Music – Page 8 – Rock Salted

Willie Nelson – The Hungry Years

Willie Nelson – The Hungry Years Sony Music Special Products A22354 (1991)

The Hungry Years — not to be confused with a budget-priced compilation album from the early 1980s by the same name — is one of the most obscure albums in Willie Nelson’s vast catalog. The original sessions were in 1976 at Studio in the Country, located in between Bogalusa and Varnado, Louisiana. There were overdubs in 1978, then the tapes were shelved. They were found in a deteriorated state in the late 1980s, restored, and then further overdubs were added in 1989 and 1991. Amidst Willie’s troubles with the IRS, he negotiated the release of The I.R.S. Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories?, of which a significant portion of the sales were committed to his tax debt (which was mostly accumulated interest and penalties, actually). The I.R.S. Tapes needed to go multi-platinum in order to cover the tax debt, which was overly optimistic. It was sold by mail via 1-800 telephone numbers, supported by TV ads. Starting around June of 1991, The Hungry Years was offered to callers as an add-on. It is not clear that The Hungry Years was ever advertised aside from being mentioned to people calling the 1-800 numbers seeking the I.R.S. Tapes album. But The Television Group, the Austin, Texas company running the telemarketing, went into bankruptcy, and by February of 1992 the 1-800 numbers were shut down. While The I.R.S. Tapes was eventually made available in regular stores, it does not appear that The Hungry Years was ever sold through conventional channels like brick-and-mortar music stores. So that means this album was only ever commercially available for less than a year, and even then only through an obscure call-in mail-order program. Some discographies neglect to even mention that it exists.

The sound of the album falls somewhere between Sings Kristofferson and To Lefty From Willie. The songs draw from the likes of Neil Sedaka and Paul Anka. These were respected songwriters at the time, and even Elvis covered Anka’s “Solitaire” around this time. Their songs have not aged all that well, though, because they fit too comfortably into the mold of being laments of the white patriarch dealing with having to be an “individual” after second-wave feminism and the decline of trade unionism. Overall, there are also a few too many little curlicues and other ornate features added to the music here. It might be the overdub sessions — not one, not two, but three — spread out over 15 years that contribute to that, but Willie’s own contributions are partly to blame as well. His vocals are a little overwrought sometimes, with too much vibrato and too often forced into the upper register of his vocal range. Though even guest Emmylou Harris does the same on one song (“When I Stop Dreaming“). He does add some interesting guitar solos on Trigger. His sister Bobbie gets a good amount of time in the spotlight, which is nice.

There are all sorts of good bits on this album. The biggest problem is that those good bits don’t ever come together in any unified and coherent way. They just float around among more dubious elements and arrangements that are a bit off. For instance, the 1989 overdubs add a horn section — one of the only times one of Willie’s albums tried to recreate the style of Shotgun Willie. But Shotgun Willie had horn arrangements in a classic soul style. These are merely passable approximations. The most sympathetic performance is probably the last song, “Carefree Moments.” But the song itself is not particularly well-written, and a good performance can’t remedy that problem. So this album always threatens to be really good, but seems to consistently fall short.

This rare album is no lost classic. Yet considering the sorry state of so many of Willie’s albums from the 1980s and early 90s, this was certainly better by comparison.

Get Right With God: Hot Gospel

Various Artists – Get Right With God: Hot Gospel Heritage HT CD 01 (1988)

A great set of gospel from its glory days, drawing from the previous collections Get Right With God: Hot Gospel (1947-1953) and Get Right With God: Hot Gospel (Volume 2). This is all high-energy, up-tempo stuff that rightly deserves the subtitle “hot gospel”. The slightly crazed vocals, the imagery of fistfights with the devil, the tracts against moonshine, testimonies to the virtues of FDR, it all could probably never be duplicated. And I say that knowing full well the paltry chance anyone would even try, ever. There are a few well-known names represented here, like The Five Blind Boy of Mississippi, but mostly these are fairly obscure artists. Nonetheless, this makes a great introduction to the genre. There is a significant overlap with the longer and later-released set Gospel – The Ultimate Collection, which also looks pretty good on paper (though I haven’t heard that one). If one track here stands out from the others, I would have to say it’s “I’m Going to that City” by Sister O.M. Terrell, which can give any delta blues track a run for its money.

