did, Kramer's career was largely a series of short-lived collaborations with various rock notables, this is when he was in the music biz, which was shaky during the 1980's.

This release is highly unofficial in a number of ways. Incidentally, it would be until 1991 that Wayne Kramer would release a proper solo album.

The Psychopath Test (Jon Ronson, 2011)

I'm enjoying the novelty of reaching the halfway point of my reading goal well before mid-year (this post is coming much later than the book completion date!). This book had been on my list a long time. In fact, two years ago there was a comment on Goodreads asking me what I thought of the book. So it was a long time coming.

Jon Ronson, through his three books, is a master of the "stranger than fiction" subcategory of non-fiction. I read Them: Adventures with Extremists a number of years ago and recall marveling at how Ronson was able to insert himself among such strange and explosive events and personalities. Perhaps because I was scarred (and scared) by the negative reviews of the movie, I never tackled The Men Who Stare At Goats, but when I heard he was tackling the whacked out world of sociopaths, I thought "sign me up!" The book starts out simply enough, with a mysterious book being delivered completely unsolicited to various people that, frankly, doesn't make any sense at all. From his curiosity over what type of person would do this, he ends up meeting folks like the "sane" man locked up in the UK's most notorious asylum, a twisted Haitian terrorist, a ruthless businessman, and, even more eye-opening, the people who attempted to "cure" and "identify" these sociopaths, including Bob Hare, the creator of the Psychopath Test. All the while, lurking in the back of his mind, Ronson wonders if world leaders need to be at least a little bit sociopathic to be the people that they are.

The book reads very quickly and I highly recommend it to those who like their nonfiction done strange, as well as those interested in the quirks of Scientology, because, guess what, the scientologists are featured here, though in more of a "supporting" role.

Led Zeppelin III (1970)

Garf! Between my trip to New Orleans and fighting this stupid head cold (swamp fever??) I brought back from the Big Easy (compounded with a stomach bug), I've been a little behind here. Don't worry though. Each day a new album is being spawned, but it may not get an immediate write-up. Don't be surprised to see a little more brevity that usual here!

So, Led Zeppelin III? I've heard this album described as the one where the band "goes folk rock", but the band really doesn't get all that pastoral except on a few tracks, even though their Bron-Yr-Aur surroundings were designed to illicit that feel. After all, the wax had barely cooled on Led Zeppelin II when this album was born, so it's not really a huge break or change in direction. In fact most of the first side isn't a huge stretch of the imagination with the usual power ("Immigrant Song") and blues numbers ("Since I've Been Loving You"). It's really in the side two material where the argument can be effectively made that they were out to explore new territory. The acoustic/folk stuff would always remain an element of the rest of the catalog, but understandably anyone in 1970 who started off with "Gallows Pole" may have been wondering what happened. My own personal journey to this album was a bit labored and I think this was one of the last albums I acquired.

A couple posts back I mused about my misunderstanding of the song "Gemini Dream". Well, there is no shortage of mondegreens (misheard lyrics) for "Immigrant Song". Check out this link to an extensive list. I didn't see among these my own interpretations: "I want to go where there's a West End show" or "I want to go where there's a rest and shower." And to think Robert Plant's delivery would only get MORE garbled by mid-decade!

Blazing Arrow (Blackalicious, 2002)

Sometimes it's just downright weird how things end up in my music library. During my extremely brief stint at a community college radio station (with a heavy emphasis on "community") I was exposed to all sorts of wacked-out music. The weirder, more underground the music was, the better as far as the music programmers were concerned. My late-night radio show had to play at least 33% from the "current" shelf, meaning that there was absolutely no escaping this music. A lot of it was pretty crappy stuff, even though I'd listen to it any day over something like the Backstreet Boys (that was my NEXT radio gig, one that had very little influence on anything you will see here). Hip-hop was invariably in the mix, but definitely not the hits of the day like Snoop Dogg or Coolio. Instead, we played stuff like Blackalicious.

Since I remembered Blackalicious from their first album (circa 1998), I decided to take a chance on their second album, being freely distributed as a promotion from the new major label. Since getting these promos was more of a free-for-all, I would often grab stuff before others could and then "sit" on it for awhile, so I didn't give Blazing Arrow a real listening until much later. While I'm not converted by any means, I have a great deal of respect for the work of Gift of Gab and Chief Xcel. The lyrics are intelligent and the album is designed to be a complete listening experience. These are definitely qualities I like in hip-hop, as far too often what leaks out of the radio is the complete opposite.

Long Distance Voyager (The Moody Blues, 1981)

There's a pretty firm wedge among Moodies fans between those who favor the "Core 7" albums from 1967 to 1972 and those who like the "Reunion" era, stretching casually from 1978 to the present day. Except for some parts of Octave from 1978, it feels like two completely different bands and compilations that attempt to chronicle the entire sweep in the scope of a single disc usually fall far short of comprehensive. The crux of the matter falls on Justin Hayward, who was simply 1/5 of the band in their first era, but grew to utterly dominate from the 1980's onward. I like Justin Hayward just fine, so the reunion stuff doesn't bother me, even though my preference is toward the more imaginative Core 7 period. Some people however realllllly like Justin, to the point of near-embarrassment, and they serve as the core fan base of most of the band's post-1978 output. They are the ones seemingly unbothered by the hyper-synthetic albums of the late 1980's and the near-disappearance of Ray Thomas. Neither of these developments really sat well with me, but thankfully they are not an issue on what is probably their finest reunion-era album, Long Distance Voyager.

