Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Leonard Rosenman, 1986)

If this seems a little weird being here, keep in mind some of the stuff in my collection goes back quite a ways, back to days when I dreamed of owning every single Star Trek movie soundtrack (I stopped at 2). I don't really do soundtracks anymore because they are all either glorified mixtapes (beware the phrase "inspired by") or largely dull incidental music. Pretty much all the soundtracks featured here were straight out of freebie bins.

The themes to all the Star Trek movies (well, the first five) were pretty darn catchy. Each composer usually started with the old TV theme and then dove into their own signature theme: the Goldsmith (the first and fifth films, and the Next Generation TV show), the Horner (the second and third), and here, in its only appearance, one of my favorites, the Rosenman. I don't know why but everything from the sixth film onward is utterly forgettable (even the return of Jerry Goldsmith didn't really solve anything).

Why Star Trek IV has a different theme than all of the other films probably has something to do with the fact that it is, in fact, a very different movie from its cohort. Even though it picks up where Star Trek III left (which in turn picked up the Wrath of Khan story line), it's the only one of the movies where the Enterprise is nowhere to be seen, at least not until the last minute of the movie. There is also no use of weapons in the film. In fact, the most violent scene is when Spock neck-pinches the punk on the bus playing his music too loud. It's also a lot funnier than any of the previous movies and putting the crew of the Enterprise into 1980's San Francisco is an irresistible opportunity for plenty of social commentary. I'm sure transparent aluminum is still tied up in the patent process and should soon be available along with hoverboards.

Of course if you think about the plot to hard you pretty quickly realize just how ridiculous it is, and I'm not talking about putting the Monterey Bay Aquarium next to the Golden Gate on the wrong side of the bridge with the power of film editing. I mean, they are pretty flip about deciding to go back in time and make it look pretty darn easy, making you wonder what took that guy from the JJ Abrams Star Trek so long to think of going back in time and changing history. So I try not to think of it too hard, because I can think of a better way to scare whale-haters than to say some deep space screeching probe is going to destroy the planet unless they get some damn whales on the scene STAT.

Since I'm not here to blog movies, a word on the soundtrack, which was nominated for an Oscar. As indicated, Leonard Rosenman brought his own theme to the table and it's very catchy and appropriately Star Trek. As a soundtrack most the music is incidental stuff with very appropriate titles ("Gillian seeks Kirk" "Hospital Chase", etc.). Just to mess with us, he turns things over to smooth jazz group the Yellowjackets for a couple tracks (not all at once, but taking turns), just in case you needed a reminder that this is the film where they go to the 1980's.

For some reason Rosenman wasn't invited back. He shouldn't feel too bad, since only James Horner and Jerry Goldsmith did repeats (not counting the last two movies with Michael Giacchino). Goldsmith did an outstanding soundtrack for a terrible movie in Star Trek V and then it sort of devolved into random composers and/or Jerry Goldsmith. Sadly, most of Rosenman's soundtracks (which stretch back to the 1950's) are for movies I've either never seen or really don't want to see. However, he had a stroke of luck in the mid-1970's scoring Barry Lyndon and Bound for Glory. Post Star Trek, Robocop 2 was about as high profile a movie as he got and he retired in 2001. He died in 2008.

Revolver (The Beatles, 1966)

While it doesn't get nearly the exposure of Sgt. Pepper or the White Album, Revolver is a fantastic album, one of the Beatles' best. You don't need me to tell you that! It's the quintessential bridge album from the earlier albums to the later ones and sports elements harking back to its predecessor ,the mod-folk-infused Rubber Soul, as well as looking ahead to the more bombastic future albums.

The very name of the album had a tortured history, with a whole litany of rejected names. "Revolver" has multiple meanings, from a gun to something that spins, like record. Listening to this album as a kid, I noticed that the liner notes were very clear about who the lead singer was on each track and it "revolved" among the four Beatles. In fact, no two consecutive songs sport the same singer and all four are represented (Ringo singing the Lennon/McCartney classic "Yellow Submarine" and George singing all of his unprecedented three tracks).

Revolver was released turning a tumultuous chapter in the Beatles story. On one hand, the spry "Beatlemania" was losing its edge, especially in the USA, where a couple offhand remarks by John Lennon were completely misinterpreted and resulted in the burning of lots of Beatles memorabilia (probably worth thousands of dollars today - idiots!). Tours were becoming increasing obnoxious and dangerous for the band, resulting in the total cessation of touring in August 1966 (no songs from Revolver were ever performed live). Musically they were being aggressively challenged by a crop of new bands out of Britain (in particular the Rolling Stones and the Who) that were simultaneous borrowing much from the Beatles and posing as an alternative image. More than any other album, Revolver shows heavy absorption of the booming Mod culture of the mid-1960's and putting the Beatles in the weird position of following a trend rather than setting one. However, Revolver benefited tremendously from the first real vacation the band ever took in their career. Although the tours had not ceased yet, they finally took a well deserved break and returned musically re-energized (check out Anthology 2 and the immediate transformation from "12-Bar Original" to an early version of "Tomorrow Never Knows"). Additionally, engineer Geoff Emerick was fully on-board for the first time, introducing new recording techniques giving this album a distinctly more "modern" sound than anything up through Rubber Soul. In his memoirs, Emerick also made no mystery about his belief that Paul was a genius, John was a doof, George was overrated, and Ringo was optional. That's another topic altogether, though.

As a postscript to pretty much any Beatles album posted here, this review is from the Mono versions box set. Casual listeners won't notice a whole lot of difference, but keen listeners will pick up on things like longer and shorter fadeouts on many of the songs and distinctly different placement of "fly-in" elements (e.g. guitar solos, sound effects), particularly on "I'm Only Sleeping" and "Tomorrow Never Knows". Worth owning alongside the stereo version? I'll let you decide!

Midnight Oil (1978)

What? Another self-titled album? At least in all cases they are debut albums, which is probably more appropriate than any other time. Midnight Oil's first album also falls into the venerable tradition of minimalist design, resulting in color nicknames. For example, Metallica's "Black Album", the Beatles "White Album", and Weezer's three "color" albums, all of which are self-titled. Here we present....the Blue Album.

Somewhat like QOTSA's debut (see the previous post) this is a mostly raw and somewhat loose production. Those who only know stuff like "Beds Are Burning" will find this album astonishingly different from that period. In the early and mid-1970's the band was largely a pub band with a classic rock repertoire, but got swept up in punk, which is evident on this album. The scorching opener, "Powderworks", was about as heavy as they ever got. However, many of the other songs are considerably more laid-back, especially the dreamy "Surfing with a Spoon" and the too-long "Nothing Lost-Nothing Gained", which is, in fact, the longest song the band has ever recorded. Rockers "Used and Abused" and "Run By Night" were the singles selected from the album.

