Record Rack: The Rolling Stones

Three from the Stones in White Vinyl

 Reissues of:

“Let It Bleed” “Beggars Banquet” and “Hot Rocks 1964-1971″ (ABKCO Music and Records))

By  Brian Arsenault

I almost don’t have to listen to any of these records.  Oh, not because I haven’t heard any of this — just a few tune titles stumped me for a moment — but  because they are all branded into my brain for years, nay, decades.  But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t or I won’t. I’m listening to “Factory Girls” right now.

First of all , the albums are reissued in glorious vinyl and sound like records, not sterile digital unfeeling CDs.  And it’s a clear vinyl to boot,  kinda weird when handling but just as good sound quality as the black vinyl version.  It’s just that the black vinyl always had that air of mystery, a dangerous black box about to be opened to the mind.

But enough of that, these are the Stones, man, long before they became geezers, back when their fans argued endlessly about which was the best of their many albums.

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The press piece announcing the release of the albums on May 28 says that “many,”  whoever they are, consider Let It Bleed the best of all.  Well, it does include the soaring “Gimme Shelter,” the deeply felt tribute song “Love In Vain” and the ever dangerous “Midnight Rambler,” which seems scarier today in these scarier times.

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Yet would you overlook Beggers Banquet with the slyly demonic “Sympathy for the Devil” — another song that seems somehow more fitting for the current era — along with the scorching “Street Fighting Man?”  It was also the last full album with the late Brian Jones.

Jones has long since fallen out of favor in the Stones’ legend, but he was the guy who ran the ad that led to the band’s formation and he could play just about any instrument given 15 minutes or so to learn it.  No, he couldn’t step back for Jagger’s prominence, but even longtime pal Keith Richards, especially Keith, knows what a pain Mick can be.

And I don’t want to argue too much about which album is best.  But for me it’s Exile on Main Street that is the most coherent object d’art. And Get Yer Ya Yas out is one fine “live” album.

Anyway, the third album of the trio about to be re-released, Hot Rocks 1964-1971, is a fine sampler of Stones stuff from early recordings up through Let It Bleed selections and a bit beyond.  The uninitiated and the young may benefit most from this compilation. Or, you could buy them all if coin of the realm isn’t in short supply these days. It’s all good.

Listening to much younger Stones on these albums almost makes me wish they’d stop touring.  That scary picture on the new Rolling Stone Magazine kinda tells you why.  Except every time I’ve seen them in concert in recent years, in person or on film, I’m struck by how good Keith and Charlie especially still are.

Mick jumping about is just a bit geriatric but he’s earned it, hasn’t he?  And he doesn’t have to use a walker yet.

Hey, as my son Kurt says, Richards was always an old guy, wasn’t he?  He seems better that way, even though we’re all rather surprised he made it this far.  Bet he is too.

Anyway, they didn’t end up like Elton playing night after night in Vegas.  Didn’t you always  figure that‘s where “Tiny Dancer“ was bound?

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Record Rack: Susanne Abbuehl, bree

Oceans Apart

 By Brian Arsenault

The following albums and their artists couldn’t be more different.  That’s part of the fun.  It’s a wide musical world with all kinds of room or, in the broad thinker Jesus’ terms, “there are many rooms in my Father’s house.”  In this case I think it would have to be Mother’s house, though.  This will become clear below. Or maybe not.

 Susanne Abbuehl

 The Gift (ECM Records)

The great strength of this album of sung poetry, mostly from Emily Dickenson, is that gifted Swiss-Dutch singer Susanne Abbuehl lets the rhythm, the music if you will, of the words set the songs.  It may also be the album’s great weakness, if it has one, because in its own terms it is beautiful  throughout.

The whole feel of The Gift is gentle like Dickinson and the two other featured poets, Emily Bronte and Sara Teasdale, three giants of poetry a century and a half ago.  Gentle but not soft or saccharine, also like Dickinson, and like Abbuehl’s wondrous voice.

Sometimes Abbuehl’s voice is more spoken than sung but then she finds a melody and the poetry becomes so seductive (in a nonsalacious way, of course, it’s Dickinson remember).

Dickinson saw infinity in a clover. She wasn’t wrong. Abbuehl and her understated band are true to that minimalism.

Matthieu Michael’s flugelhorn is the other star of the album, even taking the lead at times and always with the right tonality for Abbuehl’s voice.  Wolfert Bederode provides marvelous accompaniment on piano and Olavi Louhivuori’s percussion is a match for the musicianship of the others.

Matching poetry and music is as old as the individual forms. In the earliest days, there probably wasn’t any difference.  It is said that the Odyssey was sung by blind Homer as he journeyed from royal house to royal house.