I once heard it said (amid all of the Justin pantie-throwing squee) that Octave was a reunion album, whereas Long Distance Voyager was more properly described as a comeback album. That is an apt assessment. Octave was rent with many of the issues that led to the band's self-imposed mid-1970's hiatus, giving the entire album an unsteady feeling. The old formula of giving everyone a cut of the songwriting clearly wasn't working well, with Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder turning in particularly flimsy material. After an extended break (to allow for a handful of solo releases), the band returned minus Pinder to record this album. In his stead is 1970's synth-journeyman Patrick Moraz who lays a very heavy imprint on the "new" Moodies sound, though it's clear from the get-go that Justin Hayward is now the leader of the band, with an strong assist from John Lodge. (In fact, it's a matter of dispute as to whether Moraz was officially a member of the group. I say "yes". The rest of the band says "no".) Ray Thomas, whose flute playing is largely buried or absent in the mix, is confined to the last "suite" of songs, which actually suits him very well; "Veteran Cosmic Rocker" is one of his last great compositions. Graeme Edge's lumbering "22,000 Days" doesn't disappoint, although he is positioning himself as the man behind the scenes and the official "original" Moody Blue.

One final source of amusement is "Gemini Dream". I like this song, but it is riddled with mondegreens (misheard lyrics). For longer than I care to admit, I thought they were singing after the "make it work out" (not "naked workouts"!) section "kill each other tonight" (actually: "for each other tonight"). I tried to confirm that I wasn't the only person hearing this, but unfortunately I seem to be very much alone in this feeling. I guess I should consider it a minor miracle that I made it to adulthood.

Are You Experienced? (Jimi Hendrix, 1967)

For a long time, this album was a royal headache. Not because it was bad, or because it was too "metal" for 1967, but rather from a music biz perspective. As was the case with most artists in the 1960's, they produced excellent music while signing horrific contracts. Therefore, Hendrix was placed in unusual situations, like sharing a bill with the Monkees, working with a bass player who was actually a guitarist looking to develop his own career, and, years down the road, scores of different versions of his albums.

The three Jimi Hendrix Experience albums (this one, Axis: As Bold As Love, and Electric Ladyland) are universally accepted as Hendrix's three studio albums. After that it is a colossal mishmash of live recordings and outtakes that nobody can agree upon as "canon". Meanwhile, Are You Experienced, unlike its peers, was released a few different ways, resulting in various track being included or omitted from the release and well as tinkering with the track running order. Fortunately the "Experience Hendrix" project got down to fixing this problem and finally delivering a definitive version of the album, featured here. This album includes all the singles (e.g. "Stone Free") and tracks that frequently got dropped (e.g. "Highway Chile").

On another note, the Jimi Hendrix Experience is one of a growing number of "100% dead" bands. It's something the jazz scene has had to come to grips with over the past 20 years. With the passing of Mitch Mitchell, all members of the Experience (not counting Billy Cox, who joined in 1969 and appears on none of three albums) are rocking the great gig in the sky. When a band "dies" it passes into another form a memory, from those who witnessed it. Eventually the "witnesses" themselves will pass on, and the memory transforms once again. It will be interesting to see how perspectives on bands from the 1960's change as those who lived it pass on.

Batten Down the Hatches (Cheerleadr, 1998)

During my trip to New Orleans, the randomness was messing with me. When organized in artist order, John Abercrombie is at the top of the library list. So, should I be surprised that today's selection, Batten Down the Hatches by Cheerleadr, contains the first entry in my library when arranged by song title?


"A" is the opening track on what is essentially an EP, the second release by the band Cheerleadr from Boston. It's a hard rocking, fairly minimal track, and it is pretty clear these guys were heavily influenced by Nirvana. Now, there isn't anything wrong with that, but six years after the heyday of the new Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, it's almost retro to create music that sounds so eerily similar. There were a few other bands around this time trying to do the same thing, evidenced during my college radio stint, and they didn't achieve much lasting fame either.

The band changed drummers and released one additional album, Rock Album, and then they disappear from the record.

Timeless (John Abercrombie, 1975)

One of the funniest things about Timeless is that it is one of the very, very few jazz albums I could NOT find at one of my preferred public libraries. Now this isn't Kind of Blue, but even still, it was a bit of a surprise to find things like the Brad Mehldau's Art of the Trio, Volume 3 without any difficulty, but somehow this one slipped through the cracks. Needless to say, I had done pretty good financially so far, so a little "investment" wasn't such a bad thing.

Other than seeing his name on a list, I didn't know a whole lot about Abercrombie. With maybe one exception, there was no "sideman" era before the release of this, his debut album. With fusionistas Jan Hammer (recently exiled from the Mahavishnu Orchestra) and Jack DeJohnette forming the other legs of the trio, one would expect an ample dose of classic 1970's fusion, and in places that is true. Elsewhere the music is much more understated (this is an ECM album after all). Abercrombie doesn't play as explosively as John McLaughlin, but he's not content to be strictly acoustic (Joe Pass) or ethereal as Pat Metheny. The leads are handled even-handedly between Abercrombie and Hammer, with DeJohnette gently holding the structure together. Although this wasn't a permanent arrangement, the three would work together intermittently in the ECM scene.

Leftism (Leftfield, 1995)

Your iPod never forgets, assuming it has 160 GB of storage. I went through a brief but intense interest in electronica (the term I'm using to cover the vast array of other terms also used). Back at the first bookstore I worked at, a co-worker furnished me with some of his favorite albums to start my education. Since this was well before the whole "I can just rip it" days, I didn't have the patience or time to make a copy, so I gave them a few listens at home and in my car and then returned them.

