Come Taste the Band (Deep Purple, 1975)

Come Taste the Band was the product of a band on the verge of dissolution. From 1973 onward, the band had become famously unstable, a witches brew of clashing personalities and styles, spiked with a lot of drugs and alcohol. The sole album of the Mark IV lineup featuring Tommy Bolin, it was a departure from both the "classic" Deep Purple and also the more recent developments of the two Mark III albums, in which newcomers David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes put their own stamps on the band.

The previous album, Stormbringer, caused a lot of head scratching among longtime fans. That album traded the hard rock of seminal albums like Machine Head and Burn for a slicker production style, with obvious funk and soul influence. Ritchie Blackmore's guitar, which was usually front and center on most album, was mellowed out considerably, and even his writing contributions seems scaled back and overshadowed by Coverdale and Hughes. By 1975, he finally threw in the towel and launched a solo career that would blossom into the band Rainbow.

Meanwhile, the remaining four members were torn over how to proceed. The veterans, Jon Lord and Ian Paice, seemed ready to call it a day, but the newcomers felt like they were just getting started. Indeed Hughes old band, Trapeze, never really broke out until after he left, while Deep Purple was Coverdale's first professional band. They hadn't gone this far for their band to collapse underneath them! Blackmore's replacement, Tommy Bolin, came from a referral by Coverdale, besting a number of other candidates. The initial jam sessions (see Days May Come and Days May Go) showed good initial chemistry between Bolin and the others, though, thanks to some drama over studio issues, the actual recording of Come Taste the Band took some time, and relationships were starting to ooze from sour to rancid among the band.

The writing credits are rather telling of the band's situation by 1975. Lord and Paice had virtually checked out, mainly serving as continuity to the band's pre-1973 history. Lord only had a co-credit on "This Time Around" while Paice added his name to "Comin' Home". Meanwhile, Hughes, the youngest member of the band, was struggling with a burgeoning cocaine habit and becoming a bit of a pariah to the rest of the band. In fact, the first song, "Comin' Home" was done without him (Bolin doubled on bass). His vocal contributions and songwriting were also scaled way back in comparison to the previous two albums. Coverdale, however, needed a songwriting partner, which mostly fell to Bolin (about half the tracks are credited to Bolin/Coverdale and Bolin shares or owns writing credits on all but "You Keep On Moving" and "Lady Luck", where Bolin's old bandmate Jeff Cook scored an oddball credit with Coverdale). Unfortunately, while an excellent guitarist, Bolin still had a way to go in the songwriting department, resulting in material that is large uninspired, when compared with both earlier Deep Purple as well as his own prior work in other bands. Oddly enough, Bolin never developed the dislike of Hughes as the others had, and their one song together, "Gettin' Tighter" is a standout moment. This unlikely partnership also, tragically, was awash in drugs, in this case Bolin's notorious heroin habit, which would ultimately kill him in 1976.

In April 1976, Deep Purple played their final show in Liverpool, after which Coverdale, Lord, and Paice all resigned, effectively cutting loose Bolin and Hughes. All band members would move on to solo careers in the late 1970's (Lord and Paice under the short-lived "Paice Ashton Lord" band), and all of these solo albums were fairly comfortable transitions from the twilight of Deep Purple, especially David Coverdale, who demonstrated improved songwriting on two solo albums as well as a fruitful partnership with another guitarist, Micky Moody. Tommy Bolin and Glenn Hughes only managed a single album each, Bolin cut short due to death, and Hughes due to a disruptive lifestyle that he only managed to get under control in the 1990's.

In brief, this isn't Deep Purple's finest moment, but it's a historically important album and a critical part of any comprehensive Deep Purple collection. Most of the band would prefer to forget it, but Glenn Hughes still shows a lot of love for it and was a major contributor to special anniversary edition released around ten years ago. Speaking for myself, I probably never would have known a lick about the life and career of Tommy Bolin if it hadn't been for this album. If you haven't heard Energy or his solo album Teaser, then you are missing some of his finest moments. Alas, this isn't one of them, but it can't hurt to give it a taste.

