Author: Syd Fablo

David Ruffin – David: Unreleased LP & More

David: Unreleased LP & More

David Ruffin – David: Unreleased LP & More Hip-O Select B0002509-02 (2004)

Ruffin recorded a batch of songs primarily in late 1969 and early 1970, some of which were briefly slated for a new LP but shelved and mostly not released until 2004.  A few tracks dribbled out as singles and on rarities collections, but the bulk of this just sat in the Motown vaults.  The planned original LP (tracks 1-12 here) picks up where Feelin’ Good left off.  The opener “Each Day is a Lifetime” is the pick of them.  What’s interesting though is how much of the “bonus tracks” — those not slated for the cancelled original album — are among the best here.  The original planned album clearly catered to a mostly sweet, orchestrated sound, while the bonus cuts feature heavier rhythms and a little more rock inflection.  There is little doubt that the original album would have not made much of a dent.  It’s a competent offering but it rarely if ever excites.  The energy of some of the bonus tracks would have livened it up a lot — “It’s Gonna Take a Whole Lot of Doin'” and “I Want Her to Say It Again” are great.  In fact, “It’s Gonna Take a Whole Lot of Doin'” might well be one of the very best of his solo career (break-up song or reparations song? — you decide).  It’s hard to figure what went wrong with a talent as great as Ruffin’s.  His debut album was a magnificent achievement.  But perhaps it was his ego, his drug habit, a lack of ambition, a clash of personalities with Motown management, or just bad luck that he seemed to end up relegated to second rate material and the backwaters of the Motown empire.  He would make a brief artistic resurgence with the under-appreciated Me ‘n Rock ‘n Roll Are Here to Stay a few years later.  Yet it wasn’t really meant to be for Ruffin, whose career seemed to just unceremoniously slide out of view.

The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers

Sticky Fingers

The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers Rolling Stones Records COC 59100 (1971)

I always find it annoying that people never recognize how weak the middle of this album is.  The strained guitar solo on “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and the pathetic attempts at delta blues on “You Gotta Move” and “I Got the Blues” (which pale compared to the Stones’ stuff back around ’65) come to mind.  Still, the two ends more than make up for that. Apart from the hits, be sure to take in Paul Buckmaster‘s arrangements that brilliantly complete the last bit of the record. Not to mention that “Dead Flowers” is probably the most romantic, the most pained, the most hopeful, the most dedicated, the most sincere, the most beautiful country song ever written.  What keeps the album so very good is the general weariness which precludes the easy ways out, keeping the Stones attentive, more or less.  They are sensitive and without comfort.  Restless as if there is no rest for them, at least not the kind of rest that would satisfy them. The high points on this eclectic disc are about as high as the Stones got.

T.REX – The Slider

The Slider

T.REX – The Slider T.Rex Wax Records BLN 5001 (1972)

The Slider is an album best understood in terms of both its contrasting and consonant elements.  Marc Bolan’s almost feminine falsetto vocals and vulnerable, confessional lyrics that make the ordinary seem almost profound are set against choogling glam rock guitar riffs and big, beaty drumming.  Some of the guitar is processed to sound almost like a horn section (“Rock On,” “Metal Guru” — or are those really horns?).  Occasionally there are slicing guitar solos, picked out on a string or two with some tremolo and wah pedal, that are played in a style incongruous with the rest of the chorded riffs.  The bass noodles around much more than the lead guitar (especially on “Mystic Lady”), rumbling along in a totally different register.  These contrasts sit in odd comfort with one another.  They are contrasts that nonetheless work together as building blocks of different materials.  They seem like necessary elements of something much more than monochromatic bombast.  But the real secret behind of The Slider is found in producer Tony Visconti‘s string arrangements.

