Diary of a Madman (Ozzy Osbourne, 1981)

This album, along with Blizzard of Ozz (1980), comprise the Randy Rhoads era and are probably the best albums in the Ozzy Osbourne catalog, though both were impacted by controversy when remastered in 2002. The problem was they weren't so much remastered as rerecorded. The original bass and drums, played by the respectable musicians Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake respectively, were erased and rerecorded with members of Ozzy's current band. Rhoads and Osbourne were left as is. Even more confusing were the original credits of bass, drums, and keyboards to Rudy Sarzo, Tommy Aldridge, and Don Airey, none of who played on the album. Once again, the problem goes back to the root of Daisley and Kerslake's never-ending battle with reality TV star Sharon Osbourne, who in 1981 was happy to de-credit them from the album (Sarzo and Aldridge did in fact join the band, but not until the tour; Don Airey left the band earlier and the keyboard duties went to a guy named Johnny Cook), and then she completely obliterated them in 2002. I'm still not 100% sure which version of Diary of a Madman I am actually listening to, so I just tell myself it's the original and don't give a single thought to Bordin and Trujillo's involvement. If anyone can find something that provides a direct comparison, I would be very appreciative. I've listened to a vinyl rip and the opening drums of "Over the Mountain" sound identical to what I have, so I'm assuming this is the Daisley/Kerslake original. Either that or the replacement rhythm section really outdid themselves on playing exactly the same, which goes back to the original question: "Why did she do it?"

Let us leave this unhappy controversy behind us. All in all, Diary of a Madman is a solid album, and it kills me to say that, probably thanks to better marketing and publicity, it has the edge over what Ozzy's old band was up to around this time. "Over the Mountain" and the title track, which bookend the tracklist, are undeniable classics. Even the second tier material like "Flying High Again" and "Believer" is quite strong, and I can forgive the sappier stuff like "Little Dolls" and "Tonight". Even though "S.A.T.O" is Sharon's initials, it's a frantic little number that is almost a re-imagining of the old Sabbath song "Spiral Architect". Although I don't really associate keyboards with metal, they punch in at just the right spots, highly synthetic yet appropriate for the music is supports. In fact, I'm a little bummed that it isn't Don Airey playing because that guy has some serious hard rock credentials. He was a part of the "Great British Metal Shuffle of 1979", which saw Ozzy go solo, Dio join Sabbath, and Don Airey switch from supporting Sabbath on Never Say Die to being a full member of Rainbow. In fact, his Rainbow duties around this time are what kept him from assisting on this album, although he found the time to contribute to the previous album.

As indicated, the musician lineup playing on this album was effectively DOA upon the release of the album. Lee Kerslake was fired and never returned, electing to rejoin his old band, Uriah Heep. Although also fired, Bob Daisley, for a guy that seems to cause the Osbournes (mostly you-know-who) so much agony, would contribute to most of Ozzy's albums through 1991's No More Tears. The reason? The little public secret that Ozzy couldn't write an album's worth of lyrics to save his life. The fate of Randy Rhoads, of course, is no secret, and his ghost still lingers over every subsequent Ozzy album. I'm hardly an Ozzy fanatic, in case you haven't learned that yet, so I can't really offer much insight on the later albums. Some are good, others not so much. His career has never been on a steady trajectory in either direction. No doubt his inability to kick the rock star lifestyle at an "advanced" age, as documented in the film God Bless Ozzy Osbourne as well as accounts of the recording of the Black Sabbath album 13, are primarily responsible for this.

Wingspan: History (Paul McCartney/Wings, 2001)

I'm just going to come right out and say that nobody really needs to invest in either disc of Wingspan, neither the Hits, nor the History. It's not a bad collection of songs, but it doesn't break any new ground in the Paul McCartney catalog unless you count the throwaway "Bip Bop/Hey Diddle", an inferior lo-fi acoustic medley of two adequate album tracks. Then there's the "playout mix" of "No More Lonely Nights", which is completely unnecessary unless you are abnormally fascinated with the original song.

So what the heck was the Wingspan project? If memory serves me right, it was a "songtrack" for a half-baked documentary on the years from the first McCartney solo album to around the mid-1980's. I originally thought it was highlights from the period between McCartney and McCartney II and the ten-or-so albums in-between, credited variously to "Paul & Linda McCartney", "Paul McCartney & Wings", and even just "Wings" (which is why Apple created the "Album Artist" field so it doesn't wreak havoc with your iPod). However there is some spillover into the "Macca" years with Columbia, so there's no way to neatly describe the scope. It's a interesting period for Paul, who went from Beatle exile to submerging himself in another band identity, but then re-asserting his fame and eventually inflating into a commercial juggernaut. Although it's easy to call the earlier music more earnest than the later stuff, I always find something likable in every McCartney song, even the most gushy AM-radio grade stuff.

