Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Funkadelic – Free Your Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow Westbound WB 2001 (1970)
The debut was pretty jammy, and this one is too but, for better or worse, it’s even more freaky, loose and psychedelic. The black Grateful Dead? Sort-of. If you come to this looking for well-defined “songs” you’ll be disappointed. But guitarist Eddie Hazel proves the star. He lights up side one. This one has its place. It can’t compete with what came next though, the stone-cold classic Maggot Brain.
Funkadelic – America Eats Its Young Westbound 2WB 2020 (1972)
Funkadelic made an abrupt turn with their fourth album. Rather than extended psychedelic R&B jams, George Clinton & Co. had shifted away from guitar as a centerpiece of the music to vocal harmonies. Some of this could pass for vintage soul, and one track even could fairly be called country rock. Listeners who appreciate Funkadelic as being one of the stranger and weirder rock acts of their day may not warm up to this much, but on its own terms this is a successful album. It marked the group’s first attempt to be more commercially palatable. The approach makes a certain amount of sense, considering that attempting to duplicate or top Maggot Brain would have been futile.
Bruce Springsteen – Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. Columbia KC 31903 (1973)
Bruce Springsteen’s debut delivers brilliant folky rock storytelling. At this point, he was concerned with more than just rock anthems. His purpose was something humanistic. Springsteen had that in common with Van Morrison. This album tells of hope for human perseverance. Triumph over adversity is the common thread through all the songs.
Here he is believable. The songs matter, and they matter to more than just their characters. Springsteen was confident to make the everyday an event. It was kind of a pride thing. The sound is a little sparse. Sometimes Springsteen isn’t quite sure of what lies ahead. He leaves just enough rough edges to give Greetings a homespun charm.
Greetings from Asbury Park N.J. did not make Springsteen a star. He was still just a kid from Jersey. The album is humble and endearing in a way that none of his later albums were.
Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle Columbia PC 32432 (1973)
The Boss took a very significant turn with his second album. His debut Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. was quite obviously influenced by folky singer-songwriters. It also had a youthful exuberance with a sentimental and even romantic attachment to gritty urban concerns. All that managed to be a strength because of the overall sense of earnestness it had. For some reason, that debut wasn’t a big hit (perhaps a very minor one), and continues to be less popular with fans than what came later.
Springsteen’s second album The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle makes a conscious effort to cast off any remnants of folk influence. In place, there is a reliance on heavy production. This album tries very hard to sound contemporary, and simply “big.” Overproduced? Yes! Springsteen’s vocal adopt some dramatic flairs (like “Kitty’s Back” with his reaching vocals, set against a hushed vocal chorus, and similarly with the sappy orchestration of “New York City Serenade”). The keyboards and guitar sound more synthetic, with self-consciously jazzy inflections. And isn’t “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” just basically a re-write of “Blinded by the Light” from the last album?
So, it’s no wonder that fans who like the Born to Run Springsteen don’t go for the debut, but will probably like this one more. This album is chock full of typically disingenuous Springsteen fare. Springsteen’s attempts to find the glory of middle America have always seemed like something of a joke to this reviewer. For one thing, once Springsteen was a star his attempts to pass as just another “working Joe” seem fraudulent. He was a big star, not the little guy anymore. But it’s the hypocrisy of Springsteen’s writing that really is the most irksome. His tendency to use irony often stumbles when he simultaneously relies on the very things he mocks to do draw in listeners. You know, F. Scott Fitzgerald is often described as writing about the dark heart of the jazz age. Springsteen clearly tries to do somewhat the same type of thing for working-class America of a later time. But, but, but, the problem is that Springsteen becomes more of an enabler for the worst qualities that cause the very problems he laments. It’s this sort of passivity, fatalism and sense of powerlessness in the face of powerful, incomprehensible forces that is really quite pathetic, and it makes its appearance on this album and only grows stronger on later efforts. Fitzgerald never gave his characters the kind of pass that Springsteen does so regularly. For Fitzgerald, his characters have failings, and they most often fail to accept the inevitable consequences of a wealthy lifestyle until it’s too late. For Springsteen, escapism is fine, and he’s gonna glorify the here and now, but he’s never going to set his sights on more. This is found in his songs that pretty consistently stop short of offering any kind of explanation or resolution. It gives the impression of somebody a little naïve about how the world really works, giving comfort to the likewise ignorant. Srsly, fuck you Bruce. This may give short shrift to many great singles and individual songs The Boss has released, that do capture the bleakness of life for ordinary Americans, but the entirety of many of his albums reveal more than a little lack of ambition.