The next album, Head Injuries, turned down the keyboards and ramped up the guitars, resulting in a much heavier album overall, though I still think of "Powerworks" as their heaviest stand-alone song. Bassist Andrew James quit the band shortly thereafter, though the first release with Peter Gifford on the four-stringed fish (the EP Bird Noises) didn't seem any less heavy and I don't think James had a huge influence on their sound. Growing dissatisfaction with production and the scene in general led to a transitional album (Place Without a Postcard) that fed nicely into 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 and a new era of far sleeker production and global fame.

Queens of the Stone Age (1998)

This must be the week of self-titled albums or something. Anyway, this takes us back to the very beginning of the QOTSA story, in which Josh Homme rose from the ashes of his former band, Kyuss, to start a whole new band. Well, "band" may be a little strong a word, since the only two musicians performing in more than a guest capacity are Homme and his Kyuss drummer Alfredo Hernandez. So I guess "whole" and "new" should be struck from that sentence as well. The desert stoner rock scene isn't exactly my area of expertise!

As far as QOTSA albums go, this one is probably the most loose and raw, not to say that the other albums are tightly created masterworks of slick production work. In fact most people either love or hate the pseduo-lo-fi approach most of the albums take. While the songs here aren't too drastically different from the material that would encompass their "breakthrough" albums a few years down the road, it's decidedly less commercial and more devil-may-care in structure.

Future albums all sport different lineups. Hernandez would depart after this album, but other former Kyuss members were ready to step in, most notably Nick Oliveri, who would co-write most of the next two albums with Homme before having a dramatic falling out. Members of related bands like Masters of Reality (Dave Catching) would also pop in from time to time.

For some reason this album was out of print for awhile, then came back into circulation with three new tracks, formerly only available through split EP's with Kyuss and Beaver (and probably not the easiest things to find on their own). By dumb luck I saw it at the library and absorbed it into my music collective.

Driftwood (1998)

We've run the gamut here of "lost bands" of the 1990's. Some were bands everybody knew that just flamed out (The Soup Dragons), others just faded away (???), and some were always obscure. Among the "always obscure" Driftwood's self-titled album may win the award for most obscure. For the longest time I couldn't locate any cover art whatsoever. Also, Driftwood is completely innocent of putting more work into the liner notes in the music...because there are no liner notes. They also had no label. I'm not even sure what mechanism of distribution allowed this disc to wend its way to my radio station and into my collective.

So what can I say about Driftwood? They sort of fall into the alt-country spectrum, but not every song fits that description. The first song is actually quite good, working off a really good riff. The others are catchy as well, but some of the material meanders into Hootie territory at times (hey it was 1998).

Probably their closest relatives among the "lost bands" label are the Naildrivers, which I ruminated on back in January. Both bands are trios, nominally fronted by their guitarist. Both kicked off around 1995, though it seems that Driftwood was less productive, with only this album and a follow-up EP called Out of Place. All of the extant literature I found on the web reveals no pretenses in their music. It's just straight-up originals with no studio trickery. Sometimes I think bands struggling for recognition really ought to follow the process of working in some cover material. However, I'm not sure that fame and glory was really what Driftwood was striving toward. Again, it's rootsy stuff, take it or leave it.

Garage Beat '66, Volume 6: Speak of the Devil... (2007)

At the rate I'm burning through the volumes here, Garage Beat '66 will be completely covered by the end of the year. Not bad for a 7-volume affair. It was impressive enough that they released the first five volumes, encompassing 100 songs, in rapid fire fashion, so I was surprised to see that a couple years later Sundazed threw for two more volumes.

The main problem with the last three or so volumes is that the pool of top-quality of music was largely exhausted by the first four volumes. While never content to limit themselves to 1966, the compilers started drifting away from the gritter "true" garage end of the music spectrum. Here in volume 6, the set list is dominated by ham-fisted psych like "Psychedelic Siren" and "Lights" (both of which shout color names) or the weaker parts of the repertoire of better-known acts, stuff like "Advise and Consent" by the Music Machine and a super-weird title track number from Things to Come. But, hey, the Vejtables are back for two tracks, so things aren't all that bad!

So even though the comp overall is drowning in second-rate psych (it even manages to overlap with it's polar-opposite series, Psychedelic Experience,for one track), it hasn't lost its sense of fun. I mean it's sincerely funny to see how many renditions of "Who Do You Love" you can stick together and the Druids of Stonehenge kill it on the Kinks quasi-original "Bald Headed Woman". All in all, Garage Beat '66 is seven volumes well worth your time (but get volume 2 first).

Get the Blues 2 (Various Artists, 2003)

When a CD is only three bucks, you have to suspect that it's not about charity. Sure enough this is a sampler of the latest stuff for sale, to get you to buy more stuff at a much higher price point. I think the idea here was to do an ongoing series, like the Punk-O-Rama extensive series of samplers. However, they must have gotten tired after this one and given up on the project.

Since "the blues" are defined quite broadly by this collection, not every song will be to everyone's taste. While the purists will probably be disappointed that their interests are only represented by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, those who like some diversity will likely welcome the six tracks from female performers and the closer by Indigenous, while not the most bluesy of songs, is a Native American band. The songs by Kim Wilson and Rick Holmstrom show the continuing dynamic nature of the blues, mixing up traditional and alternative instrumentation. Since the sampler is trying to spotlight a lot of new music, most of the songs sport sleek modern production, polished horn sections, and the like. However there must have been some retrospective material included since the two big name blues guys were 20+ years in the grave when this was released!

Fire and Water (Free, 1970)

What goes round come around. Back on the first day of the year we looked at the Earthquake Album released by Rock Aid Armenia. I noted Free's contribution of "All Right Now" and lamented the fact (or at least demonstrated) that they were woefully underrepresented in my collection. Soon after I made good on plans to remedy this and picked up their best-known album, Fire and Water (by virtue of "All Right Now", of course).

The band was in pretty good condition around 1970. Their sound was considerably more "spare" than others of the era, with a nearly live-in-the-studio sound. Since Paul Rodgers largely stuck to vocals only, Andy Fraser often elevated the bass from a rhythm instrument to a lead instrument, resulting in some pretty cool sounding guitar/bass duels with Paul Kossoff. Additionally, Free was much more about musical prowess than Rodger's later work in Bad Company, which featured much tighter songwriting. Song structures for Free were relatively flimsy, but they weren't the focus either.

Not long after this album, Free went off the rails during their next album's recording session, triggering a breakup, quickly followed by a brief reunion, then continuing without Fraser, who apparently couldn't stand Paul Rodgers anymore. Kossoff was so messed up on drugs that the band had to shore up the guitar role by adding a keyboardist, another guitarist (briefly), and handing Rodgers a guitar. Needless to say matters for Free were pretty awful from here onward.

