Adultered: The Remix Project (Don Tiki, 2004)

Egad, I'm so far behind thanks to Turkey Day, but I've made it to last month of the year, and I'll be damned if I'm going to fall down so close to the finish line!

Thankfully (for me), I don't have a whole heck of a lot to say about this album, retrieved from the freebie bin at work around ten years ago. Generally I'm remix-averse when it comes to source material I'm familiar with, but genres like death metal (Fear Factory), exotica (Don Tiki), and norteno (Nortec Collective)? Well, let the drum loops begin!

Adulterated works from the source material of the first two albums. The tracks generally flow from one into another, so the album is more of an overall listening experience. The group (who's membership can best be described as fuzzy and free-flowing) released one more album five years later, but it seems like their focus was more on live shows in Hawaii. In fact, Hawaii would prove fatal to one of them, Fritz Hasenpusch, who attempted to climb a very aggressive (and off-limits!) hiking trail on Oahu in 2012.

Soul Station (Hank Mobley, 1960)

Well, Thanksgiving has me horribly behind on everything yet again, so let the catch-up begin! Like most of the jazz here, this one was identified via "core listening" lists. Prior to scooping up the contents of these lists, Hank Mobley was pretty much unknown to me. He was virtually a lifer for Blue Note Records, and was that label's tenor mainstay, in competition with better known names like Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. I'm not the first one to point out the similarities between this album and Rollins' Saxophone Colossus. Both albums are a mix of originals and standards, with Mobley preferring to sandwich his originals with the covers.

Hank Mobley borrowed two guys (Kelly and Chambers) from Miles Davis, who would in turn borrow Mobley himself as his sax man, one among a few in the interim period between Coltrane and Wayne Shorter. By the early 1970's, Mobley retired from music due to ill health, which, unfortunately, did not give him the opportunity to raise his name to the same level as his better-known tenor colleagues.

Cornflakes and Crazyfoam (Episode Six, 2003)

While Deep Purple is a familiar name to most, Episode Six is not, which is a shame since they were instrumental to the formation of the second and best-known version of Deep Purple, supplying a singer and a bassist, as well as songwriting and performance talent.

In a nutshell, the band formed through the combination of two local school groups around 1963 or so. Although not turning professional until 1966, a clutch of demo recordings exist from 1964 and 1965 with original vocalist Andy Ross, who would be replaced by Ian Gillan before their first professional single. Throughout the band's history up to 1969 the lineup would stay intact aside from some instability in the role of drummer. Unfortunately, despite the talents each member brought to their respective role, the band was unable to release an album. The main problem was an identity crisis that hung over them most of their days. Between trying to keep up with a rapidly changing music scene, that would see them playing everything from bubblegum to proto-metal, and touring ferociously (they would log more BBC sessions that most), the opportunity never came up to record an album. Additionally, they also had no less than four names: Episode Six, the Episode, Neo Maya, and Sheila Carter (the last two submerging the band to backup role to one of the singers). By 1969, Ian Gillan was becoming a flight risk, chafing under aimless management. When then drummer Mick Underwood name dropped Gillan to mutual friend Ritchie Blackmore, the rest, as they say, was history. To make matters more complicated for Episode Six, Deep Purple "borrowed" bassist Roger Glover to perform on the "Hallelujah" single in a session capacity. He hit it off so well with Gillan's new band, that he quickly agreed to fill the role permanent, realizing his departure would effectively kill Episode Six. Episode Six managed to linger through the 1970's in an even more diminished capacity, functioning primarily under the auspices of Sheila Carter, while Gillan and Glover would permanently overshadow their old colleagues.

Since Episode Six never released an album (the proposed The Story So Far never went beyond the planning stages), the only way to experience them is through compilations. One song, "Love Hate Revenge", appeared on the Nuggets II box set, but it represents just one mood of a genre-spanning group. The old Complete Episode Six mostly hit all the bases, with every single and a healthy amount of unreleased bonus tracks, but had a distinctly low-budget quality to the sound and packaging. In 2005 it would be completely reworked and expanded as the two-disc Love, Hate, Revenge. It's a good place to start getting acquainted with the band.

Cornflakes and Crazyfoam is for the advanced listener. Actually released three years earlier than Love, Hate, Revenge, it has very little overlap with that collection. It's chock full of unreleased material, capturing the potency of the band's live performances, as well as presenting alternate versions of their "canon" releases, a whole lot of unexpected cover material (the band Love gets a lot of....uh....love), and bunches of stuff that never got beyond the demo stages, including a few early tracks from the Andy Ross era. Some additional highlights are the jaunty "Gentlemen of the Park", a completed song somehow never found its way to a proper release, as scorchers like "Monster in Paradise" and "I Am a Cloud", which capture the later hard rock era of the band, woefully unrepresented by the official releases. Finally, this band was so nutty on stage that they may have unwittingly created one of the earliest mashups in history when they applied "A Hard Day's Night" to the backing vocals of "Sunshine Superman". Additionally, they do a Rolling Stones medley that involves performing "Satisfaction" and "Paint It Black" at the same time. It must be heard to be believed!

While Deep Purple's original lineup was plenty heavy in its own way, it was undeniable that the introduction of Gillan and Glover upped the ante substantially in the heaviness department. While Episode Six wasn't the heaviest of bands, it added a dynamism and cleverness that Deep Purple desperately needed to move forward. While this came at the expense of Episode Six itself, avid Deep Purple fans deserve to be well acquainted with their work, right down to the weirder elements that make Cornflakes and Crazyfoam such an interesting document.

Iommi (Tony Iommi, 2000)

This album appeared at a weird time in the Black Sabbath chronology. On the heels of the worst album in their entire catalog (Forbidden), Tony decided it was time to step back from this whole ridiculous Black Sabbath thing and establish a solo identity for real, not something like Seventh Star (1986), which would be hijacked by the suits and stamped as "Black Sabbath", but something bearing his own name by itself. In 1996, he went into the studio with Glenn Hughes (dubiously of Seventh Star) and former Trapeze/Judas Priest drummer Dave Holland to record some material only available via bootleg for the next ten years. The "reunion" with Ozzy Osbourne pretty much devoured any plans for a proper release, with Holland's incarceration only making it even less likely to ever happen (in 2005 most of the material would be released as the 1996 DEP Sessions, with Holland's part erased and re-recorded).

The return of the Ozzy didn't result in any new recordings outside of a single ("Psycho Man"), so at some point Tony must of gotten itchy about recording new stuff (plus Ozzy wasn't putting his solo career on ice) and kinda-sorta revived what he started in 1996. By 2000, he was much more in the limelight again and able to command a more complex undertaking than the 1996 sessions. Noting the roaring success of Carlos Santana's Supernatural, which rekindled a legendary guitarist's career by supplementing a new batch of songs with pop luminaries of the day, either Tony or his management decided to do the same for him, supported by major names in hard rock and heavy metal. Most of the 1996 material was ditched (I think "Black Oblivion" was an exception, but it was extensively reworked) and a new slate of collaborations was rolled out, featuring folks ranging from grunge icons (Billy Corgan, Dave Grohl) to metal masters of the moment (Phil Anselmo, Peter Steele) and a few oddball selections (Billy Idol, Henry Rollins). While the songs don't quite crush as hard as some of the stuff Geezer Butler was doing in the 1990's, overall it's a much heavier set than anything Ozzy was doing at the time (or Bill Ward, who wasn't really trying to be metal anymore).