A few years later I was on the dating scene and met somebody that was really into the genre. Not wanted to appear like an idiot, I immediately sunk what little funds I had into actually buying the music so that we'd have some kind of reference point for our blossoming relationship. Well, after a few dates, that relationship was completely DOA (she cheated, then tried to make amends, concluding with our final date happening the same week and a much more interesting date with the woman whom I would ultimately marry). However, Leftfield and its ilk lived on to this day.

So what can I say about Leftfield? Eh, not much other than what you can read about on Wikipedia. It's hard to believe this album is nearly 20 years old. I mean, think about what 20-year-old music was in 1995. Anyway, one interesting thing I learned through the years was that the "foreign language" on the track "Afro-Left" was all made up. One other Leftfield track sneaked into my library, a track from their second album called "Afrika Shox" which was included on the Vanilla Sky soundtrack.

Sarah Vaughan With Clifford Brown (1954)

I'm in New Orleans all week (don't get too excited, it's for work), so everything is getting delayed this week, but I'm sure everything will be nice and caught up here by the weekend. Normally I like to listen to my hardest and fastest music on the flight (Attila, Billy Joel's old band is a favorite), so the randomness threw me for a loop with this album!

Some of the bestselling "jazz" albums of all time are by female vocalists. If I had a dollar for every time we played a Diana Krall song in the store when I worked for Borders, I wouldn't have needed to work there. Nor was I filled with any overwhelming need to collect heavily in this domain except for the designated standout recordings of which this belongs.

Although Vaughan was a few years into her solo career, this was only her fifth LP-length album, but that has more to do with the growing popularity of long-play records over singles. She would record fifty studio albums in her extensive career.

Meanwhile, Clifford Brown is keeping his hard bop inclinations tempered here. The following year they would be fully unleashed in his landmark collaborations with Max Roach. The year after that he would be dead at 26, short even by jazz standards, but car accidents tend not to discriminate between young and old when they happen.

Combustication (Medeski Martin & Wood, 1998)

Their last album featured here has barely cooled, yet we're getting another dose of MMW, this time a straight-up album, their debut for Blue Note from 1998. As mentioned before, the band was leaving their piano trio roots behind, and Mellotron, turntables (a la DJ Logic) and electric bass illustrate that on this album, which takes things a step further from 1996's Shack-man. Some the tracks will make your hair stand on end, particularly the DJ Logic stuff like "Sugar Craft", "Start-Stop", and "Church of Logic". I saw this firsthand when I would play this during evening shifts at the bookstore, which garnered customer reaction from "this is amazing" to the old woman who ran out of the store shouting "this is making me insane!" In the middle of all of this, there is still plenty of room to explore within the confines of the piano trio, as "Latin Shuffle" brilliantly illustrates in its first movement.

The Blue Note period was an ironic era for the band in that they were signed to a major jazz label and pushing the boundaries of the genre far more than they ever did for Gramavision. Even if Combustication seems straightforward enough, the remixed EP that followed the next year showed just how willing they were to push boundaries. Eventually they moved on to their own label, starting with a collaboration with John Scofield. A new album with Scofield, Juice, is due out later this year. If you don't count children's albums, live albums, experimental releases, or John Scofield, the last proper studio MMW album was End of the World Party (Just In Case), released 10 years ago!

Houses of the Holy (Led Zeppelin, 1973)

Led Zeppelin gets so much love on classic rock radio it's almost embarrassing. I'm pretty sure every track on this album has been played to death over the airwaves except maybe the hapless "Crunge". Sure, it's a fine album (as is pretty much their entire catalog), but for god's sake radio, share some of that love! There are many other deserving bands out there that would fit right in the format.

My favorite tracks are "The Rain Song" (sucker for the Mellotron, I am) and the unmistakably eerie "No Quarter" which shows John Paul Jones as a real force within the band. Both songs also show the bands ability to step outside of their comfort zone. I also see this album as the end of the "first era" of Zeppelin, with each album a refinement of the previous one. Physical Graffiti, though half-archival/outtake, would make a change of direction, largely put in place by this album. For example, "The Wanton Song" and "Trampled Under Foot" would build on some the more funky moments of this album, while "No Quarter" would birth even more ponderous (in a good way) material like "Kashmir". Of course, that album added a ton of flimsy material, so it's best to analyze it through the stuff actually recorded for that album.

Don't let me appear to hostile. If you are a fan of the genre you should have this album. However, keep it in perspective. There are so many great releases from 1973, so don't stop here!

In God We Trust...All Others Pay Cash (Jean Shepherd, 1966)

First off, I want to say the original cover, which graced my copy as obtained from the Menlo Park Public Library, bears an uncanny resemblance to the logo for the recently-cancelled TV show "Community" (see below). Anyway, moving right along, this was a case of excellent timing. In our "Read a Classic Challenge" group, June is humor/satire month, and this book was already on my shortlist, so I graciously agreed to lead the featured book for the month. Most people may have heard the title because this book serves as about 3/4 of the basis for the holiday classic movie A Christmas Story. I don't need to rehash those parts since the movie serves them quite well, particularly the Red Rider BB Gun and the Leg Lamp stories. There are two excellent stories that don't get featured in the movie. One is about how ridiculous fishing culture is, complete with fish-story levels of hyperbole and exaggeration. Another is the all-too-familiar fiasco of learning to drive a manual transmission car and the inevitable torrent of agony it places on his father.