Another thing that bugged me about the Earthquake Album was that so many of the songs were needlessly edited, including (to my horror) "Smoke on the Water '90" (Rodgers' verse was cut out) which was supposed to be the big selling point of the compilation. "All Right Now" itself had a good couple minutes removed from it (half the bridge and most of the conclusion). Sure you got the riff and hooks that most people want, but it was a truncation, no two ways about it. So, finally, after nearly 10 months, the entire "All Right Now" finally has its day! Free did pop up on another compilation seen here (Island 40 Volume 4) with a live "Mr. Big", so here to match is the studio version. Singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke already got extensive coverage with the review of Bad Company not too long ago.

Out to Lunch! (Eric Dolphy, 1964)

If anyone deserves the "gone too soon" hashtag it's Eric Dolphy. Sure, there's lot of jazz musicians out there who died young, but the sheer genius of the few Dolphy solo albums as well as his frequent contributions to the work of others during the early 1960's have to make one wonder what could have been. Although he's generally lumped with the free jazz types, Dolphy appears on jazz recordings of all stripes, though his best known appearance include work with Charles Mingus and leading the rival quartet on Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz.

Dolphy was an extremely versatile horn player, not content to just play the saxophone. On this album he divides his time among bass clarinet, flute, and tenor sax (shades of Roland Kirk!). On top of this, his sidemen have a distinct style of their own. Drummer Tony Williams was old enough to drive but not drink here and his free drum style is very much in display here. Bassist Richard Davis occasionally starts the bow his instrument, which creates a truly eerie effect with combined with Bobby Hutcherson's vibes (presents in lieu of piano). Freddie Hubbard lends his services in the leads department, and while he isn't doing anything too crazy he keeps things anchored to the freer end of the hard bop spectrum.

Blue Note had hoped this would be the first of many releases for the label from a long and prosperous career, but Eric Dolphy died just a few months later from acute diabetes complications. Gone too soon, indeed!

Island 40, Volume 4: Electric Currents (Various Artists, 1998)

The fourth volume of Island's 40th anniversary series is probably the most accessible to classic rock fans. In most cases all of the artists should be familiar, though in some cases the song choices are unusual. For almost all of the artists represented here I have built them further into my collection.

Traffic and John Martyn showed up on volume 3 (the folk collection, even though the songs identify better as acoustic rock), although here their songs are much heavier. We also get a double dose of Traffic from the pre- and post-Blind Faith era. The Jethro Tull track, a cover of "Cat's Squirrel" from their first album, is unusual in that I don't believe Ian Anderson performs on it. In fact it sounds closer to Black Sabbath than the kind of music Tull would be producing a couple years down the road. After that is a slightly edited "In the Court of the Crimson King" which segues neatly into a live version of Free's "Mr. Big". The next two tracks are among the most obscure: Spooky Tooth's "Better By You, Better Than Me" (which may be more familiar in the form of Judas Priest's cover version), and Heavy Jelly's "I Keep Singing That Same Old Song". In fact, the Heavy Jelly track is truly bizarre in that it's the only thing the band ever did. It's an interesting song, but very weird to see it here. Traffic's second song closes the first half of the album.

The second half of the collection is more glam-oriented. John Martyn takes things in a new direction even though his song doesn't scream glam. The Roxy Music family (Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry solo, then together) move in for a few tracks, which is where the real sound shift occurs. The last songs leave us in a very different place than the beginning of the album, with songs from Robert Palmer (long before he was addicted to love), John Cale (channeling Elvis - no joke!), and Bad Company.

Like some other compilations in my life, this came around at a good time. Before this fell into my hands, the only song replicated by my existing collection was "Cat's Squirrel". Since then I've used many of the songs as a springboard to collecting more from these artists. The only artists here that show up uniquely here still are Spooky Tooth, Heavy Jelly (of course), Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Robert Palmer, and John Cale. As you can see, I've still got some work to do!

A Bothered Mind (R.L. Burnside, 2004)

The final three R.L. Burnside studio albums are either genius works of crossover or travesties of blues abandonment, depending on how you roll. Around the beginning of the 1990's the rich musical scene of the Mississippi hill country was uncovered. Among the various figures of that scene, Burnside seemed most willing to explore around outside the immediate area, team up early on with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and then challenging the whole notion of "blues" with the 1998 remix album Come On In. Aside from the live Burnside on Burnside and a myriad of retrospective releases, he never went fully back to his roots, though the next two remix albums, Wish I Were In Heaven Sitting Down and this one, would sport the occasional rootsy number. A Bothered Mind buries two such tracks into its thirteen songs, one of which is actually a much earlier recording from 1968. However the real tone of the album is in remixed standards like "Rollin' and Tumblin'" and collaborations with the likes of Kid Rock. Needless to say it's a far cry from Mississippi here, as if the bizarre opening/closing "Detroit Boogie" makes obvious. I know Chicago and Detroit aren't the same thing, but he was certainly clear about not liking travelling north on the previous album.

Sadly, Burnside passed away in 2005, cut his late-in-life renaissance somewhat short. His odd backing band (grandson Cedric Burnside on drums and "adopted white son" Kenny Brown on slide guitar) have continued, however, with both appearing in the film Black Snake Moan and Cedric in particular having released a clutch of solo albums.

Hotwired (The Soup Dragons, 1992)

Back in the 1990's, while I was listening to decidedly uncool Iron Maiden and other similar bands, I let my sister handle the trendy of-the-moment stuff. Consequently, as I piled up more and more music, she would go through routine purges as those cool bands eroded into yesterday's news. Figuring this would be a good way to acquire some music I only so-so cared about without having to pay for it, I convinced her to just give them all to me. This was one of them!

Honestly, I pretty much forgot about this album upon acquisition. In fact, to be able to write anything more here, some instant Internet research was required. So here's the deal. This album kind of gets lumped into the whole mess of 1990's alternative (the most loaded of words), when in fact, in 1992 it had the misfortune of going up against the signature album of the decade, Nirvana's Nevermind. In fact, the Soup Dragons, who had nothing to do with what was happening in Seattle (they were from Scotland for God's sake), had actively turned away from the fuzzy indie rock of the 1980's that in part built the "alternative" scene of the 1990's. While Nirvana harnessed all of the angst of an era, the Soups adopted a bouncy uptempo sound you could really tear up the dance floor to. No grunge-punks allowed here!

What was good enough was no good by 1994. The next album, which featured just frontman Sean Dickson with an overpriced army of session musicians, royally tanked, resulting in the "disbandment" of the Soup Dragons (which by this time meant that Dickson elected not to record any longer under that name). The various members of the band (from this album anyway) fanned out into a number of different bands in supporting roles, while Dickson launched a new band, which has been dormant since around 2001.