Turbonegro – Scandinavian Leather

Turbonegro – Scandinavian Leather Burning Heart BHR 169 (2003)

A bit more uneven than previous releases, but with some great highlights like “D.I.B (Drenched In Blood)” and “Wipe It ‘Till It Bleeds.” Scandinavian Leather has more of a hair metal sound, with Euroboy‘s nice guitar work being quite pronounced. You’ll probably like these guys if you can appreciate their sense of irony in explicitly bringing out the cheeseball and gay elements ever-present on or just under the surface of 1980s metal.

Carpenters – A Kind of Hush

Carpenters – A Kind of Hush A&M SP 4581 (1976)

A Kind of Hush was a bit of a lesser album from The Carpenters after a string of impressive ones in the early 1970s. Of course, Karen still sings beautifully, and there are some good songs here (“Can’t Smile Without You,” “I Need to Be in Love”). But the brother-sister duo seems to struggle to find enough suitable songs to fill the album, and Richard as the producer / arranger drifts into rigid formula, not living up to his best work. He later admitted that this was a disappointing album, noting the poor song selection, and blamed it on his addition to sleeping pills at the time. Celebrity was definitely beginning to take its toll. For their next album, they tried to seek a different producer but had difficulty finding someone “major” willing, at which point Richard produced but made an effort to move out of his comfort zone. Anyway, with all seriousness, the producer (or co-producer) that the duo should have used was Tiny Tim — think about it, this makes perfect sense when The Carpenters were recording pop songs from bygone eras like “Goofus” but also in that Tiny Tim would have added a sense of modern irony that would have reinvigorated The Carpenters’ sound at a time when their old approach maybe seemed less relevant.

“In an old joke from the defunct German Democratic Republic, a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail will be read by the censors, he tells his friends: ‘Let’s establish a code: if a letter you get from me is written in ordinary blue ink, it’s true; if it’s written in red ink, it’s false.’ After a month, his friends get the first letter, written in blue ink: ‘Everything is wonderful here: the shops are full, food is abundant, apartments are large and properly heated, cinemas show films from the West, there are many beautiful girls ready for an affair — the only thing you can’t get is red ink.’ ***

“we ‘feel free’ because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.” Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real! pp. 1-2.

At their best, The Carpenters were able to articulate the claustrophobic unfreedom of the (white) “American Dream” in the post-WWI “Golden Age”, presenting songs in “red” ink” or pointing out a lack of “red ink”. There is only a trace of that ability on A Kind of Hush. At a time when punk was making overt attacks on society, disco was celebrating individual hedonism and even hip-hop was rising from the underground, The Carpenters seemed somewhat out of touch, merely responding to conditions that many people already relegated to the past. Oh, and the album cover is indeed one of the strangest and creepiest on a major commercial release at the time. The duo’s next album Passage would be a small improvement, flirting with disco and showtunes a bit, though still prone to a few (easily avoidable) missteps.

Johnny Cash – The Junkie and the Juicehead Minus Me

Johnny Cash – The Junkie and the Juicehead Minus Me Columbia KC 33086 (1974)

Ragged Old Flag was a transitional album in which Cash finished off with his folk-country phase that began with Hello, I’m Johnny Cash and started to establish a more contemporary sound with the help of producer Charlie Bragg. The Junkie and the Juicehead Minus Me finds the new style firmly established. It’s clearly influenced by the big country stars from Texas, like Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings (those three would team up with Cash to form The Highwaymen a decade later). Kristofferson especially looms large, with two of his songs featured including the great title track. It makes this album a little grittier, looser and modern than typical Cash fare. A few other songs take on more of a bluegrass flavor. Funny thing, though, is that there are a number of songs here where vocals are handed over to guests–all part of Cash’s extended family. On these he sometimes delivers only one line (“Ole Slewfoot”), or nothing noticeable for the entire song. But that’s actually not such a bad thing. The album’s biggest weakness is the lackadaisical effort Cash puts into his vocals. Still, the album tries for a contemporary sound and achieves it without it coming across as forced, and it has aged sufficiently well. This is another of those 1970s Cash albums that’s fairly decent in an average sort of way, and no classic. His next few albums represented a step down in quality from this one.