Still, it is here that I think Abbuehl and crew could have pushed the form a bit harder.

On “By Day, By Night,” a Teasdale poem, I grew excited as the music almost takes off.  Let it go, Sue (may I call you Sue?) I muttered.  But they didn’t. Not quite. Not here or anywhere on the album. She is always the cultured Susanne.

With a bit more jazz, the combo might have shaped the words in new and different forms with the music.  But here it was always the other way round, perhaps out of respect for the poetry.  But I can’t help but wonder if they would have found/created new meaning.

That may yet remain to be done. Yet we are left with something fine in an increasingly crude world.

 bree

bree  (Werewolf Tunes)

To paraphrase, Pete Townshend is reported to have once said that Keith Moon wasn’t a rock drummer, he was rock in the flesh.  While I certainly hope she lasts a lot longer than Moony, there is something of that in bree on her self titled album.  The Nashville rocker doesn’t seem so much to play the music form as to explode out of it.

She says she isn’t retro and I’ll take her at her word.  But this is rock as it should be; stripped down — “watch me rip my clothes off” — rolling, bouncing, roadhouse, r&b rooted, Joplin polished, stay up all night stuff.

A little power trio led by bree’s singing and Gibson Flying V guitar. Stand up bass and pounding drums complete the picture.

As always when the music is special, Boones the Cat came in the room and stared at me.  Who’s this? She wanted to know.  Someone who could become a legend, I replied.  Boones stayed until the album was over and then went into the next room and napped. Nothing more to hear.

But while the music played, they could probably hear it all the way to the religious commune where she was abused property until being kicked out at 17 for having a boyfriend.  Probably another one of those communes where the old guys want all the young stuff for themselves.  When are we gonna castrate those creeps or at least close them down?

Somehow bree kept self and soul alive to rock n roll and “not have time to be saved.”

There’s another Who connection, the guys who “don’t need to be forgiven.”  She’s clearly been to the streets.  “When you don’t drink whisky, you’re cold . . . You can’t resist me when you drink . . .” Those are hard rock lyrics; out there, real, raw.

She gives new maybe truer meaning to “All American Girl” who wants to “Dance All Nite (With my finger in the air). She’s tough but not mean, she’s seen enough of that.  You just have to “love me the way I am.” I do.

She’s a real rocker in another overproduced era of pop music. This is who Jagger should jam with while on tour, not the manufactured pre-packaged Katy Perry.

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Interestingly, both these albums have a piece entitled “Forbidden Fruit.”  bree’s is very different from Abbuehl’s/Dickinson’s — but maybe not . . .

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Record Rack: Steven Casper & Cowboy Angst; Noah Preminger and Terri Lyne Carrington

Of Americana Rock, American Tenor Sax and American Genius Reprised

 By Brian Arsenault

The range of great American music never ceases to amaze me.  When they’re writing about our civilization, such as it is, a number of centuries hence I am quite sure it will be our music that is most treasured and remembered.  Unless the whole grid collapses, of course.

 Steven Casper & Cowboy Angst

Trouble (Silent City Records)

There is just no disputing the good time of bad times this EP (not LP) provides the listener.  Five tunes, one done twice, to take you deep into the heart of American music done road house bounce — blues, r&b, zydeco, Tex-Mex, Looziana all tied up in a just dazzling display.  In other words, rock and roll to delight the soul.

What Casper and his new Cowboy Angst lineup understand is that it’s all connected.  From the hills of West Virginia to the Delta. From Nashville to New York. At its best, it’s all American music. The Band knew that and so does Casper.

“Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” opens the proceedings and rightly so; a nasty tasty blues/gospel tune you won’t hear in church, with two McCrary sisters singing backup to Casper’s lead vocal.  In this version, it’s the guy who’s the cat.

Then here comes “Soul Deep”. Real nice lap steel guitar by John Groover McDuffie. Tom Petty would probably have a hit with this.

“I know where you end is the start of me.”

The title song is pure Louisiana  barroom rock.  How can trouble make you feel so good.

“I don’t go looking for trouble. Trouble comes looking for me.”

But the absolute gem of the album is “How Can I Miss You When You’re Not Gone?” Keeps the Cajun going and the irony can’t be missed.. The song is repeated as a “front porch” instrumental with banjo and fiddle to finish out the album.  But the first version will make you dance alone if there’s no one to dance with.

“Hey Marie” reaches way back to the 1950s to what Don and Phil Everly might have cut with Chuck Berry if songs could have been so damn bad back then without being censored or masqueraded. Chuck knew how to do that.

Marie writes on the wall: “Had a real good time. Don’t bother to call.”  Years later he sees their history “while standing in the grocery line.”

This little album is so good we might not deserve it. But it’s here this summer.