The structure of the book is not revealed by the movie. The movie largely goes after three of the stories here and a few snippets of the others and puts them all in the context of Christmas hijinks. I think the script (which was co-authored by Shepherd) also cleverly embellished some of the stories (little things like "Fragile? Must be Italian!") that aren't in the text of the book. The book itself interweaves the stories of childhood in Depression-era Indiana into an ongoing discussion between Ralph (Ralphie), visiting from New York City, and Flick, his childhood friend who never left and now tends the bar. Although as adults they are worlds apart, they are able to while away most the afternoon and evening reminiscing about growing up. The "adult" chapters, the odd numbered ones, have a certain bittersweet quality to them. The even chapters tend to be more warm and funny.

One flaw in the book, which is actually fairly common for these types of books, is the problem with repetitiveness because the "childhood" chapters were mostly published in magazines prior to the release of the book. So the readers of Playboy (the ones that were really reading it for the articles!) needed some context as they worked into the story, something the book readers probably didn't need. But at the same time, Shepherd is so hostile to the dirty-industry culture of Indiana, it is actually enjoyable to read him attacking it from all directions in each story.

While Shepherd isn't quite as ridiculous as those he inspired, like David Sedaris or Augustin Burroughs, his style is warm and funny enough that I will be seeking out the other part of the Christmas Story experience, a book released five years later called Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories.

Sort of?

Future Signs (Warm Jets, 1997)

This was one of my favorite albums from my college radio days. Their sound sort of falls between the older Britpop bands of the early 1990's (a scene which most of the band members were a part of) and a very faint leading indicator of Coldplay and its ilk in the following decade. I really thought they were the start of the next big thing, but they were just another casualty of the artist massacre on the Island label, which suffocated many young bands while still in the cradle. Apparently having an album and two singles in the UK Top 40 do not ensure future success.

As for the album itself, the first three tracks are incredibly strong and not surprisingly were the A-sides of the three singles derived from the album. Even though the rest of the album is not nearly as great, the strength of the first tracks will let you easily coast the rest of the way.

Warm Jets is actually one of the harder bands to play the "whatever happened to" game. It seems like their nominal leader, Louis Jones, vanished into the ether. In fact, I'm not sure what happened to any of them, though there may have been some 11th-hour involvement from Alex Lee, who has played with a number of British bands. Then there is producer Glyn Johns, who is a name unto himself long before and long after Warm Jets graced the stage.

To Our Children's Children's Children (The Moody Blues, 1969)

It's only right that if the album before this one and the album following get a little love here, then this one should as well. Although for many this is the Moodies' finest album, it gets a bum rap by many others, including the band themselves, as an album when the band overextended themselves into something they weren't. Just three years earlier, they had the opposite problem. I think it was Justin Hayward that questioned why a British band was essentially performing songs from and/or about the American South, a place they had little personal connection with. This questioning led to an early concept album, Days of Future Passed, followed by a veritable masterpiece of psych, In Search of the Lost Chord. Their third album both progressed and reacted in various place, but overall advanced the band's identity as a "cosmic" kind of band. This brings us to the fourth album, today's feature.

The primary impetus of the album was the moon landing, so themes of space and exploration abound throughout this album. In fact, I go so far to say that this is the band's one and only "space rock" album. Sure, it's not full on Hawkwind or early UFO type music, but the band open acknowledges the otherworldly qualities of the mellotron and flute, two of the band's signature instruments. And of course the lyrics are almost all either overtly or thinly disguised tributes to the expansive powers of the mind and the wonder of space. Sometimes it is unbridled optimism ("Higher and Higher", "Floating"), and in other places it feels bleak ("Gypsy", "Eternity Road"). All of the band members are participating in this vision. Not even the "rocker" John Lodge excuses himself from the overarching theme of the album.

Just like the fascination of American society with the moon was fleeting, soon to be swallowed by Vietnam and Watergate, the rock scene didn't spend a lot of time waxing poetic about space. Realizing they were producing such "out there" music that it couldn't even be performed live, the Moodies themselves backed off into simpler lyrical and musical territory for their next album. When they returned later with a more progressive sound, it was far more "prog" than "psych" and space was no longer the place. Other bands would hold on longer to the space rock scene, but by mid-decade in the 1970's, the whole scene was kind of a curious backwater, which would be effectively marginalized and killed off by punk and new wave, though sometimes metal bands would tip their hat to the old masters (with Iron Maiden of all bands giving a hearty salute with their most recent album, The Final Frontier).

Works, Volume 1 (Emerson Lake & Palmer, 1977)

In brief, the two volumes that comprise Works are flawed documents. After keeping its fans on pins and needles over their next release for four years, they returned as a fractured and unfocused group.

The origins of ELP are strange in themselves. You really have to wonder what would make anybody think the keyboard player of the Nice, the vocalist of King Crimson, and the drummer of Atomic Rooster would play well together. Most supergroups had a lifespan of one album or less, and even Cream was only together for two and a half years. Nevertheless, Keith Emerson knew the Nice weren't going anywhere without a vastly improved rhythm section and vocals, which he was able to accomplish with just two new bandmates, though it also warranted a new name, seeing that higher caliber musicians wouldn't be content to be seen as the replacement crew for Brian Davison and Lee Jackson. To the surprise of many and the horror of a few, ELP became one of the biggest bands of the 1970's. They inspired many artists to "go prog", then by mid-decade served as the example of what to rebel against for the punk movement, which by 1977 was in full blossom.