Live Cream (1970)

If you find the first Cream album to be a little thin, this album helps rectify some of the shortcomings. The live Cream shows were famous (and not a little notorious) for transforming simple songs into extended workouts. All of the songs here, recorded around 1967 and 1968, are from the first album except for the non-live "Lawdy Mama" which is just "Strange Brew" with different lyrics and guitar solos. Quite on the opposite end of the spectrum are the 10-minute "N.S.U." and the 16-minute "Sweet Wine" which utterly dwarf their studio versions. Those who prefer neat, exact renditions of the studio versions should keep away from this!

I tend to fall on the "favor" side when it comes to live Cream. I mean, if I wanted to hear the exact same song note for note at a rock concert, these days I'd rather just stay home and turn up the stereo instead to get nearly the same effect and save $50 and the smell of barf. Nowadays it seems like you have to be a Deadhead or a-Phish-ianado (I just made that up) to get the totally different concert experience. Even the bands inspired to the long form by Cream have largely fallen in line with the "neat clean" reproduction. I even saw a Fleetwood Mac show where exact reproduction was so essential that there was an entire hidden backing band backstage supplementing the sound.

Of course these days the closest I can get to this kind of experience is to find a rare filmed show from the era to capture the effect. There are some good Deep Purple DVD's that capture this quite well. Not sure if Cream was too early for that, except for the Farewell Concert from the end of 1968. I know the reunion shows were a little disappointing as Jack Bruce's voice was pretty wretched and the music has to be retuned to account for that.

Added 10/27: R.I.P. Jack Bruce!! The overall average note of rock just went up an octave....

Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns (Pascal & Ami Rogé, 2013)

The Modernists ruled the roost this weekend and the pianos were in full effect. Like any good piano bar, two is better than one, and that's the feature of this album. This primarily came into my grasp because I was looking for a couple Debussy compositions ("La Mer" and "Prélude À L’après-midi D’un Faune") and the others came along for the ride. In fact, about half of this is Ravel and Saint-Saën's only contribution in the closing scherzo.

The main thing I learned from all of this is twofold: (1) it is best not listened to while driving (all subtleties are lost), and (2) I need to spend more time with the Modern composers. I still feel like I'm missing something somewhere when it comes to these composers. Also unlike a lot of the classical stuff I've been listening to, this isn't orchestral. I must be hooked on orchestras.

Emotions (The Pretty Things, 1967)

Well, I'm all cashed out on the Pretties. If there are going to be more posts I'll just need to buy more of their albums. As I previously mentioned, Emotions is a flawed album. Looking at the cover and the title, you may think this is a really crazy psych album, but it isn't. You may think that its placement between the R&B inspired Get the Picture? from 1965 and 1968's S.F. Sorrow make it the perfect "bridge" album between them, which isn't really true either.

The band had expressed a desire to get beyond the basic R&B material of their first two albums, acknowledging that the scene was pretty much running its course. While the lyrics and vocals show signs of greater expansiveness, the music is still rooted in the older sound. A lot of this is due to the elements of the "revised" Pretty Things not quite being in place yet. Wally Waller (bass) and Jon Povey (keyboards) had joined mid-session and their vocal contributions (a vastly different style from lead singer Phil May) appear on only a few of the songs. John "Twink" Alder wouldn't join until the next album. To make matters worse in the music department, the producers hijacked the sound, adding a lot of mostly grating orchestrations to make it sound more "out there". A couple of the bonus tracks ("The Sun" and "Photographer") strip out the horns, revealing a awfully bare sound, but this is due to the band leaving out their own fills so the orchestration could step in. The end result is a weird mix of rock and jazz renditions of pop songs all piled together.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of moments in Emotions that work and anyone who likes the other pre-Freeway Madness albums will probably be just fine with the album, warts and all. From the jaunty opening of "Death of a Socialite" to the stuttered vocals and mandolin of "Tripping" this album still gets plenty of listening at work, home, and in the car. Like all of the reissued albums, there's a nice helping of bonus tracks - almost more than the 12 tracks of the original album. Probably most interesting is the unusual cover of the Kinks' song "House in the Country", probably the most overt tribute to the band they were coming to admire more and more, one that was also making the transition to a different kind of sound.

Sacré Bleu (Christopher Moore, 2012)

There are many Christopher Moore books out there and a few of them are on my bookshelf, but I've only read three: the legendary Lamb, the mediocre Fluke, and now this one, Sacré Bleu. I like Moore's willingness to explore the lacunae of history (such as the childhood of Jesus). In this case Moore presents a fantastical investigation into why the French impressionists were so nutters and, in particular, why Vincent Van Gogh would shoot himself and then walk five miles to see a doctor.

You don't need an extensive art background to appreciate the book, though you may want to be somewhat familiar with the notion of what a muse is. If you are easily annoyed by non-period language, some likely anachronistic events, and frequent references to male genitalia, this may not be the book for you. I was just OK with the book overall. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that the entire concept sort of went over my head at times and everything was just a little too convenient when I stood back and assessed the entire work. For what it's worth, the author provides a very nice afterword to help the reader sort the historical from the fiction. I always appreciate a good afterword.

Is this enough to get me to stop reading Christopher Moore books? Nah, I'm still in. Anyone who could write Lamb can't have only one great book in them. He's been very prolific over the years and I'm sure there's another one out there that will be more of a Lamb and less of a Fluke.

Aqualung (Jethro Tull, 1971)

With 21 studio albums and a 44 year history, Jethro Tull is one of those bands with a very long story to tell. A band that would emerge among the hordes of participants in the British Blues boom, it would veer off in a completely different direction than its contemporaries. Their first album, This Was, was about as bluesy as they got. After a change of guitarist, Tull fell far more in league with the progressive rock bands than their old blues counterparts, with harder solos, more flute, and more twisted lyrics. Also during this time, the band was transforming from its "original" incarnation into one that reassembled the old "John Evan Smash" - a pre-Tull group that had dissolved by 1967. By the time of Aqualung the transformation was nearly complete, with John Evan made a full member of the band and Jeffery Hammond-Hammond (the subject of three earlier Tull songs) assuming bass duties from Glenn Cornick. Barriemore Barlowe (the missing piece of the old Smash) would join on the next album; this would be Clive Bunker's last album behind the drumkit.

Aqualung was not only the band's most successful album, but also is a fine document in the transformation of a prog band. Those prog tendencies elevated them to new heights with each album, but within a couple years would also serve as their undoing. This is really the first time that clear themes are evident throughout an entire Jethro Tull album, rather than the album just being a collection of individual songs. It's not exactly a "concept album" (something Ian Anderson hotly denies) but similar characters and ideas pop up in each song, especially side 2 (subtitled "My God") which delves into Anderson's twisted theology. I'm not sure the listening public really picked up on any themes, electing the hard rocking title track and "Locomotive Breath" as successful singles, with "Hymn 43" scoring as a minor hit as well. Meanwhile, the more folk-oriented tracks were kind of overlooked.