Noah Preminger

Haymaker (Palmetto Records)

Something special your way comes on May 14.

Noah Preminger, like Hemingway, boxes.  And like Hemingway he’s clear and concise.  He wants you to get it without the merely decorative and overly descriptive.  Here, here it is. Hear it.

On Haymaker, his tenor sax is moody and reflective at times — think Hawkins — as on the opening tune “Morgantown.”  Lovely and cool at other times — as on “Tomorrow,” whether you liked the musical Annie or not.

All saxophones played well are great to me, but tenor is the most satisfying; expressive and deeply touching. It’s why Kerouac called players of the instrument “tenorman.” They were special. Still are.

There are good songs all over the place. Preminger can’t remember what girl he wrote “My Blues for You” for, so it’s for all the girls you’ve loved.  Ben Mondor’s guitar solo picks up Preminger’s mood but it almost hurts when his horn breaks off.

Monder steps out front in the intro to his composition “Animal Planet.” Real smooth. Then Preminger comes in with such melodic lines.  A real favorite of mine.

On “Stir My Soul” and elsewhere, drummer Colin Stranahan sometimes annoys with his insistent pounding.  Oh, he’s good but he doesn’t need to fill every available space.  More Charlie Watts, less Keith Moon, please. Or listen to the next album (see below).

Still, he’s fine on the Dave Matthews song “Don’t Drink the Water.” The band makes you feel so good here as they start real smooth, go off into space and then return to the song’s melody.

“Motif Attractif” is a sweet little sendoff to close the album.

Preminger’s playing — ascending, descending, roaming, retuning — is just so sensitive to tonality, melody, timing and the other musicians that he is special to hear.

A haymaker in boxing can produce a knockout all on its own.

 Terri Lyne Carrington

Money Jungle Provocative in Blue (Concord Blue)

Shoot for the top.  Can’t hurt and it might work.

Drummer supreme Terri Lyne Carrington does just that with a reworking of Duke Ellington’s remarkable trio recording Money Jungle with Charles Mingus and Max Roach.  She gathers up the superb piano of Gerald Clayton and bassist Christian McBride with a few others and nails it.

I’m kinda late reviewing this album that came out during the winter but it got buried in the stack and just has to be paid homage to the way she pays homage to Ellington.

Even when she throws in a few of her own songs she seems true to the Duke.  I think he would have liked them. A lot.  And Clayton gets his own cut, “Cut Off,” which also resonates as a true Ellington descendant.

But the Ellington tunes, oh yeah.  A money hating downer narrative leading us into the album is overridden by the joyousness of the music that follows.  Clayton’s piano complemented just perfectly by Carrington’s drumming. She understands that the spaces are as important as the hits.

The only jarring note in the tune “Money Jungle” is the music being interspersed with speech clips from various politicians.  Doesn’t do much for me.  Money may be the enemy of art, but try paying the rent without the coin from gigs and recordings.  Politicians don’t do anything for art or anyone.  They don’t make things better for anybody but themselves.

But back to Ellington’s music.  “Fleurette Africain” demonstrates beautifully Mingus’ quote in the liner notes about simplicity.

“Anybody can play weird; that’s easy (and) making the simple complicated is commonplace.  What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach.  Making the simple, awesomely simple… That’s creativity.”

You’ll get it when you hear it.  Simple. Note to note. Chord to chord. Builds, weaves but always simple.  You hear every bit of it.

Same with “Backward Country Boy Blues,” with “Switch Blade,” with all of the Ellington compositions so lovingly handled here.

The wrap comes with “Rem Blues/Music” and the recitation of an Ellington poem within.

“Music is a woman . ..

When you think what you think,

She already knows”

Terri Lyne knows.

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Record Rack: Spin Doctors, Bracher Brown and Quattro

            Sometimes a Reviewer’s Just Lucky

            Three Very Different Albums Connected Only by Their Excellence

 By Brian Arsenault

 Spin Doctors

If the River Was Whiskey (Rufus Records)

If you’re a ‘90’s kid, chances are you can still remember the words to Spin Doctors’ “Pocket Full of Kryptonite” and that favorite guy anthem to the hated former girl friend/bitch, “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong.”  I mean was there ever a nastier tune on hit radio and was a band bigger than Spin Doctors in the era?

So 25 years down the road, what is a listener to expect? Maybe not expected, but one sizzling blues album is what you get.

Hey, you can’t be a teen band forever, but these guys can do this till they’ve been around a half century.

“If the River Was Whiskey, (you’d) have no trouble drowning me.”  Hell of a lyric, hell of a song.

Chris Barron’s voice is deeper than in the early days. Whiskey? Cigs? Or just the passage of time. It works.