In 1973, ELP probably took things as far as they could with the release of Brain Salad Surgery, and then a top-billed performance to close the Cal Jam in 1974 in front of a quarter million fans, following a (literally) explosive set by Deep Purple. What could possibly be next?! Well, it turned out the answer was nothing until the release of Works (the first volume, though like World War I, the "volume 1" bit came later).

Works, in spite of the black cover, was kinda-sorta the White Album of ELP, only, unlike the Beatles it was made abundantly clear you were going to be treated to performances by three individuals rather than one group. Furthermore, these three individuals, to varying degrees, had changed substantially since the formation of ELP six years earlier, meaning you weren't going to get songs resembling their pre-ELP output. Emerson, harkening back to the last days of the Nice delivers a full-on concerto for his side, which unfortunately bears a greater resemblance to soundtrack music than a work of classical music. Greg Lake expands on his folk-influenced stuff with five mostly acoustic numbers done in collaboration with lyricist Peter Sinfield. Carl Palmer, closer to Asia's first album than early ELP and Atomic Rooster material, is the most overtly commercial on his side, even employing the probably ridiculously expensive services of Joe Walsh on guitar. Finally you get two precious songs on the last side where it's a band performance. "Fanfare for the Common Man" in its full form is a prog masterpiece, but released about five years too late, while "Pirates" is a dangerous song to listen to while driving because it tends to put me to sleep.

In spite of the fire of "Fanfare" it was clear that ELP wasn't doing so hot in the late-1970's. The rather uninspired and less rigid second volume of Works soon followed, and then Love Beach, an album so bad that I think even the band has dismissed it a contract-fulfillment outing. All would move on to solo albums between 1980 and 1981, with Palmer (and then later Lake) doubling down on the supergroup thing with Asia. ELP, like just about every band, would reunite years later, but tepidly at best. In fact I think ELP has one of the most depressing track records when it comes to reunions, as the old hostilities never really went away. Undoubtedly their work of the early 1970's has a lot going for it, but it seems that they never recovered from the mid-1970's hiatus.

The Shape of Jazz to Come (Ornette Coleman, 1959)

Calling your album The Shape of Jazz to Come shows about as much bravado in music as Babe Ruth's called-shot home run did in sports. Coleman, a pariah in the world of bop, with this album opened the door of the free jazz/avant-garde movement, which would crest with the 1961 release of Free Jazz and pave the way for many others to follow his path. Some would borrow in parts (in increasing order, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy) and others would go in wholesale (Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor). Free jazz, like fusion a few years later, would challenge the structures of jazz much more aggressively that soul jazz ever did.

Since I'm still a "jazz learner", here are some notes to myself for the next time I play "Name That Tune". First, Coleman is primarily an alto player at a time where tenors tended to rule the roost. Secondly, Don Cherry is playing the cornet, part of his progression toward making the pocket trumpet his instrument of choice. The alto/cornet mix is distinctly different than your traditional tenor/trumpet pairing in bop. Another interesting thing is Coleman tendency to abhor chord instruments like piano and guitar in his music. If anything, he was more likely to pile on more horns if he needed more oomph in his leads. Finally, structure is a hallmark of this album. Although "Lonely Woman" bucks the trend somewhat (and in so doing became a veritable standard), the songs here typically begin and end with a short vigorous chorus, often at auctioneer pace, sandwiching the "free" sections of solos, usually by Coleman and Cherry (though Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins managing to contribute in places). For listeners comfortable with their music being solo-driven (prog and fusion come to mind), this doesn't seem so strange, but in 1959 the notion of submerging the chorus and putting the solos front and center was downright revolutionary.

Garage Beat '66, Volume 4: I'm in Need (Various Artists, 2005)

This is another strong entry in the impressive Garage Beat '66 series, a seven-volume series produced by retro-maestros Sundazed. Unlike the other compilations reviewed here (well some of them anyway), this series doesn't dabble too much in psych, leaning more toward the bands sporting strong Kinks and Yardbirds qualities, with some dashes of surf thrown in for good measure. Although the Beatles were undeniably large and in charge during this period, only one of the songs openly apes their style ("Don't Try Your Luck" by the Quarrymen, and don't ask me how they were able to get away with that name). It should be noted that this isn't necessarily the earliest artifacts of garage music which predate the British Invasion and tend to draw more from the more rumbly aspects of leathery 1950's bands.

There is one crossover with Nuggets, the opening track "1-2-5", presented here with a somewhat different mix (I think this is mono and Nuggets was stereo?). I know that the novelty "Asparagus Horror Stories" was on one of the Pebbles series. The Groupies had a different track on Nuggets. The one here is a lot more energetic though seems raw to the point of unfinished (it just sort of trails off).

Future volumes of this series would ratchet up the psych element, which is kind of unfortunate as the selections lose their distinctiveness among other competing compilations. As for this volume, if you like weird, make sure you reach the final track, "Ghost Power" by the Cords. Whereas some bands called themselves "Monks", these guys were actual monks! Judging from the sound they produce, I think somebody spiked their communion wine with 4Loco.

The In Crowd (Ramsey Lewis Trio, 1965)

Ramsey Lewis has always been somewhat of a jazz outsider, usually playing toward the more popular tendencies of the genre. The In Crowd, the title track especially, adored particularly by crossover fans, remains his most recognizable and popular work. In fact he pretty much stomped the original Dobie Gray version, which had only seen daylight itself earlier that year.

I don't know a whole lot more than this. This is actually one of the few jazz discs I picked up that had no mention in the "top 100" list I was working off of. I just liked the title track a lot. The rest of the tracks don't quite have the same spark, but it's fun piano trio music nonetheless.