If there was any question about Jethro Tull doing concept albums, it was answered with the one-track concept parody album Thick As a Brick, which would rival Aqualung as their greatest success even though being one large inside joke. Critical success melted away from this point onward and even the wider audiences wandered off by mid-decade, leaving behind a core dedicated fan base than would follow the band through a number of musical style changes as well as the divesting of the old "Smash" lineup, completed by 1980 with the dismissal of Barlowe and Evan.

Like most people, Aqualung was an early Tull acquisition for me, alongside Benefit and Thick As a Brick. These albums are probably the best place to start any collection. These, along with the first two albums, are sure bets. After that, though, proceed with caution!

Feel...the Vejtables (1995)

I don't really consider Millbrae, a town just down the Peninsula from my hometown, to be a hotbed of much of anything except inflated home prices, but apparently back in the 1960's it gave us the Vejtables, a fringe group in the prominent San Francisco music scene.

This collection, essentially the only readily available output by the group, demonstrates a remarkable transformation over just a few years. The early stuff with drummer/singer Jan Errico is fun and catchy, sort of a mish-mash of the Beatles and the folkier side of Jefferson Airplane. If anything of theirs was going to be a big hit, it should have been "I Still Love You", but two slightly-different releases couldn't make a dent in the market. After around the sixth track, Errico is gone (off to the increasingly inaccurately named Mojo Men) and the band turned into a more standard garage/psych outfit. (Meanwhile, the Mojo "Men" turned substantially lighter in tone.) The new Vejtables sported a devil-may-care attitude, dabbling in heavy psych and other assorted whimsy like "I Stole the Goodyear Blimp". By the time the last track, an extended instrumental version of "Hide Yourself", it is hard to imagine this is even the same band.

Needless to say, the band never broke big and broke up in 1966, barely a two-year-old phenomenon. Thankfully Sundazed pieced together the puzzle of releases and put out this compilation. A co-worker of mine was nice enough to make a copy for me to enjoy.

Djangology (Django Reinhardt, 1949)

This was an early jazz acquisition. It was just one of those moments where I knew I wanted to check out Django Reindhart and hey presto there was a CD in the freebie bin at work. I suppose I could be forgiven for think it was a greatest hits package, seeing that it doesn't take much to turn the title into "Django Anthology", but Djangology is actually a proper album, all tracks from the same recording session (23 of the 50 recordings are collected here). Just to confuse matters further, there are plenty of other compilations flying around with the same title comprised of far earlier recordings. This album, however, was not released until 2005.

1949 is pretty late in the Django Reinhardt story and these sessions represent the last recordings with his usual partner in crime Stephane Grappelli (who is virtually a co-titular performer here). Even though the best of their material dates back to the 1930's pre-war era, there was still a lot of demand for his music in Europe in the postwar era, so these sessions addressed that thirst.

While Django died just a few years after these sessions, Grappelli would forge ahead all the way into the 1990's and set the gold standard for a new generation of jazz violinists (Jean-Luc Ponty, Jerry Goodman, and others), many involved in the avant-garde and fusion scenes.

Iron Maiden (1980)

I must have some hankering for self-titled debut albums. Then again, I wouldn't really think of Iron Maiden and Bad Company in the same thought (or even the same minute), although Maiden was an early admirer of Paul Rodgers' work in Free (expressed nicely on their cover of "I'm a Mover" in 1990). While Bad Company to this day enjoys near-universal appeal, Iron Maiden's debut is one that takes a little while to discover, but those who find their way to it are generally approving of it.

Throughout most of the band's recorded history, Iron Maiden has had a reputation of being highly calculated, somewhat progressive, and instantly recognizable. Back in 1980 however, only one third of today's Maiden was in the band. Paul Di'Anno, Clive Burr, and Dennis Stratton certainly sound like another breed of musician, while Steve Harris and Dave Murray play it much scrappier and gritty than their later work. Because of this, the first album attracts certain fans that otherwise wouldn't bother listening to Iron Maiden.

Thanks to a friend and a mix tape, this was actually some of the first Iron Maiden I ever heard, but my introduction was not really typical and the band was already in serious decline around the time I started listening. To those initiated to the band via the "classic albums" (everything from Piece of Mind through Seventh Son of a Seventh Son) this album sounds downright punk. Falsetto vocals ("don't you straaaaaay!") - check. Lyrics about pickup trucks - yep. Even though the tracklisting seems to hold some stock Maiden titles ("Transylvania", "Phantom of the Opera"), the lyrics are really at ground level throughout the album. The band seems more concerned about evading the police, comforting prostitutes, and, well, read the lyrics for "Prowler" and decide for yourself. The band was coming in hot off the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, a movement that they grew up in, but were rapidly outgrowing. Most of the stuff had been written well back into the 1970's and was all stage-tested under some of the most brutal conditions, almost like the Beatles in Hamburg.

The album in review here is the non-remastered 1995 2-CD version, so included are early original "Burning Ambition" (the only song featuring Doug Sampson on drums and only one guitarist), and two "live in the trenches" numbers. The version of "Drifter" done live is way different than the studio version that would eventually surface on Killers and features a lot of audience participation that sounds suspiciously like the Police's "Walking on the Moon". The Montrose cover "I Got the Fire" is a real scorcher that lays to rest any doubts that Maiden wasn't a viable live act. Anyone who sprang for the 1998 remaster won't get to hear these songs, plus they tweaked the cover art and moved the song "Sanctuary" up a few spots.

Of course the debut album isn't perfection, so Steve Harris moved quickly to correct the two overt flaws of the album. First off was the production. It's not hideous, but the band was sold a bill of goods by Will Malone, who billed himself as Black Sabbath's producer (true, but it was only the string section of "Spiral Architect") and produced a mix that was a little flat. Martin Birch, who really did work extensively with Deep Purple, Fleetwood Mac, and scores of others, would take over and continue in that role all the way out to Fear of the Dark (and then went off to his well-deserved retirement). The other issue was guitarist Dennis Stratton. According to band accounts, he joined shortly before the album and never really clicked with the rest of the group. His licks are generally predictable and not all that exciting, especially when matched up with Dave Murray. When he seemed to prefer hanging out with headliners Judas Priest on the subsequent tour instead of his own band, his fate was fairly well sealed. The next album rectified both problems, with Adrian Smith taking over Stratton's role. Killers would also exhaust the band's catalog of songs, so not only was the change in sound due to the arrival of Bruce Dickinson for The Number of the Beast, but the also due to a fresh new crop of songs. From this point onward, the band trajectory would be set for the rest of the decade.

Bad Company (1974)

It's interesting that Bad Company should follow Deep Purple and in particular these two albums. Ravaged by personnel issues, the band Free was spinning apart by 1973, leaving the various members primed for the taking by other larger bands. Ritchie Blackmore had designs on singer Paul Rodgers in particular, so much so that it's really not much of a surprise that he ended up drafting similar-ranged David Coverdale in spite of also acquiring the perfectly capable Glenn Hughes, who had taken over bass duties. However, Rodgers, along with his steadfast drummer Simon Kirke, had plans of his own, to break out of the second tier, which Free occupied along with other quality bands of limited popularity, like King Crimson and Mott the Hoople. In effect, they created a band far more successful than the sum of its parts.