And Eric Schenkman’s guitar can flash it like he’s playing for Billy Boy Arnold, or do the slow hand. The rhythm section of Aaron Comess on drums and Mark White on bass are tight as can be.

The whole band is.

There’s some Howlin’ Wolf (title song) here and some Allman Brothers feel (“Scotch and Water Blues”)  as well.  Yet the Spin Doctors are their own self.

On tunes like “What My Love?” it’s real hard to sit still. “Scotch and Water Blues” just builds and builds and “About a Train” has a nice Delta flavor suitable for roadhouses.

The album makes you ache a bit for smoky bars smelling of beer and less savory stuff.  But the playing is real clean.

Bracher Brown

Broken Glass and Railroad Tracks (Rock Ridge Music, digital only)

A tough old businessman of Irish heritage that I knew and valued until his death said that one of the worst prejudices was that a young person couldn’t do a good job, maybe better.

So here comes Bracher Brown who makes you think that if the Beatles had been born in America under 20 years ago, this is what they might have sounded like.  Intelligent lyrics about the start of love, the end of love, the desire for love. Rhythms that we used to call infectious.  Seductive guitar licks.

“Singing songs about what life was supposed to be.”

Young but not untested in the furnace of life.

 “Haven’t slept in days but I’m all right.”

Even acquainted with absence that may be death –

“living with your ghost.”

And a love song — “Loving You” — that rings true; a song about what he knows about life at 18 that’s not to be patronized.  After all, we may never know more, we may just shut down and call it experience.

He’s not shut down at all. Thank goodness.

Quattro

Poppzzical  (Quattro Sound)

Ok, so you know there are four of them on Poppzzical. Mixed gender (two of each), mixed ethnicity, mixed musical backgrounds.  So, of course, all American in all our splendid, confusing mishmash of cultures that often produces remarkable music.

There’s a violin, often gypsy-like (Lisa Dondlinger). She can play for Pavarotti or Dancing with the Stars.

There’s a cello, also an amazing Latin influenced voice (Giovanna Moraga Clayton). Uh, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, New West Symphony).

Are you starting to get the picture?  They can match the exuberance of their own crafted “Good Day” — “try to bring me down will be time wasted” — with some Vivaldi done as classical sound with jazz shifts.

There’s a guitar which can lead and support, strum and sing (Kay-Ta Matsuno) who can play for Baby Face or Natalie Cole and a whole bunch of other folks too numerous to name here.

Finally there’s percussion work born in Tijuana, Mexico (Jorge Villanueva) who’s played on movie scores, in Latino bands and co-owns a film and TV scoring company.

So, as you can imagine, there’s a lot going on in this album they’ve made.

“Silky” is happy and melancholy at the same time.  There’s a guitar solo that resembles a violin piece.  Or is that a violin with cello as bass. Or both.  Ha, I don’t care. It’s music that’s unique.  I can’t think of any assemblage that sounds like Quattro.

Their Spanish language soul and Latino dance music.  If I could samba I would have on “Mi Conguero.“  That may even be the wrong dance but it’s the right feeling.

The album closes with “Hana Bi” and the guitar and violin take flight together.  The cello soars after them.

And maybe that’s it: flying, soaring, breaking free of forms while paying homage to them. In a musical world of too much sameness, the individuality and creativity of this young group is not to be missed.

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Record Rack: The Rolling Stones and the Animals (Reissues)

Not Fade Away After Half a Century

 By Brian Arsenault

Vinylphiles rejoice.  If you still have a vinyl player that turns at 45 revolutions per minute, ABKCO has a very special treat indeed for you in honor of Record Store Day this Saturday (April 20).  Remarkably, there are 700 independent record stores still around in the USA and most still sell vinyl as well as CDs. On Saturday, you can pick up some Rolling Stones and Animals recordings previously issued only in the UK in 1964 and ‘65.

I wonder how many people alive today have never even seen a 45 let alone listened to one. I’m betting most under 50 – 55.  And an extended play (EP) mono 45? Extraordinary.

But even if the recording arcana bores ya, the music won’t, especially the Stones early work.

 The Rolling Stones

Five by Five (Reissue by ABKCO Music and Records)

How genuine these kids played, working to stay true to the rhythm and blues of their idols.  This was before the Stones became “the world’s greatest rock n roll band,” before Brian Jones died after alienating just about everybody else in the group, long ahead of Bill Wyman getting bored with the whole thing and retiring.

Five songs by the five guys (plus one abused “member”) recorded at the famed Chess Records in Chicago during their first American tour.  Richards recently said that bands should record in the midst of tours when they’re “hot.”

There’s heat here from the jumping version of Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” to the bouncing instrumental “2120 South Michigan Avenue” led by the fine organ work of Ian Stewart who was bounced out of the band for the wrong look and “six was too many.”