Speaking of Ozzy, he does show up, along with Bill Ward, for one song, "Who's Fooling Who". It is probably the only song that is 75% Sabbath by volume (100% if you count bassist Lawrence Cottle who was vaguely in the band around 1989), but fails my "test" of having to have a least two original members, one of them Geezer Butler. All kidding aside, it's actually a good track, and in a world that was still to wait another seven years for anything new under the name Black Sabbath, was about as good as it would get.

For some reason, this disc has been out of print for awhile. It used to be hard to find, but, judging by the price's at the World's Largest Bookstore, that must not be the case anymore.

California (Scott Thomas Band, 1998)

The sole release of the Scott Thomas Band, California is a tidy document of the world of music in 1998. Scott Thomas additionally has a couple of solo (no "Band" in the artist field) albums, one released before and one after this one. Although I haven't heard either of those albums, it seems like Thomas was keen on making an album that emphasized he was playing with a band, venturing (somewhat) out of singer-songwriter territory. Although remarkably filler-free, the three standout tracks are the title/opening track, "Never Coming Home", and "Black Valentine" (an especially good document of the era). Apparently, I'm not alone in believing this, as all three tracks were pulled into a promotional EP (The "High Fiber" EP). That EP also had a bonus track, "Dying Chair", which I took the liberty of grafting on to this album as a bonus track.

Unlike many of the "lost bands" featured here, Scott Thomas is still musically active, in a band called Ringside. However, the Scott Thomas Band is, for all practical purposes, on indefinite hiatus.

Frustration Plantation (Rasputina, 2004)

This is the second of the two Rasputina albums I have. Over time, the band has had sixteen different members, a pretty high number for what is nominally a trio. However, the band really revolves around a single person, cellist/vocalist Melora Creager. Therefore, the backing musicians are completely different from How We Quit the Forest, released just two albums (albeit six years) prior. Also, rather than being a full cello trio, Jonathan TeBeest, the first male to achieve full membership in the band, is a drummer not a cellist, so the cellos are down to two, a reality from this album onward.

I sort of go back and forth on which album I like better. How We Quit the Forest has a clutch of really good songs, but they are stuffed with a bunch of filler tracks. This album doesn't have any songs that could compete with the good songs of the other album, but, aside from a couple tiny tracks of connective tissue, it has a more consistent quality and makes for a better listening-through album. Also, the vocals are delivered a bit lower in pitch and the high-pitched vibrato style is pretty much gone. Content-wise, Frustration Plantation has more of a theme do it, sort of a nightmare vision of the antebellum South.

Since I don't have any of the other albums, this pretty much closes the book on Rasputina for this blog until I track down some more. I have plenty of directions I could go, from the debut Thanks for the Ether, to the one I skipped unintentionally (Cabin Fever), or perhaps to continue onward in the chronology to Sister Kinderhook. Although the band's studio releases have slowed down over time, they are still around.

Straight, No Chaser (Thelonious Monk, 1967)

Not to be confused with the 1948 song "Straight, No Chaser", this album, released almost twenty years later, captures Monk in his later period. As he was largely inactive for most of the 1970's, this is one of his final albums. The only original Monk composition, "Green Chimneys" was relegated to the bonus tracks. The rest are covers/standards and re-recordings of two earlier compositions, the title track, and "We See", originally recorded in 1953.

While all of this would seem to indicate a kind of decline, the Columbia years were among the most lucrative and successful of Monk's entire career. The label promoted him like crazy, culminating in his famous Time magazine cover. They also allowed him to stretch out older compositions thanks to the possibilities allowed by the 33 RPM LP, something old single discs didn't allow for.

This is one of the few jazz albums I have that did not come from a list of core albums, and this probably isn't a great place to start getting acquainted to Monk's music. Thanks to Columbia's still-impressive marketing, they put it next to some other jazz masterpieces like Ellington at Newport and Kind of Blue, so a much younger me just assumed it was in that league. It's not a bad album at all, but probably not at those lofty heights.

Roger the Engineer (The Yardbirds, 1966)

If I seemed a little disappointed when I reviewed Little Games earlier this year, this album is to blame. While it's easy to pinpoint the problems of Little Games, I'm not sure why Roger the Engineer is so good. So, here, I will attempt to rationalize my feelings.

The Yardbirds are one of six core bands that constituted the British invasion (the others being the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Who, and the Kinks....sorry Dave Clark!). Each band staked out their own image and sound, some, thanks to better management, better than others. While incredibly influential on a number of bands in the United States, the Yardbirds themselves tended to shoot themselves in their collective foot in the "image" and business departments. At the heart of it was a fundamental inability to write consistently good songs. A number of their hits were actually penned by others. While that sustained the band through the potentially disastrous loss of Eric Clapton, the notion of creating an entire album of original material was utterly daunting. However by 1966 most bands were switching from R&B and blues covers to original material, much of which picked up a distinctly psychedelic flavor and advanced the sound of decade. So, disregarding their paucity of original material to date, the Yardbirds set out to create an album of 12 original songs.

In theory, Roger the Engineer should have a train wreck. Realistically, only the first two songs are capable of standing on their own. "Lost Woman" represents the culmination of everything the band had been doing during their rave-up period, a feedback drenched masterpiece. "Over Under Sideways Down" is one of their most respected songs, brilliantly retro and progressive all at once. Among the other ten, two of the songs are just blues covers with new lyrics (something Led Zeppelin would famously get wrapped up in). A number of the songs are much more concerned with voice arrangements (think "Still I'm Sad") than a full band effort and beginning to show Keith Relf's growing detachment from the old sound. However, put together, the album is a surprisingly coherent listening experience, albeit a bit unexpected from the band that started life more bluesy than most of its peers. And just to make things a little sweeter, the version I have includes two bonus tracks recorded slightly after the rest of the album. When bassist Paul Samwell-Smith quit the band, they moved incredibly fast to replace him...with Jimmy Page. So if you think Page should have been a bass player, check out "Psycho Daisies" (which will probably have you reconsider). He was quickly moved into a more comfortable role as co-lead guitarist (with Jeff Beck) for the next song, "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago", a song so ridiculously over the top it should have been clear to everybody that things just couldn't get any better (plus bass duties were tackled by some random session player named John Paul Jones).

Obviously the Relf-Beck-Page-Dreja-McCarty lineup was totally unsustainable, with Beck storming out of the band (check out "Stroll On" - the only other song recorded by this lineup before he left), and the band converting to a four-piece with Chris Dreja retrained on bass. Also the band management situation, never good to begin with, remained a complete mess. The story continues with Little Games, but the best years of the band were now behind them.