In many ways, Bad Company is a supergroup where the individual musicians agreed to leave their less commercial tendencies at the door and produce albums of concrete songs with strong popular appeal. Rodgers and Kirke make a conscious effort not to slip into the extended Cream-style bass/guitar jams that were the hallmark of their sound. Meanwhile, bassist Boz Burrell doesn't bring an inkling of his exposure to prog music, nor his vocals. He's just the bass player here. Mick Ralphs, who probably enjoyed the most commercial success prior to Bad Company, keep any association with glam at arm's length. The result is a set of eight songs that almost all get classic rock radio airplay to this day.

Like I've said about Hotel California, regardless of what you think of Bad Company, the first album is just one of those gotta-have albums. Unlike the Eagles, though, Bad Company, at least at their debut, doesn't have a lot of haters. It's a solid work. Sure you may think a song needs an extended solo here, or more vocals there, but this is an exercise in focus. As the band went through the 1970's, the albums would tend to concentrate more on bigger hits, leaving a lot of filler. Eventually by album number six they were ready to call it a day. Interestingly, the band minus Rodgers backed up Deep Purple keyboard maestro Jon Lord for a couple tracks on his 1982 solo album Before I Forget and in a contemporary radio interview, Jon expressed his interesting in keeping the band afloat. Bad Company would be propped up in some form or another over the years by Ralphs and Kirke, while Rodgers was busy with high-flying projects with Jimmy Page and (much later) Queen. I think they did sort of reform, but after Burrell died that obviously became a little more difficult.

Who Do We Think We Are! (Deep Purple, 1973)

I was about to wonder aloud why Deep Purple doesn't turn up here too often, but it would appear this is the twelfth post where they are in fact the main event. I think the reason is that this is the first of their ten "classic era" studio albums that has shown up here. Among those ten it's one of four releases by the classic "Mark II" lineup featuring Ian Gillan and Roger Glover. And among those four it is typically the most poorly reviewed, unfortunately.

Albums released in the shadow of any band's "greatest" album tend to suffer from not meeting expectations, something the previous album never really had to worry much about. Although Deep Purple was making quite a bit of noise, primarily in the UK, since 1970, Machine Head and its surprise transatlantic hit "Smoke on the Water" catapulted the band to new heights. While this heightened fame would largely carry them through 1976, it was obscuring the fact that deep down this band was falling apart at the seams. In fact, before the release of this album, Ian Gillan had already decided he was leaving, and not just the band, but music altogether (a decision that lasted less than a year, thankfully).

Who Do We Think We Are! (a sly titling to address letters from the haters demanding to know who they thought they were) starts off strong enough, with classic rock staple "Woman From Tokyo", sporting a repeated riff that's more than a little "Smoke"-esque, though the song structure is far different. In fact, it was never played live in its entirety until the late 1990's, well into the Morse era. The following songs are a mixed bag: angry songs with hazy focus ("Mary Long", "Smooth Dancer"), and experiments that don't really catch fire ("Our Lady", "Super Trouper", "Place in Line"), and the jammy but shallow "Rat Bat Blue". In a lot of ways it suffers from the same disease as Fireball, an album prone to more experiments while sacrificing some heaviness and a lot of direction. The belated 25th anniversary edition adds on the so-so "Painted Horse" and something simply called "First Day Jam" which is just drums, organ, and bass (played by Ritchie Blackmore instead of Roger).

As intended, Ian Gillan split after some final tour dates in Japan and Roger Glover was politely offered the choice of quitting or being fired. Ritchie had gained so much control over the band that the management bent to his whims. Not long after, Deep Purple would be in the awkward position of being at the top of their game, but doing it with two new members, one barely known and the other a complete unknown, and nobody knowing that the band was less than three years away from a complete meltdown. That, of course, is another story for another album.

The Warmth of Other Suns (Isabel Wilkerson, 2010)

This was probably the best book I've read all year, in a year that's been very good for my American history ongoing reading. It's a groundbreaking study that treats the movement of African Americans from the South to the North between 1915 and 1975 as a distinct migration movement rather than just a random trend. Hence, she identified populations from Texas and Louisiana that moved to California, Mississippi and Alabama to Chicago, and Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas to the mid-Atlantic and New England states. Wilkerson strikes a good balance between the personal narratives of an oral history and and academic analysis of the migration. The narratives bring you in so close that you really feel the triumphs and heartaches of the three main characters. I'd say I'd pick up her next book in a heartbeat, except this is her only book thus far. Hopefully the next great study lies ahead!

Time Out (Dave Brubeck Quartet, 1959)

Time Out routinely appears in polls among the top five jazz albums of all time and of those five the only one that is distinctly "West Coast". The main reason is the uber-standard "Take Five", a song that is guaranteed for all time to haunt every artist and band on their fifth take of any song. The main appeal of Time Out is its use of unusual time signatures, with "Take Five" being so ingrained in the zeitgeist that I dare anyone to try writing a song in 5/4 time that does not sound like "Take Five".

However, there's some other cool songs here too. The first track, "Blue Rondo a la Turk" (9/8 time), has become very well known as well, even transforming into a blistering rock song by the Nice called "Rondo" (but in 4/4 time). "Strange Meadow Lark" dispenses with time signatures altogether for its opening.

Time Out paved the way for jazz to expand far beyond a popular music form and helped move the genre closer to classical than rock during the next decade. Within ten years an album like this wouldn't have been considered all that groundbreaking, but for 1959 it challenged the status quo like no other album.

It should be no surprise that I bought Time Out years and years ago, when my interest in jazz was still downright embryonic. It's not a bad place to start even though Brubeck & Co. were often isolated personnel-wise from their East Coast peers.

Heroes to Zeros (The Beta Band, 2004)

It's hard to believe the Beta Band's last album is now ten years old. Not quite old enough to drive, smoke, drink, or gamble, but old enough to know right from wrong. This was the band's only self-produced album and strikes a good balance between the freewheeling first album and the restrained second album. I think the band touched a live wire when they did their first album, which is quite strange, even for the Beta Band, and the never really felt like going back there again. The must have been emboldened by the early EP, The Patty Patty Sound, which sported an electronica parody and a 16 minute sound collage. But in the end, sampling The Black Hole soundtrack and mocking "Total Eclipse of the Heart" just didn't suit them right. They reacted with the second album, with sounds more synthetic and sports very tight running times for every track. Neither album was able to lift them past the prestige of The Three EP's, a collection of their early work.