For some reason I thought this was a "fake live" album, but it seems to be more sincere than some others!

Back at the Chicken Shack (Jimmy Smith, 1960)

Underestimate Jimmy Smith at your own peril! Although common, the name is instantly familiar among listeners and purveyors of the Hammond organ. Numerous rock organists, Jon Lord in particular, are quick to cite his influence, and more than one jazz pianist converted to organ thanks to Smith.

However, if you go into an album like Back at the Chicken Shack with expectations that Smith is going to tear up the organ like Keith Emerson (daggers!!) or Jimi Hendrix with a guitar, you will be in for a surprise. The real influence of Smith is not flamboyancy but structure and disposition of the instrument. Where others may dominate the sound, Smith is more than fine to share the leads with guitarist Kenny Burrell and sax-man Stanley Turrentine.

The Hammond largely missed the bop boat and had more of a reputation as a church instrument until mid-century. Even Smith himself was dabbling in piano and Wurlitzer before settling into the Hammond in the 1950's. However, the instrument was quickly gaining acceptance in the nascent rock and roll scene, leading to the branding of Smith and those he influenced as "soul jazz" performers. Before fusion really exploded near the end of the 1960's, soul jazz is many ways represented the early period of jazz and pop/rock mingling and many of its core players would play a role in the fusion scene of the 1970's, some more commercialized than others. In spite of the infatuations with electric piano and synthesizers, the Hammond held its own across genres. The influence of Jimmy Smith carries on.

Annie John (Jamaica Kincaid, 1985)

I've been doing a stealth read-though of the immense Novels for Students (NFS) series and this is the latest one, the second entry in volume 3. Personally this is book 24 on my way to 52, putting me an unprecedented two books ahead of schedule, something I fully plan to squander when I take on Neal Stephenson's Reamde in a few weeks.

Unlike the aforementioned 1000-page Stephenson tome, Annie John is a plucky 150 pages and is a spiritual sister of sorts to an earlier NFS entry, The House on Mango Street, both in length and topic. Mango was a little more poetic in style. Both are coming of age stories, and both introduce the readers to something that is different (Puerto Ricans in New York and growing up in Antigua, respectively), yet also exploring common truths across cultures (family ties).

Annie John may have rung a little hollow for me in that the mother-daughter bond is something I can observe but not experience. Books like these are important though for "outsiders" like me, though, because it reading a vivid account of it is about as close as I can get to experiencing it. Through others (wife, mother-in-law, sister, mother, grandmother) I have seen the mother-daughter relationship, with its stormy ups-and-downs, in action all around me, but as a son, my own connection to my mother is different. So on one hand I found it interesting to read about the moodiness of the mother-daughter relationship, but on the other I almost felt glad that I didn't have to grapple with such as ordeal. The father-son relationship, far more frequently written about in the history of literature, is plenty enough complicated.

Money Jungle (Duke Ellington, 1962)

Jazz supergroup! And a strange one at that. Why not combine the talents of an aging legend (Ellington), with a hard-bop mainstay (Max Roach), and musical chameleon (Charles Mingus) and see what happens?

Supposedly this recording was fraught with tension, which is not surprising seeing that you've got three guys in the room that by 1962 were all on substantially different trajectories. Ellington, the elder by 20-plus years, had experienced a revival of sorts in the post-"Newport 1956" era, yet had no recording contract at this time. Meanwhile, Mingus was on the verge of recording the complex Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. Not to be outdone, a couple years prior to this, Max Roach masterminded the timely and ambitious We Insist!/Freedom Now Suite. All of this hyper-charged talent can be heard in these incredible clashes expressed musically, with Ellington and Mingus pounding the crap out of their instruments, beating them a-la-Roach.

While this is the only session to feature all three men, Roach had recorded with Ellington the previous year, and had played with the Mingus quintet in 1955, and of course both had played in the Quintet (Jazz at Massey Hall) in 1952. Mingus was also brief in Ellington's big band. Then again, should it be any surprise that everyone had played with everybody else at some point?

The Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals 1966-1968 (1992)

This isn't a comprehensive career-overview collection, but rather a focus on the more Eric Burdon dominated period of Animal history. For those wanting "House of the Rising Sun" and other hits from the Alan Price/Mickie Most era, there are about 1000 compilations out there to help you; just make sure they are the original recordings! There is a lot of crap out there, so make sure to sample before you buy anything (chances are somebody out there kindly uploaded something on to Youtube).

This one kicks off with three of the best songs recorded by the band. "Don't Bring Me Down" is generally regarded as the swan song of the "original Animals" era, even though only 3/5 of the original band is featured. However it's track two, "See See Rider", which formally brought the era to a close, though it was released posthumously. Finally there is "Inside Looking Out", which actually predates the other two and is the only track here to feature original drummer John Steel. This track is made all the more amazing by the context of where the band was at when it was recorded. They had finally rid themselves of producer Mickie Most in favor of the far more progressive Tom Wilson. Furthermore, Alan Price was out. Even though Price is a fine musician ("O Lucky Man!" is a classic), there was just too much drama between him and Eric for the band to continue. The result of these two departures is a veritable music explosion, leaving all past endeavors in the dust.