Ambient (Jack Womack, 1987)

Jack Womack's Dryco series, which I've been meaning to read for years, is one part speculative and one part satire. Confuse these at your own risk. If you read it strictly as a dystopia, you will find it a little too whimsical. If you approach it as a work of satire, you will find it too bleak. Womack's future world is seriously messed up, but the path that lead from here to there involves a lot of downright silly occurrences, such as the deification (for real) of Elvis Presley, and the purchase of an entire borough of New York by a corporate head with more money and power than any government on the planet.

Although about 25% the size of the last science fiction book I read, REAMDE, it isn't a light read. Womack employs two dialects (Ambient and Bizspeak) in the dialogue (which sometimes bleeds into the narrative) that can bog the casual reader down, especially those who need to know the meaning of each word they read. If you try to parse the meanings word by word, you will be in for a world of frustration. I recommend you just glide through the language and let context clear things up. I will 100% definitely continue to read this series - five more books await!

As this wraps up the science fiction reading for 2014, here's a quick review of what I read in the genre for the year:
Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein: A classic of science fiction.
Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner: Another award-winner, though less well-known today.
The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern: SF for YA, slyly packaged as regular historical fiction.
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr.: Yet another award winner and an important work in the mingling of theology with science fiction.
REAMDE - Neal Stephenson: A massive tome that is a thriller at heart.
Ambient - Jack Womack: You're looking at it right now!

All For You: A Dedication to the Nat King Cole Trio (Diana Krall, 1996)

Longtime (ha ha!) readers know that jazz isn't my strong suit and it's sort of secondary to the rock albums featured here. Throw vocals in the mix and you have a double-minority genre that I sometimes wonder how to classify. Thus far this year there have been two jazz vocal albums, both from the 1950's (Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown, and Ella & Louis). Diana Krall's work is about 40 years removed from these other albums, yet the whole notion of "vocal jazz" still challenges me. Even iTunes slapped it with a "pop" label when I downloaded the album data. While her singing wouldn't be all that strange in the modern pop scene (except nowadays she would probably have to autotune the crap out of herself), the song structures are pop-based, and Nat King Cole had a pop reputation, this album was released by a venerable jazz label (Impulse), and features very familiar jazz instrumentation and playing styles. To distinguish herself further from being "just another vocalist", Krall also does most of the piano work herself.

Nevertheless, Diana Krall always reminds me of working the sales floor at Borders. I think every store I worked at had her in the rotation at some point during the year (2005's Christmas Songs simply compounded the problem). It's not that I want to say this is non-jazz (see Kenny G - and I don't mean on this blog), but it is very "safe" music. Not the jazz of risk-taking, which I tend to favor. But when all else fails, I certainly recognize the importance of this album as a latter-day milestone of jazz, even if I'm not the target demographic.

The Mob Rules (Black Sabbath, 1981)

Since the previously reviewed Dio Years compilation omitted about half of this album, it was refreshing to give the whole album a run-through this morning. This is the band's tenth album, and the first one to not feature Bill Ward on drums (in fact, he would only appear on one more "official" release) and also the first to reduce original band membership to 50%. With the previous album, Heaven and Hell, the band sans Ozzy joined forces with Ronnie James Dio, recently parted from Rainbow, and reinvented themselves as a power metal band.

Mob Rules has a slightly grainier production than its predecessor, but in many ways is a reflection. Both albums start with a rousing fist-pumping song and end with a slow song. Each one tucks the title track at the end of the first half of the album, a half that also includes a longer, more complex work. Generally in head-to-head match-ups the songs on this album fall just a little short of those on the previous album (e.g. "Sign of the Southern Cross" is not quite "Children of the Sea"). On the other hand, Mob Rules displays a little more fire in the solos (see "Turn Up the Night" and "Slipping Away", the latter of which lets Geezer loose) and employs segues from "Sign of the Southern Cross" to songlet "E5150" to the title track. I always felt that Heaven and Hell could have used a better segue between its first two songs.

The band famously ripped right down the middle during a dust-up in the creation of Live Evil, the live album that followed this album's release. The aftermath resulted in some earth-shaking developments in the world of metal, with the creation of Dio (the band), by Dio and drummer Vinny Appice, matched by the surprise enlistment of Ian Gillan on vocals and the return of Bill Ward to the drumkit. While Dio would smash through the 1980's with four albums and only one small lineup hiccup, Black Sabbath would collapse in the wake of 1983's Born Again, only to be resurrected mid-decade with a completely new group of musicians built around mainstay Tony Iommi (see Seventh Star for that debacle).

Argent (1969)

Whereas the Zombies ended their (initial) career with an unexpected exclamation point (see Odessey and Oracle for more), Rod Argent's new self-named band had a hesitant beginning. Formed from a need to capitalize off the surprise success of the last Zombies' album, with only two Zombies having any level of enthusiasm to continue, the new band made some key changes. Bassist Chris White excused himself from performing and lent his songwriting skills to Argent's to form a writing team. Argent's cousin Jim Rodford, by White's own words a superior performer, took over his stage role. Meanwhile the mess left behind by the departures of guitarist Paul Atkinson and drummer Hugh Grundy was neatly filled by Russ Ballard and Bob Henrit, respectively, best known for being the "plus two" in Unit 4+2 and their catchy hit song "Concrete and Clay". As for vocals, no dedicated vocalist would replace Colin Blunstone, with singing duties split among all except Henrit.

Perhaps the overwhelming success of "Time of Season" made the band feel that success lay in a dreamy/breathless approach, which really only characterized the Zombies on their final album. Hence, you have an opener on this album that's very easy-breezy, with some Marc Bolan-esque vocals from Rodford, who handles about one-third of the singing duties on the album. Throughout the album, guitarist/singer Russ Ballard is particularly restrained and Rod himself doesn't cut loose on they keys nearly as much as he would on later albums. Thankfully, one minor hit, Ballard's "Liar", would keep the band afloat for years to come. Even though the Argent version was indeed "minor", another band, Three Dog Night, would pick it up and run with it, making it into a much larger hit and probably planting a seed in Ballard's mind about writing for bands other than his own.

Enough Argent albums have featured here that the story going forward has already been chronicled. Although the band never made it into the top tier of progressive rock bands, their progression from hesitant beginnings to near-jazz fusion territory makes for good listening.

Undead (Ten Years After, 1968)

The title will make you think this is some kind of proto-shock-rock album and the cover image may lead you to believe this is wild slab of psych. Neither, however, are true. Ten Years After, known best for a madcap performance of "I'm Going Home" at Woodstock and the hit song "I'd Love to Change the World" from 1971, at this phase of their career, was a part of the British blues boom and this was a document of their feisty live show. Alvin Lee is clearly the star of the show with his wild guitar antics, though each of the middle three songs allows the others some room to express themselves.