Until his death in 1985, Stewart is all over Stones’ recordings and concerts but was never accorded band member status.  Pete Best wasn’t the only casualty of the marketing of these early “British Invasion Bands” and Oldham was as big a jerk and control freak as Epstein.

But back to the music.

Jagger drags and drawls his way distinctively through “If You Need Me,” written by the truly wonderful and under appreciated Wilson Pickett. “Confessin the Blues” can now be played along black blues classics without a bit of hesitation.  It’s that good.

The album makes you ache for stuff this true to the form.  Maybe on their new world tour they could tuck Five by Five into the middle of the set somewhere and do all five.  Of course, they’re only four now because the bass player doesn’t get to be a real member. Ah, show biz.

 The Animals

 the animals is here

the animals are back (both reissues by ABKCO Music and Records)

In the same 1964-65 period that the Stones did “Five by Five,” the Animals issued two mono EPs in the UK and were sprung from some of the same roots, black blues and r&b with maybe a bit more attention to folk.

At least one major folk song so old its exact roots are unknown and argued about:

The magnificent “House of the Rising Sun” propelled the Animals to a status approaching the Beatles and the Stones.  Really, this one hit — transferring a fallen life from a poor young girl to a downtrodden guy — provided Eric Burdon with a format that would remain unequalled in his career. Alan Price on organ was the perfect complement to Burdon’s vocal and the song sent the band’s popularity through the roof.

The band wasn’t as good musically as the Stones; their instrumental breaks were very ordinary and closer to pop.  They seem at times a bit cheesy now except on “I’m Crying” where Price’s organ is again strong. But boy that Eric could sing.

On the animals are back he does a great cover of the immortal Sam Cooke’s “Bring it on Home to Me.”  No one could do it as well as Sam, but Burdon came close and brought his own deep soulful style to it.

The Animals achieved a second surge of popularity in the USA (and Viet Nam) with “We’ve Gotta Get Out of this Place,” which inexplicably became an anthem at the dances of privileged college kids, and very understandably among grunts hoping not to die in Nam. Again, Burdon’s deep resonant voice is just perfect to express the longing of British working class kids.

He’s also strong on “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” when it seemed he might be a great blues singer in the making.  But thematically, this fine song seems now to have been a preview of Burdon’s self absorption with being the coolest guy in the world.  Didn’t happen, but boy could he sing.  And he still can.

(BTW, never could find out why they fixed the plural subject-verb agreement in the second album. Of course, if you view “The Animals” as a singular noun, then it’s the second album that’s ungrammatical. Oh well.)

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

CD Review: Charles “CD” Davis and Friends

Charles “CD” Davis

24 Hour Blues (Blues House Records)

By Brian Arsenault

If I told you Eddy Arnold’s torch song “You Don’t Know Me,” done as a big band blues  number on Charles Davis’ 24 Hour Blues is but one of this album’s delights, would you buy it?  You should.

In this dickless era of the Justins and the emasculating Taylor Twitt, there is still music with balls. There is still the blues.  And Davis — former guitarist for the late Calvin Owens — has assembled a remarkable ensemble.  An ensemble, including two great chick singers, to show that the blues and real Eros are not dead yet.

If you missed this album, as I did when it first appeared in late 2011, be grateful that it’s being “reserviced” as Davis gains recognition.  Ironically, he’s been nominated for a “best new blues artist” award. I mean he played with Owens’ band for a decade, but recognition is merited.

This album has a big band blues core, but it also echoes with road house small blues combos, classic acoustic blues, even big jazz bands. On the aforementioned “You Don’t Know Me,” the horn section does some backing of the vocal like it was an Ellington piece.

Charles “CD” Davis

Davis plays in several styles, all clean as Tide washed.  A personal favorite is his acoustic blues guitar work on “Lonely Man” while Jabo (the Prince of Texas Zydeco) sings an echo of Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee and Muddy.  And is that a twelve string Davis is playing?

He saves his truly electric blues masterpiece for last on “Blues for My Father” where he starts with a true slow hand.  Restraint, holding back, building tension, Anthony Sapp’s magic bass underneath. Building, building. Neal Cassidy would have lost his mind.

Then soaring, stratospheric speed but always, always so controlled.  Not many can do that.  I think the organ comes in near the end because the guitar burst into flames.  At least any more and it might have killed.

And the vocals. Oh Lord, we have winners throughout.

On “Minor Thing,” Roberta Donnay is as jazzy as she is with a trumpet underneath like a ‘50s noir film. Tasty guitar solo by Davis. Earlier she raises the album’s temperature on the classic “That’s How I Learned to Sing the Blues.”