Steve Lacy – Reflections: Steve Lacy Plays Thelonious Monk New Jazz PRLP 8206 (1959)
Perhaps not a groundbreaking album, but an extremely rewarding one. Steve Lacy doesn’t get as much credit as he deserves for bringing the soprano saxophone into modern jazz. His tone was clear, soft and lively, and he was a superb technician (not an easy accomplishment on the notoriously unruly soprano sax). He greatly admired Monk and this album is entirely covers of Monk tunes. It’s refreshing to hear a selection of tunes that go beyond the most obvious choices into some that, especially in 1958-59, were probably not well known at all outside of a pretty limited circle of jazz performers and aficionados. Lacy invigorates each song without betraying the essence of Monk in them. Probably the best feature of this album is that the tricky rhythms and upbeat quirkiness inherent in the songs are left intact. Yet everything feels modernized with the more mellow textures that give this set less of a be-bop feel and more of a relaxed, cool one. The simple fact that the melodies are carried on sax rather than piano provides a wonderfully different perspective from Monk’s own recordings. This album is also helped by the fact that Lacy’s band is stellar, with Mal Waldron (piano), Elvin Jones (drums), and Buell Neidlinger (bass) each turning in fine performances. I enjoy this album tremendously and come back to it often.
The Rolling Stones – Tattoo You Rolling Stones Records CUN 39114 (1981)
Wait, what??? Where did this album come from? Where did it come from?? The Stones ditched the attempts to sound contemporary of Black and Blue, Some Girls and Emotional Rescue in favor of something a bit more in line with what they had been doing ten years earlier. Yeah, strangely enough it works. What’s more, the ballads and slower material of side two are about as strong as the rockers on side one. A weird anomaly and really the last time The Rolling Stones sounded like they had anything worthwhile to offer.
The Rolling Stones – Black and Blue Rolling Stones Records COC 59106 (1976)
Black and Blue is something of the black sheep of 1970s Stones albums. There are no classic tunes to be found, and the songwriting in general just doesn’t impress. Yet, there is something to say about these simplistic yet gritty jams. Iggy Pop once gave an interview where he commented about his own most recent record being stupid rock music and sometimes you just need stupid rock music. Well, Black and Blue is precisely that kind of stupid rock music! The jams are often quite danceable, especially those with a disco flavor, and work out all right with the help of a rotating cast of guitarists. This one plays best as mood music, background music. If that’s not what you want, it’s time to look elsewhere. You wouldn’t even have to look far, because two years later Some Girls took the stylistically varied approach of this album and combined it with more focused songwriting to generally more acclaim.