Unlike the typical live album that functions like a "greatest hits on stage" compilation, this album was released very early in the band's career and sort of served as their second album. In fact, none of the songs (on my budget edition) appeared on the first album outside of later-released bonus tracks. Of course I got this a long time ago and since then just about every CD under the sun has been "remastered, with bonus tracks". So now the most commonly available version, which I have not heard, has nine tracks instead of five, presented in what is likely the correct running order. Time for an upgrade?

Like most bands of the British blues boom (Fleetwood Mac, the Groundhogs, etc.), if they made it into the 1970's (unlike Cream), the whole notion of playing pure blues was wearing off by decade's end. Like many of their peers, Ten Years After veered in a more progressive direction. Unlike many of their peers, they managed to keep the same lineup until their first breakup, and even formal reunions up to 2003 included all four members. Alvin Lee, always a bit on his own trajectory, eventually split permanently and left the other three with the band name and maintained a solo career until his death in 2013. The other three have had substantial success in the music business working behind the scenes, especially bassist Leo Lyons, who produced a series of albums for UFO that broke them to a larger audience. Chick Churchill and Ric Lee, still with the band, worked the music publishing side of the business following the initial demise of the band in 1974.

The Revenge of Geography (Robert Kaplan, 2012)

I'm scaring my entire household by having checked out or otherwise borrowed the last 10 books I want to read in my quest for 52. With this book complete, the end is in sight, though it may be difficult to get there!

The Revenge of Geography just about completes my geography reading for the foreseeable future (see the last book post of the year when I get there for the actual last one). Most of the titles are fairly objective studies, but this one has a bit more of an ax to grind than those others. While not as wild as some of Orson Scott Card's crazy near-future speculative pieces tucked into the Enderverse, Robert Kaplan has some pretty strong beliefs about where to world is heading, and at least one of them will stymie/infuriate the reader. I was right there with him on the Russia thing (he basically saw the crisis in Ukraine two years before the Crimean annexation), and I was nodding along with his thoughts on Turkey and Iran and all of those countries in-between even though recent events shifted some of his theories a bit. He's not psychic, but was likely not shocked by the rise of ISIS (or whatever they want to be called now). I hung my head in shame when he said that those demanding an immediate pullout from Iraq and Afghanistan were being that way because they opposed intervention in the first place, not because they believed anything had been "won".

I did have to part ways with Kaplan on some of his thoughts on the US and Mexico. While not as frantic (and frankly racist/anti-Catholic) as Samuel Huntington, I can't really subscribe to his belief that northern Mexico and the southwestern US will merge by mid-century. His almost fearful attitude toward a potential Mexican "invasion" I felt was overblown and straight out of the playbook of groups like the Minutemen. At least he was hopeful that a healthier Mexico, along with Colombia, could form some kind of Western Hemisphere counterbalance to a united Europe.

Experiencing Jazz (Michael Stephans, 2013)

I'm probably ready to move on from introductory jazz texts, but this one was lingering on my "to read" list and I'm glad I gave it a read-through. Unlike the Ted Gioia book I read earlier, this isn't a straight up history of jazz, though Stephans sets aside a couple chapters for a brief survey, just to put things in context. The real distinguishing characteristics of the book are the later chapters, each devoted to a particular jazz instrument, from the brass to the woodwinds to the rhythm, then wrapping up with a bit on vocals.

Even though the publisher (Scarecrow) tends to skew more scholarly, this isn't a hardcore scholarly work, though Stephans's other role, in addition to jazz drummer, is college professor. Most of the references are lifted from websites and he doesn't have a problem steering readers to Google or YouTube for more information. Some of the writing approaches (hypothetical interviews in particular) are a little irritating. However this is more than made up for by the aforementioned organization of the book by instrument, as well as a good sampling of the author's own experiences playing drums alongside some of the biggest names in jazz (or just bumping into them, especially in the case of Buddy Rich).

Uninvisible (Medeski Martin & Wood, 2002)

Released in the heart of the Blue Note era, Uninvisible is one strange album. Aside from the throwback album Tonic (which was live and not technically a part of the studio canon), the band had been on a steady trajectory away from the classic piano-trio sound that characterized their first album. By the time of Combustication (1998), they had pretty much thrown in every imaginable change: electric bass, more types of keyboards that I can list, spoken word, turntables, loops, etc. etc. and so forth. Further albums then took all of these elements and mixed them up further. Essentially the band was doubling down on everything. After a brief respite on previous album The Dropper, turntables are back with a vengeance, featured on half the tracks (compared to the Combustication three). "Your Name is Snake Anthony" makes "Whatever Happened to Gus" seem quaint in the spoken word department.

Admittedly, I'm still a newcomer to this album, having only picked it up from the library earlier this year, so I probably need to spend a little more quality time with it, especially to appreciate some of the really strange tracks in the middle part of the order. However, it does seem like on the weirdness scale they sort of maxed out around this point. What I've heard of the later albums seems a little more reined in, though I don't think we're in any danger of losing MMW from the outer limits of jazz.

Machine Head (Deep Purple, 1972)

I'll just come right out and say that if you only own one Deep Purple album in your entire life, make it this one. While diehard fans will pick apart the album when comparing it to others, making one doubt if this is really their best work, it is indisputably their most important, love it or hate it.

Machine Head is sort of an calm island in a sea of calamity that is the history of Deep Purple prior to 1976. After flipping the script and coming into prominence in Europe with Deep Purple In Rock (1970), the band seemed a little rudderless on 1971's Fireball. Just to compound problems, illness and the stress of ceaseless touring nearly wrecked the band. Just when it seemed like things couldn't get any crappier, at one of their shows in Montreux the venue burned down thanks to "some stupid with a flare gun" during Frank Zappa's performance, also forcing them to drastically change how they were going to record their next album.

Somehow, fortune smiled on the band or the stars aligned and the band ended up recording their most famous album ever, though they didn't know it at the time. The whole recording process was remarkably smooth, with Ian Gillan coloring within the lines, Ritchie Blackmore playing well with the others, and the others playing more aggressively, especially Jon Lord, who by this time had abandoned the whirring Leslie speakers and straight up distorted the Hammond organ with a relentless buzzing. About half the songs are riff-centric: "Maybe I'm a Leo", "Never Before", "Smoke on the Water", and "Space Trucking", something bands like Led Zeppelin were using to great success, but Purple had sort of an on/off relationship with. The other three were more classic Purple solo-intensive numbers: "Highway Star", "Pictures of Home", and "Lazy". At least one of the songs had already been road tested ("Highway Star" - with a number of documented pre-album performances). "Never Before" was written to be the single, being the shortest of the seven and jollier in tone (lyrics aside) than the rest. "Smoke on the Water", essentially the story of how the album was made, was considered a throwaway track. Finally, and unusually, the slow song, "When a Blind Man Cries" was relegated to the B-side of a single, yet many years later would end up being a staple of the Deep Purple live show (and so well-respected it would be covered by Metallica on a recent tribute album).