Johnny Cash – Rockabilly Blues

Johnny Cash – Rockabilly Blues Columbia JC 36779 (1980)

The songs are a bit spotty, but Cash is doing the best he can and his band is at least competent. Rockabilly Blues has Cash putting a pub rock sheen on some of the material. It has a synthetic and compressed sound, which has left it a little dated now, but far less so than Silver. His then step-son-in-law Nick Lowe is on board, and some of this is exactly like what you’d expect a Cash/Lowe collaboration in 1980 to sound like. Other parts are more standard Cash fare for the era. “Without Love” and “It Ain’t Nothing New Babe” are the standouts here. For the most part, this isn’t going to impress anybody new to Cash, but it’s marginally more listenable than some of his other stuff from the slowest part of his career. It probably earns second place in the beauty pageant of his 1980s albums. The curious may want to ponder how this sets out some of the same objectives as Unchained almost two decades later, but just doesn’t deliver nearly as well. It also is maybe worth mentioning that in a few years Dwight Yoakam would find success with generally more energetic music that bore resemblances to this (Yoakam would be a staunch and vocal defender of Cash later in the decade).

Willie Nelson – Both Sides Now

Willie Nelson – Both Sides Now RCA Victor LSP-4292 (1970)

Willie ups the folk-rock influence on this one. There are a few very decent performances here, like “Crazy Arms” and “Pins and Needles (In My Heart).” Although many of Willie’s early recordings that looked toward pop/rock music fizzled, the “folk” aspect of this means that there are no cheesy backing strings or horns, and very minimal backing vocals (on “Pins and Needles” the backing vocals recall certain Johnny Cash recordings and anticipate Neko Case‘s entire solo career). “Everybody’s Talkin'” is a big swing and miss though. Nothing here is especially memorable, but, overall, this is slightly better than Willie’s next couple RCA albums, which doesn’t exactly say a whole lot. As another reviewer astutely put it, “All in all, Both Sides Now is a lackluster effort that does hint at his future direction, though it does so rather obliquely.”

Mikal Cronin – MCII

Mikal Cronin – MCII Merge MRG475 (2013)

Take doo-wop and orchestrally inflected glam rock of the early 1970s (Wizzard, T. Rex et al.), combine with lyrical sensibilities resembling the mellower power pop of Alex Chilton and Big Star, and add just a hint of The Beach Boys influence, and you’ll have something very much like Mikal Cronin’s MCII. It’s an album that welcomes the kind of grand, up-beat yet hesitant melodicism that permeated the aforementioned groups in the early 1970s. Yet it updates things with an affinity for noisier guitar, which clearly places this after the punk explosion. In all, its a wonderfully heady brew of positive thinking and soul searching. (And there is none of that annoyingly common whiny, “twee” singing to be found here either!).

Herbie Hencock – Sextant

Herbie Hencock – Sextant Columbia KC 32212 (1973)

To my mind, this is Hancock’s finest long player. It’s the last album from his Mwandishi Sextet. Most impressive was that this was the first for his new major-label contract on Columbia. Different times… Like the last two sextet albums, this is less concerned with melody and conventional song structure, but now things are getting funkier. Influences from what Miles Davis was up to around this time are pronounced. This is up there with the very best that the fusion era had to offer.

Bob Dylan – Triplicate

Bob Dylan – Triplicate Columbia 88985 41349 2 (2017)

How did you feel about Christmas in the Heart? If you loved it, then you are in luck! Here is a triple album of secular songs using a similar approach. If you hated it, well, sorry, but here is a triple album in a similar style. Although nominally a “triple” album, the content could have fit very comfortably on two discs. Anyway, this is just as self-indulgent as Patti Smith‘s Twelve and Dylan’s pal Johnny Cash‘s The Gospel Road. But I like to image that Dylan commissioned an academic study to determine what music best suits his ravages rasp of a voice these days. He then read the graph upside down and went with the music least suited to his present vocal abilities. Seriously, there are like good singers who have recorded this kind of music before, and those recordings are still available. This music would have been better as instrumentals, frankly.