Probably due to lack of patience, I broke the set into its two main parts, so here we focus on the History disc (the second one). With a name as big as McCartney, even the "deep tracks" are fairly familiar to most people, though these are certainly not the A-listers. For example, tracks from Band On the Run for Hits would be stuff like "Jet" and the title track, while this disc takes on "Let Me Roll It", "Helen Wheels", and "Bluebird". McCartney, probably by virtue of being a pretty "raw document" in itself, gets 5 tracks, more than any other album, though "The Lovely Linda" is a puff piece and "Maybe I'm Amazed" really deserves to be with the Hits disc. Ram (co-credited to Linda) comes in with three tracks (four if you count the "Bip Bop" medley), making the pre-Wings era very well represented here. Nine of the tracks are Wings era proper, which can mean a lot of things, as the lineup was fairly fluid, but rest assured you get your Denny Laine fix no matter what album. The lackluster Red Rose Speedway and the most hits-heavy Wings at the Speed of Sound are not represented, but otherwise it's a pretty even spread. Finally, the "new" solo era gets a tiny bit of love, with four tracks over three albums, though I'm reluctantly counting the "No More Lonely Nights" remix as a part of Give My Regards to Broad Street.

Basically if you invest in McCartney, Ram, and Band on the Run, you aren't missing anything major here, though I have a soft spot for "Rockestra". Those three albums give you half the tracks here right away. Also, many of the tracks are in their "single edit" form, so listeners may find songs like "Rock Show" a little too truncated for their tastes.

Speak No Evil (Wayne Shorter, 1964)

Jazz has taken a (completely random!) vacation from the blog, so dialing up Wayne Shorter proved to be a nice change of pace this week. Although this is the only album of his I have with his name at the top, I've been combing through the archives to familiarize myself with his other work.

Outside this album, most of what I've known about Shorter is that he was in the second great Miles Davis Quintet and some related Davis album, and was a founding member of Weather Report. In my recent attempt to scoop up the greatest 100 or so jazz albums, Speak No Evil, probably Shorter's best-known work as a leader, joined my collective.

This album was recorded right around the time Shorter joined the Davis quintet and along for the ride are his quintet friends Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter. Since Miles wasn't doing a lot of sideman gigs in the 1960's, Freddie Hubbard joins here on trumpet, while Elvin Jones handles drums (on loan from Trane, I suppose). Tony Williams was probably having too much fun messing around with weirdos like Dolphy and Andrew Hill to make an appearance.

As for the music, far be it from me to play the role of super-critic, but it's a little bit on the frosty side. Musically, it is far removed from Shorter's hard bop beginnings, but doesn't really give any indication of where Shorter would ultimately be in just a few short years. While there is a fair measure of freedom in the solos, it's within a pretty tight structure, with all of the pieces sporting clear beginnings and endings, hardly free jazz territory of later work. Maybe it's just the titles, but they seem to be drawn from nightmares: "Dance Cadaverous" and "Witch Hunt" in particular.

As is the case with all of the quintet members except Carter (who had no albums of his own during this period), the album was released on Blue Note. Lately I've found it interesting how a smaller, more "pure" jazz label handle the sidemen projects, while Davis was comfortably with the larger, yet not as jazz-inclined Columbia.

Fun fact: Until 2004, this album enjoyed the rare distinction of sporting all still-living musicians. RIP Elvin Jones and Freddie Hubbard!

Taken at the Flood (Robin Waterfield, 2014)

This is another entry in the excellent Ancient Warfare and Civilizations series from Oxford. This is Waterfield's second book for the series, following up on 2011's inaugural volume, Dividing the Spoils. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention before, but he is now listed as a co-editor of the series, currently at six volumes (all different authors). Here's to many more!

As for this particular book, it covers a period of time that frequently gets overshadowed by the Punic Wars on one side and the end of the Roman Republic on the other (and don't worry, this series has got those covered - stay tuned!). Working largely from the narratives of Livy and Polybius, Waterfield walks readers through the Roman conquest of Greece from the end of the third century BC(E) to the mid-second century. The Romans went from hesitant interlopers to crushing conquerors in a breathtakingly short period of time. Just like in much of Greek history, almost no player was a constant friend or enemy of Rome in a world a rapidly shifting alliances. It is probably the most dynamic period of Roman history, when a mid-sized Italian republic transformed into a Mediterranean superpower, knocking out virtually all of the Hellenistic successor kingdoms save Egypt in less than a century. Oh, and that whole Carthage thing got resolved as well.

Waterfield's view of Roman power isn't shared by everyone. In the introduction he open identifies with the belief that Rome's success was built by its culture of extreme violence. This violence, which fueled its armies, was completely overpowering to a Greek world unused to the concept of total war. Waterfield hints that this violence, which stoked military prowess and rampant conquest, would ultimately overpower the sadly insufficient mechanisms of government that drove the Roman Republic. However, the figures that would bring about the demise of the Republic has not yet burst on to the scene (Marius was just a child at the sacking of Corinth and Sulla not yet born), but their role models, men like Flamininus, the Scipios, and Mummius, were very much driving forces in these events. You'll be hearing a lot more about the imperial transitioning of Rome in future book posts here.