You don't need me to tell you that things obviously didn't turn out as expected. The plans for the "Never Before" single failed so miserably I don't think I've even heard in on the Deep Tracks station on satellite radio. Meanwhile, "Smoke on the Water" has become so well-known (thanks in part to a complete misinterpretation of the song leading people to think it was about drugs) that it is routinely banned from being played in Guitar Centers across the nation. While it is fairly common for artists to disparage their most popular songs, Deep Purple has never removed it from their shows, even when the lineup bore virtually no resemblance to the original performers (check out a 1976 performance with Tommy Bolin, Glenn Hughes, and David Coverdale to see what I mean). Not only that, but Ian Gillan almost always has whatever band he's a part of make the song part of their live act. Therefore there are numerous versions of the song by pretty much every Ian Gillan solo band as well as Black Sabbath.

The version of the album I have is the 25th anniversary two-disc set that restores "When a Blind Man Cries" to the album as the eighth track. Additionally, there are two quad-mixes of "Maybe I'm a Leo" and "Lazy" which make Gillan sound like a four-man vocal unit and Blackmore like an all-guitar mini-orchestra. The second disc is a complete remix of the album (with "When a Blind Man Cries" included) that lets each track run past the fade-out. Those seeking bonus tracks will be let down, but the liner notes say that thanks to the sheer fame of the album virtually all scraps of rehearsal material have vanished into the black market. Oh well.

The band turmoil would promptly resume following this album (see Who Do We Think We Are for the continuing story). However, to quote the most notorious Deep Purple song of all time, "No matter what we get out of this, I know we'll never forget."

Plays Metallica By Four Cellos (Apocalyptica, 1996)

Although the purists in each camp may not rub shoulders too often, there has long been a strange closeness between classical music and heavy metal. Be it bottom-heavy arrangements by Wagner, Tchaikovsky exploding canons, Deep Purple, Metallica, and others jamming with orchestras, or Rainbow reworking Beethoven, the examples aren't hard to find. Apocalyptica added their own contribution in the mid-1990's by combining a love of cello rock and Metallica into their debut, Plays Metallica By Four Cellos (don't ask me where they dreamed up such a creative title).

This is about as pure as Apocalyptica gets. Every song is a Metallica cover (something they would move away from within a few years, first the Metallica, then cover material altogether), and they don't always attack the obvious stuff. "Enter Sandman" is a natural, no surprises there, and half the songs are from the Black Album. But taking on "Creeping Death" in lieu of "Fade to Black" from Ride the Lightning, and "Harvester of Sorrow" from And Justice for All instead of "One". The two tracks from Master of Puppets are probably the best tracks of the bunch here: "Sanitarium" and "Master of Puppets" may not be all that unusual for the Metallica catalog (hell, they even play "Puppets" going into commercial breaks on NFL broadcasts), but Apocalyptica does arrangements to bring down the house.

For some reason I never bothered to follow Apocalyptica any further, and my have they changed. Guests vocalists, vocals in general, drummers, programming, ten more albums (live and/or studio), and a focus on original material has moved the band a considerable distance from the early days of covering Metallica with four cellos and nothing more.

The Big Lebowski Soundtrack (1998)

The soundtrack for one of my favorite movies, The Big Lebowski is a real genre-bender and of interest to anyone who knows there's a lot more going on in this movie than the casual fan may notice. The cult-classic status of the film continues to grow over the years, an unlikely entry in the Coen Brothers repertoire. Admittedly I only grabbed the soundtrack because I liked the song "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" by a much younger Kenny Rogers and his band, The First Edition. However, I ended up enjoying most of the tracks, even though pretty much every artist featured doesn't show up anywhere else in my collection other than Captain Beefheart (and even that didn't join the collective until much later).

The first three songs are fairly standard enough: Bob Dylan, a tame Captain Beefheart song, and Elvis Costello. Things take a sharp turn right after that, with the first half rounded out by the likes of Yma Sumac, Moondog, and others. This makes a weird Kenny Rogers song seem downright normal, but it too is then followed by a mish-mash of genres, from opera to Townes Van Zandt covering the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers", plus the compilation's only original song, "Technopop" by the Coens' music maestro Carter Burwell - something for everyone, I suppose!

The only really shocking omission (many songs from the movie aren't here....like "Pictures from an Exhibition" for starters) is "I Hate You" by the Monks. It drove me crazy for years not being able to figure out what that song was and stumbled on it completely by accident many years later.

Bird and Diz (Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie, 1950)

This disc captures the final collaboration of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in 1950 (aside from the Quintet's Jazz at Massey Hall from 1953). The original vinyl was a brisk 10-inch recording released in 1952 that misleadingly included two later tracks, neither of which feature Gillespie. Reissues would remove that those tracks and replace them with tons of alternate takes (of all tracks except "Bloomdido"). In fact, there are more alternate takes than original tracks, and the reissue that I have isn't even the most extensive. The backing band is top notch and often threatens to steal the thunder of the stars: Buddy Rich on drums and Thelonious Monk on the keys in particular.

If you enjoy the pioneering beboppers, make sure to invest in Charlie Parker's collected recordings for the Savoy and Dial labels, which capture him (and frequently Gillespie as well) in his prime. This one's good, but a little spare on material.

History of the Catholic Church (James Hitchcock, 2012)

If it seems a little strange to see this book here alongside various random CD's, then congratulations, you are normal. Additionally, if it seems like an incredible undertaking to chronicle the entire history of the Catholic Church, then you are also normal. Nevertheless, as the token Protestant on the faculty at a Catholic seminary, I'm still at the level of introductory material. Hitchcock's book is a cross between a narrative and a reference book in that he's trying to unfold the story systematically, but sometimes the style gets a little jumpy among the numerous section headings. All in all, it was a good experience to read this, especially near the end as it covered a lot of terminology that gets thrown around at the seminary that I don't normally come into contact with in my own denomination. However, the reader should keep in mind that Hitchcock identifies "conservative" as does his publisher, Ignatius, but as long as the material is well-thought out and facts come before agenda, I'm fine with that. This book has given me plenty of ideas about what to read next, so mission accomplished.

Thank Christ for the Bomb (The Groundhogs, 1970)

This is the album where Tony McPhee and the Groundhogs made a decisive break with the British blues boom, taking the music in a far more heavy and progressive direction. The difference between this album and its predecessor, Blues Obituary, are pretty stark. Even though in the long view the band never reached to the big leagues, they proved adept enough to move with the times.

Blues purists may shudder, but there is still enough blues-based music to go around here, especially on the second track, "Darkness Is No Friend", and pretty much all of the other songs keep at least one foot in some kind of blues progression. However the solos are turned way up and the lyrics more convoluted, though not quite to Jethro Tull proportions. The title track is a mini-epic of sorts. Some critics like to compare it to "Child In Time" by Deep Purple (due to the two bands sharing producer/engineer Martin Birch), but it's really its own animal: a poem and history lesson set to acoustic guitar in the first half, then a musical reinterpretation that shifts from a jaunty naive march into war into a chaotic amount of shredding, culminating in an explosion. While not my favorite track (which is the next one, "Ship on the Ocean"), it simply must be heard to understand the new side of the Groundhogs.