Ghost on the Throne (James Romm, 2011)

2014 in world history has been a personal Year of Alexander for me. Although I started on a much larger stage with Bill Bryson's Short History of Everything (which I classed out of world history to "non-fiction: other"), I experience the before, during, and after in three books. Not too long ago I had read another account of the chaotic time of the "Successors" who slowly and bloodily carved up Alexander the Great's empire called Dividing the Spoils by Robin Waterfield. Romm acknowledges the timing of the two books was a bit uncanny, both released in 2011. I'm a little fuzzy on Waterfield's book, but this one felt different, and I certainly didn't feel like I was reading the same book. Romm keeps the period of analysis fairly tight, from the death of Alexander (323 BC) to the annihilation of the Argeads around 315, while I think Waterfield went a little further.

The collapse of Alexander's empire is so spectacular, it was certainly not a problem to revisit the period. What's interesting is how pretty much all of the Successors would kill themselves off (along with the royal family) except for Ptolemy, who wisely kept to Egypt (even he got a little frisky at times, though). Once the dust settled, if it even really did, the men who inherited Alexander's empire were either the children of the initial successors (e.g. Cassander) or minor players circa 323 (e.g. Antigonus, Seleucus). Again, only Ptolemy violates this observation, but what do you expect from Cleopatra's great-times-seven grandfather?

As previously stated this book marks the end of my world history reading for 2014. The two other titles were Tom Holland's Persian Fire (the "before" if you will), and Ian Worthington's By the Spear (the "during"). 2015 will focus more on the rise and fall of the Rome, with an excellent slate of books lined up and ready to go.

Presence (Led Zeppelin, 1976)

Presence is the "jump the shark" moment for Led Zeppelin, the point at which the fair-weather fans cleaved away from the devoted ones. While I think most of their contemporaries still would have relished the kind of success the album ultimately attained, it was way below par for a band of Zeppelin's caliber. In general, every band trips up at some point: Deep Purple with Who Do We Think We Are!, Black Sabbath with Technical Ecstasy. It would be strange for a band, particularly in the 1970's when corporate handling was a tad lax, not to have a slip-up at some point.

As a product of a time of great personal hardship for the group, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant are shamelessly defensive about how much they like this album. However, they are in a serious minority, with far more willing to call this the worst Zeppelin album (Coda, a collection of leftovers, doesn't count). In fact, the criticism made me nervous album picking it up at all, making it the last Zeppelin album I acquired (again, not counting Coda). All in all, it's an OK album. The first track, "Achilles Last Stand" is highly unrepresentative of the rest of the album. It's a ten minute slab of awesome proto-metal that kind of falls somewhere between Rush and Iron Maiden. Unfortunately, it's a tough act to follow, with most of the rest of the songs being lightweight shuffles with little thought. They are pleasant enough to listen to, but totally overshadowed by even the weaker parts of the previous year's Physical Graffiti. By the time the band gets back to channeling the slow blues, done so successfully on albums past, "Tea for One" just seems to be too little too late. Overall in tone, this was Page's album on which to shine. John Paul Jones, who would sometimes share the leads on keyboards, largely takes a back seat on these performances.

The band would rebound somewhat from Presence three years later with In Through the Out Door. Jones would reassert himself heavily on that album, which also included a number of latter-day fan favorites. It's different in tone that the rest of the Zeppelin catalog, and may have been a sign of things to come in the 1980's, with Plant and Jones more in control, but with the sudden death of John Bonham in 1980, the band elected not to continue (in stark contrast to the similarly-challenged Who).

Strange Days (The Doors, 1967)

The first two Doors albums are virtually twins, both bookending 1967 and comprising the original body of material written and performed by the band up to and around that time. While the first album is an undisputed classic of rock, Strange Days, its little brother, isn't too shabby.

In some ways the two albums work off of each other, sort of like a split double album, but Strange Days clearly got stuck with the weaker material. In any song-to-song matchups it's material falls a little short of the debut. Some of the songs, most notably "Moonlight Drive" pre-date the first album in origin, though the recordings here are not archival. In fact, Strange Days enjoys a small production edge over The Doors with broader instrumentation (a Moog was used on the title track for instance), and the bass, courtesy of Doug Lubahn, is meaty and surprisingly intricate for a band that never had a full-time member in that role. The previous album relied on uncredited performers and Ray Manzarek's left hand for the lower registers, so this was a big step up.