Christ Actually (James Carroll, 2014)

Between Zealot, How Jesus Became God, and now Christ Actually, I'm not sure I initially intended to read so much on the same topic over the past year. Each author, however, has a different background. Reza Aslan is a ex-evangelical Christian and current Muslim, Bart Ehrman is an ex-evangelical Christian and current agnostic and New Testament scholar, and James Carroll is an ex-Roman Catholic priest and current reform-minded Catholic. The lives of each of these three men had an impact on the tone and focus of each book.

Carroll has ruffled more than a few feathers in the past with his book Constantine's Sword, which shows the intimate relationship of anti-Semitism and the Catholic Church. In many ways, this book is a continuation of that discussion. Mid-twentieth century atrocities (Hiroshima, the Holocaust) that ushered in the "Secular Age" have forced Christianity to come to grips with its troubled history with Judaism. Carroll identifies the breaking point between Church and Synagogue as the Jewish Wars, a serious of Roman-Jewish conflicts in the first two centuries (AD/BCE - depending on how you roll). The Gospels were written during this cataclysmic backdrop of war and genocide and each Gospel is flavored by the events of the time. Carroll puts particular focus on Mark, which sometimes gets buried alongside Matthew and Luke under the cover of "synoptic". Carroll shows the far more apocalyptic tone of Mark compared to the others, and, as the earliest of the four Gospels, its closeness to Jesus as a Jew. Mark was also written nearly at the same time of the destruction of the second Temple, and surely this was on the Gospel author's mind. Out of a survival instinct the early Christians (the "Jesus People") distanced themselves from the other Jews and fell into the orbit of Rome.

There's a lot of strong medicine in this book and it's probably not the most comfortable read for those not ready to face the uncompromising nastiness of war. When we read "the city was sacked" in a history textbook, it is an antiseptic line covering up all the atrocities of rape, murder, and destruction. We nearly take for granted now that soldiers draw a salary, but back in the day plunder was their compensation, a devastating and humiliating punishment for the losers. However, for those concerned about how Christianity can continue in the present day, especially in the face of an overwhelmingly secular society, this makes for stimulating reading.

Counterpoints (Argent, 1975)

Looking back on some previous posts, I realize I've covered the Argent catalog quite well up to this point. After this post, all that will remain is the second album, Ring of Hands, and the second-to-last one, Circus. There's also the live album, Encore. Of the three, I only have the first one, so the Argent era of this blog may be drawing to an end soon!

So....Counterpoints. Well, until relatively recently, I wasn't even aware that the band had released two albums following the departure of Russ Ballard, this one and Circus, both from 1975. Losing a band member responsible for writing half of the material on paper should have been a killing blow to the band, but then again the band is called Argent, not Ballard, so it really isn't a huge surprise that the band continued with two new members, John Verity (guitar/vocals) and John Grimaldi (guitar). Another major change, more behind the scenes, was the end of Rod Argent's writing partnership with Chris White, his old Zombie bandmate. I'm not sure if anything negative caused that, but White was becoming more involved with A&R stuff rather than songwriting anyway. On Circus, Rod handles all of the writing except for one track penned by bassist Jim Rodford. Counterpoints is similarly written, but Grimaldi gets a couple songs of his own into the mix.

Since Rodford and Argent shared vocal duties with Ballard on almost all of the previous albums, the vocals on Counterpoints are not drastically different from the "classic" era. Verity, most prominent on the opener, "On My Feet Again", "Time" and "Rock and Roll Show" actually sounds Ballard-esque. Musically, some of it isn't a big departure from albums past, but Grimaldi's "It's Fallen Off" (great title?), the bridge of "Time", and "I Can't Remember But Yes" feature some crazy Mahavishnu Orchestra-grade jazz fusion style, showing that the band pushing past simple prog territory. I have no doubt the new members fueled this development, particularly Grimaldi, who, unlike Ballard, could focus entirely on guitar and let the others handle the singing. There are also some quasi-confirmed rumors that drummer Bob Henrit played very little or nothing on this album due to illness, forcing the band to borrow some guy from Genesis to...ahem...hold down the beat.

Finally, there's the little matter of the availability of this album. For some reason, Circus received a proper CD release as a two-fer with some earlier album (I can't remember which, but it was probably one of the first two), but Counterpoints did not. Furthermore, Circus is readily available as download, whereas Counterpoints is not. Thankfully, some kind people have been uploading various tracks to a popular video streaming website and it isn't too hard to make clever use of various extensions to build your own album. However the quality is typically pretty wretched and I'm sure some of what I found is missing small parts here and there. But, if you're not an OCD audiophile and you just want to hear the final Argent album, there are ways to achieve this. Songs come and go, but the one "must hear" track is Rodford's "Time". In general, the songs on the first half of the album are better, though "Butterfly" is also an excellent track, making good use of either trumpet or trumpet-sounding keyboard.

If you really want a challenge, try finding yourself a full copy of Rod Argent's solo debut, Moving Home, released three years later.