Some indication of where the band was headed in on display in the final three tracks, live cuts dating from 1970, 1971, and 1974. On each one you can hear the music getting more effect laden and McPhee's voice getting more raw. If that appeals more to you, check out the band's later albums: Solid, Black Diamond, and Crosscut Saw.

Apartment #635 (DAG, 1998)

I'm behind on everything, so it must be November. This weekend must have been some kind of Throwback Tribute themed event, between the Lords of Altamont and now DAG. DAG is just another one of those discs that fell into my orbit during the crazy college radio days of 1998. They combine a careful study of 1970's funk and soul with some really clever lyrics. Add an involved producer (John Custer) and you get a pretty sharp album. It's hard not to like the stuff here, right from the get go. I mean, who can resist a song titled "Our Love Would Be Much Better (If I Gave a Damn About You)"? The grooves are tight and funky, culminating in the bass-heavy "Worldspinning" (still my favorite cut from the album), and it's hard to believe a song like "You Make Me Feel" wasn't getting airplay across the USA.

Alas, DAG, a North Carolina phenomenon, was already in decline by this album. Their debut, Righteous, was already four years in the rear-view mirror and pretty much all of the buzz had wore off long ago, so rather than building on a good thing, the band was pretty much back to square one with Apartment #635, no matter how good the songs were. An attempt to bring together songs from both albums on to an EP later in the year went nowhere and the band ceased in 1999, a true Lost Band from the 1990's, unable to get out of the decade alive.

The Altamont Sin (Lords of Altamont, 2008)

I adopted three of the Lords' albums from a friend about a year ago. While "instant" collections are great insofar that it saves you the time of tracking down the music, sometimes it doesn't give you a chance to appreciate the distinctiveness of each album. So as a caveat to the reader, I'm still learning to appreciate the distinctiveness of each of the Lords of Altamont's first three albums. I'm not really in a position to draw distinction between this and the other albums, though I did sense this album is notably more raw-sounding than the previous two, particularly Lords Have Mercy.

In a similar way to their debut, To Hell with the Lords, The Altamont Sin takes a cinematic approach to its packaging and leadoff song, in this case warning the listener is a very stern 1950's in-class film voice of the dangers of youth culture going off the skids. Given all of this, one would expect the band to be a retro-garage group, a careful study of the lo-fi side of the 1960's. In some aspects, yes, in others, no.

The whole concept of mining the richness of the 1960's was sort of ruined by bands like Smashmouth, that somehow managed to produce stale, synthetic music in their attempts to pay homage to the golden age of garage. The Lords of Altamont wisely avoid going down that route by keeping the instrumentation (harmonica, organ, and even mellotron are in the mix, unlike modern "punk" bands), but skewing more toward the post-garage era of decade's end. So even though there are a sprinkling of covers ("Evil Hearted You" and the much later "Don't Slander Me"), the original material tends to cut closer to bands like the Stooges and the MC5, and none of the "sweeter" side of the scene. In the 1960's, most garage bands would have been completely fine to throw in a really commercial cover song to get some exposure, or add higher-quality production if they could have afforded it. Neither of these notions have or probably will ever cross the minds of the Lords of Altamont.

Incidentally, the band's mainstay, Jake Cavaliere, co-founded neo-surf band The Bomboras back in 1994. That band came to my attention as part of a Zombie-a-Go-Go Records promotional blitz back in 1998. Cavaliere and guitarist Johnny DeVilla would in turn co-found the Lords of Altamont after the Bomboras split in 2000, though DeVilla would cycle out as part of the frequent lineup changing that is inherently part of the Lords' story.

The Dio Years (Black Sabbath, 2007)

This is a tepid collection, but it has three new Black Sabbath songs on it, so they pretty much made this a mandatory purchase upon release. Initially the plan was just to do a Dio-era box set as a follow-up to the successful Ozzy-era box released a few years earlier. Since "stability" is not an adjective readily used to describe anything by Black Sabbath featuring Dio, naturally the project started veering in different directions. On one hand, the notion of a comprehensive box set collection was scaled back to five tracks from Heaven and Hell, four from The Mob Rules, three from Dehumanizer, and just one from Live Evil. One the other hand, some kind a magical spark happened during the birthing process of the compilation which brought the Mob Rules era lineup back together resulting in three new tracks, as indicated above. Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler must have been itching to record some new stuff, seeing that after nearly 10 years of serial touring with Ozzy Osbourne, they had only managed to release two songs under the "Black Sabbath" name. Unlike many "very special new tracks" the three new ones are actually quite good! The band clearly thought so as well and decided to take the act on the road, performing as "Heaven and Hell" and playing classic Dio-era stuff, including songs not featured here.

The choice of "Heaven and Hell" was interesting in that I can't find any consensus about why they didn't tour as Black Sabbath. The Ozzy diehards would have you think that he owns the name now, so no Ozzy, no Black Sabbath. All nice and good except the three tracks on The Dio Years are credited to Black Sabbath as the performer. Others say that Iommi, who likely is the sole owner of the name as the only constant element of the band through its entire history, had to make an agreement with Ozzy Inc. (read: Sharon) not to use the name. Probably the most likely and simplest answer is that Tony didn't want to confuse people since there was no act of disbanding what was passing for Black Sabbath up to that point (though the whole "is Bill Ward in the band?" thing continues to hang over them). So anyone who saw Heaven and Hell live (I did twice!) and/or bought the full album of new songs, The Devil You Know, can proudly say they listened to and/or saw Black Sabbath, even if the name isn't showing up anywhere. I remember joking with a friend that I consider any lineup with two original members to be authentic Black Sabbath as long as one of them was Geezer Butler. Thinking a little more about that later, I realized I invalidated four albums featuring only Iommi and converted at least one Ozzy Osbourne album (Ozzmosis) into a full-fledged Sabbath album. Oops!

Who knows how long Black Sabbath with Dio Heaven and Hell would have lasted or if the new album with Ozzy, 13, would even have happened if Dio hadn't died of stomach cancer in 2010. An attempt to continue for at least one more show with Glenn Hughes and some Norwegian dude whose name escapes me on vocals was weakly received and pretty much closed the book on the third and final (and frankly most harmonious) Dio era.

Zephyr (1969)

Self-titled debuts are back! So what's the deal with Zephyr anyway? What are they doing here? Is this some kind of unknown band? Well, the cover is rather...uh...distinct, perhaps the second most famous album cover to feature a toilet. Although they made quite a splash locally in the home state of Colorado, most people are interested in Zephyr's first album because it is the first appearance of Tommy Bolin, future Deep Purple and James Gang guitarist, as well as a minor figure in the New York jazz/rock fusion scene (any earlier recordings than this are archival and released much later).