The compilation moves on more or less chronologically from this point. There is one more song from the 1966 period ("Hey Gyp") from the highly underrated Animalism (no "s" - that's a different album). "Help Me Girl" is essentially an Eric Burdon solo number, backed by an orchestra, a fairly common thing for British Invasion singers to do, but not a lot of spark. For fans of the more bluesy/R&B Animals it gets a little too psychedelic, starting with "When I Was Young" and the tracks from the Winds of Change album and its supporting singles. Whoever was in charge of this compilation must have really liked that album because it has more representative tracks than the next three albums put together. The last songs are really the ones you can't get around when covering this era: "Monterey", "Sky Pilot" and "River Deep Mountain High".

Aside from some alternative mixing of a few tracks, I already have all the songs here on other albums, and with a recent remastering of the psych albums, even those I think are now covered. I would recommend this for the Animals novice, but not the completist. The only massive omission here is "Paint It Black", an eerie cover of the Stones' original. There are better tracks from Animalism and some killer B-sides that would have fit well here, but they aren't particularly well-known which defeats the point of the album, so I'll give it a pass for that.

Ovid (David Wishart, 1995)

This is book 23 of 52. I decided that it's better to mention this in the body instead of the title, because the whole "of 52" thing was getting repetitive (update from December 2016: I've "stripped the 'of 52' notes from all posts, so don't worry if this doesn't make sense). I'm still just tagging these as "books" for now because I consider this a separate project from the main purpose of the blog. Maybe next year I'll break the books off from this into their own blog, but I'm too far along for this year to switch gears.

Anyway, I did a fair amount of historical mystery reading from the Roman period back in the day, but it was mostly centered on one author, Steven Saylor. I still contend that Saylor remains the gold standard of the genre because he avoids the three great pitfalls that trip up other entries in the genre:

1. Total disregard for the historical record. (Conn Iggulden)
2. A distracting amount of slang, usually laced with American or British idioms. (Iggulden, Lindsey Davis, Simon Scarrow)
3. Set in Britain! (Davis - initially, Ruth Downie, Kelli Stanley)

Other than Iggulden, who I consider to be a hack in this genre, none of these authors are bad and I have no quibbles about continue to read their series. I've only read one book by John Maddox Roberts (SPQR) and he seems to be more deft than most at keeping away from these zones. I'm absolutely boggled by why so many authors want to set their books in Roman Britain when all the real political intrigue was happening it Rome. Perhaps they are trying to capture a primitive Old West vibe or something. I don't know. Also I've omitted giants like Colleen McCullough and Robert Graves because they didn't write detective-style historical fiction; theirs in more straight up. Technically I should lump Iggulden with them too, but I can't warn people enough about how bad his writing is.

Which bring us to Wishart. David Wishart is guilty of the first two pitfalls, though his author's note is so graceful at the end that I can almost entirely forgive him on point one. The only issue that lingers is the overtly imperial tone, something that really didn't seep in until Vespasian and later. I don't think modern writers give Augustus enough credit for his "smoke and mirrors" job of "restoring" the Republic. Pitfall number two is truly problematic. If his detective, the smart-mouthed Marcus Corvinus, wasn't so darn lovable, I think I probably would have been unable to finish the book. Most of the characters act far more like 20th century British wiseacres than Roman citizens. Also there are way too many double-apostrophe words in the narrative (e.g. wouldn't've, couldn't've) when two words would have sufficed.

Will I continue? Of course! But I've got a full plate, so it may be a while before Germanicus gets a profile here. With something like 15 books in this series (making it I think the second longest in the genre), I've got a near-lifetime of reading enjoyment ahead, presuming Corvinus doesn't outlive his reader!

The Basic Handel (Various Artists, 1993)

This is a good overview of Handel. You get your Water Music, your Fireworks, and of course your Messiah in one convenient double-disc set. Even a classical music neophyte like me can recognize the key parts of these pieces. Also included are the Largo from "Xerxes", The Harmonious Blacksmith, and the not-so-grosso Concerto Grosso #8.

I recently went to the San Francisco Symphony with my mother to see one of their "Spirit" and "Soul" sets of the music of the Bach family, which got me to thinking about baroque music. If I could only pick a single composer from that era it would probably be Bach (the elder), but Handel currently would be a close second. There's just too much iconic stuff here to ignore! However I think I'm favoring the Classical period more. Baroque is easier to wrap my brain around, but I find it a little stiff. Romantic era stuff is certainly exciting but I get lost in it, and not always in a good way. Modern is still mostly the undiscovered country.

I've got a book on classical music lined up in my reading queue and will post some thoughts on that later, probably around July or so. A little appreciation couldn't hurt this "most difficult" of Western artforms to grasp (Jacques Barzun, I think?).

Go! (Dexter Gordon, 1962)

I get my tenors confused, so I thought to myself during the drive in that I should make a playlist of Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins and see how well I do. Here are some quick notes to myself. First, Dexter Gordon is more standards-driven than his peers, but when he writes an original, it's iconic, as in the case of "Cheese Cake" here. Also, Gordon likes to insert little ditties like "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" into his solos, which the others usually don't do. On this album it's almost like a game to see what songs get checked during the course of another song. Additionally, Gordon does not frequently share the spotlight with a trumpet player, as is the case on this album, but sifting through the specs on his other albums, it looks like Freddie Hubbard makes a few appearances. And finally, not that this would help me with the ID game, Dexter Gordon rarely appears as a sideman. One of these rare instances is Herbie Hancock's first album, where Herbie "adopted" Gordon's band.

And, back to Go, wouldn't you know it....Sonny Clark on piano again. That guy is everywhere this week!

Anthology (Johnny Winter, 1995?)