In the 1960s, string arrangements in rock recordings were an odd thing.  Often they were used for crossover appeal, drawing something from pre-rock mainstream pop and showtunes that was applied to entirely different rock songs to add ornate embellishment.  Record labels frequently drafted arrangers from the pop world, or even the folk world, and had them apply their treatments to the work of artists they seemed entirely unfamiliar with.  There are scores of albums like this, with the arrangers simply working from a script that bears no relation to what the featured performers are up to.  Sometimes it works, even spectacularly (Sam Cooke‘s “A Change is Gonna Come,” Nico‘s Chelsea Girl), other times it is pretty hit or miss (Nina Simone on Philips, Judy Collins‘ In My Life).  The best of these tended to be when arrangers took a chance on tailoring the arrangements to the performer’s quirks.  Still, the more successful forays tended to involve music that wasn’t really hard rock, but rather smooth soul, urban folk, teen pop…seemingly always music without an audacious electric guitar at the forefront.  A breakthrough, perhaps, was when Paul Buckmaster worked with The Rolling Stones, doing arrangements for songs like “Sway” and “Moonlight Mile” from Sticky Fingers.  That was something different.  Those were string arrangements that lent a dramatic, anthemic, even cinematic sheen in support of harder, darker rock music.  Maybe the electric guitars weren’t up front on “Moonlight Mile” as they were on “Sway,” but Mick Jagger was still on the verge of screaming.  Visconti applies this to many of the songs on The Slider.  It is a stroke of genius.  What normally would be a contrast with the groovy glam guitar riffs ends up being perfectly complementary support.  There are other contrasts, but the strings simply extend the guitar, like the wingspan of a mighty, mythical bird that reach out from its body with majestic grace.  There are no doubts, not for a second, that everything here is in support of rock music and everything it stands for.

In hindsight, it is easy to see T. Rex as a bridge between the 1950s rock ‘n roll explosion, 60s hippie counterculture and the rawness of late 1970s punk.  This was music still interested in trying to change the world, holding open the possibilities that 60s idealism fostered while adding a more gender-conscious perspective and a simpler, more minimalistic kind of guitar playing.

The songs here are frequently quite good.  Really, really good, that is.  The title track is up there with T. Rex’s very best, a melancholy tune steeped with dreamy longing and declarations that straddle self-reflection and provocation.  “Rock On” and “Telegram Sam” really drive home the nearly boogie-rock grooves the hardest.  “Baby Boomerang” is an update of the rock staple “Hound Dog.”  “Spaceball Ricochet” has acoustic guitar and a singer-songwriter vibe.  “Metal Guru” ties the uptempo and the mellow in one package.  Even the songs on the second side that might seem like filler are really quite competent and worthwhile.  This is music with a flair for theatrics and drama.  But, hey, it never second-guesses its own intentions in using those devices.  It gives the mundane the same treatment as the profound, making the ordinary seem profound.  The Slider is also good-natured to its very core.  Large swaths of it have a tongue planted firmly in cheek.  There are few rock albums of the early 70s as likable and durable as this one.

Anthony Braxton – The Montreux / Berlin Concerts

The Montreux / Berlin Concerts

Anthony Braxton – The Montreux / Berlin Concerts Arista AL 5002 (1977)

One of Braxton’s finest releases.  It pulls together a lot of what he was up to throughout his career to this point.  Everyone in each of his groups featured here is in dynamite form and willing to stretch on every performance, which removes the possibility of the compositions sounding merely academic.  The improvisation is unrelentingly fresh and inspired across the whole album, and never drifts into mediocrity and convenient formulas.  A classic.

The Montreux/Berlin Concerts is one of many highlights from Braxton’s tenure on the Arista Records label.  It features performances from two different European festivals in 1975 and 1976.  The recordings are mostly from two similar quartets with Dave Holland (b), Barry Altschul (d), and either Kenny Wheeler (t) or George Lewis (tb), plus one side-long recording with The Berlin New Music Group.  In many ways this is a culmination of many things Braxton was doing through the 1970s. Much like a comedian who will test out new material in various venues first and then repeat the best and most successful bits and routines for a big show or video/recording, Braxton is not so much trying out new methods here (with the exception of the orchestral track with The Berlin New Music Group) as much as delivering something with techniques he (and his bands) had already perfected.  What makes the album so special is that there are some very fine performances here.  Arguably, Braxton never led a small combo better than the ones here, even if he led other ones as good or nearly as good.  And these are stellar performances even from this impressive cast of characters.  In Braxton’s world, he deals with “musical informations”.  There is certainly a lot of information being exchanged on these sets.  Each performer is contributing — solo, spotlight time is shared fairly equally.