Speaking of heat, Trudy Lynn’s “It’s Tight Like That” reminds us that not everything on a blues album is G Rated, or PG, or even R maybe.  The band sings choruses sort of like — but not exactly like — a ‘40s big band backing the lead singer. But this is no “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” here. She is intemperate, thank goodness. Or badness.

The guys are good too. Already mentioned Jabo, who also shines on “Help Me Baby,” a juke joint jump, and “Old Fashioned Woman,” which slides along like an otter down a chute. Rue Davis provides some smooth vocals to complement the deep, growly Jabo here and takes the lead on others. Rue’s the guy who redefines how you’ll ever think about “You Don’t Know Me” again.

And Charles Davis is all over this album.  He wrote or co-wrote several of the songs, arranged the album, even put it out on his own label.  His guitar playing alone would have been enough, as well as his clear affection for the big band blues of which Owens was perhaps the greatest. The Owens band is well represented here.

Even better, Davis doesn’t feel the need to always put himself out front. He complements, doesn’t dominate, the vocals.  He lets horns lead when they should, singly and in concert. There’s even a great violin lead or two.

There’s too often this tendency to talk of the blues in the past.  Too many “last of the great bluesmen” obituaries as we try to pay tribute to the originators.  “CD” on this CD shows us that the blues present is about as good as anything can be.

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

CD Review: Bobby Long’s “Wishbone”

Bobby Long

 Wishbone  (ATO Records)

 By Brian Arsenault

So I’ve been working my way through a batch of CDs and think I have just about found enough good stuff for a 2 or 3 album review column.  And then I put on Bobby Long’s Wishbone and I go, “Praise the gods of music, Rock Lives!”

Unbridled, unappologized for, unrelenting. I want to yell “Go, Go, Yes, Go” like Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassidy in On the Road confronted with great bop live.

Bobby Long

I missed Long’s earlier work which they tell me was kind of folky. I got on to him first through his book of poetry, Losing My Brotherhood.  Which I thought was terrific but tended to increase my expectation of an urban singer-songwriter, Paul Simon kind of thing.

Instead I got his driving guitar and a voice that has a little Vetter in it, a little Neil Young in phrasing and melancholy, but is truly his own and in the end sounds a lot like his guitar.  I like it.

“She won’t leave and I won’t go.

She won’t ask and I won’t say.”

Intelligent lyrics. Of course, he‘s a poet.

But let’s be true about rock ‘n roll.  You don’t have to catch every word, but you do have to be made to move, bounce, tap, shake by that blending of voice, guitar, bass and drums that is essential to the form.  The seasoned rhythm section of drummer Pete Stepro and bassist Rich Hinman (who unusually fronts both a rock group and a jazz band) provide sound backing.

“Blood in the Orchard” has big rock anthem power. Not the poorly contrived type — think of bands with “Black” (but not Sabbath) in their name. Rather the Cream/Clapton/Hendrix  kind.

Bobby Long touches those heights at times on Wishbone.  To try to do it all the time is to risk melting wings in the sun, of course. Go there at your peril.

“Blood in the Orchard” and “In Our Way” should get play on good radio and there is some.  Good radio, I mean. Most fair sized cities and up have at least one non-formulaic station playing a variety of stuff. Support them.  “Support Them!” I want to yell.  Like the Dad in “Red Dawn” (the first) screaming “Avenge me, avenge me” into the night.  Good movie making.

“Making You Talk” may bring Derek and the Dominoes to mind and “Waiting for Dawn” sports a guitar intro reminiscent of Quicksilver’s “Happy Trails” album. Lyrically too.  Outlaw life and that sort of thing.

‘Up through the nighttime running wild…”

That’s from “All My Brothers.” The lyric expresses it, the whole song. The lyrics of  “To The Light” could have been written by Dylan, at least when he was younger.

“My Parade” is a song poem.  You remember Eddie of Eddie and the Cruisers said “words and music” with two fingers entwined. Yeah.

“Stay young in my mind…”

 Even if you are

“Wearing the same sad look as me.”

Rock, good rock, still living, helps you do the first even in times of the latter.

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- Bobby Long press photo by James Minchin.

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Brian Arsenault’s Short Takes: CD Reviews of Luis Munoz, The Sweet Remains and Chris Potter

Of the Allure of Light, Harmony and Sirens (the dangerously beautiful ones)

By Brian Arsenault

Luis Munoz

Luz  (Pelin Music)

If she won’t kiss you while this plays and the lights are down, things just aren’t going to work out.

Percussionist, composer and arranger Luis Munoz in Luz (Light) brings us beautiful instrumentation, often in unique combinations, and two Latin singers to run away with if the girl above just won’t warm.