This album closed the book on the band's early period. The next album, the troubled Waiting for the Sun, would show a new and slightly less confident band as they began to craft new material to sustain future albums. Jim Morrison, in particular, would exhibit increasingly wild lyrics and vocal delivery, something that becomes very apparent when the early hit were done live in the later chapter of the band's history.

Memory Almost Full (Paul McCartney, 2007)

Since around 1997, in the glow of the Anthology project with his fellow Beatles, Paul McCartney has been enjoying a pretty good run of things, musically anyway. Considering he experience the death of his first wife and an acrimonious split with his second during this time, it's a minor miracle that Paul was capable of delivering such as series of quality albums, from 1997's Flaming Pie through last year's New. And that's just the rock albums released under his own name. Clearly, he has made the most of simply being alive, a refreshing attitude among musicians. A lot of his peers probably would have called it a day long ago.

Although Paul overall tends to insert his life less in his music than his old songwriting colleague (four words: how, do, you, sleep), he hasn't been immune from it. In fact, some of his finest moments come at a time when he's got something to get off his chest. Sometimes when the going gets rough, he will turn to the standards with a fierce abandon (Run Devil Run), but eventually he'll get around to saying something. While albums like Driving Rain and Chaos and Creation in the Backyard were speckled with little love notes to Heather Mills, Memory Almost Full is instead a big bag of hate mail he dumped on the soon-to-be-divorced Mills, be it exacting, metaphorical, or sarcastic ("Gratitude"). In spite of the changes in Paul's personal life, the album is a natural successor to Chaos and would, in turn, smooth the way to New.

Jammed into all of the aforementioned albums are live albums, Fireman albums, concertos and other releases. Not only is Paul making the most out of being a living Beatle, he is showing no signs of slowing down.

Days of Future Passed (The Moody Blues, 1967)

While technically not the "first" Moody Blues album, Days of Future Passed would set the tone for the band until their breakup in 1973. Prior to this album, the band had already gone through a "soft" breakup with the departure of Denny Laine in 1966, coupled with the general instability of the bass position. Indeed, even the first recordings with Justin Hayward and John Lodge tacked pretty hard to the "old" style of R&B-influenced British Invasion. However at the same time, Hayward was imprinting his own more expansive writing style, and Mike Pinder was changing his style to match by incorporating the unwieldy mellotron in lieu (or on top) of piano, creating an ethereal, slightly warped atmosphere of chamber music and psych rock.

Meanwhile, financially, the group was a shambles, and contracted with Decca (under their new Deram imprint) to create a new rendition of Dvorak's New World Symphony. That plan lasted about a few seconds after the ink dried and the band was in the studio. In fact, the band and the London Festival Orchestra never performed together. The whole rock-meets-classical thing was a little ill-defined in 1967, with approaches varying from "Classical Gas" to Love Sculpture's "Sabre Dance" and more grandiose experiments like Deep Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra and Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother Suite" still a few years away. The Moody Blues allowed the orchestra to provide the glue between songs, that, if left apart, actually don't sound very much alike. Those songs, however, provided the blueprint for the next batch of albums, exhibiting the songwriting skills and moods (no pun intended) of all five band members. Graeme Edge provides the poetry, recited by Pinder, who delivers two "spiritual" tracks. Hayward wrote the two big hits (one of which, "Nights in White Satin", would chart three times over twelve years), and Lodge began his pattern of writing a gloomy song and a rocker. Also two-faced was Ray Thomas, with a playful number and a dark song, something he would do on almost every album that followed.

Oddly, one of the seminal Moodies' tracks, "Legend of a Mind" was probably recorded close to these sessions, but didn't really fit anywhere. However, with the band realizing an orchestra was rapidly becoming superfluous as they handled more of the instrumentation themselves (plus the mellotron effectively acting as a pocket ensemble), they moved this to their next album, making it the crushing masterpiece of their second album, the psych classic In Search of the Lost Chord.

Days of Future Passed was one of the first albums I every owned, so I've always had a special place for it, even though I don't get back to it all that often. How many kids in 1991 were calling this their first album?

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.