Heroes to Zeros preserves the restrained running times (nothing here is beyond five minutes), but the band got more clever with the samples, resulting in a more natural sound, which made the EP's and the first album so enjoyable. At first it's a little jarring to hear a very U2-like opening in their first song, but it isn't long before the familiar Beta vocals kick in and the usual instrument switch-ups. Most of the songs here function well as stand-alone songs, unlike the first album which depended more on a complete listen-through.

Since it seemed like the band was finding its way again, it was a surprise when later in the year the breakup was announced. Since then, Steve Mason and Richard Greentree have launched their own projects, while Robin Jones and John Maclean teamed up with former-Beta Gordon "Lone Pigeon" Anderson to form the Aliens, which quickly released two very good (in a non-Beta way) albums, but have been silent since 2008.

As for me, I stuck by the Betas through most of their career, playing The Three EP's in my later college radio days and collecting the later albums as they were released. I like to point out at every opportunity that I knew about them long before their prominent name-drop in High Fidelity.

Second Helping (Lynyrd Syknyrd, 1974)

It's an unimaginative title and not quite as good as the first helping, but Second Helping is probably the quintessential Lynyrd Skynyrd album. Any album that starts off with "Sweet Home Alabama" has a natural advantage over its contemporaries. It's a little bit squandered after that point, with songs that don't quite match up to their peers from the first album, until we reach the end of the album, with the dark "Needle and the Spoon" and the jaunty "Call Me the Breeze".

Nevertheless this is one of only two albums with the "three guitar" trademark sound. Some last minute lineup flutters resulted in Ed King (ex-Strawberry Alarm Clock!) playing bass on most of the first album and when the original bassist returned he switched back to guitar. King would leave after the album after this one, Nuthin' Fancy, and the Skynyrd would become just another two guitar band.

For some reason I never felt motivated to collect anything beyond this album. There's a few good songs after this one, but I feel about 75% complete with just these two. The band capitalized off the decline of their Georgian counterparts, the Allmans, tapping into a growing American appetite for straight-ahead rock, but they in turn started to get a little aimless in their later years. From this album onward what little "progressive" elements the band had were largely stripped out. Thanks to that plane crash though who knows how long that trend may have lasted. The band is inherently full of contradictions, with one album condemned gun violence in "Saturday Night Special" and then on the next album demanding their bullets back. The whole "Confederate flag" symbolism that crept up in the reunion years seems a little disingenuous as there is still plenty of progressive lyrics on Second Helping to go around, a little on "Sweet Home Alabama" (enough to nix it as the state song) and more overtly on "The Balled of Curtis Loew".

Nightfreak & the Sons of Becker (The Coral, 2004)

The legendary sketch-comedy show Mr. Show once ran a piece on a competition for the best Halloween-themed album of all time. The joke was that every song sounded like "The Monster Mash" and critics were complaining about how inaccurate the lyrics were ("If Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy all got together the result would be an epic battle, not some bash!").

Anyway, Nightfreak & the Sons of Becker, the second and a half album by the Coral (I will explain in a moment) doesn't sound like "The Monster Mash", but a spooky aura hovers over the entire album, from the overt ("Why Does the Sun Come Up?") to the freakish ("Auntie's Operation"). It's a wild ride of a about half and hour that drops you off back in the comfort of a cute finale song, sort of like the end of Splash Mountain, a comfortable end following a terrifying drop.

Nightfreak is generally not considered an official Coral album, given it is quite short, was recorded very quickly, and generally does not observe the band's trend of increasingly "normal" sounding music. The band bashed it out very quickly, rewarding those who enjoy spontaneity and punishing those who would have preferred a better thought out recording method. Clocking in a just around half an hour, it's longer than an EP but shorter than a full LP, so it's been called a "mini-LP". In the US market, they simply threw it in as a bonus disc to the more level-headed Magic and Medicine, recorded the previous year, resulting in one of the best music deals in history for the few and proud American Coral fans.

Future albums would continue to strip the weirdness out of the music. The "pirate" sound that dominates this album and the first album (and bits of the second) was largely absent from the next album, The Invisible Invasion. Albums after than would continue showcasing a much more careful band, not one that dabbled in weird topics and pirate rock, largely to the disappointment of many, though one could argue the earlier sound was unsustainable and it's just a sign of "maturity". Who knows.

This year the Coral will release the "lost" 2006 album The Curse of Love. We'll see if that shows a possible restoration of the old silliness that made this and the other early albums so much fun to listen to.

Giant Steps (John Coltrane, 1960)

This is probably the most accessible John Coltrane album post-Kind of Blue. His stints with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk set the perfect foundation for incredible success in the 1960's. While he may have had more accessible albums prior to this (Blue Train is a good bet), his style which set him apart from his other tenor contemporaries didn't really come into its own fully until this album. Additionally this is Coltrane without compromise. He's the only horn here and he makes every minute count, pausing just enough to let his pianist squeeze in a solo here and there (his rhythm section's other components get their chances as well).

Coltrane would have even more success with his madcap interpretation of "My Favorite Things" on the album of the same name, although none of those songs (all standards) have the immediacy of the songs here (all originals). In just a few years, Coltrane would completely revamp his career, shooting off into the avant-garde en route to interstellar space. While I enjoy A Love Supreme very much and may even claim in a moment of weakness to get his later-era stuff, I would recommend anybody new to John Coltrane start here with Giant Steps. It was my first album, so I'm living proof that this works just fine.

In a Silent Way (Miles Davis, 1969)

The "second great quintet" in the vast Miles Davis chronology was largely finished by the release of this album. The two previous albums brought in additional personnel and switched up the instruments to more electric and less acoustic. Bassist Ron Carter, who went all out electric on the previous year's Filles de Kilimanjaro, is not featured here. Herbie Hancock is now part of a three-keyboard approach, and guitarist John McLaughlin in firmly on board. This would be drummer Tony Williams last album with Miles, and only sax-man Wayne Shorter would stick around all the way into the Bitches Brew era.

Those in need of a transition album from latter-era acoustic albums like Nefertiti and groundbreaking electric era stuff like Bitches Brew will find this album serves that purpose nicely. Although the keyboard unit has expanded, it's still relatively-small band material, unlike the next album which routinely featured about 10-13 guys all playing at once. Structurally though it is clear that Miles was moving way past "songs" and filling up entire record sides with single tracks, something he would do for the rest of the decade.

Of course I came into this album late, so I didn't have the benefit of a nice transitional experience from one Miles to the other. Nevertheless, no regrets about how I discovered each album, even though a chronological approach may have aided my overall appreciation a bit more.

Collapse (Jared Diamond, 2004)

Guns Germs and Steel was and remains one of my favorite books of any genre. However, most of Jared Diamond's other books have failed to excite me enough to pick them up. This one was different in that I was intrigued, but I kept putting off reading for years for no good reason.