Laura Hackstein‘s violin, that sometimes sounds like an accordion (honest) plays duet with the round notes of Jonathan Dane’s trumpet on “Amarilis,”  Teka Peterniche holds notes so long and perfectly on “Al Silencio” that her voice morphs into a muted cornet. (There’s one of those on the album as well.)

Strengths come in twos a couple times on this album.  Magos Herrera is the other fine vocalist featured. She brings so much warmth to “Testamento/Mass Alla,” Munoz’s tribute to wife Holly Ann. This is where you should get at least one kiss.

On Vals De La Luz, one pianist takes the first solo and a different pianist the second.  How often have you heard that on a jazz album?

I’m resisting the perhaps not inaccurate description Latin jazz, because while Munoz was born in Costa Rica and certainly brings a Latin sensibility to his work, I always feel that such terms put music in a box.  OK, that’s Latin jazz and that’s African pop, and so on, is so inadequate in an age when musicians are affected by so many cross currents. I mean there’s a pedal steel guitar on this album.

And tell me, do Hackstein, Friedenthal and Judge sound like Latin names to you? Methinks Munoz picks his musicians for their depth, not their point of national origin.

The Sweet Remains

North & Prospect (Sweet Remains Inc.)

Sweet is the right name for this sorta folky rocky trio and their three part harmonies on North & Prospect.  Think sunny summer afternoon in your favorite park and some band somewhere between C,S&N and America (or acoustic Eagles) just seems to go right.

You hear all kinds of familiar touches with these guys.  A bit of Jackson Browne, a dash of Dicky Betts, a sprinkle of Hall & Oates.  But part way through it struck me that you hear bits of so many others because there just isn’t anything that distinctive going down.

A little edginess would also be welcome.

There are some fine tunes here, though. “1000 Little Pieces” is the closest thing to a true rocker and more of such on the album would have been welcome. C,S&N could cover this one to great effect.

“Sweet Love” is not saccharine, it’s longing. And they push the harmonic combinations more than on most of the tunes.  More of that also, please.

There’s also something curiously out of time about Sweet Remains.  Early 70s, yeah that’s it. Maybe they were born later than planned.

But the biggest miss on the album is their rendition of the Beatles/Lennon tune “Come Together.” I’d have thought they’d have chosen something more like “Blackbird.” They funk up “Come Together” a little bit but I was disinterested by the end as they seem to miss its psychedelic derelict edge.

As they say, “Don’t look too close because the cracks appear.” Still, I can feel that summer day and breathe in the air and the fine harmonies together and be pleased.

Chris Potter

The Sirens (ECM Records)

Well, how brave is it to take on Homer and his Odyssey in a modern jazz interpretation?  Pretty damn courageous, I’d say.

Of course with Ulysses’ journey one has to start with the sea, in this case the “Wine Dark Sea” that appears only right before or right after a storm. Wayfinder Hermes points the way to other ports in and out of the storm.

It’s the females of the Odyssey who get the most attention here.  The Sirens call, as does Penelope.  But for different reasons.

Kalypso uses her wiles to keep Ulysses on her island, some say for a year. others say for several. But bigger gods intervene and she must let him go.

And the more demure and reflective Nausikka, daughter of a king, admires brave Ulysses but knows he has to journey home, finally, to butcher the suitors and be reunited to the faithful Penelope.

Potter’s saxophone, as ably supported as Ulysses by his crew, tells all these stories and more.

A very serious recording but a richly beautiful one as well. And are there more of the books of the Odyssey ahead?

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CD Review: Jimi Hendrix “People, Hell and Angels”

Jimi Hendrix

People, Hell and Angels, (Experience Hendrix/Legacy Recordings)

By Brian Arsenault

So I’m thinking, ‘Hey, Jimi’s been gone better than four decades, so how can they keep releasing new albums?’  Or rather, I’m thinking that right up to the second cut, “Somewhere,” when I start thinking, feeling what a joy it is to hear him play. On songs and versions I’ve never heard before.

“Somewhere” has this wondrous wah-wah work, you know what I mean, that morphs into his waterfall playing, into this rolling rock tour de force.

Then comes “Hear My Train A Comin’.”  That’s surely a blues classic by now, isn’t it? Pick your version. This one is a tour de force to the second power, maybe the tenth.

We knew the truth when Jimi was still alive, and this version of “Hear My Train A Comin’” demonstrates once again, that rock guitar cannot advance from here.  It hasn’t in 40 plus years. It would be like saying that you can build a better Mozart or Miles.

Jimi was the “just gone” guitarist that Eric and Peter and Jimmy and all the others aspired to be.  He sometimes builds a riff where you think a mortal can’t go — “Easy Blues” — pulls it off and then just slides into something else.  But there was a price to be paid to get there. We know that now.