Since none of those bands or experiences were on Tommy's mind yet circa 1969, what you have here is a much more raw performance style, tacking closer to the blues and low on "special" effects. This is not to say his playing is restrained. In fact, the band really let's him loose and he spars effectively with keyboard-man John Faris. However this is not a Tommy Bolin solo album (the world would have to wait until 1975 for his official solo debut). The husband-and-wife team of David and Candy Givens (mostly her singing) was the other main draw of Zephyr. I have to say though that Candy comes off as a low-rent Janis Joplin here, trying to keep up in the frantic department with Bolin and Faris. This isn't her best outing. All of the highlights point toward Bolin's performances on "Sail On", "Cross the River" and "Hard Chargin' Woman", all of which feature moods and tempos that turn on a dime.

The next album, Going Back to Colorado, reined in both Tommy and Candy, which was a disappointment in the case of the former, but did wonders for the latter. I'm not sure if that's what ultimately led Bolin to quit the band and immerse himself in the jazz fusion scene in New York (he plays on Alphonse Mouzon's Mind Transplant, Billy Cobham's Spectrum and played alongside Jan Hammer and other pillars of the scene). He would take his education from this period back to Colorado, where he formed his own band, Energy, a great band that wasn't able to land a contract, but set the groundwork for Tommy's later career as a hired gun for big-name bands. Zephyr meanwhile trooped on (Tommy stole their drummer, but the rest continued) with new personnel, though only one more studio album resulted and they sort of droned through the rest of the decade, disbanding upon Candy's death in 1984.

Tommy Bolin's death in 1976 is well known, but Candy Givens also struggled terribly with drugs. I can only imagine her situation was pretty awful, rapidly diminishing into obscurity while Tommy flamed out at the height of his popularity. For the whole story check out this interview with David Givens on the Tommy Bolin website.

Archaeology (The Rutles, 1996)

Bear in mind that whatever the Beatles did, so did the Rutles. It only seemed fair that if the surviving Beatles were reuniting for the Anthology series, the "surviving" Rutles should do the same. While the Anthologies introduced a heart-stopping two new tracks, plus a heap of unreleased songs and alternative versions of released ones, the Rutles' Archaeology is largely new music, but repackaged to seem archival. At long last one can hear the Rutle rendition of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Back in the USSR". Being the Rutles, however, they weren't content to do straight up parodies, so on most tracks the listener will pick up obvious or subtle references to four or five different Beatles songs, many of which aren't usually though of as going together. Is that "Flying" that's being referenced at the end of "We've Arrived! (And to Prove it We're Here)"?

Briefly, Archaeology is basically the second Rutles album, and in reality (not the fictional Rutles story, but the real band fronted by Neil "Ron Nasty" Innes) most of the material here was recorded in the 1990's and is neither from the 1960's or the 1978 sessions that led to the first album. A handful of tracks really are outtakes from 1978, and "We've Arrived" even includes a false start that's very much in the spirit of the Anthologies. There are no "alternate" versions of previously released Rutles material. That being said, the material presented is very good, and in many ways surpasses the first album, with highlights like "Shangri-La" and "Joe Public". While the first album largely focused on the "early" Rutles, this one seems much more centered on their "later" period, hence more homages to Beatles material from 1966 to 1970 than, say 1962 to 1965. As with the Beatles, the Rutles really are down a member, as "hidden" Rutle Ollie Halsall (who played on the songs and doesn't appear in the movie or photos) had died in 1992. (Meanwhile, Eric Idle, who did not play on the songs but appears in the movie and photos, is, of course, alive and well, but only three band members appear on the photos included in the CD packaging).

For what it's worth, a second Rutles movie came out around the time of this CD (Can't Buy Me Lunch), but it is pretty useless, with anything funny having already been done by the first movie. Stick with Neil Innes and the music!

I was happily surprised to find the Rutles took on the Beatles mashup/remix album Love and came up with Lunch, which is freely available via YouTube (originally via the Rutles' Lunch website). Also through that channel is some rehearsal tapes from 1978 which have been slyly repackaged as the "This is the Savage Young Rutles". A few of those songs that didn't make it on to their first album make their appearance on Archaeology.

Here's Lunch, for the curious. It's not anywhere near the level of Love in the deftness of the mashup, but it's still downright clever.

Prelude (Deodato, 1973)

Back in my college radio days, some local kids with handles like "Uncle Jam" prided themselves on having a "funk" show (whatever that means exactly) and they would play Eumir Deodato's rendition of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" constantly. Back then I just thought it was tacky.

Fast forward about five years or so, during my movie binge years. Thanks to Netflix, I was watching the classics like never before and a big part of that was sweeping through the director-crazy years of the 1970's. When I got to Hal Ashby's brilliant 1979 movie, Being There, I was a little daunted by the running time of 180 minutes. And then came this scene, early in the movie (give it a moment):

And at long last I finally got the whole Deodato thing! Let's hear it for context!

Since I couldn't get the song or the scene out of my head, I gave in and bought the album. When it arrived in, my bookstore colleagues who knew of Deodato warned me that the album is not all like "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and the middle tracks were particularly mellow. They weren't far off in the mark, so it's good advice for anyone thinking they'll hit the funk goldmine through this album. Fans of classical crossover will appreciate that not only was Richard Strauss given the Deodato treatment, but also Claude Debussy gets funkified in "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun". If the middle tracks have no appeal to you, then skip right to the end, to "September 13" which is another very funky track.

Even though this cuts fairly close to rock and pop on the jazz/fusion spectrum, it's fair to call it jazz nonetheless. Billy Cobham is a monster jazz drummer and if you look through the huge list of musicians Deodato assembled, you'll see Ron Carter on electric bass.

Live at the Beacon (The Elves, 1971)

Live at the Beacon, an early bootleg from 1971 by the band Elf when Doug Thaler was still in the band and they were known as the Elves, is one of the most interesting live recordings I have ever come across. It's a raw document with no fancy post-production wizardry or sonic massaging. It's a snapshot of a band on the eve of being discovered.

The roots of Elf stretch back to 1958 or so, when 16-year old Ronald Padavona adopted the gangster handle "Ronnie Dio" and assembled a band around him called the Red Caps, which released two singles. Although known for most of his career as a vocalist, Dio initially play bass and trumpet and provided backing vocals on the first single, then took over as lead vocalist for the second single. In the early 1960's, perhaps to reflect some of the gradual changes happening to the band, the Red Caps became the Prophets, who performed mostly cover songs, but also some original material that reflected the times fairly well (e.g. Beatlemania, psych rock). In 1967 they released a psych-rock single with a new name, the Electric Elves. Although they were effectively the same band as what the Prophets were at that time, Dio's role was equalized with the rest of the group, with the "Ronnie &" prefix removed. Also it was the first time Dio was using his actual last name, something he would continue to do through the first Elf album.