When Braxton was the first jazz signing to the new major label Arista, he promised to be some kind of crossover success (see the liner notes to The Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton and a November 2008 essay in The Wire magazine discussing its release).  Leading up to his tenure with Arista, he had recorded works that extended into the territory of modern composition (of the likes of John Cage and the Fluxus movement), but he also worked with more traditional jazz material.  He drifted back and forth between the twin poles of traditional jazz and avant-garde composition.  But most of the time these were shifts between isolated modes, not truly a “crossover” in the sense of a meeting and melding.  On The Montreux/Berlin Concerts he does cross the divide between traditional jazz and modern composition, achieving a synthesis of both within any given piece.  There is definitely a sense of connection to traditional jazz throughout.  Often a bouncing, free-wheeling, syncopated beat as if from an old Fats Waller tune will be unmistakable.  Yet the speed and density of it all will not permit confusion with anything from Waller’s era.  The intervals, squeaks and new performance techniques also push this well beyond just the tradition.  Again, though, this is crossover music, and so this music is not completely of the “new music” realm of abstraction.  It inserts, modifies, expands, deconstructs, and borrows from the tradition at will, but never feels constrained by it.  It is the much talked-about but less frequently achieved notion of playing “inside” and “outside” at the same time.  This is an album by an artist who has developed techniques that allow a unique voice to emerge beyond and in spite of those techniques, that is enjoyable in a way that exceeds the moral limits of traditional musical structures.  It makes for an excellent listen.

Big Star – Radio City

Radio City

Big Star – Radio City Ardent ADS-1501 (1974)

Going full-throttle, Big Star surpassed their debut with this set of charming little rockers. At times, their power pop approaches the audacity of glam rock. A haggard earthiness keeps Big Star from the heavy pretensions though. Haphazard arrangements and gritty performances do make it constantly thrilling.

Big Star was one of commercial music’s biggest mistakes of the 70s. A mistake because virtually no one took notice of the great music they produced from a tiny subsidiary of Stax Records in Memphis.  They seem an unlikely group to have affiliations with legendary soul label Stax, but Memphis always has been the most eclectic musical center in the world.

At the center of it all was former Box Top Alex Chilton. His vocals with The Box Tops always involved grand, gravelly histrionics but there wasn’t always substance. Co-leader Chris Bell departed Big Star, co-writing some of the tracks here but relinquishing credit on the final product. Chilton steps up. He leads the band forward. Cool posturing takes a back seat to honesty. The rich harmonies and hopeful attitude of their debut album take a back seat to subtly darker themes. Good-natured pop remains in the drivers seat.

Rather than overpowering the simple tunes with precise arrangements and tight harmonies, the band focuses on their true strengths. They can really rock. Manipulating things in the studio, everything sounds perfect on the record. Radio City sounds personal — a kind of work that pleases its makers first and listeners second. Fame wouldn’t have made Big Star any better. It could only have torn apart their world.

“September Gurls” was posthumously one of the biggest songs ever to hit college radio. Radio City goes much deeper. “Back of A Car” is easily an equal of “September Gurls” with its rich harmonies and sweet hooks. “O My Soul” rocks pretty hard (not to be confused with Little Richard’s “Ooh! My Soul,” as Chilton often named his songs something familiar).

This record isn’t profound for sounding fresh. Radio City sounds more like a record you already love, something great you just can’t put your finger on. Big Star at their best just let it all hang out. No gimmicks. They made good music you shouldn’t be afraid to like.

Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Kate & Anna McGarrigle

Kate & Anna McGarrigle

Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Kate & Anna McGarrigle Warner Bros. K56218 (1975)

Owing more to British folk-rock traditions of the previous decade than to, say, the Greenwich Village urban folk scene of the prior 15 years, the debut album from Canadian sisters Kate & Anna McGarrigle is a great example of what folk music can offer.  No doubt the sound of the recording owes to having the legendary Joe Boyd as co-producer.  This quirky music ranges from Irish-flavored folk (“Foolish You”), to Californian singer-songwriter soft rock (“(Talk to Me of) Mendocino”), to Appalachian country music (“Swimming Song”), to light soul (“Kiss and Say Goodbye”), to vaudevillian quasi-bel canto pop (“Blues in D”).  The song “Heart Like a Wheel” was recorded as the title track to an album by Linda Ronstadt, and the McGarrigle sisters do a version here.  This is an album that seems feminine.  The sort of machismo and derring-do that infects such a disproportionate amount of music is, seemingly, absent.  Instead, there is a lovely, welcoming warmth.  The music is literate without imposing a self-professed intelligence on the listener, friendly without descending to limpid new age “positive thinking” mantra, self-critical without wallowing in morose navel-gazing.  In spite of the varied stylistic touches, the album remains centered in its own space.  Other styles float in like house guests adding to a conversation.  Because of this approach Kate & Anna McGarrigle is an album that may come on a bit slowly.  But it hangs on with its lovely wit and grace to be one of the finer folk-rock offerings of the tail end of the singer-songwriter boom.