Jandek – Glasgow Sunday Corwood 0792 (2008)
The main thing about Jandek is that the man behind it, Sterling Smith, has managed to come up with some pretty varied music through the years. Here he enlists the help of some excellent avant-garde players for a live show recorded October 16, 2005 in Glasgow. The first track, “The Grassy Knoll,” is performed with the great Loren Connors, with Mr. Smith on harmonica and also doing spoken word and a little singing. The sort of ambient guitar playing from Connors matched with the poetic recitations strongly recalls Patti Smith and Kevin Shields‘ The Coral Sea, part of which was recorded just months before this (was Mr. Smith in attendance?). But Unlike Patti Smith’s more dynamic recitations, Mr. Smith is more dark and monotone, suggesting influence from John Cale‘s “The Jeweller” (Slow Dazzle) or an assortment of Current 93 recordings. The lyrics reflect something of a consistent theme in Jandek recordings, that of seeking escape from something like a professional office-type day job — for a similar scenario, see the interview with Runhild Gammelsæter in the October 2008 issue of The Wire magazine, or even read about the life of composer/insurance executive Charles Ives. It might be summed up in a line from the Godard movie Film Socialisme: “No more doing evil, it’s vacation time.” The second track, “Tribal Ether,” is even better. Mr. Smith is on….drums! Alan Licht is on electric guitar and Heather Leigh Murray is on lap steel guitar and some vocals. The guitar cooks and the drums, well, they strangely enough work. But with Jandek, strange is the new normal.
Jandek – Put My Dream on This Planet Corwood 0767 (2000)
No one probably expected Jandek to release an a cappella album. But then again no one expected Jandek to still exist by the year 2000, still anonymously selling albums out of a post office box. All signs point to a lot of this being recorded on a dictaphone. “I Need Your Life” adds to the intrigue with some rhythmic embellishment made possible by cutting out the sound on the recording periodically — a counterpart to Steve Reich‘s legendary “Come Out” perhaps. “It’s Your House” references the debut of The Units (a/k/a Jandek) with repeated intonations of “I’m ready for the house.” The vocals at times use little affected gimmicks that do liven this up quite a bit. If you expect this to be a tedious affair, think again. It’s anything but that. Of course, this assumes that the listener is grounded in the nature of what Jandek so often does with atonal blues. Basically, Jandek achieves here just with voice what was achieved on the early quintessentially Jandek-ian acoustic guitar albums.
Swan Silvertones – Singing in My Soul Vee-Jay LP 5006 (1960)
For those not in the know, The Swan Silvertones were a long-lived gospel group — one of the best. Their second LP, Singing in My Soul, is perhaps their very best. The group had already been around for more than two decades when they made the album, an existence that pre-dated the album format era. Their early days involved radio performances (no recordings of those performances have been released). They then recorded a host of singles for the King label in the 1940s, which were mostly a cappella, with occasional acoustic guitar accompaniment. The group complained that the record label forced them to play up a kind of hillbilly, folky sound. Into the 1950s, they recorded “hard” gospel for Specialty records. All the Specialty sides are essential. The group sang searing leads, balanced with ravaged screams and driving tempos. Lead singer Claude Jeter made pioneering use of his falsetto range, seemlessly jumping between his natural range and his falsetto.
When the group moved to Vee-Jay records in the late 1950s — where almost all of the top gospel acts of the day recorded — there was a profound shift in their music. Instrumental accompaniment was much more pronounced, and varied. Vocals remained the focus. But there were new opportunities for interplay between vocal and non-vocal sonorities. On record they were paired with some of the finest session players around (in particular, the jazz group MJT+3), with credentials from outside the gospel world, because Vee-Jay was also active making successful recordings in other genres like blues and jazz.
Vee-Jay was a significant independent record label in its day, and was notable for being an African-American owned and operated company when Jim Crow segregation laws were still prevalent. It maintained a measure of dominance in the African-American market until overtaken by Motown, and Vee-Jay’s eventual bankruptcy due to financial mismanagement in 1966. Though, it should be noted, the label’s biggest commercial successes came not from black acts but from white acts like The Four Seasons and licensed state-side re-issues of recordings by The Beatles. Vivian Carter Bracken, one of the label’s owners, was a radio DJ first in Chicago and then in Indiana. Her knowledge and connections, not to mention her exposure on radio broadcasts, seemed to give her an edge identifying new talent and understanding commercial markets for music. Scores of major musical artists made their first commercially successful recordings for the label.