What the future held for the Electric Elves was blown apart in a car accident that killed guitarist Nick Pantas, who had been with Dio since the beginning, and seriously injured pretty much the whole rest of the band, in particular Dio and multi-instrumentalist Doug Thaler. The band eventually reconvened around 1970 as just "The Elves" with Mickey Lee Soule stepping in on keyboards while Thaler continued to heal. Eventually Thaler would rejoin as a second guitarist, while Soule remained on the keys. During this time a major rift was developing between the band's studio sound and their live shows. The two officially released "Elves" singles were in many ways a step backward into schmaltzy pop and the unreleased material featured in the "War Pigs '72/Live at the Bank" bootleg was fairly tame. Meanwhile on stage the band was tearing things up with cover material of hard rock bands and a liberal dose of their own new, harder-edged songs. This brings us to the Beacon in upstate New York, 1971.

From what I can deduce the Beacon set, which may not be the complete show and almost certainly has had any song introductions cut out, consists of two covers ("Aqualung" and "Simple Sister") and five originals. None of the originals have songwriting credits (usually Dio or Thaler wrote them), so it is possible they are obscure cover songs. It's clear that Thaler is with the band again because there are two guitars playing on most every track (compared to the Bank set, which is just Dave "Rock" Feinstein alone). Dio handles about 75% of the vocals, and I'm pretty sure the other singer, who is much more range-restricted, is Feinstein, though Soule and Thaler have done vocal work at other points in the Elf timeline. "The Scramblers" is a beast of an opening track with all talents on display. The second track, "Driftin'" was probably the showcase song and the only song in the set that has a studio version (from the Bank bootleg). Unlike the studio version, it includes a freaked out bridge nicknamed informally "I Can Take It" featuring Rock on vocals. After the cover of "Aqualung" (a solid performance, but nothing super-special), the band gets a little more laid-back with blues/country style songs "36 Year Old Lady" and "Mountain Venus". The former song edges into novelty territory and mostly has Rock on vocals, though Dio does the bridge, which is a medley of old blues/R&B stuff like "Stormy Monday". The other one seems a little bit Red State, but the band wasn't one to restrict themselves genre-wise, and it actually isn't much of a stretch from many of the songs from the first Elf album, released to following year. "Simple Sister" is a Procol Harum cover, but with a much more stretched out bridge featuring some impressive constructions by Soule and Feinstein. Finally, the set ends (or at least the album ends) with a 17-minute multi-part epic called "The Rape of Andre Lucia". Let me tell you, this is a crazy ride, just a tale about the end of the world in a battle between the sky, land and sea, and quite possibly the most ambitious composition in the entire Dio catalog. It probably took me about 20 listens to wrap my brain around it, but it was well worth the effort. I used to think of songs by Elf like "Nevermore" to be the outliers of their repertoire, but this mini-opera made me realize that this was way more than a simple bar band, and frankly I'm surprised that they were even able to work something like this into the set. Most of the other pre-first album live shows are dominated by cover material, but the Beacon set stands atop them all. And even though the recording isn't in the greatest condition, compared to some of the other extant shows, it is actually in decent shape.

Anyway, don't take my word for it. If you like Dio's music, check out padavona.com, which has compiled the Dio story from the Red Caps through the demise of Elf in 1975, when Ritchie Blackmore, of the same band that did so much for Elf, absorbed them into Rainbow and dismissed all of them except Dio following the first album. As an added bonus, the website has free downloads of almost all of the pre-Elf material, including this album. Go check it out!

My Generation (The Who, 1965)

Overall, the Who catalog is pretty straightforward, but for some reason the first album, My Generation (later re-released as The Who Sings My Generation) is a bit of a mess to negotiate. It seems like no matter what version you have, you are probably missing something. Add to the mess the inability of Decca to properly name one of the tracks ("Circles"), causing massive confusion all around. You would think the "Deluxe Edition" I have would finally resolve this, but of course stuff is still left out. I think I saw a list somewhere with all the omissions, so I doubt my observations are complete, but the casualties here are the stereo versions of the two singles spawned from the album. Only the rarer mono editions are presented. That's the real issue with this edition - in it's attempt to scoop together all the associated scraps of recordings that made up the early Who sessions, they ended up omitting some of the most obvious ones. For example, there's an awesome different version of "Leaving Here", while the "canon" version remains trapped on Odds and Sods. So don't throw out that old "greatest hits" package just because you have the deluxe versions of these albums!

For those not well versed in the story of the Who, this is really the only album that captures the Who is all of their R&B glory, which future albums would overlay with mod-pop, psych, opera, and hard rock. It is the only album with a substantial amount of cover material (mostly in the bonus tracks), though like the rest of the albums, Pete Townshend is the principal writer. This version captures all album tracks from both releases, so "I'm a Man" and "Circles" are both here. As earlier mentioned, "Circles" was mislabeled "Instant Party", which wasn't just a random humorous mistake, since there actually is a silly bonus track called "Instant Party Mixture" which has absolutely no connection to "Circles". There are a huge number of bonus tracks (around 17 or so), many of which are "alternate", "extended", "instrumental", or "a capella" versions of the regular album tracks.

One of the reasons this album is different from all of the others is because of the upheaval that immediately followed. Unlike the Kinks, who suffered through over four albums, the Who broke with producer Shel Talmy soon after the release of the album. This resulted in a noticeably increased independent spirit on future albums, though Kit Lambert could present challenges of his own (look for that in a future review of A Quick One, if that happens).

This is the first time the Who has appeared here and it serves as a reminder I need to keep collecting. I sort of stalled out after Who's Next. It's almost like a different band on each album, but they somehow have managed to keep going after all these years.

Those Who Are About to Die Salute You (Colosseum, 1969)

After a series of self-titled debuts (Driftwood, Queens of the Stone Age, Midnight Oil), we turn to probably one of the finest-titled debut albums ever. Given the title of the album and the name of the band, it seems like this should be some kind of legendary proto-metal album, but Colosseum isn't that kind of band, plus this was 1969, predating Black Sabbath's first album and Deep Purple's In Rock.

Colosseum isn't very well known in the US. In fact, I think I only heard about this album because it had a song featured in the British version of Life On Mars. Actually I just looked it up and the song was "I Can't Live Without You", which was either on another album of theirs or a bonus track from the version I didn't purchase. Anyhow, Colosseum was a late arrival in the British blues boom of the late 1960's, with a distinctly more jazz-oriented sound (only half the songs have vocals). Their connections to earlier bands is evident in the choice of "Walking in the Park", a cover of a Graham Bond Organisation song. Later albums would be increasingly prog and less bluesy, while the lineup was fairly fluid throughout. Drummer John Hiseman would revive the band later in the 1970's as Colosseum II, with a heap of session players like Gary Moore, Neil Murray, and Don Airey, all of whom would be closely tied to the metal and hard rock scenes of the 1980's.

I've heard some of the later stuff and it's quite good, dare I say better than this album. I'm looking forward to absorbing those later albums into the collective.