Funkadelic – Maggot Brain

Maggot Brain

Funkadelic – Maggot Brain Westbound WB 2007 (1971)

Maggot Brain is Funkadelic’s most brilliantly executed album. It is a grab bag of styles, each skillfully employed for the desired effect. There is psychedelic balladry (“Maggot Brain”), trippy soul (“Hit It And Quit It”), folky gospel (“Can You Get To That”), dark blues-rock (“You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks”), heavy metal (“Super Stupid”), zany pop (“Back In Our Minds”), and sound collage (“Wars of Armageddon”). Eclectic to say the least, Maggot Brain is one of rock’s most durable recordings.

When Maggot Brain came out, “Funkadelic” and “Parliament” were conceptually different. Both were the brainchildren of George Clinton, and the exact same group of musicians played in both. The two heads of the beast seemed to each have a mind of their own. “Funkadelic” was the rock band while “Parliament” was the funk band. Over time the distinction lost all meaning (the names actually used gets quite confusing), especially after Bootsy Collins later joined.

This is an Eddie Hazel album. Even on great P-Funk albums, the glue sometimes came apart.  Though “Wars of Armageddon” tests the limits, Maggot Brain stays together. George Clinton was the ringleader, but Hazel is the “glue” that sticks here. The title track features one of the great psychedelic rock solos of the Vietnam war era. Hazel’s aching and languishing feeling on that song is diametrically opposed to Jimi Hendrix‘s fiery style, though in general Hendrix comparisons are in order.

The drumming from Ramon “Tiki” Fulwood is another highlight. While forceful and snappy, his drumming is simple. However, the percussion is ingrained in the music, right in step with the solos from Hazel and the amazing keyboardist Bernie Worrell. The echo effects on “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks” bring back a trick from old sides by blues shouters like Big Maybelle. The rough feel gives give this record’s constant inventiveness some firm roots.

“Can You Get to That” returns to the very ancient concepts of love and equality. This crew believes in those things even if they aren’t commonly witnessed. Funkadelic handles this song is such a way that these ideals never seem futile.

Maggot Brain has empowerment on Funkadelic’s agenda. It’s not happy Sixties soul. The record points out some of the biggest mistakes society has brought upon itself. Yet, Funkadelic seem immune. They have the inside track laid out inside their social commentary, and are willing to share it.

When Gospel Was Gospel

When Gospel Was Gospel

Various Artists – When Gospel Was Gospel Shanachie SH 6064 (2005)

A nice collection of gospel from 1946-1969 produced by Anthony Heilbut, the author of The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times.  Eight of the selections are previously unreleased live recordings, which may make this interesting to those already well familiar with the artists represented here but also less interesting to those looking for just a general introduction to gospel music.  There are plenty of great female gospel singers and groups on display here.  If this set does have a theme, it is a focus on the kinds of acts that emphasized very disciplined singing and very traditional lyrics with generally biblical tones.  That is to say, this collection steers clear of more modern gospel with more emotional, unhinged vocals.  So the title “When Gospel Was Gospel” seems to reflect a context of a lecture by an old timer to a younger “kid” about days gone by when things were good, serious, dependable, meaningful, and, from the point of view of the “kid” being lectured, entirely boring and out of date.  Well, I’m being harsh.  All the music here is really good, even the obscure live recordings.  The thing is, this set has a tendency toward the kind of dour, serious material that threatens to take all the fun out of listening to the whole thing front to back.  It would have gone a long way if different artists, or even different songs by the artists already represented here, were selected to place a few more up tempo, lively numbers here and there.  Fans of gospel music won’t be bothered by the dour seriousness, of course.  There are so many great performances, from Mahalia Jackson‘s soaring “Power of the Holy Ghost” to Marion Williams‘ “Traveling Shoes”, that there is bound to be at least something for everyone to love.  But, this set might be a little too disciplined and straight to win over many new fans of the genre.  I hesitate to add this, but felt like I should: the sound quality of this disc is a bit muffled, so you don’t hear all the great voices as clearly and crisply as you might like.