Although it's sometimes considered a sequel to Guns, Collapse is quite different. It tends to be more focused on certain areas of the Earth as case studies and the "overall" application is considerably more muted than its famous predecessor. While Diamond's organization of lists of reasons for things being what they are are interesting and sure to provoke discussion, they aren't quite as mind-blowing as some of the ideas he brought to the table in Guns. Also, Collapse is a lot more of a polemic work, with lots of criticism heaped on just about everybody, much of it with very good reason. I think it's important that he brings these concerns to light, but those expecting more of the same from his earlier book may find the tone a little too preachy.

If you read Guns and you liked it (4.5 or 5 stars) you should find Collapse worthwhile, though maybe a shade or too less intriguing. Just don't go into it expecting a sequel. This is a standalone work.

You Better Run: The Essential Junior Kimbrough (2002)

I think most folks are aware of Junior Kimbrough through the evangelization of his work by hipster-darlings the Black Keys. They can hardly let a minute slip by without invoking his name as a major influence on their work. My advice would be to follow their advice and head right to the source (and skip the Keys altogether if you want), and you could far worse than picking up this greatest hits package.

Kimbrough's closest colleague previously featured here is R.L. Burnside. If Burnside's music is a mixed drink that's heavy on the booze, then Kimbrough is a straight up shot of moonshine. Their musical styles ran fairly close together when both were alive and Burnside veered off into greater experimentation as his late-in-life popularity blossomed. Kimbrough died before he had a chance to get his name on to the national scene.

I first stumbled on Kimbrough through the Robert Palmer (critic, not musician) documentary Deep Blues, which was instrumental in uncovering the largely ignored Mississippi hill country blues. The style is distinctly different from the kind of blues that influenced the British Invasion and its aftermath. I would almost describe it as handmade trance music, repeating a short riff over and over for a number of minutes. While I'm no disciple of the Black Keys it isn't hard to see why the music appealed to them so strongly and how they used it to distinguish themselves from the rest of the scene. But Junior did it first.

Odessey & Oracle (The Zombies, 1968)

Odessey & Oracle (the spelling of the first word is deliberate, though it may have been based on a mistake somewhere in the production process) is perhaps the finest "contractually obligated" album ever released. Normally that phrase prompts dread in the form of empty-hearted endeavors like Love Beach by ELP and other regrettable quasi-legal releases from various bands.

By 1967 the Zombies were on the ropes. The early successes of hits like "She's Not There" and "Tell Her No" were not being replicated. Actually, they were, but it wasn't panning out financially. Throw in some intra-group squabbles and it was clear the band was nearing breakup. In fact, by some accounts they were de facto finished, but they had just changed labels and CBS wasn't about to let them go so easily.

The enthusiasm for another album was centered mostly on the writers Chris White and Rod Argent. Argent and singer Colin Blunstone were the traditional nexus of the group (keyboards and vocals set the Zombies apart from their contemporaries), but Blunstone, along with guitarist Paul Atkinson and drummer Hugh Grundy, were at the virtual breaking point, leading to plenty of drama in the studio. In

It would have been so easy if the album flopped. In fact, most of the songs slipped away just like the rest of the catalog. The album finally in the can, the band finally busted apart, but wouldn't you know it, one song somehow squeaked through and became a gigantic hit. "Time of the Season" represented everything the band had blossomed into, from just another British Invasion trooper into a breezy psych outfit. But it was too late. The band was gone.

To battle a multitude of impostors creeping up in the wake of the song's unexpected success, Chris White and Rod Argent formalized the notion that the Zombies were becoming Rod Argent's solo career by forming Argent. That would be the most legitimate vehicle for satisfying the sudden need to see this rediscovered band perform their greatest hit live. The last bonus track, "Imagine the Swan" gives an inkling of the new direction and new era for the band (I'm not 100% sure about who is actually playing on this song, but it's not the five original members).

These days the Zombies are sort-of back, reformed around Blunstone and Argent, who seemed to have buried the hatchet long ago and assembled a new band with includes Argent (and Kinks!) bassist Jim Rodford. Paul Atkinson died in 2004, but his real successes came from behind the scenes, signing numerous bands to MCA during the 1970's and 1980's.

I've been meaning for years to resolve the whole mess of collecting the works of the Zombies by investing in the box set Zombie Heaven which helps manage the tangle of early non-album recordings, many of which missed out on being collected anywhere else.

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (Charles Mingus, 1963)

One doesn't simply listen to this album. It's one of those albums that demands all of your attention. No you cannot read, work, eat, operate a vehicle, run, walk, jog, or dance to this music. So of course I am a bad person and have yet to carve out a little niche in my schedule for The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. And because of this I still feel daunted every time I listen to this album (while doing something else, of course, because I've been doing wrong by the album). This statement coming from a great admirer of another ambitious album, A Love Supreme. You can't pigeonhole Mingus neatly into a genre, not on any of his albums. However, this one takes genre-bending about as far as it goes, pulling together elements of big band, bebop, avant-garde, traditional, ballet and who-knows-what-else.

Particularly in jazz, if your name is on an album then you are the focus. For piano, guitar, sax, and trumpet, it's pretty easy to establish yourself as the main attraction. Drummers and bassists have it a little different since other than Jaco Pastorius it's a little taxing to listen to music swamped with bass or drum solos. Sure, they're fun and should be included in jazz, but not the entire album! Realizing an entire album of bass solos, especially in the 1950's and 1960's probably wouldn't garner much attention, Mingus focused on his real gift, which is writing and arrangement. I've always been impressed by how Mingus writes for others, recognizing that bass alone does not make the album. In a similar way Art Blakey, a fantastic drummer, channeled much energy into band-leading and mentoring.

I think I just need to spend more quality time with this album and I'm sure I'll one day understand why this album frequently makes the top 10 in many jazz polls.

Crown of Creation (Jefferson Airplane, 1968)

Until this year, the scope of my Jefferson Airplane collection was the first two albums, which really give no indication of where the band would be by the end of the decade. The band was a sort of canvas that all of the decade's growing strains were painted upon. Therefore, the younger idealist folksy Jefferson Airplane was gradually consumed by a heavier, more cynical band. Crown of Creation shows the transition nearing completion, with a few folk bits here and there, but overwhelmingly sporting a hard psych-rock sound and ample experimentation. It doesn't reach the level of Volunteers, its successor, but the writing is on the wall. Eventually these transitions would drive Marty Balin out of the band he co-founded and drummer Spencer Dryden, a little older than the rest of the band and disillusioned with the whole scene would exit around the same time.

As a far of the harder rock sound, I find this album and Volunteers closer to my interests than their earlier material. Crown of Creation, however, lacks a cohesiveness among its 11 tracks (plus the 4 bonus tracks even more so), with a few go-nowhere experiments and some abrupt fadeouts, as if their interest in continuing the song just trailed off.

Since there is quite a variety in the Jefferson Airplane discography, I would like to continue filling the holes in my collection. I haven't come across anything that completely poisons my opinion about one of San Francisco's greatest exports.