I think owing to Johnny Winter's relative lack of control over his own song catalog, there are only a few dozen compilations entitled "Anthology" floating around out there. This is but one of them, packaged together with another disc for his brother Edgar. Oddly enough somebody left this set lying around the bookstore I worked at. It was not a promotional copy, just abandoned. It remains the only material by the Brothers Winter in my collection. I don't have plans to obsessively collect, but sometimes I just need a little "Raised On Rock" to get through the day. If I'm feeling more adventurous, I usually switch over to Edgar, my favorite albino scientologist. (hmmm...let's see if the presence of that word gins up my stats for this post!!)

Persian Fire (Tom Holland, 2005)

I tell people I like to read my history chronologically. I find it too disorienting to bounce around from, say, the fall of Rome to World War I. I need to explore all the stuff in-between. I launched a new series of world history reading with Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything, but that turned out to be a little off the mark as far as being a true history book, but it did set down a truly awesome tablecloth for the picnic table upon which I embarked on this latest world history feast.

In this latest round, I've tried to focus in more on particular authors and series, at least for the pre-476 stuff. Oxford University Press's series "Ancient Warfare and Civilization" has a strong first volume, so I've added the next two, one about Philip and Alexander, the other about the Roman conquest of Greece. Anthony Everitt has some decent biographies (Cicero, Augustus, Hadrian) to supplement his latest on the rise of Rome (coming soon to this blog!). However it's the four books by Tom Holland I've been looking most forward to reading. Since Persia falls earliest chronologically in my list, it was the first to be read.

Overall, it's a great book, especially if most of what you know about Athens, Sparta, and Persia comes from watching Hollywood goop like 300. It's not particularly scholarly, so even though it has an excellent narrative tone, if you have an advanced degree you will probably be lacking in a-ha moments. My primary disappointment was that I was really looking for a Persia-centric book and instead got something more 50/50 between Greece and Persia, plus not much following the Battle of Plataea. I mostly give Holland a pass for this because even what we know about Greece in the fifth and sixth centuries BCE is quite scanty for such an influential period, and information on Persia is even scantier, most of it written by their enemies.

I've still got some more reading in ancient Greece to work on before moving on to Rome. Stay tuned!

Note Bleu (Medeski Martin & Wood, 2006)

For a nice retrospective of most of the career of Medeski Martin & Wood, just pick up this disc and their old label predecessor, Last Chance to Dance Trance (Perhaps). Then all you need to find is a yet-to-be-published compilation for their next label (Indirecto) and your life will be complete.

The Blue Note years for MMW marked increasingly diverse instrumentation, especially by John Medeski, who has probably done more for jazz mellotron than, well, anyone? Other than one track from the acoustic Tonic ("Hey Joe") there is plenty of wurlitzers and turntables to go around. Even the horn section and guitar (Scofield in for Ribot) make their return on some tracks. All and all it isn't exactly pure jazz (they opened for Dave Matthews....talk about a concert I would walk out of after the opening act), the musicianship is first rate and they certainly recognize that "tradition" in jazz as far more been about taking risks and trying new things rather than getting wrapped up in the past. I think Wynton Marsalis would mug me with his trumpet for saying that...!

Cool Struttin' (Sonny Clark, 1958)

Don't be fooled by the title. Jazz, most notably hard bop, is in control for today. This album, like most of the jazz I've come into, comes from cruising Top 100 lists and so forth. I've sort of exhausted that list, but I've discovered so many artists that I'm not really hurting for ideas anymore. It's more a matter of what I can scrounge from the various public libraries, which (at least around here) have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of jazz and blues (and classical, if you aren't particular about the orchestra or performer).

On this recording Clark borrowed Miles Davis's rhythm section (Chambers and Jones did an absurd amount of sidework) and teamed up with two top-flight horn players (McLean on alto! sax, Farmer on trumpet, making for very bright arrangements). Personnel was a seriously revolving door for Clark's quintet work, as all of these artists would not appear on the next albums save Mr. P.C. This particular album has the dubious distinction of the leader being outlived by all of his sidemen, which is especially dark for any combo featuring Paul Chambers. The jazz life isn't easy!

We Are Our Shadows (The Bobbies, 1997)

This is another one of those free discs from my college radio days. In spite of some buried vocals in places it all sounds very professional, but there just isn't a lot of spark here. Clearly a lot is owed to the Beatles here, with a lot of the singing sounding like John Lennon on helium and a vibe that hits more in Rutles territory, but without the directness or humor of that band.

You can learn a lot from reading the liner notes. Guitarist/singer Kennie Cruz gushes about "the music" and the Beatles and thanks about one thousand of his closest friends with all deepest sincerity. Bassist Mickey Bliss is nearly as verbose, but if you read between the lines it's all tounge-in-cheek. Finally drummer Buddy Greco only confesses he's a minimalist and leaves it there. Clearly one member of the band was deeply invested in this project and the other two not so much.

As is always fun to do with these "lost bands of the 1990's", I did a little internet archaeology. From what I can piece together the Bobbies were around from the 1980's or so and their first album (and only album other than this one that I could find) Supersongs came out in 1993. Buddy Greco (Jr.) according to a sketchy fan site is the son of the jazz piano player of the same name and his involvement in the band I don't think was consistent and there may have been some others behind the drumkit. It looks like shortly after this album Bliss and Greco split (surprise? liner notes!) and formed The Situation with Iovanna Medina. Recently a Facebook page popped up, with the URL indicating Mickey Bliss as the author so it seems like a reunion of sorts happened a little ways down the road and the band is continuing to enjoy a low-key existence, with no loss of humor.