Jimi was also the acid romance poet Morrison aspired to be. Listen to the lyrics of “Somewhere” to know that — as if you didn‘t already. Another price to be paid.

I’ve been featuring two songs so far in this review but there’s more.  Oh yes, there’s so much more.

There’s a just super version of Elmore James’ “Bleeding Heart.” We’ve always known Jimi had good taste in music, great taste.  Who could range from James to Dylan with not a trace of self consciousness?

“Have mercy people.”

On “Let Me Move You” we hear Jimi trading leads with Lonnie Youngblood’s sax.  Sax, that’s something I don’t think I’ve ever heard featured in Hendrix songs I know. But it works like a bear in this so-fast, beer-drinking, butt-wiggling. road house song where a fight breaks out at 11:30 while it’s played.

“Izabella” is a true Jimi “love” song; longing and lust intermingle.  And “Crash Landing” tells of love’s labors lost with a whole lot of vitriol.

There’s some secondary stuff on the second half of the album, it’s true, and the closing song, “Villanova Junction Blues,” isn’t even a finished piece.

But the next to last song, “Hey Gypsy Boy,” got me to thinking there is in Jimi’s music some mysterious stuff. What is the wellspring?  Oh I can hear all the rock and blues and r&b influences too but there’s something that just came from somewhere else.

Charlie Parker had that too.  Part of the tradition.  A supreme realization of what came before crafted anew.  But where did he come from, really? Some other time and place we only imagine.

This isn’t truly an album.  It’s a thrown together collection of previously unreleased tracks. There will probably be more.  It’s about cash flow after all. But when it comes out March 5 those under the spell will of course get it. Because magic in pieces is still magic.

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CD Review: Eric Burdon’s “‘Til Your River Runs Dry”

Eric Burdon

 ‘Til Your River Runs Dry (ABKCO Music)

 By Brian Arsenault

Dear Eric,

When you just cut it loose, as on  Marc Cohn‘s “Medicine Man,” we get that Burdon power unencumbered by self conscious lyrics. You just belt it out and the voice is perfect. Now here comes some Animals-like organ.  Oh yeah. And when the guitar comes in it’s just as pure as it was nearly a half century ago and all I can say is . . .  Thank you.

Eric Burdon

Two songs later, when Bo Diddley’s “Before You Accuse Me” closes out the album, the singing is so solid. And you let the guitar guy rip a mean solo. And there’s a neat trumpet piece over your shoulder. And I say this is who we are, Eric. This is who you are.  What the hell, man. It’s enough.

Still, regarding the album as a whole, J’accuse.

First, I gotta tell you that I notice a common thing in the previously mentioned two songs: Neither was written by you.

I think you get liberated in singing someone else’s songs all the way back to turning a folk tune about a girl fallen into prostitution into a driving blues song about a man’s fallen soul.

With your own songs, the lyrics sound too often like attempts to get instant play on FM classic rock radio.  It’s kind of like instant coffee, never as good as the real thing.

Yeah, I get the still angry rebel pose.  Not sure it translates into angry old guy that well. And socially conscious protest lyrics sung to indifferent music don’t make my heart sing.

Gotta say that the you’re-all-as-bad-as-me stuff — “Devil and Jesus” — is kinda tiresome, don’t you think?  Who was saying we aren’t as bad as you?  Why not be the best you can be. (Sorry for the militaristic allusion.)

To me, the album’s first three songs are all about the self indulgent, mirror gazing excesses of your worst traits, but on “Wait” you get more personal, less preachy and more satisfying.  There’s only a trace of the Animal rawness of your youth, but it’s okay. I often can’t find mine either and . . . “we’ll climb the stairs together” is a weary phrase you’ve earned.

“River is Rising” shows your ability to annoy and delight at the same time.  There are these painful narrations set amongst a gospel-like chorus with hints of Dixieland horns. This could almost be funk, but what means “He was nailed to the piano like pages from a yellow book.” Huh?

Compare that to, say, Cohn’s line “And he thinks that he can hear her calling in the wind.”

“Bo Diddley Special” is a nice little tribute song but the “black talk” is cringe inducing. Still, it’s not nearly as horrifying as the Amos and Andy shtick on “Invitation To The White House”.  Good Lord, Eric, what were you thinking!

Perhaps even more horrifying is the little ditty “27 Forever” wherein you imagine that you might have been better off with Jimi, Janis, Jim, Moony, etc. going to rock ‘n’ roll heaven and always being 27.  Oh please. If you could ask any of them, even Morrison, they’d have given anything for just a little more time.

For all that, I’m glad you’re still around so I can listen and smile when you are at your best and write about it when you’re not.

Regards,

Brian

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