The opener on Singing in My Soul is the traditional “Swing Low.” The first sounds are from an electric guitar (from Linwood Hargrove), slowly playing two dissonant, descending chords. Louis Johnson, who joined the group about five years earlier, is the first singer heard, and he is sermonizing rather than singing as such, recanting a nostalgic tale about supposedly hearing about the lyrics of the song from “an old gray-haired lady” many years ago, presumably in childhood. A vocal harmony is introduced, with slow, wordless “wooos” filling out the space behind Johnson. Claude Jeter comes in next. He goes immediately to his falsetto range. He dips into his natural range briefly, only to swoop immediately back up to his falsetto. Some lightly brushed percussion on a cymbal (from Walter Perkins), and a faintly plucked acoustic bass enter in too (from Bob Cranshaw). As all this builds, there is a bluesy, jazzy approach to the instrumental accompaniment, though except for Jeter’s vocals everything stays respectfully in the background. There is actually a lot happening, with six or seven performers backing Jeter at the same time, yet the song still provides a sense of space and openness.
The next song, “Move Somewhere,” again opens with Louis Johnson. This time, though, he’s actually singing. His range is much lower and, frankly, narrower than Jeter’s, with a gravelly texture that is accentuated with slightly cracking, subdued screams used for emphasis. This song picks up the tempo. The full drum kit is used to provide syncopation. Meanwhile, the vocal harmonies introduce words, and the guitar continues in what seem like improvised blues/jazz riffs not far off from West Coast cool jazz of the latter part of the 1950s.
By the third song, “Lord Today,” Claude Jeter’s opening lead is ready to fully open up. His finesse in going from a robust use of his natural tenor range, with more limited, precise and dramatic forays into falsetto puts superb technical skill into play in the most friendly, welcoming way possible. Louis Johnson enters and he is now wound up to a more fevered pitch, pushing against the steady tempo of a rhythm section that is providing more forceful beats.
The first part of the album lacks any prominent contributions from the great Paul Owens. This changes somewhat in the middle and latter part of the album. Owen’s biggest chance to shine is on the closer “Stand Up and Testify.” The presence of a jazz trio kind of takes away opportunities for Owens to showcase his style of singing influenced by what was then fairly contemporary and modern vocal jazz. But he gets to do some of that in at least in that one song.
The group’s classic “Trouble In My Way” is re-recorded here with a brand new arrangement that manages to impress even with a completely different sound. Owens gets some time out front here, along with Louis Johnson. The backing vocals adopt something approaching New Orleans second-line music (with echos of “Jesus on the Main Line”). The guitar strums steadily in nearly a fury, setting aside the jazzy chords for the first time to play in a more incongruous folk music style.
As usual, baritone singer John H. Myles and bass singer William Connor stay pretty much out of the spotlight. What is more unusual, though, is that the group’s most talented arranger, Myles, isn’t felt so strongly on this album as on others. The jazz trio providing instrumental accompaniment is given relatively free reign to create a lightly improvised foundation, and the most of the backing vocals are straightforward call-and-response stuff. More complicated vocal treatments do come on the title track, with the instrumentalists holding back a bit more and the singers providing a more layers that more somewhat more independently, with solos from Jeter very nearly taking the role of the responses to the calls from the other singers.
“Near the Cross, Pt. 2” might well be a live recording. The instrumentalists can barely be heard, and there are shouts and handclaps that might be from an audience. Along with “Rock My Soul,” it raises the intensity and energy level of the album and helps provide a more a more varied song sequence.
This is my favorite Swan Silvertones full-length album. While it somewhat paradoxically gives over a lot of attention to the instrumental accompaniment, and the vocal arrangements are rather more straightforward than elsewhere, this holds together so well I can’t help but want to listen to it more frequently than most of the group’s original albums. It has a consistency of sound, yet it still maintains a kind of looseness and leaves room to sprinkle through it a variety of attitudes, tempos and phrasings that prevent stagnation down any single stylistic avenue. It may lack any individual standout songs, but the sum ends up being greater than its parts. The Swan Silvertones are definitely number one on my list of “greatest bands no one seems to have heard of”. Listen in!